Sidestepping the Constructive Objection

It's really too bad. Although he found a more direct quote than anything in the speech that I cited in response to him, Andrew Sullivan doesn't bother to engage the more purposeful and potentially constructive aspects of the objection. He sidesteps:

"Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is the means by which husband and wife participate with God in the creation of a new human life. It is for these reasons, among others, that our society has always sought to protect this unique relationship. In part the erosion of these values has given way to a celebration of forms of expression most reject. We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality." - Ronald Reagan, July 12, 1984. That's a useful reminder to me not to get too carried away by Reagan's differences with Bush-style conservatism.

Why won't he explore the disparity between the position that he would have wished for Reagan to take and what Reagan did, in fact, say? As Rod Dreher once asked himself, "if we liberals were wrong about [communism], and Mr. Reagan was right, what else did the old man know that I didn't?"