Andrew Sullivan has an interesting post this week. Sullivan, for those who don’t know, is one of one of the grandfathers of blogging, launching The Dish back in 2000.

He is also one of the grandfathers of the gay marriage movement, and it is on this subject that he is most interesting. Sullivan has discerned two “core narratives” shaping the debate over gay marriage in America. Apart from the obvious conservative-progressive dichotomy, there is also a liberal-progressive dichotomy. (Did I mention Sullivan is English? That’s probably important. I don’t think Americans, whose understanding of liberalism is a little parochial, would have coined this argument.)

Here’s Jon Lovett making a fundamentally liberal point:

The trouble, I think, is when ostracizing a viewpoint as “beyond the pale” becomes not an end but a means to an end; that by declaring something unsayable, we make it so. It makes me uncomfortable, even as I see the value of it. I for one would love homophobia to fully make it on that list [of impermissible opinions], to get to the point where being against gay marriage is as vulgar and shameful as being against interracial marriage. But it isn’t. Maybe it will be. But it isn’t. And kicking a reality-show star off his reality show doesn’t make that less true. Win the argument; don’t declare the argument too offensive to be won. And that’s true whether it’s GLAAD making demands of A&E or the head of the Republican National Committee making demands of MSNBC.

The bottom line is, you don’t beat an idea by beating a person. You beat an idea by beating an idea.

Then there is another approach, in which creating a progressive culture in which some things are unsayable is the whole point of the exercise. Here’s a piece by J. Brian Lowder with that perspective. Money quote:

Tim Teeman wrote on Friday that “the ‘shame’ axis around homosexuality has positively shifted from those who are gay to those who are anti-gay.” He may be right about that, but speaking personally, I am not interested in shaming anyone; it would be enough for me if those people who are so ignorant or intransigent as to still be anti-gay in 2014 would simply shut up.

This is not a minor disagreement. It’s a profound one. One side wants to continue engaging the debate. The other wants one side to shut up.

For what it’s worth, Sullivan sides with the liberal approach. He wants to engage debate, rather than shut down debate. Read the whole post to find out why.

I don’t agree with Andrew Sullivan on many things, but I agree with him on this.