Partial Retraction: Actually, Ramesh Ponnuru's cover article on gay marriage is an even-handed look at the politics of the issue, and is not, as such, extreme. It is, in fact, full of thoughtful and interesting observations like this one:

The logic of the argument against homosexuality now implicates the behavior of a lot of heterosexuals. If the argument is made openly, and cast as a case for traditional sexual morals in general, a large part of the public will flinch. If the argument is made so as to single out gays, the logic vanishes. Social conservatives begin to look as though they are motivated not by principle but by the desire to persecute a minority. If no effective public argument can be made, the prohibition on gay marriage must survive based on tradition and unarticulated reasons. These are weak defenses in a rationalistic and sexually liberated era.

The follow-up article, more editorial in nature, by Gerard Bradley, is typical of the attempts to frame marriage as a by-definition issue, that marriage is -- by definition -- closed to homosexuals. That is to say, it makes the case based precisely on those grounds that Ponnuru dimisses as "weak":

. . . homosexual acts are not and never can be marital. Sodomy has been discouraged, and sometimes prohibited, for basically the same reason that fornication and adultery have been: to protect marriage as the principle, or litmus line, of sexual morality.

Now this is not to say that Ponnuru's judgement of such defenses as "weak" means that he dismisses them as insubstantial. He may well agree with Bradley; I don't know. But the two pieces are not of a piece.