European Diary: Just as the storm over Mr Rocco Buttiglione was abating, the US election result has propelled the issues of gay rights and religious faith back into the centre of the debate on both sides of the Atlantic, writes Denis Staunton.
The role of religious voters in securing President Bush's re-election and the success of amendments in 11 US states banning gay unions came only three days after Mr Buttiglione stepped aside because most MEPs found his views on homosexuality and marriage unacceptable for a prospective justice and home affairs commissioner.
Mr Buttiglione welcomed the American results and announced he was setting up a Christian network to campaign for a greater role for Christian values in European public life.
His supporters have contrasted popular support for conservative social positions in the US with what they regard as a liberal witch-hunt in Europe, which led to Mr Buttiglione's withdrawal.
The tone of the debate in Europe has become unusually harsh, with some conservatives seeking to characterise the liberal campaign to extend civil rights in Europe as a new form of intolerance.
On RTÉ television's Questions and Answers last week, the Fine Gael MEP, Ms Mairéad McGuinness, said she found Senator David Norris's description of Mr Buttiglione as "a lout and a bully" to be offensive. Mr Norris's judgment was based on Mr Buttiglione's statement in 1989 that AIDS could be seen as a "divine punishment for homosexuality and drug use". At the time, thousands of gay men throughout Europe, most of them young, were dying of AIDS.
I lived in Berlin, which has a big gay population, during the late 1980s and 1990s and some of those who became ill and died were my friends. Most of them suffered great physical discomfort and some lost their jobs, their homes and their partners during their final months.
In many cases, family and friends worked together to help those who were dying but more than a few found that their families could no longer accept them because of the double stigma of homosexuality and AIDS.
It would be a mistake to judge too harshly those parents who felt unable to comfort their dying sons or to dismiss the grief they must have endured. In the face of such suffering on the part of a vulnerable minority, however, Mr Buttiglione's remarks were not only loutish and bullying - they were downright wicked.
His sentiments were also out of tune with mainstream thinking on the issue among Europeans - including Christians, many of whom showed great kindness to people with AIDS.
Times have changed since 1989 and the debate on gay rights has moved on but Mr Buttiglione remains outside the European mainstream in his approach to it. His views would matter less if the Italian had not been allocated the justice and home affairs portfolio, with responsibility for the EU's civil rights agenda.
As the Dutch Liberal MEP, Ms Sophia in't Veld, reminded Mr Buttiglione during his European Parliament hearing, the Commission has the sole right to initiate new measures within the EU. "As a commissioner you must be pro-active and must yourself attempt to develop a proper body of law," she said.
Most MEPs - not only those on the civil liberties committee who rejected him - concluded that Mr Buttiglione was the wrong person for the job. This view was shared by Fine Gael's most experienced MEP, Ms Avril Doyle, although she did not favour rejecting the entire Commission on account of it.
The MEPs' decision was a political one, reflecting the political make-up of the European Parliament and the state of public opinion in Europe. If Mr Buttiglione's Christian network is successful, that political balance could change and Europe might begin to slow down or even reverse its civil rights agenda.
In the meantime, the incoming Commission President, Mr José Manuel Barroso, has promised to chair a new Commission working group to advance measures against discrimination on a number of grounds, including sexual orientation. The gay marriage debate may be polarising Americans but in Europe it does not appear to be dividing people on religious grounds.
Indeed, the most notable fact about the three European countries that have already approved gay marriage laws - Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain - is that two are overwhelmingly Catholic.