THE LAST WORD - signs of the times.

Proposition 22, the California state initiative banning recognition of same-sex marriage, passed last month by a margin of 61 to 39 percent. I was not surprised. The week before the vote, I had driven to my mother's house to help her pack for a move. As I drove through the small, middle-class enclave of Duarte, I was confronted with a sea of lawn signs reading: "Protect Marriage: Yes on 22."

Despite the fact that there was a presidential primary at stake and numerous other important ballot initiatives, only Proposition 22 seemed to have prompted bold declarations on lawn after lawn. Living in the city, I had never seen a "Yes on 22" lawn sign. For me, a gay man, the air in Duarte was thick with unwelcome. I sped through the streets anxious to get to where I was going and leave as quickly as possible.

But as I pulled up to my mother's house, my heart began pumping. There, on her lawn, was a sign proclaiming "Yes on 22." I felt humiliated and betrayed. I parked in the driveway, pulled up the sign, walked in, and asked, "Mom, is this sign on your lawn by mistake?"

"No mistake," she replied.

"Well then, I'm going home," I responded. On the way back to Los Angeles, my mind and heart raced. I thought of the fact that marriage between two people of the same sex was already illegal in California and how, as far as I was concerned, Proposition 22 had been developed as a catalyst to pit citizen against citizen on the issue of civil rights for lesbians and gay men. As a Catholic, I know that the sacrament of matrimony, theologically, can be contracted only between a man and a woman. But civil marriage, I would argue, is different, more a question of individual rights than majority rule.

I could, for example, fly to Las Vegas tonight, wed a prostitute in a drunken stupor, and return to Los Angeles tomorrow morning to have my marriage fully recognized by the law and society. Fifty women can vie on national television to marry a man they've never met for his money, and that union would be recognized by the state. Any man can marry a woman for her looks in a cynical but legally sanctioned form of concubinage, and that union would enjoy all the rights and privileges of marriage. But if two people of the same sex want to establish rights of inheritance or become legally empowered to make health-care decisions for one another, we are now told that the entire structure of Western civilization will come crashing down. The threat is so dire that California's Catholic bishops spent nearly $300,000 in support of Proposition 22. I understand some of the reasoning behind the bishops' actions. I also note that many civil marriages between straight people are not recognized by the church, yet I do not see bishops proposing initiatives that would ban such unions.

A thought crossed my mind. Let's say I thought divorce-rather than gays and lesbians-was the real threat to the idea of marriage. I could then propose to amend, through popular initiative, the same sentence inserted into the California Family Code by Proposition 22, adding just six words: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized, and every valid marriage is indissoluble." Would I encounter a sea of lawn signs in Duarte proclaiming marriage's indissolubility? Could I expect my bishop to support the civil codification of the church's understanding of marriage in this instance? Or would churches beg off the idea of settling such a sensitive issue at the ballot box? Why do I suspect that the real-life needs of the majority would somehow be accommodated on this question?

After I got home and returned the inevitable message from my mother (yes, I should have sat down and talked with her about it, but I am not perfect), I proposed my scenario to her: "Would you not be offended if you came to my home and saw a banner hanging from my balcony urging the abolition of divorce?" She is divorced. "No," she said. "That wouldn't bother me at all."

I wonder. For you see, it is not that everyone in the gay community believes we can contract matrimony as a sacrament. I don't. But I am irked by the double standard in civil life. Divorce, adultery, and marriage for inappropriate reasons are all permitted in a pluralistic society. Why are gay unions so threatening, when immense leeway is routinely permitted in straight people's ideas of what marriage entails? This can even be seen as an issue of free exercise of religion. If some in the Reform movement of Judaism and in the Episcopal church can permit same-sex marriages, should the California electorate have the right to deny civil recognition to such unions?

In civil law the idea of marriage has changed radically from the days when divorce was the exception and interracial unions illegal. Most Americans, I suspect, believe that individuals, not the community as a whole, should define what marriage means. But if straight people enjoy that right, why can't gay people?

Eric Stoltz is a consultant in public relations and Web development in Los Angeles.