conservative, what i'm described as a conservative or whatever else comes posted be, i want the day when this is over. i want today when we humans, together, when our differences are opportunity for self- understanding and conversation, when we can get past this distinction that has caused so much pain for so many people for so long, and we can become citizens and human beings and again. thank you. .

>> thank you so much. thank you for visiting princeton. we have time for questions. because of the broadcast that is happening, we ask that you please wait for the microphone and speak into the microphone so that we know who you are and what your question is. i am informed that he will take questions on any subject, not just the subject of this

lecture. if it comes up, the millions of subjects for which he is known, i will get it over. >> if i promised to end all of this at 9:40, is that ok? because this is very squeaky, if you want to leave before then, please leave now. please stay until 9:30, because the noise is a distraction and demoralizing. i know. at the oxford union, were used to debate the mother was a rule that once a person started speaking -- where i used to debate, there was a rule that once a person started, people could not leave. it is really demoralizing for speaker if people get up and leave. [laughter] leave now or forever hold your

peace. it is only 20 minutes or so. i will take any questions within the normal rums of propriety. -- normal realm of propriety. >> what distinction be made between the boy scouts and the catholic church? you find it ok that the boy scouts can bar gay participation, but not the catholic church. >> i guess because i believe that religious faith is something more sacred than merely lending -- learning how to go camping. or learning how to tie a knot. religion and questions about the ultimate meaning of the universe do deserve special protection in a society, in a way that other associations and not. -- i do not. that is increasingly controversial position, but it is one that i hold. i think the first amendment is very clear about that. i think religion is special.

>> so, i guess my question -- first, thank you or everything you have been sitting on your blog recently -- for everything you have been saying on your blog recently. i disagree with you on the subject of your lecture tonight, but i deeply appreciate everything you have said and i hope you continue to speak. >> thank you. i think that is a subject on which catholics of all varieties and christians of all varieties should be far, far more passionately engaged in than they currently are. the fact that the united states government has tortured people in the most cruel and inhuman and undignified ways. the people who did that are not only not prosecuted, but bragging about it on national television. it 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 was still rational, an argument from desire, that this is a desire deeply felt for a men and women. how would you answer those who cite these much more french phenomena? people who say they love something like the golden gate bridge. i do not mean anything by saying that. i deeply feel this is my desire. why does the argument you offer tonight applied to them? >> simply because it does not desire, it is love. i think that is a different thing. it is a more profound thing. i think it is love for human being, who has a 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 do not mean to say that 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. that is about himself and others. the accord -- the core truth of our faith, in my view, is love.

faith, hope, love -- but the bid -- but the greatest of these is love. as human beings to live a life without love, without intimacy, without the support, and without the care of another person is an act of cruelty and at a lawyer of compassion -- and the failure of compassion on the part of the church cannot see that. i think many catholics do see it. i think it has gotten too muddled up with the notion of social -- sexual act, as opposed to human love. i have never made an art -- i have never made an argument that the sacrament of matrimony should be extended to homosexuals. i would like to start a conversation within our faith tradition about what we do as a base tradition with committed -- as of faith tradition with committed, gay couples.

we're not close to that conversation. it is about love, not sex. i also believe, by the way, and i know this sounds funny, if you really want to kill off today's sex, marriage is the greatest way to do it -- gay sex, marriage is the greatest way to do it. [laughter] my husband will kill me for saying that. at some level, when you actually come down to it, marriage, or the commitment of one human being to another and for life, for good or bad, in sickness and in health, to be there for them when they have had an awful day, when their mother is sick, when they are laid off -- to be with somebody through the ups and downs in life and stay with them and make a binding commitment in front of your family and friends that he will never let them down -- you will never let them down. there is a bet -- there is a

beautiful song we played at our wedding by new order. "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. i feel it in my life. i think that is the truly catholic position, in the end. marriage is also not just about love. it is about a love that becomes profound friendship, which is a great virtue that ancient and catholic church has always taught as a great virtue. i wrote an essay about friendship in the last chapter of my book.

it ends with jesus. i come in my conscience, genuinely believed that this is -- i, in my conscience, genuinely believe that this is what my conscience tells me to do. i respect that your conscience says otherwise. but i would also like to have a conversation, reasonably, about natural law and why these exceptions are made for others and not for us, in the way that i did in the first part of this. it is not fair -- i have gone to notre dame, boston college, a catholic magazines, and no one has yet answered these questions. instead, they have told me i am a bad catholic. and it is a very painful thing to love your church and to be told really you should not be there. for the pope to say, especially

with respect to gay priests who are celibate, that they are not allowed to be priest anymore, whatever they choose, is, i think, actually an attack upon our faith, not a true representation 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 often think that while we have a smattering of civil unions, 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. there is still this cultural thing called marriage which gay

people say, i want that. that is significant to me. i sometimes wonder whether, if the state or to say, we're going to get out of the business of marriage -- were to say, we are going to get out of the business of marriage. we're going to issue taxable union licenses to anybody who wants them. -- issue civil union licenses to anybody who wants them. european in the well and inviting me to drink from it -- you are peeing in the well and inviting me to drink from it. [laughter] >> your argument was wiped away by the last metaphor. it is a very serious question and i am grateful that you asked it. this is my response. first of all, it is never going to happen. it is a kind of esoteric argument. in england, for example, the

pragmatic english art -- this is typical -- they have civil partnership, but they all say we're getting married. that is how they get around it. the english are so good at this kind of thing. [laughter] that is why they irritate me actually, because they just avoid the subject and try and find a way to euphemize their way around it. it is good manners. i believe a cultural institution of marriage and the reasons for its. i believe that it gives us a status, social status. it gives status to people who are prepared to say in front of the world, i am here for this other person forever. i also, frankly, even though it obviously would not, in any way, legally prevent it, i do not believe in divorce as a person. i do not.

i think marriage really is a solemn commitment forever. that is part of its undying definition. obviously, we're all human. in the end, sometimes marriages are so bad and so toxic that they really should leave them. i do not think they should enter them with that understanding or easily or casually. i also think that it is -- this is why i am, why i still think i am a conservative, even though none of the others do -- is that the more someone else is there for you to take care of you, the less the government will have to do so. therefore, it helps limited government to sustain these marriages. there are the little platoons of our society that help self governance and self-help. there also economically

important. every statistic you will find will show you that married couples live longer and have a healthier and happier life. we all need that. going home alone is hard. i think this is -- i also think that sex is a very powerful thing as rick james might have said. [laughter] someone got the reference. anyway, and man, in particular, as we know -- and i am certainly not pretending otherwise about myself -- sex is a very powerful drive. it has made me do lots of stupid things, and had lots of amazing experiences. it is crazy to think that sex --

it is an astonishing mystery. there is something that we also know. if we give into it too much, we learned this over millennia, it can hurt us. it can lead to the spread of viruses and disease, emotional isolation, and lack of self- worth. you can to give yourself purely as a sexual object. it can lead to compulsive sexual behavior. it is such a powerful force in human nature, especially for men, i think. we need some kind of social institution to give status to commitment. i think, in a strange kind of way, this is particularly true for a game men.

we are all men. we do not even have women to give us hell when we come home having done something really stupid. we do not have women in our relationships to tell us, you need to settle down. now lesbians, on the other hand -- and i am generalizing massively here, ok. [laughter] it is only then when you finally get interesting stuff. in some ways, you know the jokes. what does a lesbian bring on the second day? a u-haul. what is a game man bring on the second date? -- gay man -- what does a gay man bring on the second date?

what second date? [laughter] if you look at gay culture and lesbian culture, there would be nothing to be surprised about. it just so happens, in the last generation, once the restrictions and the criminalization and persecution of gay people was released and when there was a general, sexual liberation in the entire country -- straight and gay -- in the 1960's and 1970's, gave men -- 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, my closest friend. i watched him die in his

mother's arms at the age of 31. i really believe -- and i will tell you this for my motivation. it was watching that happen -- and i am not blaming anybody for anything. it is a very human impulse and very understandable. if we do not create the social institutions that can help gay men restraint a little, encourage a little stability and ability and commitment -- 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 lost. i'm not saying it is -- i am trying to make and wants point here. i do not think every game and should get married and i do not think having lots of sex with -- i do not think every day -- gay man should get married and i do not think having lots of sex

with lots of people is bad. i am trying to escape from an objective viewpoint if there are no social institutions to encourage commitment of one person to another -- i am trying to say, from an objective viewpoint, if there are no social institutions to encourage the movement of one person to another, societies in which marriage collapses or where some areas the families collapse, the consequences for the people are quite bad. he even though every single one is made in the -- even though every single one is made in the image of god and we should not condemn, and i am not, the data it is clear. i want to build a fire wall against this happening again. this is part of it. we need to build the self-worth of people so that they understand that this is possible for them. >> thank you. i want to return to the issue of having a dialogue with proponents of natural law.

i want to press upon the extent to which that argument boils down to irrationality. do you think that there -- there is a core of homophobia underlying that argument? could it boil down to homophobia? >> all i can tell you in my experience is that 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, the more vicious the response has been. i do not think that comes from a place of confidence. i think it does come from a place of fear. it comes from a generation of gay men who, in the church, have

an extraordinarily proportionate number within the church, who, in many ways, have run the church for centuries. they cannot accept that the lives they have lived may not have been lived that way -- need not have been lived that way. they will be do anything to prevent others from having the happiness they denied themselves. if i were to ask myself psychologically what is going on, i would say that is that. people always laugh about this, as if the vatican was some -- it is one of the biggest institutions in the world -- gayest institutions in the world.

do you think a straight person did the sistine chapel? gay people have been at the core and center of the church forever. some of the greatest since have been gay. some of the greatest and worst popes have been gay. when there was no place for gay people to go, where would you go? you would go to monasteries and 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 that, in evolutionary biology, that gay men often do develop a better quality -- spirituality that is quite profound. i will tell you a story.

i am not talking here about whether people have sex or do not have sex. i am talking about whether they are gay or not, whether they love another person of the same gender, erotically, emotionally, and deeply. we know that one of the greatest catholic intellects and greek catholic saints -- for english catholic like me, d is an iconic figure. he lived with the man -- let me, is an iconic figure. he lived with a man. he mandated that he be buried alongside him. recently, and this is a true story -- maybe we should end on this.

recently, he is about to be become a saint. the current pope, if you're going to be a saint, but want him not to be in that grave -- they want him not to be in a grave and they want to separate him, dig up his remains so that this joint to break would no longer be in public record -- joint grave would no longer be in public record. they want to dispel any idea that this man, who was such a great pillar of the church, could ever have been homosexual. something very amazing happened. they dug it up and they found that the bones had so disintegrated that the two bodies were in distinguishable -- were indistinguishable. there was nothing left to separate.

i think, at some level, that should teach the current holy father something. it is a beautiful rebuke to so much fear that has permeated, and so much pain. thank you. [applause] >> oh, i am sorry. one second. one last question. >> i want to claim the right to ask one -- >> i am really sorry. but it is a follow-up to the natural law question it -- >> it is a follow-up to the natural law question. it is from my own perspective. >> you should be protected from

discrimination. >> we have our organization and we are going to keep it. when i hear discussion of natural lot in the context of the previous question about prejudice and irrationality, i agree that natural law -- i worry that natural law is a code phrase. on your -- in "the daily dis h," you write a lot about this. do you think that is going to change our perception of what is normal or not normal, if we start understanding the foundations of behavior? is that a way of replacing, in my optimistic view, replacing natural law and turning the question into a different kind of question? >> what di do.

i think it will open whole new world of understanding of what being human is. i'm fascinated by example -- for example by the studies of the brains of people in the meditation, compared to people who are not. i'm fascinated by the possibility of understanding the homosexual mind and the heterosexual mind, to see what differences there are and how they changed over time. my view is that aquinas, for example, was desperately seeking the truth about what human beings were. that was in the 13th and 14th centuries. what i feel is these discussions of natural law are actually resistance to understanding the nature.

they resist it. i have to also said that if borrowing did not do it, we're 150 years -- is far when -- if darwin did not do it, religious fundamentalism has never been stronger in this country or around the world. the great problem is that the more we know the truth about who we are and all our complexities, the more terrifying it will become for us to abandon the easy certainties and prejudices of the past. what we're seeing in the world right now goes far beyond the question of homosexuality. it is the central question of my book "the conservative soul." i think and the muslim -- i think fundamentalism is an erotic response to the truth as has been revealed by science and