PROPOSITION 22 reads ``Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.''

It sounds simple. But Proposition 22 has a curious provenance, and a hidden agenda: to deny gays and lesbians basic rights that most Californians believe they should have, and all other Californians take for granted.

Its sponsor, state Sen. Pete Knight, claims that Proposition 22 is necessary to ``protect marriage.'' But one might reasonably ask why Knight believes that couples like my wife and I need him to strengthen our families by targeting gays and lesbians. The answer lies within the senator's own family, and it is deeply sad.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, his son David observes: ``When I was at the Air Force Academy, or when he was speaking at my pilot training graduation, or when I was returning from the Gulf War, where I flew fighters for my country, my father was very proud of me. His love for and pride in me, I assume, was because I was his son. I am the same son today.''

But not to Sen. Knight. Three years ago, David told his father that he had a gay life partner. Since then, they have been estranged. It is hard to know why Knight chose to banish his own son. As with another gay son of the senator's who died of AIDS, the senator refused to discuss with David his homosexuality.

Perhaps his reason was shock. Perhaps grief at the death of another son made him wish to deny the realities of David's life, and to lash out at what he perceives as the cause. But whatever his motives, Knight has denied himself the healing that has already happened in so many American families who have accepted a daughter or son for what they were born to be.

Over the years, I've known many gays and lesbians. For them, homosexuality was never a ``preference,'' or a ``choice'' -- any more than one ``prefers'' to be born left-handed or right-handed, tall or short. None of us chooses our race, nationality, or whether or to be homosexual -- or, for that matter, heterosexual. If that were so, surely no person would ``choose'' to face dislike, discrimination and difficulty in forming a family. Put baldly, David Knight did not choose to risk rejection by his own father, or to live in a world where his father's rage becomes law.

Nor do most of us want him to. In other states, provisions similar to Proposition 22 -- ostensibly passed to define marriage -- have been used to deny to gay couples the most basic of rights. Ask Californians how they feel about marriage, and one gets a variety of answers. But few of us would want to deprive other Californians of the right to Social Security, the right to health benefits, the right to make medical decisions, or the right to pass on one's estate.

And who among us, if we really think about it, wants to deny gays and lesbians the right to visit a partner who's dying in a hospital? And who among us thinks our family will be better if we do?

Between us, my wife Laurie and I have six children. We're not flawless parents, but we try hard to be good ones, and we know that the quality of our marriage, and our children's lives, depends not on laws, but on love. We don't need Pete Knight to protect our family, and frankly we wish he wouldn't. He has unfinished business of his own.

Novelist Richard North Patterson is an attorney and the author of six international bestsellers, including ``No Safe Place'' and ``Dark Lady.''

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© 2000 Mercury Center.