If we don't argue for a particular human nature, I'm not sure how we arrive at believing that humans have rights *as humans*, at all. Every argument you can make for human rights just seems to rely on a more truncated, less-than-satisfactory definition of human nature and its attendant rights. This sounds all very theoretical, but really this has become a real quandary for me. As a Catholic, I believe God intends for people and society to be and act a certain way; as a person living in the contemporary world, I believe in the importance of a religiously pluralistic society, for the free exercise of religion and the necessity of protecting sub-cultures by law, but also somehow answering the call for universal justice and human rights. But honestly I am not sure that pluralism is possible -- and definitely not for supporting cultural and individual formation and flourishing at the deep level that I think -- while delicate and dependent on social constructions -- is an essential part of humans seeing meaning in their lives. There is a lot of talk in sociology of religion circles about how pluralism or competition makes more actively-devoted members of religions/sub-cultures, and thus actually benefits religions. But personally, and from my experience, I think that is total bunk. The formation of world-views is much, much more about what we are unconscious of and what we assume without ever thinking about it, than what we talk fervently about. And as for our contemporary situation, I think, without wholeheartedly subscribing to the secularization thesis, that the act of religious belief or religious acculturation is (for the religious themselves) far more about trying to undo or re-write the basic modernist, secular understanding of the world *within ourselves*, which is impossible to remain immune from. There is a really good Catholic philosopher (Charles Taylor) who writes about this dilemma and doesn't dismiss modernity or modern consciousness the way *I* and most others am prone to do -- but ultimately that doesn't really answer my question about how we are to live together.

In sum, I am very skeptical of and very impatient with the idea that we can all live our separate lives and natures or 'individual choices' together. A majority "default" *always* emerges, and in a democracy, barring whatever protections minorities can win for themselves, the majority actually gets to claim superiority and form the culture. So, for marriage, claims for mythical historical 'always-beens' are facile, but claims for human nature are what it's all about, and it's not unfair to make them. We can't escape nature-based arguments -- saying that we are essentially fluid is just another statement about our nature. We can try to make reasonable arguments and come to reasonable conclusions (based on assumptions we still share), for sure. But when you are dealing with a world-view as complex as Christianity (with its multiple layers of 'nature', and the variable of human sin) or as slippery as, say, any neo-Marxist interpretation (the majority of cultures are patriarchal/hetero-normative because of oppression, 'nature' has never emerged until the past few decades, if that), it's not something that can be "proved" or disproved by merely examining history. So we end up with a culture war, am I right? I don't see any way of avoiding that. What are your thoughts?