This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

A long time ago, at a newspaper far, far away, I was the editor who made the decision to publish a wedding announcement for a couple of guys.

The reaction was, well, sort of like the reaction The Salt Lake Tribune got last week when it endorsed George Bush for president. In both cases, people were surprised, shocked, offended, appalled, aghast, nonplussed and stunned.

This week, though, the reactions included a lot of reasons for the dismay, reasons that had to do with both the substance of the endorsement and the methodology of newspaper editorial pages.

A decade ago, on the other hand, the reaction I heard was more the anger that could not speak its name. People spluttered and gesticulated and got all red in the face. Even by mail.

One gentleman finally calmed down long enough to tell the truth from the depths of his soul.

"I just don't like imagining what those two guys might be doing right now," he sighed.

Of course, it was only after he was gone that I thought of the question I should have asked.

What, I've wondered for the last 10 years, does my friend imagine about the 18 or 20 other couples, all adorned in wedding gowns and tuxedoes, whose nuptial photographs were in the newspaper that same Sunday? And every Sunday since?

Does he look at the photos, read the little blurbs about the bride and groom, and proceed to imagine what those newlyweds might be doing right now? If that is what readers do, then I was not only wrong to publish the announcement for the gay couple, I was wrong to publish all the other wedding announcements.

But my friend's comment cemented in my mind something I already suspected in dealing with issues of gay rights and same-sex marriage.

It's not the homo that bothers a lot of people. It's the sexual.

The institution of marriage is, among other things, intended as a safe harbor for our otherwise risky sexual nature. Monogamy not only protects us from the pain of loneliness but also minimizes such dangers as jealousy and disease, both of which can be deadly.

Once attached, we don't have to keep preening and competing for mates. We are likely to have someone to stand by us when we are old. And, of course, marriage provides a nurturing environment for the children who are born as a result of our sexuality - whether by design or as an unintended by-product.

But, in the argument over gay marriage in general and Utah's Amendment 3 in particular, the image of marriage seems to be one that, rather than sheltering protecting our sexuality, cruely seeks to deny it.

The argument that people only get married to have children, and thus gay people should not get married, is just another way of saying that people only have sex to have children. That is tied to the idea that sex is something to be endured, especially by women, not enjoyed, much less celebrated.

When straight couples marry, we can enshroud their sexuality not only in the healthy promise of monogamy, but also in the fiction that the sexual part of their nature is but a necessary, if distasteful, tool in the creation of children.

When gay couples marry, we are deprived of that noble lie. We have to face that gay couples get married for the same reasons straight couples do. Those reasons include a sexual spark that, with nurturing, can grow into a long-glowing hearth.

Sometimes that glow fuels a relationship that never includes children, whether by chance or by choice. Sometimes it provides so much warmth that two people just cannot absorb it all and so the founding couple, gay or straight, brings children to the hearth to help gather the glow and pass it on.

In denying gay couples the right to marry, we needlessly deny the altogether healthy reasons why straight couples choose to marry.

So the only way Amendment 3 will fail is if we all get our minds out of the gutter. And how likely is that?

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George Pyle (gpyle@sltrib.com) is an editorial writer for The Salt Lake Tribune.