For those who missed it, Lott was asked on a radio talk show whether he thought homosexuality was a sin. Instead of passing the question on to theologians, whose opinion would be more appropriate, Lott answered that he did. His answer was gobbled up by the carnivorous media and spat in the direction of House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Instead of recusing himself for a similar lack of professional competence, Armey pulled out a Bible to "prove" that it was, adding that as a Christian he was instructed to love the sinner and hate the sin.

Eager to exploit an opportunity for political advantage, the White House joined the fray. Lumping all traditional religious believers with Republican legislators, Press Secretary Mike McCurry said: "The president thinks the American people understand how difficult it is to get business done in Washington sometimes when you're dealing with people who are so backward in their thinking."

In fact, in almost the same breath with which he had invoked the lightning, Lott also made an attempt to show that he was really progressive in his thinking. Genuflecting to the therapeutic standard that liberals and progressives have created, and under whose rubric everything from alcoholism and cigarette addiction to gang activity and gun violence is officially construed as a public health problem, Lott backed away from the stern authority of the biblical text to explain that homosexuality was a kind of disease and its victims should be helped "just like alcohol ... or sex addiction ... or kleptomaniacs."

But his bowing to the left proved even more damaging than his original sin. "It's an indication of how the extreme right wing has a stranglehold on the leadership" of Congress, cried Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign, the 250,000-member gay and lesbian political organization. Her comment was echoed by other gay leaders, giving it the clear outlines of a party line. Lost in the outcry was the fact that Trent Lott had gone as far as he had to show tolerance for homosexuality, while establishing that it was a "lifestyle" he does not approve of.

The things that are wrong with this picture are the result of formulations that have been introduced into our public discourse by both left and right in recent decades.

The idea that homosexuality is a "lifestyle," of course, originated with the left and is still maintained by many academics -- specifically "queer theorists." If "homosexuality" is a lifestyle -- that is, a political and moral choice -- then it is perfectly appropriate for some to regard it as an immoral "choice" and to reject it on those grounds. Furthermore, if homosexuality is a lifestyle (and therefore a choice), it is perfectly appropriate for politicians like Armey and Lott to make such comments when they are responsible for billion-dollar AIDS programs made necessary by the sexual practices of gay males.

But what if this is not the case? If homosexuality -- as most centrist gays now maintain (and as I personally believe) -- is biologically innate, if it is a genetic given that cannot normally be altered by the assertion of individual will, then the moral and therapeutic posturing of politicians is completely inappropriate and offensive. Gay activists like Congressman Barney Frank must accept much of the responsibility for the misperception of homosexuality in our political culture, and thus for the verbal perplexities of conservatives like Armey and Lott.

The biblical injunction against homosexuality is real and cannot be argued away (though not a few have tried). What, then, is the appropriate way for a democracy like ours to deal with this problem? We are a pluralistic society. We do not have an established state religion. We are in fact composed of ethnic and religious communities so diverse that in other parts of the world, war is the normal condition of their relations. Serbs and Croats, Arabs and Jews, Christians and Muslims co-exist in America, but elsewhere are at each other's throats.

How did we achieve this? By requiring our official community to treat everyone as an individual, equally, and by a single standard. It is perfectly appropriate for Dick Armey, as a religious believer, to regard homosexuality as a sin, just as it would be appropriate for any Christian to believe that Jews are damned as unbelievers, or for Muslims to regard both Christians and Jews as infidels, and therefore damned. Provided Jews, Christians and Muslims respect America's constitutional framework, which regards each of us as a child of a single God who must therefore be treated equally by secular authority, there is no problem. One nation under one God. (Atheists are given the option of observing the form of this miraculous arrangement without acknowledging the substance. It works just as effectively.)

But as soon as people forget the limits of the political sphere and confuse it with the realm of the religious, they are asking for trouble. Lott and Armey should not have blurred this distinction. What their private conscience tells them is one thing; what they pronounce on as legislators is quite another. As it is written, "That which is Caesar's must be rendered unto Caesar, and that which is God's unto God."

From the context, it seems clear that neither Lott nor Armey actually intended his religious comments to be political statements or policy agendas. For that reason, it did no good for the presidential press secretary or gay leaders to escalate the confusion that had already been sown. There is no resolving of religious differences except by religious warfare. That is why the conflict in the Middle East is so intractable, and why our constitutional framework allows the same groups to co-exist here in peace. Therefore, it is advisable for all parties in our political debate to back off from such fundamental confrontations and seek out a common ground.

The problem reflected in the flap over Lott's comments is a mutual problem of our political discourse, created by actors on both sides of the political divide. It is time for those same actors to work together to draw back from the language of religious warfare and attempt mutual solutions, based on compromise, to the problems that affect us all.