San Francisco had passed a "domestic partnership" law, giving some of the legal

benefits of marriage to unmarried couples, whether gay or straight. An article in Mr.

Kinsley's magazine had said this was the wrong direction: the answer was to permit "gay

marriage." After a lively discussion of the new modalities, Mr. Buckley speaks on behalf

of old-fashioned common sense: "Permit me to be square enough to say that one of the

problems we face today ... is the problem of the broken family, and the problem of the

broken family has to do with a feeling of only tangential loyalty when people live

together. Eighty-three per cent of the people who were born in the Bronx the year before

last were born to single-parent households. Now it may not significantly change that

situation to restore the old orthodoxy, but I should think it would move in that direction."