c. 2004 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ As the dispute over gay marriage heats up, much of the language of the debate is religious, with supporters arguing gay unions may actually uphold religious norms while opponents maintain they neglect and undermine the moral requirement of procreation.

A recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life here was the setting for another round in what has become the “wedge issue” in the “culture war.”

“As a Catholic, you have an obligation to think about the marginalized,” said Andrew Sullivan, a political blogger and senior editor at The New Republic, at the Pew forum. “I believe the ability to integrate homosexuals and their families is a critical challenge. We should treat people as individuals regardless of their identities.”

Sullivan, a gay and a political conservative, said he was raised in a Catholic family in which he was told he would someday be able to marry.

“Why should I give up that dream when it’s my dream, my family and my faith?” he asked.

Sullivan called the argument that marriage is for procreation a circular one.

“The Catholic Church marries infertile and menopausal people,” he said. “The exception does not extend to homosexuality. Procreation is not an essential part of what it is to be married.”

But Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council insisted procreation is an integral part of marriage.

“If marriage had nothing to do with procreation, there would be no reason for it to be a public or civil institution,” he said.

In what he calls the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” Sullivan explained that the conservative right has accused homosexuals of being promiscuous while simultaneously campaigning against their right to marry.

“What are we supposed to do?” he asked. “Gay people exist. They are a fact of human society, of human nature. Sexual orientation is fixed. The religious right wants people in bathhouses. They don’t want them in marriages. (They) want us to go back to the ’50s.”

The agenda of the far right is to attack sexual autonomy in every way, beginning with homosexuals, Sullivan said.

Bob Wenz of the National Evangelical Association said his organization is not against gay people having relationships and certain rights within those relationships but was not willing to accept gay marriage.

“It’s what we’re for as evangelicals rather than what we’re against,” he said.

Wenz supports a proposed constitutional amendment endorsed by President Bush for the one-woman, one-man definition of marriage.

The amendment allows states to provide civil union legislation for same-sex couples. Civil unions provide some but not all the legal benefits of marriage and would be recognized only in states with legislation permitting them.

According to Pew polling data, the proposed amendment is supported by 80 percent of Americans who say they attend church regularly.

Wenz said allowing gay marriage is like “sending Billy up to the classroom blackboard and saying draw me a square circle.”

“There is no such thing as a square circle,” Wenz said. “Definition is very important. When words no longer have meaning, we’re in trouble.”

According to Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley, who was Sullivan’s opponent on the Pew Forum panel, there is a considerable religious aspect to marriage.

“Characteristically, not universally, religious believers think of religion and marriage as transcendent,” said Bradley, who helped draft the proposed constitutional amendment.

The coincidence of religious and civil law is meaningless, Bradley said.

“At the root of the movement to recognize same-sex marriage is not religion _ it’s culture,” he said. “Our democracy is not a reference to political mechanisms, but a political culture.”

If that’s the case, Sullivan countered, marriage for the homosexual minority should be protected under the 14th Amendment.

“The Supreme Court’s right to marry extends to persons on death row, the mentally ill, foreigners, deadbeat parents, to Britney Spears _ who was married for 55 hours _ but it does not extend to two women who have lived together for 55 years,” Sullivan said.

More than 35 states have either adopted or are considering legislation that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Several states have approved or are considering changing their state constitutions to incorporate that definition.

RNS/PH END MORGAN