Reactions to Sullivan Reactions

I'm about to sit down to read the last stack of reactions to Andrew Sullivan's "The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage." Now I know that it's quite difficult for a college freshman to disagree with a teacher and it's pretty obvious that I generally agree with Sullivan. Here are a couple of my own reactions to the student papers:

Several students have commented that Sullivan plays loose with statistics. He says, "the majority of people 30 and younger see gay marriage as inevitable and understandable," and my students ask, "How do you know? What surveys? Where were they taken? When?" The students have a point. Sullivan's argument would have been stronger if he'd given some indication of where his "majority" comes from.

I get disturbed, though, by simple misreading of the article.

1. The opening refers to action by the Canadian Federal Courts. Canada is a separate country from the USA, so actions they take (even if they also call their judiciary "Federal Courts") have no legal effect in our country. The United States Supreme Court hasn't made any ruling yet (five years after the writing of this article) on the legality of gay marriage.
2. In a similar vein, a ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court doesn't directly affect the other states. If gay marriage becomes legal in Massachusetts (as it did after this article was written), that only affects Ohio and the other states indirectly.
3. The U.S. Supreme Court issue was much more limited: should a specific sexual practice be illegal for gay people but legal for straight people?
4. Sullivan isn't really saying he's leaving the Roman Catholic Church on this issue. The Catholics only come into the discussion because they have a stricter view of divorce than the civil courts (though those who know the Catholic stance on homosexuality should realize that Sullivan is pretty far from Catholic orthodoxy on this issue).
5. The "when I grew up and realized I was gay" paragraph doesn't say so directly, but the perspective seems to be a young man looking forward to his life and wondering how he will fit into the world. It's certainly not reflecting on a divorce that took place because he "decided to be gay."
6. Perhaps the most frustrating misreading refers to Sullivan's opening paragraph. He begins by saying that the winner for dull, unimaginative writing in the New Republic's humorous little contest was "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative." Sounds like something announcing a new rule for salmon fisheries. The irony is that that incredibly dull contest-winner would turn out to be an appropriate headline for something so earth-shaking as gay marriage in the Western Hemisphere. Sullivan wasn't saying he learned of Canada's decision by reading an article with that title. He's doing irony (a variety of humor).