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Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Getting educated w/ the help of Robert P. George & Andrew Sullivan
Relative to the current debate on same-sex marriage I've picked up Andrew Sullivan's Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con - A Reader (Vintage, 1997) and Robert P. George's Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion and Morality in Crisis (ISI Books, 2001).
I confess to having a very limited awareness of the arguments being asserted by both parties -- ignorance which I hope to remedy by Sullivan's anthology, having heard that it was a decent introduction. From a cursory look at the contents, he appears to have fairly presented both sides of the issue. 1 Robert P. George is Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton. Clash of Orthodoxies is actually a compilation of revised articles and essays, a few which I've previously encountered previously in First Things but merit re-reading. Judging from the reviews I think it will help provide some philosophical context for the "culture wars" we're witnessing today and thus a fitting compliment to Sullivan's reader. What I immediately like about George is that he believes in taking the offensive. Far too long, he insists, have we let the media and liberal critics portray the issue as a dispute of faith and reason: "enlightened liberalism" vs. "the religious right" -- when, George contends, it is those who affirm the Judeo-Christian moral tradition who have the rationally-defensible upper hand. A characteristic insight from the first chapter:
A good question, I think. I'm curious if Mr. Sullivan has an answer. And it will be interesting to read the various arguments proposed in Same Sex Marriage: Pro & Con, keeing in mind the underlying question of the fundamental basis for asserting one's rights . . . or lack thereof.
Labels: politics
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Against The Grain is the personal blog of Christopher Blosser - web designer
and all around maintenance guy for the original Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club (Now Pope Benedict XVI).
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