"A Catholic's Case for Same-Sex Marriage" [UPDATED]

[Commonweal reports:]

 

Joseph Bottum, former chief editor of First Things, has taken to the pages of Commonweal to state a Catholic's case for same-sex marriage.

 

In this thoughtful and personal essay, Bottum states the position plainly: "We are now at the point where, I believe, American Catholics should accept state recognition of same-sex marriage simply because they are Americans." 

 

Bottum also says there is no coherent jurisprudential argument against same-sex marriage, and that it may be time for American bishops to stop fighting the passage of laws that allow it. "Campaigns against same-sex marriage are hurting the church, offering the opportunity to make Catholicism a byword for repression in a generation that, even among young Catholics, just doesn't think that same-sex activity is worth fighting about. 

 

"I find these practical considerations compelling," Bottum writes, "just as I think most ordinary Catholics do."

 

Further, Bottum contends, the sexual abuse scandals have helped put the church in America in "its weakest public position since the 1870s," when thirty-eight states passed anti-Catholic amendments to their constitutions. "[W]hat kind of loony, pie-eyed judgment," Bottum asks, "could lead the bishops to engage in a sex-based public-policy debate they are doomed to lose -- feeding mockery of the church while engaged in the process of losing that fight?"

 

"The Things We Share" is now featured on the Commonweal website. Read the whole thing here.

 

 [UPDATE:  The "Beliefs" column in today's--Saturday's--NYT is about Bottum's Commonweal essay:  here.

Let me add, while I'm at it, that calling Bottum's essay to the attention of MOJ readers does not entail that I concur--or that I do not concur--in all or part of the essay.  My own position on the "jurisprudential" issue--more precisely, on the constitutional issues--is elaborated in my new book.]