Bush calls for gay marriage ban. Now I find myself tempted to repeat what some of my hard-left friends say about Bush: "He's an idiot!"

In the first place, the definitions of "man" and "woman" are not perfectly sharp. Folks with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, for example, are considered intersexual, and exist at all gradiations between "man" and "woman". Consider Jamie Lee Curtis, for example. Laws restricting marriage to a relationship between a "man" and a "woman" prohibit intersexuals from ever marrying anyone.

Next, people regularly undergo sexual reassignment through a combination of surgery, hormonal therapy and counselling. Some of these people are already married, and some remain married after their reassignment. Should couples in this situation be forcibly divorced by the state? Alternatively, do we require that one member of a same-sex union undergo sexual reassignment? This would certainly allow gays to marry. Perhaps a partial reassignment, such as "femininization" of a gay man by the use of hormone supplements, would be sufficient to change his sex long enough to get a legal marriage license?

The socially-sanctioned practice of marriage is a union between two people and the society around them. Our society has laws that provide different rights to people inside of marriage. The intent of such laws was and is to re-enforce the stability of such relationships and to recognize the importance of married partnerships to the nuclear family that characterizes successful civilizations. The only aspect of marriage that relates to the expressed secondary sex characteristics of the people involved is the notion of reproduction. Every other aspect of this relationship with society is genderless.

By insisting that marriage exists purely between a "man" and a "woman", we are stating that the reproductive aspects of marriage are so much more important than all the other aspects that marriage cannot exist without it. Should we then attune the law further by forbidding marriage between people who are sterile or who choose to practice birth control? That seems more salient than using the fuzzy boundary between "man" and "woman".

Okay, I'll say it. He's an idiot!