A Reflection on Confronting Evil
The New York state legislature has nearly approved a bill endorsing same-sex marriage, finally bringing the state in line with such bastions of extravagant liberalism as Argentina, Nepal, and Iowa. Taking to the airwaves in the tradition of Father Charles Coughlin, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan declared the legislation an “ominous threat”. Same-sex marriage is “detrimental for the common good,” said the Archbishop; it violates “the natural law that’s embedded in every man and woman”.
This post is not about gay marriage; I will not present a positive argument for the moral necessity of marriage equality. Similarly, I will not write a post about the moral necessity of racial integration in public education, or about the moral necessity of women’s suffrage. The mere raising of such issues, in a context of argument, implies an open question about the simple human dignity of the people affected. My starting point is that marriage equality is such an issue. My question, instead, is this: how we are we to deal with those among us most responsible for our collective failure to decisively conclude this argument, the very existence of which is morally repugnant?