Sorry if I sounded unkind David, but I honestly can't see which part of what I wrote you found offensive. Was it my pointing out that on some issues, we are going over old ground? I also shared what I saw as the error of a personal-autonomy-primacy world view - that in the final analysis, it's a spiral into the hollowness of our own ego.

On the other hand, you keep attributing to those who are true to their faith tradition the 'cardinal sins' of

-not keeping their own counsel
-giving up their free will
-choosing not to choose
-leaving their moral choices to others.

The false dichotomies I referred were in relation to these 'cardinal sins' - in a nutshell it's a fallacy that one can't be free and faithful at the same time.

I have tried to explain why we are not what you perceive us to be. On your part, you might feel that those who subscribe to a personal-autonomy-primacy world view are not what I perceive them to be. To help me understand, you need to say what "common mores" your personal-insight reference points correspond to.

Yes, there have been lynch mobs of all stripes, including some made up of people who call themselves Catholics. Your honesty about Unitarians and eugenics is refreshing. Here, I'd just point out that a single deranged soul can cause as much damage as a lynch mob. Anders Breivik and the school shooters in the US come to mind. Also, the biggest lynch mobs in history have been those led by single deranged souls like Hitler.

Thanks for your honest question, Granny! The short answer is I have not researched the history of marriage in Australia, nor in Malaysia where I was born. What I do know is that Australia's roots are deeply Christian, possibly more so than that of the US. I think that explains the passage in 2004 of our Commonwealth Marriage Legislation Amendment Act, which defined marriage as "the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life."

My views on this subject, as on other topics here on MercatorNet (like Muslim extremism and sustainable ecology) are not those of a scholar but of someone with first-hand experience of the life issues in practice - for example, as a husband, a father and a listening heart to good friends of mine who are gay. Mine's not an academic interest but a community one.

My views are also coloured by my sceptical ear on the views of some experts. Besides the obvious ideological underpinnings in some of what they say, my life experience is that experts often miss the woods for the trees. There are many examples of this in our common experience. In this context, David Page is right that we should always keep our own counsel.

Nice nickname, Peregrine! When I hear something like "Pardon my ignorance" or "I'm probably out of my league here", my natural instinct is to listen up. Paraphrasing F Scott Fitzgerald, it's an abyss of a fine line between writing because we want to say something and because we have something to say.

Conversely, when someone flaunts his expertise, my sceptical ear twitches. Many people are confused on topical issues because when they ask ten experts what is happening and why, they get eleven different opinions based on their ideological leanings. For some, ten years of experience is really one year repeated ten times.

You are quite right that the cure is often worse than the disease, esp when driven by ideologies like Malthusian economics. At the risk of being called naive, I hope the sustainable ecology movement can shed its Deep Green baggage and make a difference in the way concerted action shrunk the hole in our ozone layer.

Hi Jim! Your reasoning is sensible. However, marriage is founded on, and draws its raison d'etre from, relationships whose nature is explicitly or implicitly procreative. This is the thrust of Prof Heaney's thought experiment, which remains valid in this context.

Your thought experiment also makes sense but is less accurate. Marriage is more like a house with all the functions and limitations of a family home, while a civil union is more like other shared dwellings. Supporters of 'traditional marriage' simply wish to retain the definition of 'family home' while supporters of 'marriage equality' wish to change its definition and rationale.

Both sides of the thesis-antithesis environmental debate often miss a crucial synthesis - the issue of profligacy and wastage. In a comment on Cardinal Pell's article on 'And yet, it moves' here on MercatorNet, I wrote:

"Can we all in the affluent West at least agree to collectively consume less, eschewing both 'conspicuous conservation' and 'conspicuous consumption' and rediscovering the back-to-basics approach of our grandparents? This is good for us on many levels, including:

- economically, as part of our response to global economic uncertainties
- ecologically, as custodians of the world's resources for our grandchildren
- spiritually, as in 'live simply so that others may simply live' ~ Mahatma Gandhi."

In the context of the Deep Greens' error of worshipping Mother Earth, I like Ron Rolheiser's use of the term Sister Earth:

"Physical creation has value in itself, independent of humanity. We need to recognize that, and not just so that we practice better eco-ethics so that the earth can continue to provide air, water, and food for future generations of human beings. We need to recognize the intrinsic value of the earth because ultimately it is sister earth, destined to share eternity with us." http://www.ronrolheiser.com/columnarchive/?id=899

Excellent analogies worthy of Chesterton, ptt! Your analysis is clear without being long-winded. Just a comment on use of the term 'traditional marriage'. While it may be a redundancy in a semantic sense (esp when used without inverted commas), I don't think it's that inaccurate. For example, when we say 'civil marriage', we need not mean that what the civil registry recognises is not founded on and continues to draw life from marriage in its fullest expression.

Yet another false dichotomy David, or rather, another way of expressing your first one. In accepting "the dogma of a religion", I don't stop keeping my own counsel. I examine it in the light of the counsels of wiser men and women and decide if my natural instinct needs to be refined.

Like the misogynist "dirty little secret of conservative religion", dogma is another of your favourite whipping boys. This extract from our fascinating exchange on Michael Cook's article on 'A mortal threat to marriage' (where I'm afraid that I was too long-winded) summarises my perspective:

"You believe in yourself and that’s fine. The spark of truth in our hearts can never be extinguished by anything imposed from the outside. It can, however, be eclipsed by our ego and pride, a sense of self-sufficiency or absolute autonomy. We can mistake the spark for the source, the moon for the sun, as it were. You may recall my previous comment about how a moral relativist hunts by the light of the moon and sleeps in the light of day. The most intransigent dogma is that of believing we have all the answers within ourselves."

And you have not answered my question on what is your reference point for morality. To spare our readers another boring exchange (and because I'm reaching my quota of comments on this article), perhaps we could pick up this thread in response to a subsequent one.

With reference to what do we know what we are allowed to do? The law, as in laws made and interpreted by constitutional writers, legislators and judges? As a dead thing, the letter of the law needs to be interpreted in the spirit of those who made it and its morality is only as good as that of the makers and interpreters. There are good laws, not-so-good laws and bad laws. Our leaders? Every country has had its share of good and bad leaders, some more than others.

You also raise a false dichotomy between religion and the exercise of free will, as if taking our faith tradition as the reference point for what we're allowed to do (as in what makes us happy in harmony with our nature) makes us less free.

Hi ogbuefi! To me, silence is also an answer. When I write (or say) something and get no response, it could mean that

- what I wrote is self-explanatory or clear enough and no clarification is required
- the reader (or listener) is so confused or upset that he or she does not know what to say
- I have said too much (some people, myself included, are more prone to this).

In the case of George Friedman, I think it's because it's clear he knows what he is talking about in his area of expertise, geopolitics. I do read all his articles but hold my tongue if I cannot add value to his analysis.

David, if my freedom comes from my personal reality (my little truths, half-truths and untruths as the final arbiters of right and wrong) without reference to any external moral norms, who are you to tell me I'm wrong when I curtail your freedom as long as my personal reality says it's for the greater good?