A good father does these basic things: provides for his family, protects his family, and gives spiritual and moral guidance.

Legislators in Kansas, Arizona and 23 other states who are properly determined to protect religious freedom can begin by asking themselves: Does any religious conviction justify denying lesbians and gays a basic legal promise of non-discrimination in hiring, public accommodations, and housing? Surely the answer to this question is no. Correcting that inequity would begin the process of recognizing that both sides - gay couples and religious objectors - have rights and that reasonable accommodation is possible only when both sides have something to gain.

More broadly across time and cultures, it seems, one perennial piece of advice to father has been the importance of acting tenderly toward their children. The New Father, it turns out, is an old story.

We would be more American on the day we permitted same-sex marriage than we were on the day before.

Even with all its problems, I will support marriage as an institution until something better comes along.

Children have a primal need to know who they are, to love and be loved by the two people whose physical union brought them here. To lose that connection, that sense of identity, is to experience a wound that no child-support check or fancy school can ever heal.

Commenting on paternity establishment programs: What these millions of children want and need is not a name on a form or a promise that the sheriff will arrest these guys if they don't pay child support. What they want and need is in-the-home, love-the-mother fathers,. . .