An interesting image. Dore's (at least I think that is Dore) image of the lovers Paolo and Francesca in the circle of the lustful, just as they are leaving Dante. While I did not read the entire post, I wonder how exactly it fits? Murdered adulters and same sex marriage?
The two are in the inferno because they allowed their passion to overrule their senses, and in so doing they caused hurt to themselves and others. It was a narcissistic kind of love. In a way, it was good to have a straight couple to use an example because overwrought passion isn't uniquely gay.
And Dore's art is really cool.
Unless one wishes to deny state-recognized marriages to protestants and atheists, I still don't think it makes sense to bring Catholic theology into an argument about civil marriage, even though I happen to believe in those very principles.
The fact that we believe the sacrament of marriage to be a covenant with God (carrying all the spiritual implications that such an undertaking necessarily must) doesn't change the fact that _civil_ marriage is a contract between the marrying parties and the state, which doesn't concern itself with spiritual (or, for that matter, even sexual) matters. It is open, and has been for hundreds of years, to any two parties of opposite sex, no blood relation, and legal majority who wish to enter it, regardless of their beliefs about spiritual and physical union or their capacity to procreate.
It is disingenuous, to say the least, to lard on deep theological implications to an institution (civil marriage, in this case) which is widely open to those who don't subscribe to the theology, and indeed to those who flagrantly and unashamedly behave in a manner contrary to the proscriptions of that belief system.
That is not to say that I don't believe in a credible prudential case against state marriage for same-sex couples...but theological arguments against it are unpersuasive.
Gotcha Curt:P
When we studied the Divine Comedy (I actually border line disliked the Inferno, in favour of Purgatory and Pardise) the Professors had a slide show of Dore's and others art as a back drop.
I think it's interesting that Fracesca's husband is in a deeper level of Hell for killing the two.
Pete: that does not surprise me. Murder is much worse act.
Matt: The main line of the argument is for the importance of the physical, which I think any thinking person can be pesuaded to see. The argument about age is more theological, but it's secondary to what I'm saying. You make a good point about the need for law to have a wide acceptence, however.
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Hmm. Turns out he was right after all. 
This message brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood heretic.
You're not saying that we DO know good from evil the way wew know 2+2=4, are you? We're as muddled as we ever were.
"Knowing" in this passage means God's property of God possessing good in his being, so he does not have to measure moral standards by something outside of his being. It also echoes God's property of aseity, meaning his existence is not dependent on anything else.
In this reading, the serpent was a huge liar. We now know good and evil by being torn between them, not by being master over them.
Curt, quoting Bloom's book will not alienate all of your non-Catholic Christian readers; viz., conservative Episcopalians/Anglicans (and others, I suspect). The Rev'd Dr Leander Harding, sometime rector of St John's Episcopal Church in Stamford (CN), and newly on the faculty of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge (PA), wrote an article entitled "Homosexuality and the American Religion" in which he uses Bloom's basic thesis of gnosticism as "America's religion". The article was quoted in First Things shortly after its publication in the conservative Episcopalian weblog, TitusOneNine, and may be found in Dr Harding's own weblog.
For my own part, this conservative/traditional Angliacn commends commend Bloom's book to your reading. My own early (childhood and adolescent) formation in Christian faith in a Southern Baptist church argues against his thesis of essential gnosticism, and while applicable in some ways, I don't think the critique of Southern Baptist faith as gnostic can entirely be sustained. But Bloom's is a critique that is at least applicable in part against individualistic evangelical pietism, of which there is a lot among Southern Baptists.
Thanks Todd. I am still finding my way about Christiantiy and am never quite sure when my questioning is going to give offense. You're quite right, I suspect, about not being able to pinpoint people by what faith they profess. I do find Bloom's hypothesis intriguing but would keep in mind the need to treat each person I encounter as an individual. I read the Harding post even before you mentioned it and enjoyed it.
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