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The ad ran all over California on Election Day—and surely sets a record for anti-religious bigotry. Two clean-cut young men knock at the door of a lesbian couple. The men identify themselves as Mormon missionaries. “We’re here to take away your rights,” they announce.

The challenge of defending marriage as the union of a man and a woman was on full public display on November 4. The immediate news was very encouraging indeed. Voters in Arizona, Florida, and California all passed measures defending marriage and prohibiting same-sex marriages in their states. These three states, added to the over twenty others that had already passed similar constitutional amendments or similar provisions, have made a massive public statement in support of marriage.

The election of Sen. Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States came as a bang, not a whimper. The tremors had been perceptible for days, maybe even weeks. On Tuesday, America experienced nothing less than a political and cultural earthquake.

Americans head for the voting precincts today as the 2008 election is now at hand. Already, some 20 million citizens have voted through early voting options. Some expect a record turn-out for today's election. In any event, millions of citizens will participate in the first duty of freedom - the freedom to vote.

Q: People keep urging me to vote but I think it's just a waste of time. I care what happens to our country and all that, but I don't think one vote makes any difference. And anyway, Jesus never said anything about voting, did He? - S.F.

Writing more than twenty years ago, Thomas Sowell described the basic worldview clash we observe today as a struggle between "constrained" and "unconstrained" visions of humanity. The fundamental distinction between these two visions is moral, but the thrust of each is ideological. The constrained vision may be considered basically conservative, while the unconstrained vision is basically liberal, in modern terms.

"We're talking about really refraining from using things like, husband-wife, boyfriend-girlfriend, those kind of things, and just say 'partner,'" explains Robin Sinks. She is the health education specialist for the Long Beach Unified School District in California. The point she was making is clear enough. The legalization of same-sex marriage will require a comprehensive change in our language.

Same-sex marriage is, for now, legal in three of fifty states in the United States. Beyond our borders, it is legal in the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, South Africa, Canada and Norway. This represents a very small percentage of the world's population. Same-sex marriage is, by any measure, the exception rather than the rule. Even when legalized civil unions and domestic partnerships are thrown into the mix, the countries that consider same-sex unions and heterosexual marriages to be equal before the law represent a small percentage of the world's nations.

Human society is a complex reality, but certain constants have framed that reality for human beings. One of those constants has been the institution of marriage. The respected status of the heterosexual pairing, set apart for exclusive rights and respected for its functions for the society, is among the most important of those constants. Even where deviations from this pattern occur, they are of interest merely for the fact that they are deviations from this norm.

It is an ironic fact that this phrase appears on our currency when so often it is money (or financial security) and not God that we trust in first. In these uncertain economic times, the tendency of our frail flesh is to be fearful. However, if the church is to be a faithful witness in such times this, fear must be replaced by confident faith in the sovereign God who causes all things to work together for good.

Like many of you, I don’t look forward to turning on the financial news these days. These are troubling times. If you’re anywhere near my age, or about to send your kids to college, you can’t be happy when you see your retirement plans or college funds seemingly going up in smoke.

Over the past few weeks, oil prices have dropped from their record levels earlier this summer. The price of light sweet crude is down nearly 30 percent in less than two months.

This summer, my much-needed vacation coincided with my daughter Emily’s 50th birthday. The whole family gathered at a wonderful clambake hosted by Emily’s brother Wendell and his wife. It was a weekend at the beach none of us will ever forget.

China is flexing its economic potential and showing the world it can compete, not only in the Games of the West but also in all the areas the West deems important. One glaring exception is China’s record on religious freedom.

Most of us have been badly shaken by the tumultuous events of the last 48 hours in Wall Street. If you have an IRA or some kind of retirement plan, no doubt you’re licking your wounds. You may even be fearful. I understand. I’ve experienced those apprehensions myself.

Today, seven years after terrorists flew a plane into the Pentagon, killing 184 people, a memorial to that attack will be dedicated. That it has taken seven years to erect this memorial is a testimony to our uncertainty as to how best to memorialize the events of that day.

But day by day, Google and the Internet-at-large are convincing us that knowledge ought to be at our fingertips

When I began this series, I said the battle to define marriage is not over — and I’m still convinced that is true. However, the issue in America has clearly passed the eleventh hour and I fear the clock has already begun to toll. The outcome of California’s Proposition 8 this November, which seeks to amend the state constitution in order to establish that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California”—thus reversing the state Supreme Court’s recognition of same-sex marriage in May—will figure prominently in the future of marriage in America. If the measure is defeated (and barring any intervention by God), I predict it will be nearly impossible to halt the homosexual movement and with it the radical redefinition of sexual morality.

To drill or not to drill may be the hottest issue in Congress this month and this fall’s political campaign. Drilling supporters argue it will lower gas prices. Opponents claim it poses too many environmental risks—and besides, they say, paying $4 per gallon for gas is good for us because it will force us to develop alternative energy sources.

Looking back at my journey as a Chinese woman in ministry, I can summarize it in one word: challenging. So, I entitle this presentation “Against Overwhelming Odds: Chinese Women in Ministry.” I will be speaking primarily from my own personal experience, but I hope my experience will serve as a mirror reflecting other Chinese and Asian American women’s experience in ministry.

In the wake of the California Supreme Court’s audacious decision to legitimize marriage between people of the same sex, media outlets have been dominated by discussions on the topic. Frustrated by the lack of any cogent arguments defending the Judeo-Christian conception of marriage, a friend challenged me to pen a more thorough apologetic so that the church might be better equipped to offer an articulate and rational defense of this essential institution.

As discussed last week, the noted anthropologist, J. D. Unwin conducted what is arguably the most exhaustive examination of sexual ethics and their affect upon society. In brief, Unwin discovered that throughout history, the state of a given society was directly related to its sexual ethic. Monogamous cultures prosper and those disinclined to restrain sex to monogamous marriage remain primitive or, if once successful, they decline. Unwin also observed that legally recognized and socially reinforced marriage was the only effective means for regulating sexual behavior. Where marriage is strictly defined and reinforced, monogamy rules.

Thus far we have established that monogamy is central to the health and prosperity of a given civilization, and that marriage has proven the only effective means for regulating monogamy. Additionally, we countered the charge that homosexual monogamy would prove equally beneficial by demonstrating that procreative acts are essential to defining marriage and that it is only marriage defined by such essentials that proves efficacious to society.

Marriage is designed for sex and sex is designed for marriage. Nonmarital sex ultimately harms the individual and society. Marriage, as I have already shown, is also exclusively heterosexual in that it conforms to the biological design for human sexuality and fulfills the reproductive principle. While same-sex couples may enjoy an emotional bond and engage in sexual acts, they are unable to achieve this one-flesh union because there is no biological communion such as that achieved through procreative acts. In the absence of this biological principle, sex becomes merely instrumental for self-satisfying pleasure and therefore falls into the same destructive category of self-centered acts that characterize all nonmarital sex.

All right, you say, so cohabitation is a poor substitute for marriage and may even undermine those marriages preceded by cohabitation. But how does allowing persons of the same sex to marry harm the institution of marriage? As advocates of same-sex marriage (SSM) are quick to point out, “the sky hasn’t fallen” since SSM became legal in Massachusetts in 2004, apparently convinced that four short years is adequate to produce the predictable and deleterious public consequence of redefining marriage. Remember, however, that Unwin’s research demonstrated that the effects of such modification would occur over generations and not be immediate. Nonetheless, there is some empirical evidence already emerging that indicates the acceptance of SSM will, in fact, harm the institution of marriage and, subsequently, society.