Some sample comments made in defense of traditional marriage at yesterday's hearing on SSM in Maryland:

Martha Schaerr, Montgomery County School Board candidate: "Marriage is about children and the good of society. To change it to adult love changes the definition of marriage.”

Maggie Gallagher ''The reason that marriage is a virtually universal human social institution that reoccurs again and again in different cultures, and different religious backgrounds, is that humanity recognizes that we need a special institution to bring together a male and female to make and raise the next generation. 'To get to gay marriage requires that we repudiate this as a public purpose of marriage . . . way that we can give our children the benefit of a mother and father in a single family is to first pledge to a permanent, faithful, sexually exclusive union of man and woman.''

Austin Nimocks, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund: “The legislation before you is inconsistent with the purposes of Maryland’s marriage laws. Men and women still comprise the two great halves of humanity."

Derek McCoy, president of the Association of Maryland Families: "Your concerns should not be on pandering to the political mood of the day . . . Marriage is between a man and a woman.” [source: TBD.com]

Our own Maggie Gallagher and Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse are in Rhode Island today testifying at the hearing on SSM.