Four activist judges in Massachusetts may have just marked the beginning of the end for America.

How? By destroying the building block of society, and replacing it with nothing more than straw.

To redefine marriage - the very core of what we know as family - is to wreak havoc on every other institution that holds our country together. From the legal system, to interstate commerce, to health care, to your neighborhood, everything would eventually fall apart. Why? Because the nuclear family - starting with the marriage of one man and one woman - is the very foundation of the entire human race and every single civil society since the beginning of time.

Ask the leaders of Old Europe. There, thanks to readily available abortions and wide acceptance of homosexual families, birth rates have dropped below what is known as the "replacement level" meaning that in the future there will be insufficient numbers of workers to pay, through their tax dollars, for pensions and medical care for the elderly.

As a result, to maintain the social compacts established in those countries, already exorbitant tax rates must be raised significantly - crushing economic growth for decades or longer - or immigration must be encouraged in amounts so large that France won't be France and Germany won't be Germany anymore. The problem is real, and it's happening now.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney noted in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that there are many "compelling state purposes" in limiting marriage to the union of one man and one woman. For one, societies must produce physically, emotionally and morally healthy children. And, as literally millennia of experience have proven - and your own God-given common sense tells you - the best way to do this is through traditional marriage.

When four activist judges in Massachusetts decided that to uphold traditional marriage creates a "discriminatory status for same-sex couples" they unlocked a Pandora's box that if opened will result in unending grotesque distortions of the institution of traditional marriage.

To "discriminate" against same-sex couples means that society cannot use morality as a reason to deny any "groupings" of people the right to marry. Following that logic, if society can't "discriminate" by disallowing two men to marry, then it can't discriminate against three men who want to marry each other. What about two men and a woman? Or several adults and a child? The fact is, to redefine marriage to accommodate anything other than the divine design that has withstood the test of time is to make a mockery - a farce - out of an institution that was created by God.

And, of course, that's really the point, isn't it?

The goal isn't for everyone to be able to enjoy any type of marriage they choose - the goal is to destroy it. And power-hungry activist judges are helping them do just that.

It seems that only a constitutional amendment can stop them now.

If activist judges are permitted to rewrite laws, to redefine families and to restructure society, then democracy and our republican form of government is in grave danger. The time for a national constitutional amendment to define marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman may be upon us. Amending the constitution is not something that should be taken lightly. Our Founding Fathers made it extremely difficult to amend the document that protects the rights of the states and of the people. But they did provide a means to do so - and if ever there was a need to undertake the effort, this may be it. Other options to do so are fading fast. If America cannot protect her families, then what can we protect?

The percentages of adults who oppose homosexual marriages have increased in recent months, and opposition has climbed faster among liberals than conservatives. Recent polls show that Americans want to protect the institution of marriage by a margin of two-to-one. Even though many have grown more "tolerant" of civil unions between homosexuals, it's apparently one thing to dance around the edges of homosexual marriage, but it's quite another to be forced to embrace it and the obvious fallout that comes as a result.

It seems that in 2004, we have reached a crossroads in history, that we've come to the point where we make the decisions that determine whether we grow stronger and continue to prosper or weaken and die.

So what do we do? Do we endorse decadence in the name of "equality" and "diversity"? Do we ignore the importance that strong families have played in our development? Do we defy the very reason God created both male and female and brought them together in the first marriage? Or do we preserve what we know is right, and in so doing, preserve our nation?