The Associated Press does an excellent job of interviewing some of the people behind the pro-marriage movement -- good people whose views are based not only on conviction but on real life experience that marriage really is the union of husband and wife and that when we abandon or deny this reality, children and society suffer:

"...opponents [of same-sex marriage] cite their own specific, personal experiences -- as a missionary working with teens from single-mother households or a nurse treating a suicidal gay man -- to explain their belief that the only way forward is for marriage to be limited to between one man and one woman.

Many say that although their opposition to gay marriage begins with a reading of the Bible, it is confirmed by the challenges and observations of everyday life in a country whose values they see as crumbling. The politics of recent days, they say, will not change that.

That view is echoed in interviews with opponents from around the country, with some of the strongest conviction in states where gay marriage has been a hot issue.

In Minnesota, where a vote is set for this fall on an amendment similar to North Carolina's, missionary John Tolo said he had long admired Obama for rising to become the nation's first black president. But he lamented Obama's stand on gay marriage as an unprincipled pursuit of campaign cash.

The president's stand contradicts the lessons of his own experience, said Tolo, recalling his own drug use and multiple sexual relationships after his parents divorced and, more recently, his work in a poor part of St. Paul.

In the Frogtown neighborhood, where Tolo's group has bought and is renovating an abandoned house that he says is a gathering point for teens, too many children grow up in households where there's "this fundamental breakdown of having a healthy father role model and a healthy mother role model," he said. "There's this major identity issue where men are just missing."

Tolo said that, while he supports the idea of some kind of legal recognition for same-sex couples, marriage is a sacred template for raising and caring for children as God intended. Broadening marriage risks undermining that, while infringing on the rights of Christians to define their own institutions.

The entire article is well worth reading.