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" (Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post) Welcome back to our weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, of course, is what Bach would have come up with, had he written the Minute Rice In G Minor. Before we begin our tour of the wonderland known as teevee, we should pause for a moment and reflect on this weekend&amp;#039;s Easter benediction from Ross Cardinal Douthat, primate of the Archdiocese Of Stickupyerassistan. He would like you to know that there are good Christian souls out there who do not oppose gay marriage simply because they spend all their days \u2014 and many of their nights, and the better parts of entire holy days of obligation \u2014 thinking about all the icky things that gay people do with their icky parts. But, first, Humanae Vitae, beeyotches. Heterosexuals had already severed marriage from procreation and permanence, and so there was no more reason to deny same-sex couples marriage licenses than to deny them to the infertile and elderly.  As a cradle Catholic, I warned you before \u2014 watch out for converts. They&amp;#039;re the worst. It started with St. Paul and it never got any better. Even when they&amp;#039;re quoting Andrew Sullivan, this is the case. And, not for nothing, but was there ever any reason to deny marriage licenses to the infertile and the elderly? And, if not, what is the point here? However, His Eminence quickly gets into the, ahem, meat of the problem. There are plenty of interesting arguments, often from gay writers, about how the march to gay marriage might be influencing heterosexual norms - from Alex Ross&amp;#039;s recent musings in The New Yorker on the sudden &amp;quot;queer vibe&amp;quot; in straight pop culture to Dan Savage&amp;#039;s famous argument that straights might do well to imitate the &amp;quot;monogamish&amp;quot; norms of some gay male couples. It&amp;#039;s only the claim that this influence might not always be positive that is dismissed as bigotry and unreason. A more honest, less triumphalist case for gay marriage would be willing to concede that, yes, there might be some social costs to redefining marriage. It would simply argue that those costs are too diffuse and hard to quantify to outweigh the immediate benefits of recognizing gay couples&amp;#039; love and commitment. OK, I hereby argue that. I win. Scoreboard! Now, let&amp;#039;s talk about bigotry and unreason, shall we? Because it&amp;#039;s all on your side of the aisle, Your Eminence. And it&amp;#039;s losing the argument almost daily, and if you want to distance your delicate philosophical formulations from the choir of loons who share your basic viewpoint on most things, it&amp;#039;s probably best that you use that high-end piece of journalistic real estate with which you have been favored to talk some sense to them. The rest of us \u2014 gay and straight \u2014 are pretty much getting on with our lives. But, it being Easter and all, there was more than a little gay pondering on Teh Sunday Showz as well. We begin with Disco Dave&amp;#039;s Disco Dance Party, on which Our Lady Of The Dolphins was asked her opinion on the apparent sea-change in public opinion regarding marriage equality, immigration, and all the other greatest hits of the culture wars that seem to have fallen off the hit parade in the past couple of months. After a brief, pensive consultation with the voices of the tiny canaries that flit around her head, Our Lady announced that the hits just keep on coming out there in the provinces, where the real Americans live. I don&amp;#039;t know... (Ed. Note: Stop right there. No, seriously. AIEEEEEE!) I think \u2014 all of these cultural issues, as I guess \u2014 we call them, have been major issues in America for almost half a century, really. The abortion argument was going on 50 years ago, Roe came 40 years ago. It is hard to resolve these issues because they&amp;#039;re not just cultural issues. They are \u2014 they are moral issues and Americans feel differently about them. So I think one way or another, they&amp;#039;ll probably be bubbling out there for a long time and it&amp;#039;s not the worst thing.  Except for the occasional abortion provider. Not so good for them, of course, all this bubbling. I don&amp;#039;t know. Actually, that&amp;#039;s not my question. Here&amp;#039;s the thing. This issue will not go away, abortion. It is \u2014 a constant agitating of the American soul. You mention the \u2014 the legal move that was in \u2014 made in one of the states to cut off abortion after six weeks. The real story this week is the haunting and disturbing story of this doctor in Philadelphia \u2014 Gosnell, who is being tried this week. And if you wanted to watch the testimony, it was hard to find. But if you want to have the sense of what was happening, you could find it on the internet or in the local paper. This was a man who had an abortion mill, that was in fact a death mill for babies essentially born. Being tried now, we&amp;#039;ll see how it goes. But this is a story that is haunting, about the implications of decisions made by courts. This decision \u2014 the abortion issue will not go away, if you think it is the taking of a human life. And so it&amp;#039;s going to stay there and get itself worked through the courts again\u2014 Yes, you couldn&amp;#039;t read a word about this trial, unless, of course, you were aware of plucky little Internet start-ups called The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, or CBS fcking News.It is interesting, is it not, that la Noonan believes that the &amp;quot;real story&amp;quot; as regards abortion this week is the fact that a doctor is being put on trial, essentially, for committing murder under the parameters established by Roe v. Wade, and not that a crackpot state legislature and a crackpot governor passed a law they know will fail in order to keep women in North Dakota from exercising the constitutional rights guaranteed under that same decision. (No mention, by the way, from Our Lady of the fact that Kermit Gosnell is also being tried for killing an actual, grown-up woman.And Kate Michelman makes a pretty good case that all that bubbling may have contributed to what Gosnell is alleged to have done.) Culture warriors gotta war, I guess. Which is also what went on over on ABC, where This Week With The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs featured Dolan Of New York, everybody&amp;#039;s favorite prince of the Church. He began by explaining the problem HMC has in reaching the people who believe that he and the rest of the Clan Of The Red Beanie may well have beamed in from Zontar, for all they apparently know about the inhabitants of this world. I think the biggest challenge facing him, George, is to reconnect Jesus and his Church. There&amp;#039;s now a growing cleavage between Jesus and his Church. You reported some of the statistics. People will say, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t have any problem with Jesus. I got some problems with the Church.&amp;quot; And probably, I think his greatest pastoral challenge is going to be - to reconnect Jesus and his church. We pause here for a moment to allow Garry Wills time to throw something through his TV screen. Jesus didn&amp;#039;t have a church. He didn&amp;#039;t have a pope. He didn&amp;#039;t have priests. He didn&amp;#039;t have cardinal-archbishops who look cute in Yankee caps and make sure they&amp;#039;re on Teh Sunday Showz to catapult propaganda on Easter Sunday. And, in any case, 50 years ago, the Second Vatican Council taught us that the &amp;quot;Church&amp;quot; is the entire people of god. What Dolan means is that people have stopped listening to the likes of him, and that they&amp;#039;re rejecting hierarchy and bureaucracy as inimical to their faith. And they&amp;#039;ve done it for pretty good reasons, I&amp;#039;d say. If he wants to reattach Jesus to that same hierarchy and bureaucracy, he should go ahead and try, but I think he&amp;#039;s got a tough road ahead of him.  Anyway, he also had some advice for gay people that was even worse than that of Cardinal Douthat. Be friends. But no sexy sexytime, you rascals. Well, the first thing I&amp;#039;d say to them is, &amp;quot;I love you, too. And God loves you. And you are made in God&amp;#039;s image and likeness. And - and we - we want your happiness. But - and you&amp;#039;re entitled to friendship.&amp;quot; But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that - especially when it comes to sexual love - that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally. God, of course, has told us no such thing. Generations of idiot, sex-maddened celibates have. Judging by the Gospels, Jesus isn&amp;#039;t going to know what in hell \u2014 you should pardon the expression \u2014 Dolan&amp;#039;s talking about. And we conclude our Easter services over on Face The Nation, where former James Oglethorpe transportation correspondent Bob Schieffer also entertained Dolan of New York, but he also put together a decent panel to discuss American spirituality with a minister, a rabbi, and an imam. (And no, they did not walk into a bar, ya sacrilegious bastids.) This only went briefly a&amp;#039;cropper when the minister, one Harry Jackson, seemed to give Christians pride of place in American history. I would like to say this, in deference to the Christian foundation of this nation, it is that foundation that allows us freedom. I don&amp;#039;t see this diversity in other places. And so to the credit of our Christian foundation of this nation, this freedom we&amp;#039;re experiencing is because they said we believe this to be a Christian nation. We feel like we&amp;#039;ve been persecuted in the places we came from, and we are going to intentionally let this nation be founded in a way that if you come here and you&amp;#039;re Islamic, and you come here and you&amp;#039;re Jewish, we&amp;#039;re not going to persecute you. We&amp;#039;re going to celebrate these roots. Although, we don&amp;#039;t worship as Jewish people, we&amp;#039;re going let this country be guided in a place where there&amp;#039;s going to be liberty and freedom of worship. I feel we would be remiss we act like some other set of countries has operated in this way. For an opposing view, let&amp;#039;s go to Mary Dyer, coming to us from Boston Common. She can only be with us for a brief moment... "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a18011/the-gobshites-get-right-with-god/>