Prompted by the CA Supreme Court ruling this week on gay marriage, I finally got around to picking up my copy of Virtually Normal.

In this particularly thought-provoking passage, Sullivan uses the logic of "natural law" to counter those who usually invoke it:

[N]ature seems to have provided a spontaneous and mysterious contrast that could conceivably be understood to complement -- even dramatize -- the central male-female order. [Homosexuality, like other deviations from the norm,] doesn't deny heterosexual primacy, but rather honors it by its rare and distinct otherness.

As albinos remind us of the brilliance of color; as redheads offer a startling contrast to the blandness of their peers; as genius teaches us, by contrast, the virtue of moderation; ... so the homosexual person might be seen as a natural foil to the heterosexual norm, a variation that does not eclipse the theme, but resonates with it. Extinguishing -- or prohibiting -- homosexuality is ... the real crime against nature, a refusal to accept the pied beauty of God's creation, a denial of the way in which the other need not threaten, but may actually give depth and contrast to the self.