Social policy throughout the United States has evolved from the conviction that unions between men and women bring forth welcome fruits, primarily the children who become citizen-successors and provide for the continuation of the state. In terms of civil status, such a union is -- and is called -- marriage. A marriage has derivative rights and responsibilities, including child care.

The gay lobby seeks to neutralize those special inducements to marriage. But something more than equivalent tax accommodations is sought. The lobby wishes that unions between gays be treated under the law as "marriages." It is not absolutely plain whether what is being sought is much more than a terminological promotion, from "union" to "marriage." If gay unions succeed in acquiring such rights as married couples now have, then they will be acquiring not only rights but responsibilities, including responsibilities toward their partners.

It is not difficult to divorce nowadays, for instance, but it is harder to do than simply to file a change of address, whereas members of gay unions at present can separate without recourse to law. It will require a generation of adjustments, assuming that the courts in Massachusetts and New Jersey prevail in this, to know exactly what will be won or lost. But the commotion at the moment is over the nominal point: Can the courts pronounce that a marriage can be entered into by members of the same sex?

It was immediately understood, after the 2003 ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, that a solution embodying the popular will may need to be achieved through a constitutional amendment. The same arguments that prevailed early in the week in New Jersey will certainly be used in arguing before the Supreme Court. And that court is certain to confront, sometime soon ahead, the question whether individual rights extend to the right of gay persons to contract a "marriage" as defined by law and common practice.

President Bush has acknowledged the implications of the New Jersey ruling, and the fever that built up three years ago is reignited. There are men and women in America who have no designs to limit the movements of gay Americans, but who believe that notwithstanding this, there are sanctuaries that are naturally, and organically, reserved for traditional arrangements between men and women. There is something ranging between innocent frustration and raw fury over the proposition that a society of equal rights is required to disregard those characteristics that make up a married couple. Mr. Bush may elect to launch a movement for a clarification of the Constitution.