NORTH CAROLINA passed its constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage by a thumping 61-39 majority yesterday. Celebrating the vote, Tami Fitzgerald of Marriage NC, the group that backed the amendment, provided a slightly different variety of question-begging from the ones my colleague addressed yesterday.

"We are not anti-gay, we are pro-marriage," said Tami Fitzgerald, chairwoman of the group. "And the point—the whole point—is simply that you don't rewrite the nature of God's design for marriage based on the demands of a group of adults."

Ms Fitzgerald's argument here is of the form "because God says so, that's why". I think this may be the most common form of question-begging in human society, though it is more often used by parents, with the word "I" replacing the word "God". One can't really hope to convince people who are resorting to this justification through argument. One valid rebuttal might be: "But God doesn't exist, and the government should not discriminate against gay people on the basis of some lady's characterisation of the intentions of an imaginary being. You may disagree with me about the existence of God, but given that some people think there is a God, some don't, and some think there is one but she's fine with gay marriage, the government shouldn't be picking sides." Unfortunately, given the religious make-up of the American population, this argument may not be entirely politically effective.

But it is useful just to briefly inquire where Ms Fitzgerald gets her conviction that the God she believes in has a design for marriage, and that it doesn't include gay men or women marrying each other. The Bible, obviously, doesn't say anything about gay marriage; it wouldn't become a major political issue for a couple of thousand years. What it does talk about, in those famous passages in Leviticus (and the ones in Corinthians, for Ms Fitzgerald and other devotees of the sequel), is homosexuality. It's agin' it. Leviticus says the penalty for a man who lies with a man as one lies with a woman is death. The same, it says a few verses later, goes for someone who has sex with a sheep, or with a woman who's engaged to somebody else. (If she's not engaged, you just have to pay 50 shekels to her family and marry her.) In Corinthians, Paul makes it clear that homosexuals will have no place in the kingdom of heaven (nor will adulterers, people who have sex before they're married, slanderers or thieves). Some interpreters make the hopeful argument that these lines are based on ambiguous translations or that it's anachronistic to apply them to modern understandings of homosexuality, but that seems a bit too optimistic to me. Though Jesus, as far as the Gospels tell us, was silent on the subject, and Matthew has him noting that some people have no interest in the opposite sex because they're just born that way.

The point is, if Ms Fitzgerald is rooting her objections to gay marriage in biblical theology, then her claim that she is "not anti-gay" but "pro-marriage" is clearly wrong. The Bible is "pro-marriage", sure, in the sense that it thinks people who have sex outside of marriage should be killed, or will go to Hell. But this would suggest that gays should be forced to marry each other, if not for the fact that the Bible also thinks people who have gay sex should be killed, or will go to Hell. If this is where Ms Fitzgerald gets her sense of what "God's design" is, then her motivation is entirely anti-gay. Fortunately it's impossible to call yourself "anti-gay" in polite society these days, which is why Ms Fitzgerald uses the "pro-marriage" nonsense. All that means is that gradually, gradually, equality and freedom are winning, and one of these days (and it won't be long) Ms Fitzgerald is going to lose.

One final question, though: why does the Bible think homosexuality is wrong? Leviticus is simple and clear: it's "an abomination". More question-begging! Paul elaborates a bit more, not on homosexuality itself, but on the more general category of sexual immorality.

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

Well okay. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit; don't sin against it. Fair enough. Except...why is having sex with someone of your own sex a sin against your body? Come to think of it, it seems to me I know a fair number of gay people who treat their bodies pretty reverently.

We're begging the question again. It's turtles, all the way down.