That’s not, by the way, neccesarily a bad thing.  The Eucharist, for example, is essentially an argument from authority when you boil it all the way down.  There’s an attractive logic to it thanks to Aquinas, but we have to believe that logic works, and we have only the word of tradition’s authority that it does.  So saying homosexuality is wrong–well, it does seem to lack any real empirical referent, and I’ve yet to find anything indicating that gay marriage would actually destroy, well, anything, that is, except heterosexual definitions of marriage.  Again, I’m not sure it’s bad if we recognize that the Church opposes gay marriage based only on faith, but then it seems like an easier thing to change too.  After all, we are the Church of faith and reason.

A smart debate on this from Damon Linker and Rod Dreher.  Below is Linker’s side, but you should read Dreher too (he’s a great writer).  I think, by the way, that Dreher is totally right that much of the left accuses people who don’t like homosexuality of being sick, ironically in just the same way society used to accuse homosexuals:

In the end, I suppose our disagreement boils down to what Rod says in the last sentence of the paragraph I quoted above: The legitimization of homosexuality, for Rod, “would be a profound distortion of what it means to be fully human,” whereas for me nothing nearly so profound is at stake. All I know is that a few of my fellow citizens love, and feel sexual attraction to, members of the same sex. And as Jefferson might have put it, that neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Rod and those with similar convictions obviously take a very different position. I just don’t see how over the long term they can possibly make their case in our public life if their position boils down to nothing more than a profession of faith: “I believe being fully human requires that my fellow citizens consider it evil to do this and that to each other in bed.” Don’t get me wrong: Such professions might inspire a handful of conversions. But they are unlikely to persuade anyone, because there is no argument involved. If you believe that scripture and tradition are right to condemn homosexuality, then you’ll believe that it’s right to condemn homosexuality. And vice versa.