I think a little more context is in order, Jay. A quite conservative Catholic speaker was coming to our alma mater and people were protesting and staging a kiss-in + walk-out at his talk. But no one was spending much time rebutting his argument, and I feel pretty strongly if you're going to disrupt a talk, you owe the people who are coming a cogent explanation of why.

So I invited a friend to summarize and pitch the speaker's ideas on my blog and then I rebutted, so that there'd be a discussion and reference to go with the protest. And Gerken (my interlocutor) is intelligent and was writing with the best of intentions. I disagreed with a lot of his points (even within a Catholic framework) but that's not a refutation of his sincerity.