Transcript

BILL GALSTON:  One dimension of increased polarization, of course, is around cultural issues. Compared to the 1950’s and the 1960’s, our political agenda is now crowded with cultural issues which have forced their way back into the public arena. 

And that raises a very important question. Everybody knows that when you’re talking about how Senate conferences, where the House says four billion for a particular line and the Senate says six, it’s not too hard to see where the compromise might come from. And if you’re talking about a big federal program, where the question is, how is the money to be distributed among the states, should it be done by population, should it be done by poverty rates, should it be done by a variety of other criteria, it’s usually possible to find a meeting of the minds, it’s not always split the difference, but there is a quantitative compromise that is in view, if not always within reach.

But when you get to these contested cultural issues, the following question emerges: is morally serious compromise possible, that is, can people who represent very different points of view, and who take those points of view seriously as a moral matter, is there a way that, consistent with moral reflection and moral integrity, people who disagree on such issues can come together? That is not a rhetorical question, it is one of the leading questions for American politics today.Well, I don’t need to tell you that one of the hottest and most widely and deeply contested of these issues is gay marriage, and more broadly, the relationship between public law and public regulation on the one hand, and the gay community on the other

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