Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Maggie Gallagher and Jonathan Rauch to debate same-sex 'marriage' at CU-Boulder

UPDATE: This could get interesting.* Fred Phelps' crew is heading to Boulder for the debate.

*As James Poulos has noted: "The interesting is not the good."
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On Monday, January 25, the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought, the intellectual outreach arm of the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center, will hold the third annual “Great Debate” on the University of Colorado campus and host nationally-known speakers Jonathan Rauch and Maggie Gallagher for a debate entitled “Should the Government Approve Same-Sex Marriage?”

Last year’s “Great Debate” featured Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens [KJJ: Not that great] and drew a crowd of over 2,400 people to CU’s campus to hear the debate on “Atheism vs. Religion.” Over 2,000 people are expected to attend again this year and tickets are currently on sale. Tickets are $10 per adult, $5 per student and can be purchased at www.thomascenter.org or at any King Soopers.

Monday, January 25, 2010 at 7pm
University of Colorado-Boulder, Macky Auditorium Cristol Chemistry 140
All are welcome.

“The Roman Catholic Church has a long history of engaging in public debate on important ideas and issues of the time, even those controversial in nature. Given the growing national interest in the same-sex marriage debate, the Catholic Center has decided to provide a forum to openly discuss the merits of both sides of this issue, on the campus of Colorado’s flagship university,” said Father Kevin Augustyn, director of Campus Ministry at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center.

“In the tradition of the Catholic Center’s patron saint, St. Thomas Aquinas, who intelligently and fervently engaged the ideas and controversies of his day with age and grace, we hope to provide a stimulating intellectual discussion on the same-sex marriage debate.”

(Source: Jan. 12 Thomas Center Press Release)


The first debate featured Peter Kreeft and David Boonin on the ethics of abortion. See too my personal take on the debate and the fine work of the Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center.


Twitter: NOMTweets ThomasCenter kevinjjones

2 comments:

ben said...

Sometimes I'm embarassed that I have completed the major requirements for my BA from the very department that Dr. Boonin now heads.

I think the violinist argument and all of its variants are patently absurd, they completely ignore both the physics AND metaphysics of the conjugal act.

Kevin J. Jones said...

I was briefly a philosophy major at CU too! I settled on Classics alone as my gloriously useless degree of choice.

Some of the arguments academics make can be so deliberately annoying. Universities are like zoos, hosting all sorts of exotic creatures who would not survive if released into the wild.

Universities would be almost as harmless as zoos if only they weren't instructing the youth badly and setting government policy.