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The border guard didn't even look up when she asked the question: "Citizenship?"

"U.S."

"And why are you in Canada?"

I paused. She looked up.

I was going to Canada to give a lecture, which would be easy enough to say. But then there would be the inevitable follow-up question: "A lecture on what?"

Instantly I thought back to a story once told to me by Glenn Stanton, my frequent debate-opponent from Focus on the Family. Just prior to Canada's legalization of marriage for gays and lesbians, Glenn went there for a right-wing conference. When the border guard asked him, "Why are you in Canada?" he responded with "For a same-sex marriage conference."

His border guard shot back, "We don't need that shit here."

After relaying the story to me Glenn added, "I thought to myself, what if it had been you, John?"

To which I responded, "Welcome to my world, Glenn."

I live in Detroit, just next to Windsor, Ontario. I go there occasionally for dinner with friends, and most times the crossing is smooth. But if you happen to catch a border guard who's having a bad day, or who's on a power trip, or who's just congenitally an asshole, be prepared for an unpleasant delay. I generally aim to give border guards all and only the information they absolutely need.

And yet a frequent theme in my advocacy work is the importance of coming out. Not just on National Coming Out Day, or at pride parades, or when writing columns for the gay press, but at any time when reference to one's (actual or desired) significant other-or more generally, one's life-would be appropriate. Coming out is an opportunity to teach diversity, and to be a role model for those around us and those who come after us.

More than that, it's a chance for simple honesty: there's something profoundly dehumanizing about treating one's sexual orientation as a dirty little secret. I don't want to be complicit in that.

So (for instance), last Valentine's Day, when a Trader Joe's employee presenting roses to female customers offered me one, saying, "Maybe you have a special girl at home to give this to?" I responded, "I'll give it to my special GUY at home, thanks!"

Giving a diversity lesson to a Trader Joe's employee is one thing; giving one to grumpy border guards is another. Military uniforms intimidate me more than Hawaiian shirts do. In the past, I've been harassed by Texas State troopers for kissing (yes, kissing) another man, and it wasn't fun.

After that Texas incident, I filed a formal complaint, which resulted in the trooper's being put on probation and having to take classes on Texas state law. I'm not afraid to stand up for my rights, but like most people, on some days I just don't want to be bothered.

I admit I'm embarrassed to share these thoughts. It's not just because of the great figures who have stood up for our rights even when it's been inconvenient or dangerous: luminaries like Frank Kameny, Harvey Milk, Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon and Harry Hay. I'm sure even they had days when prudence trumped other virtues.

It's because I was facing a CANADIAN BORDER GUARD, for goodness sake. They're not exactly the SS.

So I'm embarrassed that the question gave me pause. But I share the story anyway, because it speaks to the tremendous power of the closet.

"Why are you in Canada?" She repeated the question, startling me from my deliberations.

"I'm giving a lecture at the University of Lethbridge."

"A lecture regarding…?"

"Gay rights."

Now she paused.

"Have you ever been to Lethbridge?" she finally asked.

"No."

"Well, good luck with your talk." Then, as she stamped my declarations form, she leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, "Really, good luck. It's redneck country, you know."

Okay-so I promise that this is my last column for a while on the definition of marriage. Four out of five in a row is enough.

But I've learned a lot from writing these, especially because of comments from various marriage-equality opponents. Three points stick out.

First, the definitional argument is deeply important to them. Perhaps this shouldn't surprise anyone. But it does surprise me that even those who explicitly acknowledge that marriage is an evolving institution place great weight on what marriage has been, as if that would settle the question once and for all of what marriage can or should be. It doesn't.

Second, marriage does not lend itself to a pithy definition. Whatever marriage is, its definition won't be like, "A triangle is a three-sided plane figure."

That's because marriage is both evolving and multifaceted. Marriage is, among other things, a social institution, a personal commitment, a religious sacrament, and a legal status. It looks different from the spouses' perspective than it does from the outside; it looks different respectively to anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, lawyers, and so on.

Each of these perspectives can tell us something about what marriage is; none of them is complete or final. Any definition they provide, however useful, will be partial.

Third, those who emphasize the definitional argument, when they're not simply begging the question against marriage-equality advocates, often invoke a false dichotomy: Either marriage is a social institution for binding parents (and especially fathers) to their biological offspring, or else it is an adult expression of love-an expression that these opponents variously dismiss as selfish, empty, or "fluttery".

Contrast this with the actual view of most marriage-equality advocates, which is that marriage is both of these things, and then some.

Yes, marriage is the cross-cultural institution that has provided for the needs of children. But how? What makes marriage so suited to this purpose?

I'll hazard a guess: it does so because it is also an abiding commitment between the spouses. It binds them together "for keeps," thus creating a stable environment for any children who arrive.

So the view that marriage consists in abiding love between adults is not merely COMPATIBLE with the view that marriage serves children's welfare; the former actually helps explain the latter.

There's nothing "fluttery" about this. The abiding love of marriage is not just a vague feeling or promise-it's an ongoing activity. I'm reminded of the words of St. Augustine, "Dilige, et quod vis fac": "Love, and do what you want." Augustine knew that true love is challenging; it takes work.

After one of my recent columns, a prominent same-sex marriage opponent wrote:

"I invite you to look back at the entire world history of anthropological thought on the topic of what is marriage, and point out to me even ONE example of ONE scholar who has, based on ethnographic data, said, actually or in effect, since recorded history began, that marriage in human groups is properly defined as the promise of abiding love. If you can identify even one reputable scholar in the history of the world who has made such a statement or implied such a thing, I will grovel before you in abject intellectual humility and gladly buy you the lunch of your choice…"

Well, I couldn't find an anthropologist who said that. Actually, I didn't bother looking. Anthropologists define marriage by its cultural function, and "abiding love" isn't really their angle. But I did find this:

"The inner and essential raison d'etre of marriage is not simply eventual transformation into a family but above all the creation of a lasting personal union between a man and a woman based on love."

What radical, "fluttery" activist wrote these words?

Actually, it was Pope John Paul II.

Of course the late pope defines marriage as "between a man and a woman." No shock there. But the interesting thing is that he writes that marriage is "above all…a lasting personal union…based on love."

Perhaps he was distracted when he wrote this. Perhaps the Radical Gay Agenda had begun to infiltrate the Vatican.

Or perhaps the pope realized what most people know. Marriage is fundamentally a lasting personal union based on love-which is not to say that it is ONLY that.

As I said above-and it bears repeating-any neat definition of marriage will be partial and imperfect. There are counterexamples to this characterization, ways in which it is both too broad and too narrow.

But "marriage" is not definable in the way "triangle" or "bachelor" is.

And when marriage-equality opponents feel compelled to repudiate characterizations of marriage that The Gay Moralist, the previous pope, and most married couples all find obvious, you know they're in trouble.

The gay news from Africa gets more frightening every day.

In Uganda, a member of Parliament said he would hang his son if he learned that he was gay. He said this while the Ugandan Parliament debated an anti-gay bill imposing harsh penalties for homosexuality - including the death penalty.

In Malawi, a gay couple faces 14 years in prison because they held an engagement party. There, gay marriage is not just illegal (meaning, not allowed) - it is criminal.

And in Kenya, mob violence greeted fake reports of the marriage of two gay men. Rioters destroyed computers and other equipment in an AIDS clinic. They beat more flamboyant men in the street. And they went house to house in a witch hunt to find gay men, arrest them - and beat them.

The American reaction to this - even the gay American reaction - tends to be one of two things.

We're indifferent. Or we're horrified, but blame American Christians and expect them to fix it.

We blame American Christians because some extreme, anti-gay rightwingers encouraged fear of gays within the Ugandan government. Some have taken responsibility for that; some have not.

But it is not enough anymore for the gay community to stand by while our African brothers and sisters are rousted from their homes, beaten senseless, arrested and killed.

We cannot sit back and expect our homegrown American extremists to make it better. After all, they might have been responsible - or at least instigated - the situation in Uganda, but Kenya's horrors were incited by local Muslim clerics.

Instead, we must do what we can. And we can do a lot.

On the home front, we can use our political power to ensure that African gays and lesbians who are in danger in their home countries find political asylum here. And when they get here, we can help them find homes, jobs, education.

We can pressure our leaders to make public statements against anti-gay violence (Barack Obama, of Kenyan heritage and beloved in Africa, would be a particularly effective spokesperson).

And we can encourage our Congressional leaders to tie the billions of dollars of HIV/AIDS funding that we send to gay-friendly education efforts. If Republicans can add pro-life strings, why can't we add pro-gay ones?

But I think we can be even more creative than that.

Christians, after all, didn't have pull in Uganda because they made a speech. They have influence because they have spent millions of dollars in Africa - on AIDS, yes, and also on infrastructure, on food aid, on personnel to educate and heal and help. They send missionaries to live among the people. They recruit.

It is time we did the same.

We need Gays Without Borders. We need to start pooling our talent and resources and assisting developing countries.

After all, gays and lesbians - lesbians in particular - tend to gravitate toward non-profits. We are social workers, doctors, nurses, teachers. Why shouldn't we put that knowledge to use to help Africans? Who knows how to organize the medical establishment (or lack thereof) to fight AIDS better than gays and lesbians? Who can tend to AIDS patients better or with more empathy?

And we wouldn't help just gay Africans, either. Christian relief groups don't just help Christians. Instead, the idea is to be a model - and to encourage a certain way of thinking. In our case, that way of thinking would be: Gay is OK.

Many Africans think of gay people as being perverted. They think of us as an underground sexual cult of some kind. But Gays Without Borders could show them first hand that we are a people to be respected, emulated, idolized.

We are scared and horrified by the news coming out of Africa. It is time we did something about it.

An opponent writes, "What's YOUR definition of marriage? If you're going to use a word, you need a definition of the word."

I doubt that.

After all, most English speakers can competently use the word "yellow," but ask them to define the term (without merely pointing to examples) and watch them stammer.

And then try words like "law," "opinion," and "game" just for fun. It's quite possible to have functional knowledge of how to use a term without being able to articulate the boundaries of the relevant concept.

Alright, you say, but as someone deeply involved in the marriage debate, surely the Gay Moralist has a definition to offer?

Yes and no. I have definitions to offer, not a definition.

The word "marriage" can refer to many different things: a personal commitment, a religious sacrament, a social institution, a legal status.

And even if we focus on one of those-say, the social institution-there are other challenges. As David Blankenhorn puts it: "There is no single, universally accepted definition of marriage-partly because the institution is constantly evolving, and partly because many of its features vary across groups and cultures."

Blankenhorn makes this point in his book The Future of Marriage. It's an interesting concession, since he spends much of the rest of the chapter railing against marriage-equality advocates for offering "insubstantial" and "fluttery" definitions that emphasize personal commitment over marriage's social meaning.

Not surprisingly, his own definition emphasizes children:

"In all or nearly all human societies, marriage is socially approved sexual intercourse between a woman and a man, conceived as both a personal relationship and an institution, primarily such that any children resulting from the union are-and are understood by the society to be-emotionally, morally, practically, and legally affiliated with both of the parents."

Putting aside the odd claim that "marriage is…sexual intercourse" (rather than, say, a context for such intercourse), this is actually a pretty good description of what marriage typically is.

But the "typically" is key. On the very next page, Blankenhorn acknowledges a counterexample (raised by Christian theologians, no less): Marriage can't be essentially sexual, since if it were, the Virgin Mary's "marriage" to Joseph would not be a marriage. (And one could point to plenty of contemporary sexless marriages that are nevertheless marriages.)

Moreover, Blankenhorn's own definition includes the hedge-word "primarily," acknowledging that marriage has goals beyond providing for children's needs.

My fellow philosophers are often enamored of analyses that provide "necessary and sufficient conditions" for concepts: definitions that capture all, and only, the members of a class. But I have yet to see anyone on either side of this debate do that for marriage, and I doubt that it's possible.

The definition would have to be broad enough to include unions as disparate as King Solomon's polygamous household; Elizabeth Taylor's marriages to her various husbands; my maternal grandparents' arranged marriage; Bill's marriage to Hillary; Barack's marriage to Michelle. It would have to make sense of metaphors such as the claim that nuns are "married" to Christ (traditional profession ceremonies even involved wedding dresses). And yet it couldn't be so broad as to include just any committed relationship.

Are there necessary conditions for a union's being a marriage? Sure. For instance, there must be at least two persons. (I say "at least" because polygamous marriages are still marriages, whatever other objections we might have to them.)

Beyond the "at least two persons" requirement, we find a host of features that are typical: mutual care and concern, romantic and sexual involvement, a profession of lifelong commitment, the begetting and rearing of children.

But "typical" does not mean "strictly necessary," and for any one of these features, it takes very little imagination to think of a genuine marriage that lacks it. A "marriage of convenience" is still a marriage, legally speaking. A childless marriage is still a marriage. A marriage on the brink of divorce is still, for the time being, a marriage.

I am not suggesting that any of these scenarios is ideal. But our opponents' objection isn't that same-sex unions aren't "ideal" marriages. It's that they're not marriages AT ALL. And that objection is much harder to sustain when one surveys the various overlapping arrangements-some with children, some without; some intensely romantic; some not-that we call "marriage."

So what is marriage? For me, the standard vow captures it nicely, though of course not perfectly or completely. These are the words my parents used, and the same words I used with my partner, Mark:

Marriage is a commitment "to have and to hold; from this day forward; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish; until death do us part."

"Fluttery?" Maybe. But real, and important, and good.