The gays have a point. It does say something about the quality of mind of Senate President Marcelo Fernan that he should seek to outlaw gay marriages. It makes you wonder how he ever became chief justice before becoming a senator.

Fernan's justification for his bill is that it corrects an infirmity in the current Family Code. That Code is silent on homosexual and transexual marriges. Consequently, he says, gays who marry elsewhere may seek legal statys as a couple when they settle in the Philippines. Indeed, in future, gays may insist on being married in the Philippines. That is a threat to the family, an institution Filipinos deeply cherish.

He misses the point. At the very least, as the Progressive Organization of Gays points out, the country does not lack for real threats to the family. Chief of them lawmakers who makes laws that create joblessness and force Filipinos to look for jobs abroad. That's what has been breaking up Filipino families over the past 15 years. Fernan wants to fight the threats to the Filipino family, Progay says, let him stop the flight of Filipinos abroad.

While at this, you want to be prudish about it, there's the whole querida to mistress system staring us in the face. Chief of its practitioners being politicians, though cops have been known to give stiff competition. That's an obvious threat to the family. Or at least the nuclear one, although many wives appear to have learned to live with the disease. Erap for one may argue that it is not breaking up families, it is merely adding to them. But the selective perception is patent.

At the very most, why should gay marriages constitute a threat to the family at all? I was rather amazed to find some people who I thought were fairly progressive agreeing with Fernan on TV. A marriage, said one, normally presumes family. And family normally presumes children. It is one thing to not want to have children, it is another not to be able to have them for a reason other than infertility.

You grant that that difference matters, why should the second constitute a threat to the family? What, if gay unions are recognized legally, everyone will want to get into it? What, legalizing a gay marriage will contaminate the air heterogeneous couples breathe? What, the presence of a gay couple will prevent a straight couple from having children? Why should a way of life that is different from our own naturally constitute a threat to it? That's plain bigotry. That's a knee-jerk lashing out a the unknown or unfamiliar. Married gays are as much a threat to the Filipino family as blacks are to white folks' way of life.

In fact, what Fernan's bill shows is not how deeply we cherish the family as an institution, but how deeply we embrace machismo as a solution. For it is steeped in the kind of double standard machismo thrives in. The very tolerance we show for men, even when they indulge in sexual excess, is matched only by the intolerance we show for gays -- and women -- even when they comport themselves within the bounds of social decorum. The very expansiveness we show for men, giving them knowing winks when they openly stray from convention, is matched only by the severity we show gays -- and women - - bearing down hard on them when they unwittingly defy convention.

What is so infim about the silence of the Family Code on gay marriages? That is clearly a case where silence is golden? It if ain't broke, don't fix it. The better part of valor is caution, the better part of vigilance is understanding. The Family Code is silent as well on couples who resolutely refuse to have children. They may be an outrage to Catholic morality, which deems marriage to be spawning ground, but that is not a ground to mount a pogrom on them.

Of course, it's not always so easy to accept the strange and unfamiliar. Some time ago, Oprah Winfrey read a survey on American attitudes toward public displays of affection, and the strongest negative reactions were toward gays kissing in public. Respondents found elderly people kissing each other less of a put-off. More respondents found gay men kissing each other in public more offensive than gay women doing so. You can imagine what the attitudes are in this country, given that the former chief justice himself finds the thought of gay people cohabiting an affront tothe concept of family.

I do have friends who are gay, some of whom live with other gays. They are some of the most responsible people I know. They are passionate in their demand to be respected for what they are, but they are just as passionate in their demand to respect others for what they are. I do not know why they should be treated as a separate class of people. I do not know why, like the rest of us, they should not be entitled to the bliss -- and curse -- of marriage.

I should think that if we needed to correct the silence of the Family Code on gay marriages, we need to correct it in the direction of recognizing it. Truly, you wonder how Fernan ever became chief justice. The Supreme Court is not an ordinary court. It is there to blaze new trails, it is there to cut a wide swath for enlightenment to follow. It is there for people who have breadth of vision and largeness of spirit. At the very least, it is there to be able to interpret the law right.

The freedom of the speech means nothing if it is only the freedom of people to agree with you. The freedom of assembly means nothing if it is only the freedom of people to gather to look at movie stars. The freedom to live as one pleases means nothing if it is only the freedom of people to conform to the norm. These liberties mean something only when they are tested. They mean something only when people disagree, when they gather to protest, when they choose to live according to their conscience, or genes. The Supreme Court is there to defend them that way.

Quite incidentally, there is a clause in the Constitution that guarantees gay marriages. You will find it in the Bill of Rights. It is called the right to pursue happiness.