She said it had been hijacked shortly after takeoff. By this time, the plane had been in the air - again, I'm presuming that it took off on time - for over an hour.

No one aspires as a child to grow up and enter into a domestic partnership. But they do aspire as children to grow up and be married.

She said it had been hijacked shortly after takeoff. By this time, the plane had been in the air - again, I'm presuming that it took off on time - for over an hour.

The Supreme Court has said that: Marriage is the most important relation in life. Now that's being withheld from the plaintiffs. It is the foundation of society. It is essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness. It's a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights and older than our political parties. One of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause. A right of intimacy to the degree of being sacred. And a liberty right equally available to a person in a homosexual relationship as to heterosexual persons.

These individuals are tyrants, and so they hate democracy. They are bigots, zealots, and persecutors, and so they hate Americas freedom tolerance, and respect for all people. The terrorists of Sept. 11 live and flourish in darkness. They cannot survive in the liberating and inspirational sunlight of American freedom and democracy.

My wife had taken off on a plane. Two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I, of course, like any other person, felt potentially devastated, panicky a little bit.

I guess the language that Justice Ginsburg used at the closing of the VMI (United States v. Virginia Military Institute) case is an important thing; it resonates with me: 'A prime part of the history of our Constitution is the story of the extension of constitutional rights to people once ignored or excluded.'