To buttress this absurdity, they repeatedly ask, "Where are the studies" that prove that children do better with a father and a mother? Not only are there no such studies, they claim, but in fact, "studies show" that that children raised with parents of the same sex do just as well as children raised by a father and a mother.

But this claim, too, is dishonest.

As Professor Don Browning of the University of Chicago recently wrote in The New York Times, "We know next to nothing" about the effects of same-sex parenting on children.

"The body of sociological knowledge about same-sex parenting," he and his co-author wrote, "is scant at best. ... There are no rigorous, large-scale studies on the effect of same-sex marriage on the couples' children.

"Steven Nock, a leading scholar of marriage at the University of Virginia, wrote in March 2001 after a thorough review that every study on this question 'contained at least one fatal flaw' and 'not a single one was conducted according to generally accepted standards of scientific research.'"

So the statement that "studies show" that children don't do better with a mother and father is as factually mendacious as it is morally repugnant. Why then are so many fooled by it? Because "studies show" has become the refuge of those who do not wish to think. I hear this lack of thought regularly from college educated callers to my radio show who refuse to think an issue through, or to make a moral judgment, without first having seen what "studies show."

But does anyone who thinks, rather than awaits "studies" to affirm their biases, really believe that a mother is useless if a child has two fathers, or that a father is unnecessary if a child has two mothers? The idea that men and women do not have entirely distinctive contributions to make to the rearing of a child is so absurd that it is frightening that many well educated -- and only the well educated -- believe it.

There are many powerful arguments against same-sex marriage, and in subsequent columns I will offer them. But if you have to offer only one, know that those who push for same-sex marriage base their case on something factually indefensible -- that children do not benefit from having a father and a mother; and on something morally indefensible -- ignoring what is best for children.