IN the midst of the general euphoria accompanying Barack Obama's six-point win on Tuesday night a few smaller milestones were missed. One is that California has voted against same-sex marriage.

You read that right.

California, probably the most gay-friendly place on the planet, voted to rescind a recent decision by the State Supreme Court to allow same-sex couples to marry.

If it was defeated in California, what would happen if a similar proposition was put to the Irish people?

We know the answer; it would be resoundingly beaten. It would be beaten because the Irish people would finally get to hear (hopefully) the overwhelmingly powerful and eminently reasonable case for giving traditional marriage a special place in society.

The Irish Government isn't planning to allow same-sex marriage, if only because it would be unconstitutional but it is planning something that is marriage in all but name, and that might be unconstitutional as well.

Certainly Cardinal Sean Brady seems to think so.

On Tuesday at the annual Ceifin conference he raised the distinct possibility that the Church would mount a legal challenge to the proposed Civil Partnerships Bill. Finally the Church signalled to the Government that it cannot expect to radically redefine the family in a manner that is inimical to the interests of society and get away with it scot-free.

For his troubles Cardinal Brady was compared with Robert Mugabe by David Norris. Truly, no-one demonises his opponents better than David Norris.

A government source told this newspaper that it will press on with its civil partnerships proposal despite the lack of any real public demand for it. For good measure, the source protested that the proposal will not undermine marriage.

It appears that the Government no longer has any clue what it is to undermine marriage, so let's try to spell it out. First and foremost you undermine marriage by chopping away at its special status in the law, that is, society, and by the State no longer giving it favoured treatment.

The favoured treatment marriage receives is what makes it a social institution.

We want to say marriage is so special that it must receive certain rights, benefits and protections that are unique to it. You destroy its special status in one of two ways.

The first is by taking away its rights, benefits and protections. The reason the Government thinks it isn't undermining marriage is because it isn't doing this.

However, you also destroy its favoured status by giving its benefits to everyone else.

Eventually you have spread around those benefits so evenly that there is no longer anything special about marriage as a social institution. You have reduced it to just one other family form.

This, of course, is exactly what the family diversity lobby wants. To this extent the family diversity lobby is, objectively speaking, anti-marriage. It is bitterly opposed to the favoured status of marriage and it wants to bring it to an end.

The problem is that the Government is listening to it and to this extent the Government is also, objectively speaking, anti-marriage.

It might not be ideologically anti-marriage, but its actions are anti-marriage. For example, the social welfare code now treats married and cohabiting couples in the same way.

Critics of the special status of marriage imagine that its status is a product of prejudice.

It is not. It is a product of reality. Children benefit from having a married mother and father. This is testified to by the evidence and the burden of proof is firmly on those who say there is no special benefit to a child having a married mother and father.

Does the Government believe this? It appears not.

How else do we explain the fact that it is about to give to same-sex couples all of the benefits they give to married couples even though same-sex couples cannot give a child a mother and father?

This is a direct attack on the special status of marriage.

In its 11 years in power no senior government minister has uttered a defence of marriage. No major new pro-marriage policy has been launched.

One government official after another parrots the language of family diversity.

The family diversity lobby is lavishly funded by the State.

No indication is given that the Government any longer believes that there is any special benefit in a child having a mother and father which is why it is prepared to reduce its special status.

The only conclusion we can arrive at is that the Government is, de facto, anti-marriage which is why we must fervently hope the Church takes that legal action.

PS. I'm glad that America has elected a black president but not that it has elected a man whose voting record to date is that of a Social Democrat. Obama ran on a promise that he would be neither a red state nor a blue state President. He must now deliver on that promise against all his instincts or we will quickly find he is not the uniter we imagine him to be.

- dquinn@independent.ie