Finally, a word about that new non-monogamy study, which according to the New York Times shows that half of gay male couples interviewed are in open relationships (and other research suggests men in three-quarters of the theoretically closed relationships "cheat"). The Baptist Press filed a story this week suggesting something worth thinking about: How will the "planned infidelity" of gay couples reshape our marriage culture?

The first step is to claim that gay couples are just the same as married couples. But even an anti-Prop 8 expert witness had to concede that monogamy--sexual fidelity--just isn't the norm in the gay male community.

"The study demonstrates clearly what we've been arguing: That gays bring a different definition to marriage," Glenn T. Stanton, a sociologist who is the director for family formation studies at Focus on the Family, told Baptist Press. "And it's not just a different definition that male and female become optional, but that monogamy becomes optional as well. They are coming into marriage with a wholly different view of marriage than anybody has -- left, right, conservative, liberal.... They come in with that understanding of openness. These are people who come into marriage with a wholly different and really radical definition of what marriage is about."

The Baptist Press quotes other prominent gay men who've acknowledged this obvious truth: "Gay male couples generally don't view monogamy as the defining characteristic of a loving, committed relationship," gay columnist Dan Savage wrote. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Christian Churches, an organization of homosexual churches, said the same thing: "Monogamy is not a word the gay community uses," Perry told the Dallas Morning News in 2003.

"Marriage Equality" will be a two-step dance. The first step is to claim that gay unions are just like opposite-sex unions. The next step will be to say, "Gay marriages are just as much marriages as yours, so if gay men don't want fidelity, then fidelity shouldn’t be considered a basic part of marriage." Making fidelity an optional part of the cultural perception of what marriage means is already on the gay rights agenda. Consider when Andrew Sullivan first made this argument back in 1993. The uproar caused him to immediately recant and say that gay marriage would be sexually exclusive like other marriages.

Now the groundwork is being laid in the pages of the New York Times for a "fidelity-optional" version of marriage. Look for it to be taught in a public school near you soon.