When The New York Times delivers a sermon, it’s usually of the secular variety, which is why it comes as a surprise to open the paper today to an explicitly religious column by David Brooks, better known for his smart-aleck condemnations of “Bobos.” “Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide,” Brooks begins his theological discourse. This is strangely declarative language for a Times columnist writing on religion, not least because it represents a view most clergypeople and theologians would be quick to qualify. Not Brooks — it’s the spiritual hardline all the way for this guy. Which would position him at the extreme edge of the right were it not for the argument he proceeds to make from this stand: Conservatives “shouldn’t just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage.” Brooks further — and, The Revealer suspects, unintentionally — welcomes into the conservative fold some pretty avant-garde queer theory when he cites Ruth‘s pledge of fidelity to her mother-in-law, Naomi, as biblical precedent for a kind of romantic monotheism. Regardless of whether one supports gay marriage or opposes it, thinks it should be an option or mandatory, this is brave stuff from Brooks. But not as brave, in a perverse kinda way, as the acrobatics necessary to the godless case against gay marriage, presented here in all their glory by Weekly Standard contortionist Maggie Gallagher. Gallagher claims that the recent Massachusettshigh court decision allowing gay marriage may cause the entire country to “lose the core idea any civilization needs to perpetuate itself and to protect its children.” The Village Voice‘sRichard Goldstein is on steadier ground when he makes a secular argument for gay marriage, but in general progressives allies have left the spiritual case for gay marriage untouched; leftist magazines such as Sojourner (evangelical) and Tikkun (Jewish) have been silent on the issue. Sulayman X isn’t afraid, though — this gay, left, Muslim from the American heartland has the guts to join Brooks in arguing that God wants gays at the altar, now! Read about it and more on Queer Jihad.