is why we are in afghanistan. to prevent them running afghanistan through a government that would be run by the taliban itself and i secondly to him we have to persuade people we have a purpose of our mission and that is to train the afghan forces. there will be 300,000 afghan security forces in 2011. they will be a far greater course in numbers from coalition forces together and gradually the afghan forces in operation together gradually the afghan forces have got to take security controls to allow our troops to come home. cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

>> order. i think we're clear about the government's position. >> mr. speaker, what the prime minister agree with me that the terrorist plan in northern island not only is a threat to the peace process but our direct attacks on the very communities from which the terrorists, from? >> mr. speaker, their members from the house here who are from northern island who care deeply about northern island. i agree with them. in a renewed terrorist attacks

should be taken the necessary action to stop. as he knows large numbers of previously terrorist organizations have the conditions their weapons. there are two organizations that have not done so and it is the pressure upon them that must be brought to them. but the way we shall cherish organizations that will have no time with their bows is to build up the strength of the political and democratic process in northern ireland. that is why i urge all parties, parties in this house and in the northern ireland assembly, to support the agreement to the end of the process of constitutional conflict over many years in northern ireland. that would be the biggest signal we could say to anybody who's interested in terrorism in northern ireland. >> thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, i enjoyed a pint of porter and a game of darts as much as any old italian. [laughter]

>> but they're the so mary ann's. [laughter] >> have asked my right honorable friend to strain every sin you to try to cheat at international agreement on a robin hood tax, bearing in mind we all know who, in this house, speaks for the sheriff of nottingham. [laughter] >> mr. speaker, i cannot beat the humor which my honorable friend brings to this occasion. and when the leader of the opposition is having a pint of guinness and playing darts he might consider this, there's growing support across the world just as there was growing support to do with the recession in a way he wouldn't propose to do with the, growing support like global lever that will put the place of financial institutions firmly at the global level and make a contribution to society. that is the way forward. the global levy, global banking

organization, global financial institutions working together. i hope the opposition can see beyond europe to support a global action. >> order. order. statement of the prime minister. i should be grateful if they proceed quickly and quietly. statement for the prime minister. >> from london to have a jing prime minister's question time.

>> author and commentator andrew sullivan was recently invited to speak at princeton university about the politics of homosexuality. mr. sullivan is the author of "virtually normal," an argument. and write about politics on his blog. he speaks for about an hour and a half. >> i am in the atlantic monthly and right at the atlantic.com. i've been asked to speak about politics of homosexuality. which is, as steve pointed out, he is very kind and generous, introduction, a subject, an article i wrote in 1993, and with some rational in my book "virtually normal." it's now 2010, and it was

interesting, i'm going to ask to speak about this to go over the arguments that i made then, and see how they have held up and whether they still apply, and whether i still believe all of them. and what i try to do in that essay was to actually, instead of getting into this extraordinary fight in which one side equals of the other perverts and the other calls the other bigots, to actually try to construct and a little, to talk about various ways of understanding and thinking about homosexuality. and i divided, and there are many, many different ways of doing so, but i decide for the sake of clarity and brevity to divided into four categories. for different kinds of politics about homosexuality. and tackle why i believe every

single one of them was wrong. those politics of homosexuality i called prohibition is an, liberation is him conservatism and liberalism. and the arguments i made in the late '80s and early '90s came from a young gay man who tried to make sense of his own life and the world he was living in. and try to make sense logical, rational sense of the discourse around this extraordinary broad topic. and remains, of course, incredibly frost today, intense, emotional, disturbing, upsetting, the sort of red-hot center of a culture war in which many people's lives are discussed and debated. i want to try to and tonight, and if use that calm that

,-comcome and to try to think rather than feel about this topic. and i ask you tonight also to help me do that, because there's so much emotion, legitimately, about this subject, that thinking is sometimes hard. the first concept of politics of homosexuality, prohibitionism, has actually had a much stronger and longer life than i expected it would act in the early 1990s. prohibitionism was, of course, the absolute consensus in america and indeed most of the world for the vast majority of existence of humankind. it is still the overwhelming politics for the overwhelming number of homosexual men and lesbian women, and bisexual and

transgender people in the world are today, we see in africa a rather terrifying movement to criminalize, imprison and execute homosexuals, in the united states created by the american religious right. in my lifetime when i grew up, when i was born in my old country, homosexuality was illegal. it was criminal. people were jailed. people lived in fear. today, they still live in fear. not know in many parts of this country, but certainly and large parts of the middle east. and vast amounts of africa and asia where people today, even in places we think of as relatively civilized, suffer tremendous sufferings because of this. in iran, young, gay men are

hanged in public because they are homosexual. and this is based on religious doctrine, first of all. it is based in this country on the bible. and i think it is silly to deny the fact that the bible does explicitly condemn homosexual facts. i'm not one of these people who are trying to pretend he doesn't. leviticus is very clear on this matter. roman seemed to be pretty clear that it's not kosher. [laughter] >> i hope that isn't going to be interpreted as anti-semitic. [laughter] >> does this work today as a politics? does it appeal to the bible? it is one of the dominant themes of the religious right.

it was adamant eve, not adam and steve. you heard the slogans. the bible is clear on this isn't the word of god. we must take the bible literally seriously. well, my response of that is simply this. leviticus is clear. a man shall not die, shall not lie down with a man, but it is also clear the penalty is execution. it is also clear that you shall not makes one fabric with another fabric. in which case the religious right it should be containing to shut down bloomingdale's. it should come in the biblical literalism is the actual argument, arguing for the execution of homosexuals as real fundamentalist regimes do. so i'm sorry, but already the prohibitionists are in the aging incoherence. i of the bible is literally true

and is a commitment to be enforced. or it isn't. they are telling us it isn't. because they don't support the execution of homosexuals. then you come to the much more sophisticated, and this argument comes from the catholic tradition of natural law. what it says is that human beings are naturally designed by god to be heterosexual. in fact, at some level homosexuals do not really exist. they are all, we're all heterosexuals, but some choose to engage in behavior that is unnatural. that is against the way god made us and the way nature designed as. and this revolt against nature is the argument against homosexuality.

the legal framework for criminalizing homosexuality was often referred to in english law and indeed in early american law as crimes against nature. this is a core element, and why is it a core element? because when you ask sexuality and sexual acts, are by nature supposed to procreate and create life. and a man and a woman can do this, but obvious he a man and a man for biological reason and a woman and a woman for biological reasons cannot create new life. and therefore the act, the entire purpose of sexuality is being perverted, literally, away from its natural end. therefore, we are not bigoted

about homosexuals or stigmatizing homosexuals. we are simply saying that by understanding the nature of human beings the act of sexuality in this sense is clearly contrary toward every human being we clearly understand. at this is the other critical argument of natural law. natural law does not appeal to what positive fundamental does in the literal sense. it says and makes an argument that these arguments that it is making are obvious and self-evident to anybody with reason, that you do not need to have revelation or even faith to accept the obvious reasonable nature of this condition, and of this argument.

and you know, it remains a very powerful argument. the male body produces sperm, that we know biologically are and can be, and can become, if united in an open, into a potential human being without this particular thing, nobody in this room would be here. i certainly wouldn't. and i know all of you wouldn't either. i am now degenerate into the same kind of repetitive mantra as bart simpson's alter ego. [laughter] >> someone also expect this argument to be held consistent consistently, and i'm trying to do here is to agree with that matter. well, protestant also defend contraception.

in other words, in fact, the very strongly committed to urge contraceptives in many circumstances. not use contraception as a heterosexual, is to engage in this natural act and deliberately prevent it from reaching its natural end. so presumably in that sense, heterosexuals who use contraception are perverting the entire point of sexual interaction. the argument is a yes, but it's also about committing and love to one another. sex is an act of love in a committed relationship that will come unfortunate that are to can also plot obviously to gays and lesbian couples. so by by that argument. the catholics, of course, being

sometimes very smart, and in 1968 realizing if we give this away, a lot of other things will follow. insisted that, though, the contraception is as bad as homosexual sex, for exactly the same reason. and again, it's important to point out the catholic doctrine is this is not bigoted. it is not in that in so far we love. it is not saying the homosexual people are evil or wrong. is saying that the sex act must always be open to procreation. it is the same argument as against masturbation and as against contraception. it's just that homosexuals get caught in this same argument because by nature, sadly, they cannot reproduce themselves.

so the question then becomes is it okay, therefore, for infertile couples, people who know that they cannot procreate at all to have sex, to engage in a sexual act, that is inherently incapable, for no fault of their own, of producing children, right? here you have a sexual act that they know in advance cannot create children. one would imagine, that if sex is only feasible during that -- if it is creating new life, then clearly, people are in fertile for one reason or another, are people who are postmenopausal cannot have sex.

so one expects the catholic church to say no, you must not have sex past menopause and you must not have sex if you're infertile. because you are perverting the core nature and reason of sexuality. but they don't, do they? they actually provide the sacrament of marriage to infertile couples. there is no bond on the sacrament of marriage for people who are past menopause. it is also simply a fact that during the period when the woman is pregnant, it is impossible to procreate in the sexual act. and yet, the church does not bar sexual acts in that nine months which one might imagine if one is arguing for natural law for our nature, there is nothing more natural than the nine months of pregnancy and the womb

is not open to conceive again. but, no, disposition says that's fine. this position also says that in terms of family planning, if you time it right, the rhythm method, as it was once called, natural family planning, if you can time it right so you are at the moment she can't conceive, then that's okay. if that is also trying to rig the system, against nature, in order to prevent procreation i don't know what is. this argument is riddled with exceptions. the argument that is used within natural law to say that gay people cannot have sex is violated in the case of many other examples, whether it be

the rhythm method, or post menopausal couples. at which point some people said with in fertile couple, a miracle can happen. you can still have sex and a miracle can happen, and somehow god can intervene. if a miracle can happen, then maybe i can have a baby with my husband. [laughter] >> who am i to put a limit on the power of god? [laughter] >> you laugh because the argument is, of course, ridiculous. and want to go through this argument, and as a young catholic boys try to understand why my church was done i could never have love or a relationship, i had to go through these arguments one by one by one. and i found that every single one fell apart, until he came to

gay people. day, somehow, were uniquely set apart because they somehow were not worthy of all the exceptions that were made for other people for compassionate and human and convenient reasons. to enter this argument, because as a young catholic boys i kept asking unfortunate questions, because it is a church i still love and a fate i still hold. there came this argument that, in fact, what really matters is that the whole universe, by nature, is divided into the symbolic to have the male and female, that this is a mystery about humankind, that god has chosen. it is represented by jesus and the bride of the church.

it is represented in the heavens. it is why the mother of god is given such a great prominence within the catholic tradition along with jesus. and there is some great symbolic notion that the whole universe is made whole by this complementarity of the sexes, that anything that violates that complementarity somehow misses, so that contraceptives are in fertile sex -- sex between couples who cannot procreate because they modeled the form of the male and female are allowed, but because a man and a man or woman and woman do not represent this natural form of the universe it is some violation.

now some of you have puzzled looks on your faces, and i don't blame you. jesus, one recalls, never married. jesus, one recalls, told all his disciples to leave their wives immediately without even saying goodbye. jesus, one recalls, consorted with single women. the church itself demands that its highest people in authority, the male and unmarried. this fantastic importance of complementarity of male and female, again, suddenly collapses. except when it comes to the question of homosexuals. in which case, it is resolutely and consistently enforced. it is also true, of course, that if one understands nature as

nature, and this entire tradition springs from thomas a qantas' understanding of aristotle, and at qantas was trying to understand biology from he was trying to understand what actually is the nature. you would think that as he did, the modern church would be seeking constantly and emphatically to discover what science is telling us about what nature really is. and sizes tailing us and has told us in the last 100 years that there are not actually in the whole universe just two genders. there are many species in which there are intermediate genders. the human species as many people born as intersex.

but there are dozens of genders of grass. there are fish species that go from male to female to male in their own lifetime. and everywhere in nature, using homosexual behavior as a darwin saw it himself, and then covered it up because he thought it was too outrageous to say. happening all over the place. in all sorts of species. and now, of course, in signs in the study of nature, there are all sorts of theories about why homosexual orientation might be of evolutionary advantage, might have helped bonding, it might have been advantageous for human beings to have a group of people who were dedicated solid to rearing children themselves, but could actually be helping the communities as a whole.

educate, religious duties, scholarship. all sorts of other things that aggregate these communities advantage because they had men and women who were not dedicated solely to reproducing and bringing up children as a family unit. now we're at a stage of knowledge we don't really know the resolution of all these things, but what we do know, we do know as truth, as the truth of nature is this idea of male and came out as the only definition of what the universe is about, as somehow some ultimate truth of which all variations must be banished is simply not consonant with what we know about science and nature. and if aquinas were living today he would be studying evolutionary biology and psychology of understand what god meant us to be.

i look at the world and the universe as a catholic who believes in god, as an amazing, very diverse, fascinating, complicated, beautiful place. and i believe that also applies to sexuality and to human gender, and i know what i do not know. i believe in what the great catholic poet hopkins called tied to beauty. the beauty of those who are freckled and different, the fact that the universe,.com requires diversity. the fact of course as we now know, the diversity of individuals and of genes is a strength. it is the driving force of human life and human civilization.

my view is, therefore, again, by reason, not by feeling, this argument is over. the last desperate act of the people supporting it has been the decision of the current pope to insist that gay people are simply, as he put it, i objectively disordered, unquote. he doesn't quite explain why or how. he has even gone so far as to say that even if it gay men are utterly celibate, if they obey the church's teachings and highly, if they never have sex with another man they still cannot be priests. his directive recently in a last

gasp of effort is simply to say that we don't care whether a gay man adheres to the exactly the same rules as a straight man in the priesthood. he still somehow sick, too sick to serve god. in my view, that particular directive, which i think up until then there are some arguments that seem to fall apart, that itself is not an argument. it is an act of bigotry. it is an active stigmatization. and this, by the way, and this perhaps is where feeling does creep in, by george engaged over the last decade and a grotesque cover up and commitment of sexual abuse of children, at a greater extent than any other institution that we know of. if it were a secular institution

the police would've gone in and shut it down. but nonetheless, the hypocrisy and double standards of these individuals are not what i am arguing here. what i'm arguing here is the argument makes no sense. and i tried most of my life for it to make sense, and it doesn't make sense. the second politics of homosexuality, calm emotions, calm emotions. [laughter] >> i want to just add by the way, before we leave the catholic topic, the catholics i know, the people who live in the church and the pews and the priests i know are not like this at all.

they are good people. they do great things. they love god, and they love their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. i am testimony to that. my devout mother loves me as she loves my brother and my sister. and there is no way in which her love for the love of my fellow catholics and fellowship of my fellow catholics has been affected by this. i'm talking here not about catholics. i am talking about a hierarchy that is lost, lost, sadly lost. but one day will find itself again. the second politics of homosexuality -- [laughter] -- i want to call liberationism. and now all of you liberals all hate me. is basically an argument that, again, a curious kind of way because in some ways really you

can't understand it without understanding the causes and. all he wanted to do was turn it upside down. there is no truth. there is no fundamental nature of human beings. homosexuality like heterosexuality is entirely a social construction. it is all in our heads. to talk about homosexuals through history, for example, is to make a fundamental dollars. there were no homosexuals before the late-night teen century when the term homosexuality was invented. people laughed, but he made a great career out of this argument. and he's absolutely right in many respects that in different cultures and in different times

and different eras and places, how homosexuality has been described what it has meant, how homosexuals understood themselves, the words they have used, the variety of ways in which it has been expressed has toured enormously to such an extent to say, for example, that someone living in a century of himself as a gay man is, in fact, i think idiotic. another historic who would disagree with that, and his brilliance and it is brilliant was to understand exactly that. and to try and free us from these constructs that he thought were imprisoning us, that all the matter in the end were feeding the and desires the header section out of

homosexuality does all the into just a variety of tax. you can see also the cup also is a within, just as catholicism is all about the sexual act in understanding. sofer company want to reduce everything to that as well. and then claim that it has any sustained or permanent meaning. so most of the student in today's, if there gay and lesbian are actually clear. that to be gay and lesbian is to be in permanent constructions revolt against any sort of category whatsoever. that it is a permanent revolt against structures that inhibit human freedom. and this is what we call queer liberation is a. in which we study text and

deconstruct them in which we study words and deconstruct them. in which we look at our lives and deconstruct them. and the whole idea of gay rights is itself oppressive and i think probably for him it was. although in his later years, before he died, there did seem to be some shift in his thinking, but i can't read into what he might have evolved into. someone to agree with him that there is the obvious variety of expressions and understandings, self understanding. but i don't think it goes all the way down. i think there is something something just their that we seem to understand and all i can say is that my own expense, maybe your experience and ask yourself this as deeply as you can, most gay people have to ask themselves in a way that mostly

people have never asked themselves this because they never had to question their heterosexuality. although freud of course was tested about why it had to be explained as much as heterosexuality. i do think that, in fact, no, these acts and feelings sexually and emotionally are not just ask of feelings. they are as human beings and nature acts and feelings that are related to other people, and those people are members, overall, of two genders. and if you're one of gender attracted to another gender, it is not something you have constructed. this is a very elaborate way of something saying you really can't help what turns you on. you really can't help who you fall in love with. and it remains a simple truth, a fact of life, and the

nomological fact that this is how the people live on how they expressed. when i wrote my book, "virtually normal," i had to begin by saying what is homosexuality and i had to say this is how i experienced it. this is how everybody i have not experienced it. that it emerged from the deep just as heterosexuality emerge from people deeply. you don't think when you first all of i am a heterosexual. or i am a homosexual. you think, i am so in love with david or jane. that's the truth. you can't deconstruct that. and is eternal and in part of us for ever, and for some reason, the biologists and geneticists are trying to figure out and evolutionary biologist also have some theories about a very small minority of human beings have that experience with members of

the same gender. there you have it. it's an experience that seems to be in every culture at every time in every place. and is not, therefore, socially constructive. a huge amount of the rest of it is, but when you get all the way down, there is some core solid concrete beneath the earth that is reality. and that is what we call sexual orientation. there's also something rather bizarre to my mind about liberationism and coherence politically. because we're liberationists are really against gay oppression. but shouldn't they actually, if they were consistent be seeking gay oppression? isn't the expense of the outsider and the marginalized and the persecutors which is essential to the version of the queer threatened by equality and

inclusion? if it is to be outside, why would ever seek to belong? why are queer liberationism we're liberationists part of any movement to change law or reform institutions to include gay people at all? and of course, in days gone by, before many of you seem to have been born. , i feel so old these days. i was resizing the argument. we don't want to have marriage. we don't want equal marriage rights. want to destroy marriage altogether. we don't want to join the military. we don't want straight people to join the military. we want to destroy the military altogether. so in the end, the irony of liberationism is they seek to perpetuate the oppression of gay people.

except of course almost all of them in real life are too humane to actually go there. instead they take it out of gay conservatives but we'll leave that for another day. but do you see what i mean? there something incoherent about this. you can't, you can't worship being in a prison as the core of your identity and then asked to have the key to get out. indiana, it becomes a prison you beautifully decorate, you make a charming home, and god knows, we homosexuals are good at that. [laughter] >> the third politics of homosexuality, i feel like i am on some monty python speech.

[laughter] >> sorry. the third politics of homosexuality i call conservatism. and i mean this in a, not in the way conservatism is truly understood in this country. i mean a class of conservatism contended which means we really like homosexuals, we would really rather have a talk about a very much, thank you. this is very english view. why did you have to keep bringing it up? can't we all just get along? why did you have to talk about sex all the time? why do we even have to talk about this? gays in the military, there was a time when we did have to do with this subject, can we please go back there? i don't want to hate you, but i don't want to acknowledge you exist. [laughter] >> and these are also good people, many of whom, but, of

course, in the last 20 years the possibility that happening is over. the closet has collapse. looking at admiral mullen, seeing the difference between then and now, admiral mullen in front of the congress said he had always served alongside gays and lesbians in the military. as most soldiers, especially sailors, will always tell you, not to denigrate the air force or the marines, heaven knows, not the marines, but now he understood that it was a violation of integrity of these soldiers that they have to lie about who they are. because our societies have evolved to the point where these people are not actually closeted themselves in the realize, they just have to pretend to be

someone else within the military. and this is an enormous and cruel imposition upon these people, and in fact, because the society has evolved to such an extent of these peoples very lives obvious, other people, sometimes for malicious reasons, out them and their careers are over. and this is not an honorable thing to happen. and the owner of the united states military and the integrity which is the word that he used of the american soldier, will no longer allow this conservatism to remain. you will also notice that they closeted politician is becoming actually rare or more ridiculous. larry craig is the only person a part from his wife who seems to think he is heterosexual in the entire united states of america. we can pretend otherwise, but

not many heterosexuals spend a lot of time in bathrooms with their feet 10 feet apart. you'll also notice the disappearance of openly gay republicans. there are none in the congress of the united states. none. why? because the cost of a gay person today to be in the republican party, which is no longer a conservative party, it is a fundamentalism party, is impossible to sustain. log cabin republicans which was 10 or 15 years ago had a chance of making it have all but given up. the right wing fringe of the log cabin republicans, a group called geo proud actually cosponsored a bill that the conservative conference which is going on in d.c. which i am so sorry i am missing --

[laughter] -- and what's interesting about those gay republicans is they are all openly gay. you know what's also interesting about them, is they all support equal marriage rights, military service, openly gay military service, and they all oppose constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. there are no gay people left in this country able to actually support the agenda of the republican party. because the closet itself, and the atmosphere that it created has disappeared. it's gone. it's over. that's what's happening. in britain, to give you a sample counter example, country i left with for years ago, the conservative party, if it wins the next election, which is happening within 100 days, if it wins the next election by one seat majority, will have 15

openly gay conservative mp's. and two of them will be in the cabinet. i had dinner two nights ago with the shadow minister for the environment who is not only openly gay, he is also married under britain's civil law for every single right that every heterosexual has and he has campaigning to win gave vote for conservative values. that is the coherent next step in and evolving society. but it means the closet is over and it means the all conservatism is dead. and what's happened in this country is that those people have left what is increasingly a fundamentalist party that seeks, not only to gay people stay in the closet, but actually embraces the idea that they should be cured. and is actually tormenting campaigns that to be executed in africa.

i'm running out of time. liberalism. number four. [laughter] >> liberalism understand homosexuals as a protected and victim class. they see the entire homosexual question in terms of the classics of the rights, concert, in which minorities need to be protected from majority hatred and majority oppression. they need special protections from these things. there must be laws that make it impossible for you to fire someone, private people within the private sphere, not the government, because they are gay. we must have hate crimes laws so that people, the laws, someone kills somebody because they happen to be walking down the street and look like they have a lot of money.

and someone who kills somebody because he yells back at them, the person who yells back at them need to have a higher penalty under the law than the other act of violence. because the minority group is so vulnerable to fear, and the terror spread throughout the broader community is so great, that our laws must make a special note that there are not americans, but african-americans, korean-americans, gay and lesbian americans, and the job of the civil rights movement, every syllable single right make sure this next up is included in that category. and then we are fine. and i think this comes from an extremely benevolent and good place. what i worry about is that it

balkanized society into different sections that get places, and that, and generates by structures and language racial, sexual and sexual orientation divisions within people. and provokes resentment amongst those who don't seem to be protected. and generates a very particular argument that yes, some people are for special rights. and i don't really minority should have any more rights than majority. i think they should all have rights. now i don't believe the majority, that minorities are some fundamental postage alone should be allowed to discriminate by the government. absolutely not. that's what courts are for. but i do believe that minorities can and should and must look hatred in the face and be confident enough to stare it down without the necessity of law and government pretending they do not have that capacity.

i believe that the doctrines and attitudes that liberalism forced us with these special groups and these special categories actually subtly entrenched in the the human psyche this is that gay people are always victims. that they must always seek help and protection. that in some sense, even though it is done in an incredibly benevolent way, and analyzes. i also believe that someone who is a passionate believer in free speech that we should never criminalize bigotry just as we should never criminalize any kind of good speech. i believe the freedom of the bigots is also the freedom of the profit. i think a government of any particular time will never be able to know for ever which is which, and that all the government should do is make sure that both have the freedom to say and think anything they

want. and the only limit should be it should never be speech that is a threat of violence that actually explicitly targets any specific person. because i believe that's what i defend the right of the boy scouts. to discriminate against gay scoutmaster, even though i think the policy is abhorrent, because i believe that once you accept the principle that a private group cannot discriminate against people at the size was all particulars and whatever reasons it is, then the groups that are most vulnerable from government interference are the ones that are the smallest. , gay people among them, that the right of the nazis, or kkk to walk down the street under the first amendment is indistinguishable from the right

of the drag queen to walk proudly down the street in the gay pride parade. i want to defend both of them, not because one of them is good and what of them is bad, because bowles of them are acts of freedom. and if we start as gay people infringing upon the first amendment, the fundamental right to say what we want, to be who we are, we will finally be the victims because they really aren't that many of us. and we will be the people who would be the victim of this kind of intimidation. now, i also believe for those reasons that we should be extremely careful in enacting equality for gay men and women that we protect the religious liberties of people who, for whatever reasons, since we believe this is against their conscience. even if as i try to show there isn't that much reason in this

comp is not the will of the, to tell a religious person that they are not reasonable. at some level every religious person is not reasonable. but religion is not about recent. what i worry about and what i worry is a legitimate fear among people, is that once you start down this path of protecting particular groups of people, other people and their freedoms to say and be and speak will be affected. and lastly, i also want to say that gay people are a very particular kind of minority. a very strange in some ways minority. different than every other racial minority or group that we think of the. because which makes them not and shouldn't be put apart of all minorities should not be

balkanized and set apart. and the reason is that every homosexual is born into a heterosexual family. that leaves almost everyone. and most of us live our lives deeply embedded in heterosexual culture. now most african-american kids grew up and african-american household. most jewish kids grew up in a jewish household. they're part of a minority you can easily demarcate. they're part of a minority that creates its own self-sustaining culture from birth on. not true of gay people. we are spread randomly through the population, in every family, and we live and breathe as heterosexuals. and include within heterosexual culture because they don't realize yet, unless we tell them, or unless it is obvious they have to kick in a whole bunch of denial, which they are

very talented at. so this fact that we're embedded already from birth on for such a long period of almost 400 years make setting us apart in later years on designing and vulcanize the end stigmatizing in a strange way. it is a benign form of stigmatization. and it is entrenches the idea that we somehow need to be protected more than other people. my view him and this is what in some ways libertarianism right meets the left is the right attitude is those drag queens at stonewall who fought back, who stood up for themselves, didn't seek laws or to bash those cops back. what i loved about that was its fearlessness and declaring there is nothing wrong with being gay and gay is good comedy is good, gay is good.

why would something that is so good be something we should be so frightened of being persecuted for? bring it on. bring it on. i love debating the religious right. why? because i'm not afraid of those people. why? because i'm not some persecuted minority desperate and unable to defend myself. and the first thing that i defend myself with is the first amendment, which is what i'm doing here tonight and which gay people have done for centuries. i need to conclude. the politics that i argued in alternative all these four things has, in a couple of

decades since i first started making this argument come to pass, we have seen, and the are you was that the core argument is that the government, the government should stop treating us differently. the government should stop identifying us as different and stop discriminating against us. we are equal, and our government should treat us equally. and that means our relationships should be treated no differently in any way, shape or form than heterosexuals relationship that is identical in its commitment, and its fidelity, and it's love and in its passion. i will never accept that somehow my love for my husband should be corn teens into something called a civil union or a civil partnership, or euphemize in such a way that is not the exact

equivalent of the relationship of my sister and her husband. i am not going to be written out of my own family. and there is no reason why any gay person should ever accept anything but full equality under the law. . .

>> segregation is wrong. it was wrong racially. it was wrong sexually. it is wrong with respect to sexual orientation. civilians and domestic partnerships and anything short of civil marriage is a form of segregation and a form of stigmatize station which no self-respecting gay person should tolerate for a second. people will object that religion is such a powerful thing and that on the reason should therefore be given a special privilege over reason and the quality and truth. well, if religion is not about

truth, what it is what is it about? if religion is not about the sincere seeking of truth then what is it about? and the civil protections i am talking about, the civil equality, simply the ability to be treated like everyone else is a simple thing, not a religious thing. it is a marriage license issued by a single entity. it has nothing to do in some respects with a religion. atheists get married every day of the week by local clerics, by town clerks, by several officials. and they never have anything to do with any religion and all. the idea a religious group should be able to say who into is not simply married is absurd. let me give you one simple example. the great inconsistency, is the

catholic church campaigning to make civil divorce illegal? is the existence of civil divorce an attack upon the family? is it an attack on marriage? divorce is absolutely forbidden within the catholic church. it affects far more people than the situation of gay marriage. why is there not a defensive marriage act to prevent divorced people remarrying. be consistent, and they are not. be rational, and they are not. treat us equally, and they are not. lastly, yes, it is a simple question. this is a civil equality. it is very simple. what is it that i really or we

really are fighting it is there should never be a gay rights movement in the future. i want to shut it down. i want to achieve civil equality so the distinction between homosexual and heterosexual in the political world is irrelevant. i want the day to come when there is no human rights campaign and no national gay and lesbian task force , legal defense network. when i am not always described as a gay conservative when i am described as a conservative or whatever else i am supposed to be. i want the day when this is over. i want the day when we humans together, when our differences

are opportunities for self-understanding and conversation. when we can get passed this distinction that has caused so much pain for so many people for so long and we can become citizens and human beings again thank you. [applauding] [applauding] [inaudible conversations]

>> okay. thank you so much, and dr. sullivan. on behalf of the university committee on public lectures and the lesbian, gay, and transgender center we thank you for visiting princeton. now, we have time for questions. because of the broadcast that is happening we ask that you wait for the microphone and speak into the microphone so that for posterity we know what your microphone is. i am informed you will take questions on any subject, not just your lecture. if it comes up the millions of subjects for which he is known, and i'll give it over. >> thank you. can i also ask a favor. if i promise to end all this at 9:40, is that okay? yeah. because this place is very squeaky if you want to leave

before then, please leave now. if not can you stay until 9:30. otherwise the noise and the distractions gets really demoralizing. i know. i know. i know. i know. the union where i used to debate, there was a rule that once a person started speaking no one could leave the chamber. just because it is really demoralizing for a speaker to watch people get up and go out. so leave now or forever hold your peace. it's only 20 minutes. i will take any question on a subject within the normal realm of propriety. yes, sir. >> yes. i was wondering what distinction to you make between the boy scouts and the catholic church? he seemed to find it a case that boy scouts can, but not the

catholic church. >> i guess because i believe that religious faith, anyway, is something more sacred than merely learning how to go camping or how to tie knot and religion and questions about the ultimate meaning of the universe do deserve special protection in a society in a way that other associations do not. i know that is increasingly a controversial position, but it is one that i hold. i think the first amendment is very clear about that. i think religion is special. >> i guess my question, first, i want to thank you for everything you have been saying on your board recently about torture. i read about this. i disagree with you on the subject of your lecture tonight, but i deeply appreciate

everything you just said. i hope you continue to speak. >> thank you. i think that is the subject on which catholics of all varieties and christians of all varieties should be far more far more passively engaged in than we currently are. the fact the united states government has torture people in the most cruel and inhumane and undignified ways and the people they did that are not only not prosecuted, but bragging about it on national television is an extraordinary threat to the integrity of this country and also the defense of western civilization. >> my question is, you have done a good job of going through the natural law arguments. i feel like your argument dusted this ration as you presented, from desire.

this is a desire deeply felt for gay men and women. i wonder how you answer those who cite this much more french phenomenon of people who say they love something like the golden gate bridge. i don't mean to demean anyone. people who say a deeply feel this as my desire. >> it is not desire. it is love. i think that is a deeper, more profound thing. it is love for a human being who has the soul and is made in the image of god, which i think is a different thing than an object or an animal or a hobby. and the reason i believe this, i am sometimes asked how can you be openly gay and be a catholic. my answer is i am openly gay because i am a catholic.

i know that i am not, and i don't mean this say that the magisterium of the catholic church agrees with me. it does not. i am in disagreement with the hierarchy and magisterium of the catholic church. i also believe it is the duty of every conscientious catholic to speak from his heart what he believes sincerely to be true about himself and others, and that the core truth of our faith, in my view is love. these three things remain. faith, hope, and love. the greatest of these things is love. to ask a whole group of human beings made in the image of god to live a life without god, without the intimacy, without the support, and without the care of another person is an act of cruelty. it is a failure of compassion on

the part of the church not to see that. i think many, many catholics do see it. i think it has got too muddled up with the notion of sexual acts as a pose of human love have never made an argument that the sector rent of matrimony should be extended. what we do as a faith tradition with committed gay couples, obviously it seems to be receding, not coming closer to that conversation. but i do believe that it is about love, not sex. i also believe, by the way. i know this sounds funny. if you really want to kill off g ay sex marriage is the greatest way to do it. [laughter] and seriously -- my husband will kill me for saying that.

[laughter] seriously at some level when you actually come down to it marriage or the commitment to one human being to another for life for good or bad and sickness and health, to be there for them when they have had an awful day, when their mother is sick, to be there for them when they were laid off, to be with somebody through the ups and downs of life and stay with them and make a binding commitment in front of your family and friends that you will never, never let them go. there is a beautiful song we played at our wedding that is by new water. one of the lyrics is, "if jesus came to take your hand, i won't let go." that is a beautiful thing. it is not intrinsically evil, as the pope says it is.

i believe that in the depths of my soul. a feeling in my life. think that is that truly catholic position in the end. not just about love, but about a love that also becomes a profound friendship, which is a great virtue that the ancients and catholic church has always taught. i wrote an essay about friendship. it ends with jesus. i, in my conscience, genuinely believe that this is what my faith is compelling me to do. i utterly respect that your conscience says otherwise. i would also like to have a

conversation reasonably about things like natural law and why these exceptions are made for others and not for us and the way that i did in the first part of this talk. it is not fair. i have gone to notre dame. i will tell you this. no one has yet to really answer these questions. instead they told me i am a bad catholic. it is a very painful thing to love your church and to be told really you shouldn't be there. for the pope to say, especially with respect to gay priests who are celibate that they are not allowed to be gay priests anymore. this is an attack upon our fate, not a true representative of it. >> i wonder if you would

meditate for a moment on the difference between the concept of marriage as a legal institution and as a cultural institution? i oftentimes think as i know we do not have in this country that while we have as a matter in the civil union legislation, the civil union is not the legal equivalent of marriage. but if it were universally, we would still have, at least as i interpret your talk tonight, we would still have a problem. that is there still is this cultural thing called marriage which gay people say, i want that. that is significant to me. and so i sometimes wonder whether if the state were to say, we are actually going to get out of the business of marriage. we are not going to issue a marriage licenses anymore. we will issue civil union

licenses to anyone that wants one. would that somehow clear the deck so to speak, or would we simply said you are peeing in the well and inviting me to drink from it? [laughter] >> i'm sorry. all your argument was wiped away by the last metaphor. it is a very serious question, and i'm grateful for you asking it to. this would be my response. first of all, it's never going to happen, so it's a kind of esoteric argument. it's an interesting argument. what is interesting in england for example. the pragmatic english, this is typical, of course. they have several partnerships, but they all say we are getting married. that is how they get around it. the english are so good at this sort of thing. that is why they irritate me, actually. they just avoid the subject. it is good manners.

secondly i actually believe in the cultural institution of marriage and the reasons for it i believe that it gives a status, a social status to people who are prepared to say in front of the world i'm here for this other person forever. i also, frankly, even though i obviously would not in any way legally prevent it believe in divorce as a person. i don't. because i think marriage really is a commitment forever. i think that is part of its undying definition. now obviously we are all human. in the end sometimes marriages are so bad and toxic to people that they really should leave them. but i don't think they should enter them with that understanding or easily or

casually. i also think that it is a good conservative, and this is why, you know, like i still think i'm a conservative although none of the others do. the more someone else is there for you to take care of you the last the government will have to do so. and therefore it helps limited government sustain these marriages. they are part of what burg would call the little platoons of our society that help self-government and self-help. they are also economically important. every statistic you will find will show you that married couples live longer and are healthier and happier because they have someone there for them. we all need that. going home in life alone is hard.

and i think this is specially, and i also think that sex is a very powerful thing, as rick james might have said. [laughter] someone got the reference. anyway. and men in particular, as we know, and i certainly am not pretending otherwise of myself, sex is a very powerful drive. it has made me do lots of stupid things and had lots of amazing experiences. i think it is crazy to think that sex is an astonishing mystery. we also know that if we get into it too much, we have learned this over millennia, it can hurt us. it can lead to the spread of viruses and diseases.

it can lead to emotional isolation and lack of self-worth. it can lead to thinking of one's self purely as a sexual object. it can lead to a compulsive sexual behavior. it is such a powerful force in human nature, and especially for men, i think. we need some kind of social institution to give status to commitment. and i think in a strange kind of way this is particularly true for gay men because they are all men. we don't even have women. [laughter] to give us hell when we come home having done something really stupid. we don't have women in our relationships to tell us, you need to settle down. now, of course, lesbians on the

other hand, i'm generalizing massively here. [laughter] it's only when you generalize massively that you get interesting stuff. you know, in some ways, you know, you know the joke. the joke is that what does a lesbian bring on the second date? it is a u-haul. what is the gay man bring on the second date? what second date? [laughter] i think if you look at anybody with any understanding of males and women looking at gay culture and lesbian culture they would find anything to be surprised about. it just so happens in the last generation once the restrictions and decriminalization and the

persecution of a people is released and when there was a general sexual liberation in the entire country, straight and gay, '60's and '70's, when all that repression similar burst out gay men had freedom and no social institutions. 300,000 of them died. i have lived with the virus now for 16 years that has denied me the ability to have citizenship, that has terrified me. i have lost friends. i've lost my closest friend. i watched him die in his mother's arms at the age of 31. i really believe, and i'll tell you this from my motivation, it was watching that happen. i'm not blaming anybody for anything. i think these are very human impulses, and very understandabe impulses. but if we do not create the social institutions that can

help gay men restraint a little, encourage a little stability and fidelity and commitment then the fire next time could be even worse than the fire last time. i am doing this for the people i love. i am not saying it, i'm trying to make a nuanced point here. i don't think every gay men should get married. i don't think having lots of sex with lots of people is the worst thing in the world at all. i have. i am saying that from a purely objective viewpoint if there are no social institutions to encourage commitment of one person to another then collectively the consequences are psychologically and in the end physically terrible just as societies in which marriage collapses or a city where some

marriage collapses and the families collapse, the consequences for the people are really kind of bad. even though every single one is amazing in its regard, and we should not condemn. and i'm not. i'm just saying, the data is clear. i want to build a firewall against this happening again. i think this is part of it as well as building the self-worth of people so that they understand that this is possible. >> i wanted to return to the issue of having a dialogue with proponents of natural law. i wanted to sort of press upon the extent to which that argument boils down to irrationality. i wanted to ask if you think that there is simply homophobia, like fear underline that the argument and what you think about the idea that it just

might boil down to phobia? >> all i can tell you is that my experience over the last 20 years of making this argument in that context has been met in my own church with greater and greater and greater repression and greater and greater and greater hostility in the hierarchy. the more persuasive our case is i think the more vicious the response has been. and i don't think that comes from a place of confidence. i think it does come from a place of the fear. i think it also comes from a generation of gay men who, in the church, have extraordinarily proportionate numbers within the church who in many ways have run the church for centuries. here cannot accept that the life they ey have lived need not have

been lived that way. they will do anything deep in their psyche to prevent others having the happiness they denied themselves. and if i were to ask myself psychologically what is going on i would say that is fair. people always laugh about this. the vatican, it is one of the case to institutions in the world. do you think a straight person did the sistine chapel? do you think a straight person orchestras a high mass? gay people have been at the core and center of the church f orever. from the greatest saints have been gay. some of the greatest and worst popes have been gay. when there was no place for people to go, where would you

go? you would go to monasteries. you would seek out professions where your inability to marry would be hidden. it is no accident that so many of these men went into the church. it is also part of the fact, i think, in evolutionary biology that gay men are actually, because we often struggle deeply with our own identity to develop spirituality that is quite profound. i will tell you one little story, cardinal newman. i am not talking here about whether people have sex or not. i am talking about whether they are gay or not, whether they love another person of the same gender erotically and emotionally and over the years, of course, deeply. newman, we know, one of the greatest catholic intellects and

one of the great catholic saints and for an english catholic like me, a particularly iconic figure. lived with a man and was devoted to another man his entire life. so devoted, in fact, that he mandated that he be buried alongside him in the same tomb. and recently, and this is a true story. maybe we should end of this. recently he was about to be deatified. the current pope, if he was going to be a saint, they wanted him not to be in that grave. they wanted to separate him. they wanted to dig up