This is not a response to Deroy’s last post, wherein he repeats his views that denouncing an adulterous business’s website, which he himself is unwilling to put out of business, is the ultimate measure of seriousness about marriage. We will just have to agree to disagree about how silly that sounds.

(One might possibly observe that Deroy never denounced that website until he figured out a strategy to use that denunciation to attack me and others on the gay-marriage issue. . . but, nonetheless, I believe he is sincere in denouncing both the adulterous website and me).

Plus, I do thank Deroy for the column. Since its publication, a number of creative lawyers have written to me suggesting other ways to make the website’s life miserable. Perhaps something good will come of that; we shall see what is possible.

I do want to explain, in a serious way, for anyone who is seriously interested, what I mean about how and why the public meaning of marriage matters. Call it: the Amazing Power of the Culture.

Many belittle the very notion — it’s the anti-intellectualism of the intellectuals — by reducing it to an argument in which “correlation is not causation” (a point of which I am well aware and even mentioned myself) is taken to be an apt, witty, zinging, and complete rebuttal.

How do ideas have consequences? I want to share over a couple of posts, what I think I have actually seen — a report from the front, as it were. More to come. . .