Colson and Sullivan

Andrew sullivan posts the following excertp from Chuck Colson as an example of anti-gay prejudice:

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: "Radical Islamists were surely watching in July when the Senate voted on procedural grounds to do away with the Federal Marriage Amendment. This is like handing moral weapons of mass destruction to those who use America's decadence to recruit more snipers and hijackers and suicide bombers. One vital goal of the war in Iraq, and the war against terrorism, is to bring democracy to the heart of the Islamic world. Our hope is to make freedom so attractive that other Muslim countries will follow suit. But when radical Islamists see American women abusing Muslim men, as they did in the Abu Ghraib prison, and when they see news coverage of same-sex couples being "married" in U.S. towns, we make our kind of freedom abhorrent—the kind they see as a blot on Allah's creation. Preserving traditional marriage in order to protect children is a crucially important goal by itself. But it's also about protecting the United States from those who would use our depravity to destroy us." - Charles Colson, Christianity Today.

It is clear that Colson is anti-gay. I think Mr. Colson has every right to criticise the policy of gay marriage and on the merits of the issue itself I find myself, to a considerable degree, agreement with him. But I also find myself rather offended that one would use the fact that the policy would offend the sensibilities of our enemies as an argument against a policy. We should do what we think is right and if it offends the monsters we are fighting then so be it.

But I also wonder if this argument doesn't expose something of a contradiction in the argument of those on the left that claim we should be worrying more about what we are doing to offend the Muslim world. It is surely correct to point out that our overthrowing a dictator and trying to put in place a representative democracy has inflamed the hatreds of much of the Muslim world, but is that any reason to rethink the rightness of our policy? If the Muslim world is offended by our doing the right thing by the people of Iraq, doesn't that say more about them than about us?