So let me pose a hypothetical:

Suppose -- and I think we can take this as a given -- that there are people who so very much hate the existence of gay men and lesbians, that it actually hurts them. They are gnawed-upon from the inside over the existence of homosexuals, for whatever reason. And, unable to bear the emotional -- and physical, in an ugly biofeedback loop -- pain, they begin sneaking up on gays while they sleep and butchering them alive. Literally: They crush, slice, and dice the bodies of these men and women, ruthlessly. They feel better when it's over.

It would not be too much of a stretch to call this inhuman. Someone who did this, deliberately, with malice aforethought, is in a state of grave sin, and should not receive communion in the Catholic Church. This is straightforward stuff. Any politician who enabled this behavior -- who said, I disagree with his choice to murder these people, but I also understand how much pain he's in, and so I refuse to interject the State into what he does with his own body would rightly be considered at best deranged, and at worst, a cold-blooded murderer. I don't imagine many people would take issue with the decision of any Church to deny that politician its sacraments.

You see where this is going.

I understand Kerry, and Cuomo, and Kennedy, and other blood-letting, coldblooded, power-mad psuedo-Catholic politicians overlooking human biology and the teachings of their faith, and trying to pretend that their sin represents bravery. They're morally incomplete; they're, like most humans, greedy, grubbing little creatures who desire power more than they desire the warmth of God's embrace.

It happens to the best of us.

What I don't understand is their flackers. Like, just for example, Andrew Sullivan. So, without fisking his argument, let's just say it this way: If you put "murdering sleeping gay men and women" in place of "abortion," you kinda gotta concede that, first, he would never make this argument; second, that his Catholic formation, such as it was, was sorely lacking; and, finally, that it makes him a bit of a moral monster.

Oh: Ramesh was too kind.