Rod Dreher sent a note asking how trads should argue with “gay marriage” proponents, and posted my reply at Beliefnet.
thoughts in and out of season
Rod Dreher sent a note asking how trads should argue with “gay marriage” proponents, and posted my reply at Beliefnet.
A waste of spirit.
I’ve just read your answer to Rod Dreher’s question about debating “gay marriage” over at beliefnet. Judging by the mostly canting and hostile comments on your justification of traditional morality (as it relates to marriage) based on the premise of innate patterns etc., it seems futile to continue kicking against the pricks.
In a moral waste land where only parasites, serpents, and weeds flourish it’s useless trying to restore a garden of reason. Instead of putting intellectually sophisticated arguments against “gay marriage”, you might just as well say that sodomy is a disgusting perversion that is increasing and ought to be diminished. You would not be smothered with any more ridicule or showered with more opprobrium if you did just that.
Who’s the real audience?
You’re not going to convert the loudmouths but you might affect the onlookers.
Loudmouthism
Your answer to Rod Dreher’s question is a cameo of moral reasoning against a powerful lobby that dispenses the received wisdom concerning “gay marriage”. In other words, what you’re up against goes way beyond mere liberal loudmouthism – even when it’s rational. You’re challenging the entire liberal consensus that gratification of self is the highest good. The promotion of homosexual marriage, in some respects, is at the heart of liberal boosterism at this time.
(As the author ofThe Tyranny of Liberalism, I’m only telling you what you know already – so you must forgive the presumption. I suffer from a variant of the Ancient Mariner’s Syndrome.)