Why, a friend asked us several months ago, has The New York Sun failed to take an editorial stand on the question of gay marriage? Our friend, a decent and exceptionally well-educated person, was perplexed, he said, because he was aware that we welcome gay and lesbian individuals and couples into our workplace, homes, friendships, and families. We responded to his question by asking him what he would do about the Agudath Israel and its Council of Torah Sages. “I see them as bigots,” replied our friend, “just like any other religious fundamentalists.”

We think of that moment as illuminating a line this newspaper is unwilling to cross. On this page last week, Andrew Sullivan sketched, brilliantly we thought, the argument that our federalist system provides an ideal way, in the wake of the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts, to test gay marriage and see whether it can work. In the New York Times over the weekend, David Brooks argued eloquently for gay marriage by pressing the logic of doing “everything in our power to move as many people as possible from the path of contingency to the path of fidelity.”

But neither has dealt with the question that has come to vex us above the others — the fact that, with a few exceptions, this cause is being advanced through the denigration of Jews and Christians who adhere to the fundamentals of religious law. Last week, the New YorkTimes ran an editorial characterizing the conclusion of the Massachusetts court as being that the ban on gay marriage was “simply about prejudice … much like state laws barring interracial marriage, which lasted until 1967, when the Supreme Court struck them down in Loving v. Virginia.” In fact, the vile prohibitions against interracial marriage had, despite the jackleg preachers, no basis whatsoever in the laws brought down by Moses.

To suggest that either those laws, or the laws America derived from them, are “simply about prejudice” is merely a politely worded, but equally offensive, version of the assertion that adherents to religious laws are bigots. We have little doubt that most Americans reject that libel, hence such broad bipartisan support for the Defense of Marriage Act, passed overwhelmingly by the Congress and signed by our most liberal leader in two generations, President Clinton. The legal battles in the news this season are no doubt only the beginning of a long struggle, which we don’t seek to resolve here. But nothing good can come of the campaign for same-sex marriage if it is part of the long assault on religion.