Frank Turek

The fervently anti-gay writer Frank Turek takes to Townhall today to present an interesting analogy. Turke argues that when gays and lesbians advocate for marriage equality, they are being just as unreasonable as someone who “can’t qualify to become a police officer” protesting “when the government pays other people to be police officers.” He goes on to say that gays and lesbians can “simply marry someone of the opposite sex” and that the legalization of same-sex marriage will harm children and cause Americans to “lose the freedom of speech.”

Of course, the argument that gays and lesbians already have marriage equality because they could just marry a person of a different gender was the same claim made by supporters of anti-miscegenation laws who asserted that interracial marriage was unnatural and that people already have the same right to marry someone of their race.

Here’s why promoting natural marriage exclusively does not deny anyone equal rights.

First, everyone has the same equal right to marry a qualified person of the opposite sex. That law treats every man and woman equally, but not every behavior they may desire equally. Same sex marriage and natural marriage are different behaviors with different outcomes, so the law rightfully treats them differently. One behavior perpetuates and stabilizes society, and the other doesn’t. Promoting one behavior does not deny rights to people who don’t engage in that behavior.

An analogy may help clarify this point. Like marriage, the government promotes police work by paying people to become police officers because police do much good for society. But if you can’t qualify to become a police officer, or if you choose another vocation, your rights are not being violated when the government pays other people to be police officers. All people, regardless of their vocation, experience the benefits of police, just like all people, regardless of their marriage status, experience the benefits of natural marriage.

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Some will ignore those biological realities and object, “But men and women are the same so there’s no difference between homosexual and heterosexual relationships!” If that were true, no one would be arguing for same-sex marriage. The very fact people demand same-sex marriage is precisely because they know men and women are drastically different. If men and women were the same, no one would be spending time and energy trying to get same-sex marriage approved. They would simply marry someone of the opposite sex—which according to them is the same as someone of the same sex—and be done with it.

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Now, I am not suggesting that a law would fully achieve either, but only to point out that natural and same-sex marriage should not be legally or culturally equated. The truth is homosexual and heterosexual relationships are not the same, can never be the same, and will never yield the same benefits to individuals or society. We hurt everyone, especially children, by pretending otherwise.

Finally, as jurisdictions with same-sex marriage show us, people lose their freedoms of speech, association, religion and even parenting due to the imposition of same-sex marriage. In Massachusetts, for example, parents now have no right to even know when their kids as young as kindergarten are being taught about homosexuality, much less opt out of it; business owners must now provide benefits to same-sex couples, and they can be fined for declining to provide services at homosexual weddings; Catholic charities were forced to close and leave Massachusetts and Washington D.C. because both governments mandated that all adoption agencies had to provide children to homosexuals. So much for freedom of religion! And in Canada, same-sex marriage has led to such a chilling restriction on speech, that my speech here today could get me fined or jailed if given there.

To sum up, the government already permits homosexual relationships, but promoting them by equating them with married heterosexual relationships ignores the facts of nature, the needs of children and the health of society. While people with different sexual attractions are equal, not all behaviors are equally beneficial. True equality treats equal behaviors equally. It doesn’t demand that different behaviors be treated the same.

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• Finally, Frank Turek explains that Christians don't want theocracy ... they just want their Christian morality enshrined into law.

Frank Turek is a corporate consultant who "conducts dynamic training and development programs in Leadership, Sales, Customer Service, Team Building and other people-skill topics essential for business success."

He is also a Religious Right activist who writes books like "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist" and "Correct, Not Politically Correct; How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone" and hosts a radio program called "Cross Examined" that airs on the American Family Association's radio network.

Recently, those two career paths have begun to come into conflict with one another and Turek's anti-gay activism has started to cost him consulting jobs. This development has, of course, transformed Turek into a Religious Right hero and yesterday showed up on "Today's Issues" with the AFA 's Tim Wildmon and FRC's Tony Perkins to tell his tale.

During the discussion, the topic turned to the AFA's boycott of Home Depot (or "Homo Depot," as they called it) over the corporation's support for equality and gay pride parades ... which prompted Turek to rail against gay pride and diversity training programs:

Anytime you have to call something "pride," there's a problem with it, particularly when it comes to behavior because you don't hear people walking around saying "heterosexual pride" ...

Pride? Pride? Pride is, as we all know, really the root of all sin; we want to do it our way rather than God's way.

And secondly, the other thing I'd like to bring up is do you have to have corporate training programs to teach people that men were made for women and that women were made for men? No! You only need corporate training or indoctrination programs to try and cause people to believe something they know isn't right. You don't need diversity training for man-women relationships - we all know that's the natural way, that's the designed way, that's the teleological way. We only need to be talked out of what we know is true, and that's why we have these corporate propaganda programs.

Frank Turek has become a hero of sorts to the Religious Right after Cisco terminated his contract as a consultant when an employee complained about his work as an anti-gay activist. Turek, who was a motivational speaker for Cisco before he was canned, is a radio commentator on American Family Radio, the American Family Association’s far-right radio network, and is the author of Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone. He also frequently appears on broadcasts from Rick Joyner’s the Oak Initiative and joined Joyner, Tony Perkins and Jerry Boykin to create the Religious Right’s own '300' Spartan army. While a guest on Bryan Fischer’s AFR radio show in May, Turek warned that gay rights advocates and Islamic extremists are “in concert together” because “they both hate Western Civilization” and “hate Judeo-Christian natural law values that our Constitution and particularly our Declaration of Independence.”

Turek now writes columns for the American Family Association. In his latest piece, he claims that the people who truly love gay people are the ones like him, who believe they should become ‘ex-gays,’ while the people who hate gay people are those who affirm their sexual orientation. “If I have good reason to think you are on the road to destruction—if a truck is about to run over you,” Turek writes, “the only way to love you is to urge you to get out of the street”:

Everyone puts limits on marriage—if marriage had no definition it wouldn’t be anything. Recognizing that marriage is between a man and a woman is not bigotry, but common sense rooted in the biological facts of nature. That’s why the state recognizes marriage to begin with—not because two people love one another but because only heterosexual unions can procreate and best nurture the next generation.

Everyone also puts limits on behaviors. But opposing behavior is not the same as opposing or “hating” people. In fact, to really love people, we often have to oppose what they do! Parents know this, and all former children know it as well.

Celebrating behavior that leads to disease and an early death is closer to hate than love. According to the latest data from the Center for Disease Control, homosexual men comprise more than 80 percent of sexually transmitted HIV cases despite comprising less than 2 percent of the population. The FDA says that men who have sex with men have an HIV infection rate 60 times higher than the general population. Why should we be encouraging behavior that results in such tragic outcomes? If I have good reason to think you are on the road to destruction—if a truck is about to run over you—the only way to love you is to urge you to get out of the street. If I tell you to keep walking down that road—that I celebrate the road you’re on—how could I hate you more?

But isn’t homosexuality like race? No. Race has nothing to do with behavior, but homosexuality is a behavior! Skin color affects no one, but destructive behavior affects many. Moreover, sexual behavior is always a choice, race never is. You’ll find many former homosexuals, but you’ll never find a former African-American.

So if you don’t approve of a man because of his race, you are a bigot. But if you don’t approve of a man’s destructive behavior, you are wise.

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[B]eing born a certain way is irrelevant to what the law should be. Laws are concerned with behaviors not desires, and we all have desires we ought not act on. In fact, all of us were born with an “orientation” to bad behavior, but those desires don’t justify the behaviors. If you are born with a genetic predisposition to alcohol, does that mean you should be an alcoholic? If you have a genetic attraction to children does that mean you should be a pedophile? What homosexual activist would say that a genetic predisposition to anger justifies gay-bashing? (Don’t blame me—I was born with the anti-gay gene!) Certainly, those that oppose alcoholism, pedophilia and gay bashing are not “bigots”—they are wise.

Last week, Time's Amy Sullivan reported that dozens of Religious Right leaders gathered for "a conference call to discuss their dissatisfaction with the current GOP presidential field, and agreed that Rick Perry would be their preferred candidate if he entered the race."

Brian Kaylor of EthicsDaily.com had reported on the same thing a few weeks back, noting that the effort was being organized by James Robison.

Last Friday, Robison wrote a post on his blog in which explained that he had called these gatherings in September of 2010 and June of 2011 because "there is an insidious attack on God, faith, family and freedom" and that God was planning on using this group of "national leaders to help inspire a spiritual awakening, a return to sanity and a restoration of freedom’s foundation."

And he also conveniently posted a list of every person who had participated:

Speaking with Bryan Fischer, fellow American Family Radio host Frank Turek argued that gays and Muslim extremists are allied in their plot to destroy America. Turek, the host of CrossExamined and a motivational speaker for businesses, previously joined Tony Perkins, Jerry Boykin and Rick Joyner in announcing a Spartan-like 300 to get more Christians involved in politics.

Turek tells Fischer that “the homosexual community and Muslim community [are] joining together” pass laws banning ‘hate speech’ in America in order to bring about “totalitarianism” by “shutting up the opponents.” Turek says that the two groups are collaborating because “they both hate Western Civilization” and “hate Judeo-Christian natural law values.” Turek’s views appear to reflect a new theme among conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Rep. Louie Gohmert who believe that progressives and radical Muslims are in an anti-American alliance. Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber last month claimed that progressive and radical Muslims are trying to “unite together to destroy Christianity” over their allegedly shared hatred of God.

Watch:

Fischer: Anybody who speaks out against Islam in the United States just gets hammered by voices on the left trying to censor them, silence them, intimidate them, the only thing they are lacking right now is the club of a law that will punish them for telling the truth about Islam.

Turek: Well that’s on the way and I’ve mentioned on my show there are strange bedfellows politically in our country today that is the radical left and the radical right in terms of Islam. You have, for example, the homosexual community and Muslim community joining together to try and call any criticism of their behavior or their religion ‘hate speech’ which would make it illegal, if they could get these laws passed, to criticize homosexuality or to criticize Islam. See it isn’t about truth here, it’s about totalitarianism, it’s about a way to silence the opposition. You can win the debate by just shutting up the opponents here.

So it’s really strange to me how these two disparate groups can be in concert together, maybe it’s because they both hate Western Civilization, maybe it’s because they both hate Judeo-Christian natural law values that our Constitution and particularly our Declaration of Independence were founded on, ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident,’ maybe they just hate that both those groups hate those values so much that they’re in bed together. But I can tell you one thing, if the Muslims ever takeover, the first people they’re going to go after is the folks on the radical left.