Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 647 ｜ Who Defines Marriage & Why It Matters

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. This episode is brought to you by our friends at

00:00:04.780 Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com slash Allie. That's GoodRanchers.com slash Allie.

00:00:18.940 All right. Today, I want to talk about the Respect for Marriage Act, which fully repeals

00:00:25.840 the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined legal marriage as between one man and one woman and was

00:00:31.140 passed in 1996 and signed into law by Democrat President Bill Clinton. The House of Representatives

00:00:36.160 just voted on this Respect for Marriage Act that codifies what is typically referred to as gay

00:00:45.280 marriage. So you will hear me say a few times, so-called gay marriage or gay unions or quote

00:00:52.120 unquote gay marriage. Why do I say that? Well, because I am a Christian and therefore I believe

00:01:00.160 as many faiths have believed that marriage was created by God. Therefore, it is defined by God

00:01:08.680 in the beginning pre-civilization and he defines created marriage as between one man and one woman.

00:01:15.440 Therefore, all other forms of so-called marriage are actually illegitimate. They're not by definition

00:01:22.100 marriages. They might be civil partnerships. They might be unions that are recognized by the state,

00:01:28.320 that are recognized by the law as marriages. But because marriage actually precedes America

00:01:34.460 and precedes civilization, we do not define marriage as anything other than between one man and one woman.

00:01:42.680 I will probably use that phrase gay marriage throughout this because that's kind of the colloquial term and

00:01:48.260 we kind of understand what I mean by that, but also know where I'm coming from and what my actual

00:01:55.740 perspective is on that. So why are we even having a Respect for Marriage Act? Why is this going on?

00:02:02.960 So we're going to talk about that. I'm also going to talk about why I believe as conservatives,

00:02:07.700 we shouldn't support the codification of what is referred to as gay marriage. And then, of course,

00:02:13.120 as Christians, but also just from a general secular nonpartisan perspective, why it's important

00:02:20.960 to maintain and to protect the legitimate traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a

00:02:29.140 woman. I very much understand that this is a controversial position, whether you're on the left

00:02:34.900 or the right. I understand that I am out of step with the mainstream here. But I mean, that's typical

00:02:41.680 of most of my views. I simply believe what Christians have believed about marriage for thousands of

00:02:47.640 years, what Jews believed about marriage for thousands of years before that, what by common

00:02:52.760 grace, all civilizations, all societies, all nations for all of time have believed about marriage. And

00:03:00.880 that is that it is between man and a woman for the purposes of procreation. So even though my position

00:03:06.980 on this seems radical to us, the reality is the vast majority of even Americans believed what I did just 20

00:03:14.360 years ago, the majority of Americans, as we'll talk about in a little bit, believed that marriage was

00:03:21.200 between a man and a woman even just 12 years ago. So I may be out of step with where we are today. I am not out of

00:03:28.300 step with most of human history in even most of the world today when it comes to the definition and this

00:03:35.360 perspective on marriage. So why are we even having this conversation? Why are politicians having this

00:03:45.100 conversation when Obergefell passed in 2015 saying the marriage of same-sex couples was a constitutional

00:03:52.340 right? There are probably a few reasons for that that I'll get into.

00:04:05.360 Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said this, quote, this legislation guarantees that no married

00:04:13.200 couple can be denied equal protection under federal law. This is really very important, she says, from

00:04:18.360 tax provisions to social security benefits and more, even if the court were to erase marriage

00:04:23.940 freedom, God forbid. So there are probably two reasons why Democrats are pushing this right now. You

00:04:33.600 might think it's kind of random. One, they may legitimately think the Supreme Court will overturn

00:04:40.600 Obergefell, which, as I just mentioned, declared marriage between two men or two women a constitutional

00:04:45.460 right. That could be one reason because of what Justice Thomas said in his concurring opinion on Dobbs. Now, Justice

00:04:55.280 Alito, who wrote the majority opinion for Dobbs, which was the decision that overturned Roe at the end of

00:05:01.440 June, explicitly said that the decision to declare abortion not a constitutional right should not be

00:05:09.400 interpreted as calling into question other decisions like those on birth control or

00:05:13.440 same-sex unions. But Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion, said this, quote, we should reconsider all of the

00:05:20.840 court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.

00:05:27.380 Well, Griswold guaranteed the right of married couples to obtain birth control. Lawrence ruled

00:05:33.120 anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional. Now, Thomas is not saying in his concurring opinion whether he agrees

00:05:42.140 morally with birth control or sodomy or gay unions. He's not even saying that these things shouldn't be

00:05:48.000 legal. That's not what he's arguing in his opinion. He is disagreeing with the court's idea of

00:05:53.440 substantive due process, which served as the basis for not just these three cases, but also for Roe.

00:06:00.180 So you can go back, you can listen to episode 633 of Relatable, where I explain more about his

00:06:06.120 reasoning. We'll link it in the description of this episode. So perhaps Democrats are truly sincerely

00:06:12.540 trying to preempt a Supreme Court decision overturning Obergefell, which is incredibly,

00:06:18.040 incredibly unlikely to happen. Now, maybe in 50 years, like what happened with Roe v. Wade,

00:06:23.960 but not anytime soon. But perhaps that's their motivation. But here's another likely reason,

00:06:31.100 and that is to make Republicans vote on it before the midterms in November. Democrats want to show

00:06:38.440 that the entire movement or they want to try to prove that the entire movement that conservatives have

00:06:43.900 been forging against gender identity indoctrination in schools and drag queen story hour and men and

00:06:49.200 girls bathrooms are really just hating the gays. That's what they want everyone to think. And that

00:06:55.100 conservatives are in cahoots or are a part of, you know, this far right movement along with the Supreme

00:07:01.840 Court to control people and to establish a Christian nationalist fascist theocracy. Their buzzword

00:07:09.460 for this election cycle, if you haven't noticed, is freedom. Nancy Pelosi said it in the quote that I

00:07:15.420 just read a couple minutes ago. Gavin Newsom is running ads in Florida trying to get California's

00:07:21.540 defectors to move back, saying that they're the party in the state of freedom. Do you think this is

00:07:28.000 just an aside, just a little parenthetical part here? Like, do you think that you're actually going

00:07:32.540 to make people forget why they left California? Because much of California is an overtaxed, crime-ridden,

00:07:37.140 tyrannical hellscape, overflowing with drugs and homelessness. People are not forgetting that as

00:07:41.200 they are relaxing on Miami Beach. As usual, when Democrats use this word freedom in their ads and

00:07:47.480 in their tweets, this is their buzzword going into the midterms. They actually mean the exact opposite

00:07:51.600 of what they say. So when they say freedom, they mean tyranny. When they say democracy, they mean

00:07:56.160 authoritarianism that they like. When they say authoritarianism, they mean democracy that they don't

00:08:00.420 like. And the Dobbs decision is a great example of that. The Obergefell decision is a great example

00:08:05.700 of that. So the Dobbs decision said, this decision should be placed in the hands of the people

00:08:11.540 of the states, should be decided democratically. And the left is calling that authoritarianism,

00:08:17.460 handmaid's tale, far-right fascist extremism, when in reality, the Roe decision was far more

00:08:22.320 authoritarian, banning states and their voters from banning abortion if they wanted to. But the left's

00:08:29.480 vision of democracy is actually where all of their wishes are pushed through and dissent,

00:08:34.220 is silenced. That's why they support Obergefell, even though Obergefell was undemocratic. The

00:08:40.640 decision of marriage should have been left to the state. It should have been decided democratically.

00:08:49.060 This is also why this kind of subversive, opposite interpretation of the words that they use,

00:08:56.360 like democracy and authoritarian and freedom, it's also why you saw so many articles

00:09:02.380 about how and, you know, news segments about how Elon Musk's commitment to free speech on Twitter

00:09:09.680 would have been a threat to democracy. Free speech, they think, is a threat to democracy. It's because

00:09:14.900 they mean the opposite of what they say. And you're hoping that they don't notice. It's the same thing

00:09:18.840 that they do with abortion. Abortion is health care. OK, well, no, because health care doesn't

00:09:23.980 include purposely, intentionally killing an innocent person, right? So they always mean the exact opposite of

00:09:30.260 what they say. They're hoping that you don't think about it. They're hoping that you don't notice.

00:09:34.080 So when Democrats say that they are for freedom and Republicans are not,

00:09:38.860 they're not actually telling the truth. It's not that Democrats who are for child drag shows

00:09:44.940 or teachers teaching kindergartners how to be non-binary or for abortion through all nine months

00:09:50.300 or for illegal immigrants living here on the taxpayer's dime or for violent criminals being released

00:09:55.640 from jail. It's not that they support these things because they are for liberty, like max amounts of liberty

00:10:01.140 as we define liberty. They're actually just pro-chaos, specifically pro-moral chaos, pro, in many cases,

00:10:10.160 outright immorality. So we know that they're not interested in what we think of when we think of liberty.

00:10:15.380 They shut down businesses, forced masks, forced vaccines, closed schools, kept family members

00:10:20.420 from visiting their loved ones in nursing homes and in hospitals without any scientific evidence that this was

00:10:28.540 helping. They're constantly fighting against speech they don't like online. They use every legal tool at their

00:10:33.720 disposal to ruin the lives of people who pray on football fields or refuse to sell wedding cakes to gay couples

00:10:38.560 or people who defend themselves against violent criminals. They are incredibly intolerant of dissent and of personal

00:10:44.840 liberty. But to be fair, and this is all building the argument and helping us understand why conservatives

00:10:52.520 should be for protecting traditional legitimate marriage. So to be fair, it is also true that

00:11:02.260 conservatives are against the freedom to do some things. That is also true. We are against the freedom to

00:11:09.780 abort your baby. Because we believe in the baby's freedom and the right to live. We are against the

00:11:16.300 freedom to mutilate a minor's body because they decided one day that they are the opposite sex.

00:11:21.220 We are against the freedom to murder, to steal, to assault, etc. We believe in laws. We believe in

00:11:26.180 governance. We believe in order. Conservatives and liberals fundamentally disagree, though, on what

00:11:32.160 freedom is and what rights are because we disagree on where rights and morality and truth come from.

00:11:38.780 The left, in general, replaces God with government. The government creates rights, which means these

00:11:45.420 can be given and taken away and changed as those in charge see fit, based on what's politically

00:11:50.560 expedient for them, according to their ideology, or according to which way the social winds are

00:11:55.540 blowing. The right, in general, is supposed to believe that the government is subservient to God.

00:12:02.760 We believe, as the founders outlined in the Declaration of Independence, that we were created by God

00:12:07.440 and were endowed with certain inalienable rights from him, among them being life, liberty, and the

00:12:12.220 pursuit of property. That does not mean that every right in the Bill of Rights is found explicitly in

00:12:17.060 Scripture, although some, like the right to due process, are, but that the rights that we see listed

00:12:22.820 there were determined to fall under the umbrella of the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the

00:12:28.440 pursuit of property. Because God, the supreme authority, has given individuals these inalienable rights,

00:12:34.560 and therefore, the government did not create them, and therefore, cannot take them away arbitrarily

00:12:40.040 because they don't have the authority. That is why we believe in the right to self-governance. That

00:12:47.140 is the basis of this concept of self-governance. That doesn't mean that there's no official government.

00:12:52.260 That doesn't mean that there are no laws. It means that our elected officials are supposed to be

00:12:55.760 beholden to us and beholden to the Constitution, beholden to the Bill of Rights.

00:12:59.580 These things acknowledge that our rights come from God, who is our authority. He gave these rights

00:13:09.200 to us. He says what is and what isn't, what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad.

00:13:13.720 And if rights come from God, as our declaration declares, that means that truth and morality come

00:13:20.960 from God too, because what are rights except for an application of truth and morality? The only way

00:13:26.980 God has the authority to give us rights is because he is the creator of those things,

00:13:31.520 the creator of those rights. He is the arbiter of what is true and false. He is the arbiter of what

00:13:36.680 is right and wrong. So the security of our rights in the United States depends on this belief that

00:13:44.100 there is an authority that transcends our government, that gives us rights, that cannot be arbitrarily taken

00:13:48.980 away by the government. And the stability of this type of governance depends on a common agreement

00:13:54.120 by man that our consciences are bound to God, or at the very least, a higher authority than us.

00:14:02.240 The founders believed that there was a higher authority. Sometimes they called it providence.

00:14:06.000 Sometimes they called it a creator. They didn't necessarily all agree exactly theologically on

00:14:11.420 how to interpret scripture. Today, that is not the debate that we're having. We're debating whether

00:14:16.420 there is a God or not, whether there is a higher immoral authority than the government or not,

00:14:21.060 whether human beings are just accidental, purposeless clumps of matter, or whether we are

00:14:26.180 individuals created by God in his image and given certain rights. That's why we are so divided between

00:14:31.420 the right and the left today. The only reason that anyone could ever be trusted, the founders knew,

00:14:38.160 to self-govern is because they're actually being governed by a transcendent moral authority that is

00:14:42.720 God himself. That is why John Adams said that our constitution was made only for a moral and

00:14:48.180 religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. So limited government

00:14:52.760 as conservatives are supposed to stand for, and as the founders created, is dependent on the belief

00:14:58.300 in God as the giver of rights of truth of morality. Therefore, this brings it back. When you abandon God

00:15:04.500 as the giver of rights of truth of morality, you eventually lose limited government. I am not advocating,

00:15:12.280 as I've said many times, for a theocracy where everyone is forced to worship the same God in the same

00:15:17.860 way. It does mean, however, that God in the founder's vision, the Christian God, really, the Christian idea

00:15:27.460 of God, and his law does inform the formation of our basic laws. Laws against murder, theft, assault, laws

00:15:36.280 requiring due process against cruel and unusual punishment are all based on the laws and or principles found

00:15:42.020 in God's law giving to Israel. You'll hear people say things like, no, murder is illegal because it's

00:15:48.500 common sense. No, it's not. It's not common sense to most people in the world, to most governments in

00:15:53.000 the world today or throughout history. Murder is illegal because of the idea that people are made in

00:15:57.360 God's image, and that is the basis of Western civilization. And it is the manifestation of that

00:16:02.520 belief that has led to true liberation and equality, like the emancipation of slaves. Everywhere in the world

00:16:09.940 has had slavery. Unfortunately, still, most places in the world or many places in the world today do have

00:16:16.300 slavery. It is because of the manifestation of the gospel, the manifestation of the Christian belief

00:16:21.860 that all people are made in God's image and therefore have equal rights that led Western

00:16:26.740 civilization and specifically the United States to obliterating slavery. So we are not built, conservatives

00:16:34.580 should understand, Americans really in general, but conservatives should understand that basic,

00:16:39.980 that integral to conservatism is the belief that rights, that truth, morality come from God, that he

00:16:46.600 created us, that we're not accidental clumps of matter, but we actually have rights because of him.

00:16:52.040 Now, you will also hear that you can't legislate morality, but every law is moral. Every law is

00:17:08.780 based on a worldview. Secular progressives believe their worldview should inform our laws,

00:17:12.880 but have a problem when Christians want their worldview to inform the law. The reality is there

00:17:18.520 is no neutral law. The question is only ever whose morality and worldview is informing this law.

00:17:23.920 Let's debate the laws. Let's debate the ideas. May the best one win. That's how it's supposed to work,

00:17:28.140 but we are all supposed to have a common agreement about where morality, truth, and rights come from.

00:17:33.440 It is our disagreement about that on the left and the right that ultimately and fundamentally divides us.

00:17:38.260 So conservatives and Republicans who support the codification of what is called today gay marriage

00:17:44.800 do not understand what they are actually foregoing. Everything that I just talked about,

00:17:50.380 they are abandoning. They are actually abandoning the very basic tenets of not just conservatism,

00:17:54.760 but of America because they are redefining marriage as God who gave us our rights and truth and morality,

00:18:01.180 and therefore our authority to self-govern defines it. And you snub God as the authority,

00:18:06.400 you will lose the rights that the founders knew are inalienably ours because of him.

00:18:12.220 The foundation of America and conservatism is not the freedom to do whatever you want to.

00:18:17.100 The foundation of America and conservatism is a limited government made possible by a people

00:18:21.040 who are voluntarily constrained by the principles of God. Also, you cannot create moral order,

00:18:30.620 you cannot create societal order when you abandon the created order. And that is what is happening.

00:18:38.340 I mentioned earlier that every society by the gift of common grace, that means grace and knowledge

00:18:44.100 and wisdom and understanding that is given to everyone, whether they are Christians or not. Special

00:18:48.740 or specific grace is given to Christians who are in Christ, but the gift of common grace, so good food,

00:18:57.120 sex, marriage, science, things that human beings can understand because God has given that gift of

00:19:03.640 common grace to the universe or they can partake in because of that common grace. Marriage, the institution

00:19:11.080 of marriage is a gift of common grace that has been understood and accepted and practiced by virtually

00:19:16.300 every single society for all of time until the last 10 to 20 years. And if you look throughout history,

00:19:26.480 when that created order of male and female, when that institution of marriage between male and female

00:19:34.720 is subverted, it's perverted, it is demolished, you get chaos. Why do you think over the past seven years

00:19:44.400 since Obergefell was decided in 2015, we have seen the sexual and moral revolutions go the way that they have?

00:19:53.920 We said, or we were told that this is about visitation rights in hospitals. This is about

00:20:01.400 equality. This is about people being able to do what they want to do in the privacy of their own

00:20:06.320 homes between two consenting adults. It is very quickly turned into something else. It is very

00:20:12.440 quickly, as Justice Thomas prophesied or guessed or deduced in his dissent on Obergefell, that we have come

00:20:21.260 head to head with religious liberty. I mean, you see that with an example like Jack Phillips, the baker

00:20:27.180 who has had his life nearly ruined because he refused to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple because

00:20:34.260 it violates his conscience. It violates his religious belief. He has gone through litigation for years and

00:20:41.820 years because of that. You see that in the Equality Act, which is trying to force religious hospitals

00:20:46.940 and religious hospitals to perform abortions and to perform sex change surgeries, trying to force

00:20:56.000 religious organizations and even churches to hire people that identify as the opposite sex, even if it

00:21:03.440 violates their beliefs and doctrines. And so we are seeing a conflict between what have been created as

00:21:12.200 new sexual rights different than anyone for all of history has ever thought of or has ever considered

00:21:19.440 a right or has ever considered legitimate sexuality or a legitimate marriage and our First Amendment

00:21:26.280 rights, which is the right to religious liberty. So we're seeing a conflict there, which is exactly what

00:21:31.520 we knew was going to happen. That is exactly why the moral and sexual revolutions have gone the way that

00:21:37.080 they have gone. That is why you are seeing a subversion of parental rights. That's why you are

00:21:42.300 seeing the indoctrination that you are seeing in schools. You really cannot separate the idea of gay

00:21:50.160 marriage from what we are seeing in the way of gender ideology. I know that people try to separate

00:21:57.020 those two things. I understand there are people who identify as gay who are against transgenderism.

00:22:02.380 They're against the gender ideology that we see in schools. And I think that's great. I think it's

00:22:06.920 important to get their perspective, but they both go back to the same idea that men and women are

00:22:11.440 really interchangeable, that it's okay that if you create a child through sperm donation or egg donation

00:22:17.680 or surrogacy, you manufacture the creation of that child, and then you take them away from their

00:22:23.480 biological father or biological mother, and you come together and you raise that child with two women or

00:22:28.680 two men, that that is going to be equal, that that's going to be just as okay as a mother and a father

00:22:36.940 raising that child. I mean, that practice is based on the same idea that gender ideology and transgenderism

00:22:44.080 is, that there really is no important or inherent difference between men and women. Really, what is

00:22:51.200 called gay marriage is a giant social experiment that no country in the world throughout history

00:22:57.120 has really tried. And the people who are going to pay for that primarily are, of course, as we've

00:23:04.480 talked about many times before, children. There is no science, there is no evidence, there is no logic

00:23:10.520 behind this idea that we can take a child away from their biological mother and father, whether it's

00:23:17.760 whatever, through whatever reproductive technology, and that that child will receive the same benefit,

00:23:23.400 the same nurturing, the same security and stability as they do from being raised by a mother and a

00:23:29.920 father. It's almost like God, or if you don't believe in God, science knew what it was doing

00:23:35.500 when it gave us procreation. Everyone in the world has a mother or a father. You might not be raised by a

00:23:44.660 mother and a father, but everyone in the world has a mother and a father. We do not even know yet the

00:23:52.200 consequences of separating a child from their biological mother or father for the sake of the

00:24:02.340 social experiment that is gay marriage. And I'm not sure that we will ever really see what that looks

00:24:10.500 like down the line, the consequences that will be felt by those who were purposely created with the

00:24:18.940 intent of being taken away from their biological mother or father. So that is part of why the state

00:24:26.180 actually has an interest in protecting marriage as between a man and a woman, because the state

00:24:33.600 has an interest in the well-being of its future citizens. It has an interest in protecting the

00:24:40.980 family also because the family, husband, wife, mom, dad, and children, has been part of the foundation

00:24:50.560 of every functioning in every flourishing society that has ever existed. So conservatives that are

00:24:57.840 abandoning this are abandoning a foundational tenet of society, specifically of Western civilization,

00:25:05.900 particularly of America. And at that point, what are you really conserving? You're not going to get

00:25:11.300 all of these economic benefits without social conservatism. They really go hand in hand. If you

00:25:17.120 believe that the family is the better act of society, which we do, which we should, whether you're

00:25:21.800 Christian or not, you're not going to get all of the benefits from that stable bedrock if you demolish

00:25:31.200 it, if you change it. It's just not going to happen. I've heard before that the family is the

00:25:35.820 incubator of liberty. Okay, well, if you redefine that, if you break that apart, you no longer have

00:25:41.500 that incubator. It just doesn't work. Of course, this goes back to everything that we just talked

00:25:45.400 about. You abandon the God who created all of these things. You also abandon the idea that he gave us

00:25:51.380 our rights. You will not get the limited government and the liberty that you say that you are fighting

00:25:56.560 for by foregoing something this fundamental. Now, I want you to listen to a couple arguments from

00:26:15.360 people who are kind of giving just the political and secular perspective on why the state has an

00:26:22.700 interest in protecting marriage between a man and a woman. Alan Keyes was the Assistant Secretary of

00:26:29.980 State for International Organization Affairs. There is a televised debate between him and Barack Obama

00:26:38.120 on C-SPAN at the City Club of Chicago, October 27, 2004. He's debating Barack Obama. He's asked about

00:26:47.860 this concept of gay unions, gay marriage, and here's what he has to say.

00:26:54.300 Mr. Keyes, on the Channel 7 debate last Thursday night, you said, and I'm quoting you,

00:26:58.900 where procreation is in principle impossible, marriage is irrelevant. You went on to say it was

00:27:05.560 irrelevant and not needed. What about marriage between people who are well beyond their childbearing

00:27:10.660 age? Irrelevant, not needed? No, no, it's simply a misunderstanding. The word in principle means

00:27:16.880 relating to the definition of, not relating to particular circumstances. So if an apple has a

00:27:22.760 worm in it, the worm is not part of the definition of the apple. It doesn't change what the apple

00:27:27.560 is in principle. So the fact... It retains its apple. No, it retains... To act as if concepts are

00:27:35.240 laughable means that you want to be irrational. Human beings reason... You said, you said it was

00:27:41.240 irrelevant and not needed. Human beings reason by means of concepts and definition. We also make laws

00:27:46.640 by means of definitions. And if you don't know how to operate with respect for those definitions,

00:27:51.400 you can't make the law. An individual who is impotent or another who is infertile does not change the

00:27:57.440 definition of marriage in principle. Because between a man and a woman in principle, procreation is always

00:28:04.520 possible. And it is that possibility which gave rise to the institution of marriage in the first

00:28:09.640 place. As a matter of law, excuse me, as a matter of law and government. But when it is impossible,

00:28:16.520 as between two males or two females, you're talking about something that's not just incidentally

00:28:20.640 impossible, it's impossible in principle. And that means that if you say that that's a marriage,

00:28:25.920 you are saying marriage can be understood in principle apart from procreation. You have changed

00:28:31.520 its definition in such a way as in fact to destroy the necessity for the institution. Since the only

00:28:36.400 reason it has existed in human societies and civilizations was to regulate from a social point

00:28:41.600 of view, the obligations and responsibilities attendant upon procreation. So when you start

00:28:48.400 playing games in this way, you are actually acting as if the institution has no basis independent of your

00:28:53.760 own. OK, so that's one argument. Alan Key is very smart person. He has a lot of good arguments on a

00:29:01.920 lot of different political issues. And so that was what the majority of Americans believed for a very

00:29:08.960 long time. He's very articulate and more sophisticated than most people in arguing the position on traditional

00:29:14.720 marriage. But that was just kind of the common understanding. Of course, Barack Obama sitting there like

00:29:19.680 he's so confused. But of course, Barack Obama believed in protecting traditional marriage,

00:29:24.400 too, even when he was running for president in 2008. So the whiplash from the sexual and moral

00:29:29.440 revolutions really is just crazy. Now, Thomas Sowell has written about this. Of course, he's written

00:29:34.400 about everything. And of course, I think that his arguments are brilliant. He, too, is coming from a

00:29:39.760 secular perspective. So let me read you some excerpts of his arguments about what is referred to

00:29:47.440 as gay marriage all the way back in 2000. He says the issue of gay marriage is one of many

00:29:53.220 signs of the sloppy thinking of our time. Centuries of laws, policies and traditions have grown up around

00:29:58.560 marriage as a union of a man and a woman. Now the demand is that all those laws, policies and traditions

00:30:03.940 simply be transferred automatically and in mass to an entirely different union that chooses to use

00:30:10.880 the same word. Homosexuals were on their strongest ground, Thomas Sowell says, when they argued

00:30:16.800 that what happens between consenting adults is nobody else's business. Now they want to make it

00:30:22.540 everybody's business by requiring others to acquiesce in their unions and treat them as they would

00:30:27.980 other unions, both in law and in social practice. So Thomas Sowell argues that really the government

00:30:35.460 does have a concern when it comes to marriage between a man and a woman. But he believes that the

00:30:41.460 government does not have a concern and should not be involved at all when it comes to the union of

00:30:47.080 two men or two women. And some of his reasoning for that is that, well, men and women can create

00:30:52.160 children. There are different effects on men and women in marriage. They have different positions

00:30:58.200 in marriage. And that's just not true of gay couples. When they come together in unions, you don't have

00:31:04.120 the procreation of children. They don't have different positions in marriage because there's,

00:31:07.660 you know, there are two men or two women. So there's not some inherent differences there.

00:31:11.300 I think that argument is a little outdated because he could not have foreseen in 2000 all of the

00:31:17.140 reproductive technology that has now developed that allows two men or two women to procreate,

00:31:25.120 in a sense, sons and daughters. And so because, as he argues, the state does have an interest in the

00:31:33.100 well-being of its future citizens, in the well-being of children. I believe that the state

00:31:38.600 actually does have a place when it comes to actually proactively defining what marriage is.

00:31:47.540 Now, he also argues, he argued in 2006 in an article titled Gay Couples Misunderstand Intent of Marriage

00:31:55.640 Laws. He says the equal protection of the laws provided by the Constitution of the United States applies to

00:32:00.640 people, not actions. And so you're often hearing, well, I believe in the equal application of the

00:32:05.740 law. Therefore, I believe in gay marriage. He says it doesn't apply to individuals. It applies to

00:32:10.040 individuals, not actions. Laws exist precisely in order to discriminate between different kinds of

00:32:15.920 actions. When the law permits automobiles to drive on highways, but forbids bicycles from doing the

00:32:21.060 same, that is not discrimination against people. Such a brilliant point. A cyclist who gets off his bicycle

00:32:26.580 and gets into a car can drive on the highway just like anyone else. In a free society, vast numbers

00:32:31.580 of things are neither forbidden nor facilitated. They are considered to be none of the law's

00:32:35.960 business. He says gay marriage advocates depict marriage as an expansion of rights to which they

00:32:40.360 are entitled. They argue against a ban on gay marriage, but marriage has for centuries meant a

00:32:44.680 union of a man and a woman. There is no gay marriage to ban. That's a very radical statement,

00:32:50.620 which of course aligns with what I believe. He says analogies with bans against interracial

00:32:56.820 marriage are bogus. Race is not a part of the definition of marriage. A ban on interracial

00:33:01.200 marriage is a ban on the same actions otherwise permitted because of the race of the particular

00:33:05.760 people involved. It is a discrimination against people, not actions. There is no reason why

00:33:10.860 traditional marriage laws should be transferred willy nilly to a different union, one with no inherent

00:33:15.760 tendency to produce children. Well, again, yeah, no inherent tendency. But again, I don't think he

00:33:22.340 would have known all of the technology that has been developed today, nor the inherent asymmetries

00:33:26.900 of relationships between people of different sexes. It'd be interesting to hear, knowing everything

00:33:33.040 that has developed over the last couple of decades, how his argument would come across today. But

00:33:39.660 clearly he is for the protection of traditional marriage for a variety of reasons. Now, the fact

00:33:48.280 that 47 House Republicans voted to ban states from recognizing the traditional definition of marriage,

00:33:57.120 that's really what happened. That's how the blaze puts it. And at least two GOP senators will do so

00:34:05.160 is actually really radical. It's really stunning. I know a lot of people like Pete Buttigieg are saying

00:34:12.220 that it's so tragic that in 2022, 157 House Republicans just voted against marriage equality.

00:34:18.640 Adam Schiff is saying that Republicans just voted against codifying marriage equality for LGBTQ plus

00:34:25.140 people. They have an extreme and a backwards agenda. No, the headline is actually that 47 Republicans

00:34:31.740 voted to codify what is called gay marriage and that there are going to be Republican senators

00:34:37.440 who do the same, that this might actually pass. That is what is radical. That is what the headline

00:34:42.540 is, because it shows such a drastic and quick shift away from what the entire world has known about

00:34:49.500 family and marriage. So what's interesting is that people say, I mean, people on the left say that we

00:35:07.460 are turning into this Christian nationalist fascist state, that the religious right is getting their

00:35:14.680 way, that they're enacting all of these harsh laws, that they're taking us back 50 years. Obviously,

00:35:20.140 nothing could be further from the truth. Like, do you not see the moral and sexual landscape that is

00:35:25.980 the United States right now? Like, do you not see how progressivism dominates every institution that

00:35:31.320 exists from the federal government to academia, to the mainstream media, to big tech, to the public

00:35:37.540 education system? Much of even what claims to be the church today is kind of steeped in this

00:35:43.520 progressivism when it comes to social justice, when it comes to economics, when it comes to

00:35:49.200 certainly sexuality and gender. Like, progressivism dominates our country. Yes, there is a minority of

00:35:56.080 people who are loud and proud, like you and I are, who are pushing back against the progressive

00:36:01.660 zeitgeist. But absolutely, progressivism, especially when it comes to things like homosexuality

00:36:08.120 and gender dominates, dominates our culture today. And there is no greater example of this than

00:36:16.360 America's views on what is referred to as gay marriage. 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act was

00:36:22.560 passed by huge Democrat and Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate that defended and

00:36:29.980 was meant to legally protect the definition of marriage is between a man and a woman that was signed

00:36:34.200 into law by a Democrat president, Bill Clinton. And then you had in 2000, of course, George Bush said

00:36:42.620 that he was going to protect marriage as the definition between a man and a woman. You even

00:36:48.980 had Obama, as I mentioned earlier, say in 2008, that marriage is between a man and a woman. He later

00:36:56.500 kind of, of course, later he, what they would call is evolved. But even like a few years later,

00:37:01.400 he said, well, I think this is something that should be decided by the states. I don't think

00:37:04.840 it should be decided by the Supreme Court. And the majority of Americans believed that as well.

00:37:10.860 It wasn't until 2014, eight years ago, that the majority and a slight majority, a slight majority

00:37:20.740 of Americans believed in legalizing, quote unquote, gay marriage eight years ago. Up until that,

00:37:29.200 the majority of Americans did not believe in legalizing gay marriage. And so now not only

00:37:37.020 does the majority of the country, 61 percent, believe in legalizing gay marriage. I'm surprised

00:37:43.100 it's not higher than that. It probably is higher than that today. I think the last year that they

00:37:48.360 have is 2019. So not only has that shifted dramatically, but also look at everything else

00:37:54.660 that we've gotten. I mean, we literally have men being nominated as woman of the year by the

00:38:00.240 University of Pennsylvania for the NCAA woman of the year awards. I mean, could you have imagined

00:38:06.080 that it was going to go this fast? And you actually have the audacity of people on the left to say

00:38:12.080 they we are going towards like some right wing theocratic state. Are you kidding me?

00:38:18.480 Are you kidding me? So no, the story is the headline is, is that a few dozen GOP representatives,

00:38:27.940 and that's probably more than a few GOP senators are going along with what is a radical position

00:38:37.500 historically, a radical position on the foundational understanding, the foundational definition,

00:38:45.120 the definition of marriage, which is foundational to all functioning and flourishing societies,

00:38:52.440 and which is connected to the conservative and what is supposed to be the American belief

00:38:56.880 that we were created by God, that he gave us our rights. He gives us our rights. He has the

00:39:02.860 authority to do so because he transcends the government. He predates the government. And within that,

00:39:09.200 he gives us truth. He gives us morality. Part of that is defining not just who we are,

00:39:14.440 male and female, but also what marriage is. And then, of course, the secular perspective,

00:39:20.420 if you want to call it that, of the idea of marriage being important for the purposes of

00:39:26.280 procreation and for the perpetuation of society and the human race. Conservatives abandon that,

00:39:32.840 you'll abandon everything else. I understand there's log cabin Republicans. I understand that

00:39:37.040 there are a lot of people who call themselves conservative in a lot of different ways that I really

00:39:41.280 respect, that I really like, that I'm glad to talk with and partner with on a lot of different things

00:39:46.140 that believe that we can just kind of compartmentalize things, that you're going to be able to get

00:39:50.240 capitalism and free speech, but you're going to be able to abandon social conservatism and these

00:39:55.800 kind of foundational beliefs in God and marriage and children. And you can't. I'm just telling you,

00:40:00.500 you can't. You can argue with me all you want to. You can call me a bigot. You can say I'm crazy.

00:40:04.240 You can say, oh, you know, that's a some Fox News person like tweeted at me on Twitter. I was like,

00:40:09.440 huh, that's a take and did some like little cringe emoji or something like, OK, that's fine. You you

00:40:15.880 have your position. I have history on my side. I have the understanding of our founding on our side.

00:40:23.920 I have an understanding, a coherent and cohesive understanding of political philosophy and what

00:40:28.360 make societies on my side. But sure, all of human history, all civilizations were probably wrong

00:40:34.940 until 2015. No, you're probably you're probably right. You're probably right. Let's see how that

00:40:41.280 works out. It's worked out really well since 2015. Things are going awesome. So you know what? If if

00:40:47.400 if we if I'll tell you what, if things swing in the other direction, if we start having more liberty,

00:40:55.660 if the family structure gets stronger and we have more parental rights and we start heading towards

00:41:03.220 a good direction while still completely abandoning the traditional definition of marriage and the

00:41:09.700 traditional definition of the family, then I will be happy to say, you know what? I and all of humans

00:41:16.180 until 2015 were wrong. I'll be willing to say that. Unfortunately, I don't think that I am wrong

00:41:22.040 because it's not me. It's not me that I am appealing to or it's not my authority that I am

00:41:28.760 using to argue this. It is the authority of God himself. It is the authority of history. And as I

00:41:33.740 said, cultures around the world and throughout history. So that is why I believe that we should

00:41:41.300 support the legal protection of traditional traditional marriage. Of course, you guys know why

00:41:47.500 I believe as a Christian marriage is between a man and a woman. It's rooted in creation. It's

00:41:51.740 repeated throughout scripture. It's reiterated by Jesus himself. It's representative of Christ in the

00:41:56.760 church. And therefore, it is reflective of the gospel. I will link a past episode on that where I

00:42:01.620 get into that thoroughly from a theological perspective. It doesn't mean that you hate gay

00:42:07.300 people. It doesn't mean that you don't believe that everyone is made in the image of God. It doesn't

00:42:10.860 mean that you don't think that they should have rights, visitation rights,

00:42:14.280 or that they should be able to live happy lives or that we should be regulating what two consenting

00:42:20.660 adults do in their own home. It's not what I'm saying. Not for enacting a theocracy. I am for a little

00:42:26.460 bit of common sense and a little bit of understanding of where our rights and morality and truth come

00:42:30.800 from. If conservatism doesn't conserve that, it's not going to conserve anything else either.

00:42:35.780 All right. That's all I've got time for today. We will be back here on Monday. Have a wonderful,

00:42:42.420 fantastic weekend. And also make sure to check out our merch because we've got a lot of really

00:42:48.040 good stuff. We'll link that in the description of this episode. See you guys soon.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 21, 2022

Ep 647 ｜ Who Defines Marriage & Why It Matters

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