Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalized polygamy and "polyamory" (group marriage). Marriage will be transformed into a variety of relationship contracts, linking two, three, or more individuals (however weakly and temporarily) in every conceivable combination of male and female. A scare scenario? Hardly. The bottom of this slope is visible from where we stand. Advocacy of legalized polygamy is growing.

In Orthodoxy, Chesterton broke new ground in apologetics. Rather than writing a serious tome on strictly religious questions, he careered through topics as diverse as lunatic asylums and fairy tales, drawing in the arts, intuition, emotion and imagination as witnesses for the Faith, and so demonstrating that rather than being dull and stifling, Christianity is itself 'The Eternal Revolution.'

The authority ruled that the advertisement, placed in the Belfast News Letter by the Sandown Free Presbyterian Church in Belfast, caused "serious offence" and broke its standards on decency.

In its adjudication the authority, which received seven complaints, rejected the suggestion that the advertisement could provoke violence against gay and lesbian people but said it was offensive and should not be repeated.

The move threatens the fragile unity of the Anglican Communion, the world's third-largest Christian body, made up of 38 provinces around the world that trace their roots to the Church of England and its spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury.