This my last post, so you get the last word.

CoastRanger,

I see no shortage of arguments that homosexuality is immoral or that same-sex marriage is wrong. I believe it’s 31 states now that have passed constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage. “My side” obviously did a very poor job of intimidating voters! First Things keeps up a constant drumbeat against “normalizing” homosexuality and “redefining” marriage. They haven’t been closed down by the PC police yet. The Catholic Bishops lobby against same-sex marriage. There may be people in certain professions that don’t want to go on the record on hot-button topics like homosexuality and abortion, but they are hardly silenced.

As I have said a number of times, with six seats out of nine on the Supreme Court, Catholics can’t seriously claim to be an oppressed minority. If you know anyone who feels he or she is being silenced, invite them to write here.

Wouldn’t agnosticism on the question argue not changing things? We know the union of man and woman to form a family has been a norm for all of history in all kinds of cultures and we know that homosexuality has never been one.

Until we know homosexuality is a true human good wouldn’t society be smart not to give people special rights based on that kind of behavior?

David Nickol responds:

No, not at all. Honest disagreement persists on almost everything. You can’t just do nothing waiting for unanimity. That’s certainly not how the United States abolished slavery. Even in the Catholic Church, positions that were suppressed and thinkers who were silenced have in time won out.

David Nickol,

You said you have gone to some lengths to make the point that, after a decade or so of daily writing about redefining marriage, you still don’t know if marriage should be redefined and whether gay people “have a right” to “marry.”

Hmm. You claim to have no clear picture as to whether or not gays “have a right to marry,” and yet you think we should move ahead on redefining marriage anyway. Why should we attempt to redefine an institution as old as mankind even if you think that might be wrong?

CoastRanger,

No, not at all. Honest disagreement persists on almost everything. You can’t just do nothing waiting for unanimity. That’s certainly not how the United States abolished slavery. Even in the Catholic Church, positions that were suppressed and thinkers who were silenced have in time won out.

“Assuming the concept of natural law is valid, it does not follow that if we can’t know everything, then we can’t know anything. There is going to be a broad consensus about murder, stealing, rape, and so on. On the other hand, there is no consensus on the question of whether it is okay lie to the Nazis and tell them you are not hiding Anne Frank. There are varying views on this kind of situation going all the way back to St. Augustine. Even assuming there is natural law, there is no reason to assume that there will be agreement on every particular question that natural law applies to.”

Then my comment to Ray holds. Do nothing. Don’t you agree that is the rational course?

“And honest disagreement on such things is impossible?”

Yes. Honest disagreement is possible. A question is, what do we do while the honest disagreement persists?

Wouldn’t agnosticism on the question argue not changing things? We know the union of man and woman to form a family has been a norm for all of history in all kinds of cultures and we know that homosexuality has never been one.

Until we know homosexuality is a true human good wouldn’t society be smart not to give people special rights based on that kind of behavior?

CoastRanger,

But if the Catholic Church is right about this, then anyone capable of reason should be able to make judgments about the natural law that are just as valid as those of the Catholic Church. We would not need the Catholic Church to make pronouncements on aspects of the natural law. As Scalia implies, if natural law is based on reason, then determinations about natural law should be debated and voted on by the people. He doesn’t believe judges should decide what the natural law requires. Certainly anyone who is not Catholic does not want the Catholic Church to decide.

If the natural law is not “a verifiable, objective look at the world” then nothing is and we are back to cowering at the feet of whoever has more raw power.

Assuming the concept of natural law is valid, it does not follow that if we can’t know everything, then we can’t know anything. There is going to be a broad consensus about murder, stealing, rape, and so on. On the other hand, there is no consensus on the question of whether it is okay lie to the Nazis and tell them you are not hiding Anne Frank. There are varying views on this kind of situation going all the way back to St. Augustine. Even assuming there is natural law, there is no reason to assume that there will be agreement on every particular question that natural law applies to.

You’ve made clear that after ten or so years of thinking and writing every day on every First Things post (at least every one that I’ve ever looked at) about the redefinition of marriage that you still don’t have an opinion on whether gays have a right to marry.

And yet you constantly refer to “gay rights.” In our country, what specific human rights are denied to a man because of sexual actions he takes with other men? Please contrast that with a heterosexual man, whom for whatever reasons, remains single his entire life.

The natural law is reason looking at human nature to try to discover what is really good and bad for human beings.

And honest disagreement on such things is impossible? One of the issues, for example, is the nature of homosexuality itself – is it innate, learned, some admixture thereof, or something else yet?