Dear Dr. Bock

In the end, you seem to say that's is ok for Civic law to not actively promote (legalize) equality. Your argument is that legalizing gay marriage would be to bring moral affirmation to an "immoral" social minority.

This sounds like "separate but equal" legislation: It's ok for people to ride the bus, just not in the front, because that would be to sanction (promote, according to your above arguement) their equality.

But the lie that was inherent in Jim Crow laws was that whenever laws don't actively define equality (or when they legislate separateness), that the very concept of equality is annulled.

You will argue that sexual preference is not race. I would argue that because morality cannot be biologically proven, you need look no further than the tactics of separation to see a glaring red herring.

Criminal law states that you are innocent until proven guilty, and yet, by your above argument ("neither does it offer support for it giving it a legal and moral standing many doubt it deserves"), you would argue that it actually promotes and sanctions criminals, because innocence is literally - legally - taken as granted.

You are confusing protection - a structural legal necessity - with promotion. The law doesn't promote things like male-female marriage, any more than it promotes crime by giving universal, theoretical protection to potential criminals and upstanding citizens alike.

Criminal law exists to protect citizens against being wrongly judged. And a judgement, albeit moral, is implicit in denying a law for gay marriage.

I'll remind you that your blog concerns what the Bible has to say about moral transgression first, and criminal law second, but that my above point concerns the mechanics of legal judgment first and foremost. Any validation of non-hetersexuality as a social (first), or even legal crime (second) on the basis that it is already "morally" judged by the majority is a textbook example of a circular argument.

Your 5 articles are about the role of "moral" citizens towards those they deem to be their (somehow) inferiors. Such power-play is implicit in your final prescriptions, where you "draw the line".

And sadly, implying this kind of judgement then invites all forms of schoolyard excess. Your blog does matter in the sense that (like a leader or a father) you give people moral validation and support for what will ulitmately be a hierarchical judgement. This leads to real, psychic and physical violence againts those being judged.

I've elswhere drawn a parallel between Koranic prohibitions towards women and your own Christian-inspired anti-gay legal stance. The same hiding behind scriptures to advocate a dominant (and literally judgemental) status-quo.

The issue has strictly nothing to do with the concept of "innate". Should an arab woman be allowed to choose the way she dresses even if that differs from local customs? Yes - up to a point that falls short of starting a riot - yes, this should be her choice. Must there be laws to protect (promote) her rights and bodily safety in doing so? The answer - regarding her choice - and the educational and legal promotion of that right, is obvious.

But, your argument uses the mechanisms of plain and simple cultural dominance. Like so many others from different faiths and ideologies, you are seizing upon difference as a means of shoring up your own hegemony.

The singlemost error Christians make is in believing they are privy to the only morality, spirituality, and faith around. But morality, faith and sprituality have never been - and never will be - limited to the sphere of religion(s) alone.

Putting that another way, one that needs to be repeated constantly is that you can be religious and moral, but that being religious is not the only way to be moral. This point is critical and is the only path for peace in the world.

The issue you've brought up in your blog is the relationship between a divine scripture and a social contract between different people. But the only post-enlightement (or universal) answer must at all cost transcend faith.

Again, I've elsewhere drawn a parallel between early (persecuted) Christians, and today's gays and bisexuals. Not in the loaded terms one or the other's access to sacrosanct morality, but rather in the mechanics of their relationship to society.

The message of Jesus had nothing to do with achieving hegemony in order to bring about the kingdom, desptie the fact that early Christians were outsiders under constant threat of torture and death. A spiritual message is a message from within. But hegemony is the converse - a message from without - and always leads to pain, suffering, and war (another word for hegemony is mob-rule).

Early Christians just wanted to believe, be left alone, and be protected from violence, something the emperor Constantine allowed them when he legalised their faith and freedom.

The only way to argue that their plight was different than non-heterosexuals' plight today is to say that they were following from a "universal" source of morality, "God". This argument is simply no longer workable in the modern world, and that's why we have the separation between church and state. Furthermore, faith and obviously conversion are - precisely - choices.

The comparison is not intended to be offensive, but it does call on self-reflection and applying the same standards to everyone. Many non-heterosexuals (myself included) are deeply respectful of Christian values, and all we ask is the same, structurally, just so there's no confusion.

Laws therefore must not emanate from faiths, but must bring them together under equality. Moral law must exist above faith, because the great religions - while losing none of their spiritual potency - cannot be credibly (or maybe equitably) seen as the only paths in existence leading to human salvation.