Glenn Stanton

Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family appeared with John Rabe and Carmen Pate on Truth that Transforms, the flagship radio program of Truth in Action Ministries, to argue that same-sex marriage is an oppressive and satanic ploy. After Rabe asked him why opponents of same-sex marriage sometimes have problems explaining “why redefining [marriage] is deadly,” Stanton claimed that the marriage debate “goes deep into not just our own faith but humanity itself.”

He argued that resistance to same-sex marriage is necessary because “throughout the world if you look at how cultures do marriage, every single culture throughout time has done marriage as a union between men and women, God has given it to us this way.” “Every human culture needs marriage and we redefine it at our own peril,” Stanton said.

Later, Stanton repeated his assertion that homosexuality “is a really pernicious lie of Satan” because it denies “the distinct God imaging in each of us as males and females.” He went on to warn that gay equality leads to the “persecution” of Christians and will “redefine not only marriage but the family itself if not humanity completely.”

Stanton: This is a really pernicious lie of Satan to say that the gender part of humanity doesn’t really matter because the gender part of humanity is really denying the distinct God imaging in each of us as males and females. We need to understand that as Christians. That’s the biggest thing. The other is that, ‘you know kids don’t really need a mom and a dad they just need any configuration of loving adults who care for them,’ in fact, and this has already been in the case, we all know about what hate speech is, the fact of saying a child needs a mother and a father will be deemed hate speech because that is a statement against same-sex marriage and parenting. That’s a radical thing. The other thing is religious freedom, I mean we’re already seeing that on a vast, vast scale; the other side really in a pitiful way goes, ‘oh we’re not going to violate religious freedom, you’re not going to have to marry same-sex couples in your church,’ but it goes far beyond that. But it goes far beyond that. Doctors refusing to inseminate a lesbian couple because it violates his conscience, people like that have and will be hauled into court and prosecuted and persecuted because of their long held and deeply felt convictions about what is right and what children need.

Rabe: That’s a major point. The way that this has been portrayed societally and how it’s gotten so much traction is via the idea, ‘well if two people love each other, who are we to say that they shouldn’t be together and that they shouldn’t be able to get married?’ That very simple idea has a lot of persuasive power with people as it turns out and yet when you really break it down you start to get the sense that that’s really not what this is about. It’s not so much that people want to be able to have that long-term commitment to each other as it is being able to redefine what society is about and being able to silence people who disagree.

Stanton: That is exactly it. As a good friend of mine says, ‘you know a lot of these people advocating for same-sex marriage, I’ve been in the marriage work for decades, I’ve never seen these people come to the stump to advocate for marriage, the only time they are for marriage is when it has same-sex in front of it.’ Think about that. These are not advocates of marriage; they’re advocates for redefining marriage. They know that making gender any irrelevant part of the equation really does redefine not only marriage but the family itself if not humanity completely.

• Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family accuses Dinesh D'Souza of engaging in "attitudinal bigamy."

• Is anyone surprised that Glenn Beck is now paling around with EW Jackson? 

• Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries says "This is an apocalyptic election. It's clearly the most important election in the history of America."

• Bryan Fischer reiterates his call to ban immigration from Muslim countries.

• James Robison says President Obama Vice-President Biden "have claims of religious beliefs that directly contradict the words and actions of both ... this is intentional political activism directly opposed to a supposed belief, which can only lead to one conclusion: what they claim to believe is not what they actually believe."

• Finally, FRC prays against marriage equality: "May God-fearing men and women be moved to make profoundly generous gifts to support marriage protection efforts in these four states. May the citizens of Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington, through their votes, boldly say NO to same-sex marriage!"

Last week we noted how a new book "showed a significant shift toward counting same-sex couples with children as family" and how this trend was not sitting well with the Religious Right, especially Focus on the Family's Glenn Stanton, who refused to accept the idea that legally married gay couples constitute a family.

And Stanton is apparently so very intent on restricting the use of the word "family" to only situations that meet his narrow definition, which is why he is lashing out against it once again, saying that people who think gay couples are a family are young and naive and generally have no idea what they are talking about:

"If they want to be called a family, that's fine. But, first of all, the conviction is not very deep," contends Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family. "It's absolutely not well thought out because if you ask them -- and other scholars have done this -- what supports [their] conviction...there's not a whole lot they can tell you."

He further argues that the demographic target of the study greatly influences the polling outcomes.

"This is primarily among young people, and young people are especially akin to that kind of 'whatever' attitude," Stanton points out. "Plus, one of the ideals of being young is sort of your open-mindedness, your idealism. [But] when you get older -- when you start to get married, when you start to have kids yourself -- you...become more conservative in the sense of they start to realize...kids do need a mom and a dad."

Stanton is the "director for Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family" and he sure does seem focused on making sure that the term "family" does not include gays.

It it too much to ask of the mainstream media that if they are going to quote the AFA's Bryan Fischer, that they mention his long history of making militantly anti-gay statements, especially when they are quoting him in an article relating to gay issues?

Apparently, because Fischer's well-established hatred all of things gay didn't warrant even a passing mention in this USA Today article about how increasingly "gay relationships and gay families are portrayed as just like other families" in movies and television:

It's a landscape that many Americans still don't accept.

Such movies and TV shows "desensitize the public to the raft of problems associated with homosexual behavior," says Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, one of the proponents of Proposition 8, California's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage now tied up in court. "Hollywood is conveying a deceptive message about that behavior and doing a disservice to (viewers) who are coming to conclusions based on what they see on the silver screen. It's a distortion of reality."

Says Glenn Stanton, director of family studies for Focus on the Family: "When actual gay and lesbian weddings are shown on TV (as in news coverage), we win. When they're shown through the lens and creativity and artifice of Hollywood, we don't. Hollywood is succeeding, but they're doing so by not representing reality."

Of course Fischer doesn't accept it - he thinks all gays are violent, deviant perverts and pedophiles who ought to be treated like criminals. 

Maybe the media ought to at least mention that fact the next time they decide to quote him.

About a week or so ago, I saw an article in Christianity Today called "The Case for Early Marriage" that argued, among other thing, that abstinence was the only acceptable option for young people, it was creating a dilemma when coupled with the fact that young people are simultaneously waiting longer before they get married.

Written by Mark Regnerus, author of "Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenager," the article's solution is for young people to just get married at an earlier age:

[O]ver 90 percent of American adults experience sexual intercourse before marrying. The percentage of evangelicals who do so is not much lower. In a nationally representative study of young adults, just under 80 percent of unmarried, church- going, conservative Protestants who are currently dating someone are having sex of some sort. I'm certainly not suggesting that they cannot abstain. I'm suggesting that in the domain of sex, most of them don't and won't.

What to do? Intensify the abstinence message even more? No. It won't work. The message must change, because our preoccupation with sex has unwittingly turned our attention away from the damage that Americans—including evangelicals—are doing to the institution of marriage by discouraging it and delaying it.

Without getting into the various arguments Regnerus makes in favor of his position, I just wanted to highlight this one section in which he claims that younger marriage is good for everyone, as it prevents young women from turning into a barren spinsters and makes young men "grow-up" faster:

The ratio of devoutly Christian young women to men is far from even. Among evangelical churchgoers, there are about three single women for every two single men. This is the elephant in the corner of almost every congregation—a shortage of young Christian men.

Try counting singles in your congregation next Sunday. Evangelicals make much of avoiding being unequally yoked, but the fact that there are far more spiritually mature young women out there than men makes this bit of advice difficult to follow. No congregational program or men's retreat in the Rocky Mountains will solve this. If she decides to marry, one in three women has no choice but to marry down in terms of Christian maturity. Many of the hopeful ones wait, watching their late 20s and early 30s arrive with no husband. When the persistent longing turns to deep disappointment, some decide that they didn't really want to marry after all.

Given this unfavorable ratio, and the plain fact that men are, on average, ready for sex earlier in relationships than women are, many young Christian women are being left with a dilemma: either commence a sexual relationship with a decent, marriage-minded man before she would prefer to—almost certainly before marriage—or risk the real possibility that, in holding out for a godly, chaste, uncommon man, she will wait a lot longer than she would like. Plenty will wait so long as to put their fertility in jeopardy. By that time, the pool of available men is hardly the cream of the crop—and rarely chaste. I know, I know: God has someone in mind for them, and it's just a matter of time before they meet. God does work miracles. But the fact remains that there just aren't as many serious Christian young men as there are women, and the men know it.

Men get the idea that they can indeed find the ideal woman if they are patient enough. Life expectancies nearing 80 years prompt many to dabble with relationships in their 20s rather than commit to a life of "the same thing" for such a long time. Men have few compelling reasons to mature quickly. Marriage seems an unnecessary risk to many of them, even Christians. Sex seldom requires such a steep commitment.

As a result, many men postpone growing up. Even their workplace performance is suffering: earnings for 25- to 34-year-old men have fallen by 20 percent since 1971, even after accounting for inflation. No wonder young women marry men who are on average at least two years older than they. Unfortunately, a key developmental institution for men—marriage—is the very thing being postponed, thus perpetuating their adolescence.

Apparently, the logic at work here is that young Christian men want to have sex and chaste Christian women don't, forcing the men into sexual relationships with not-chaste Christian women, thus postponing the development of their emotional maturity and ultimately narrowing the pool of eligible and acceptable marriage partners for women, leaving them to become childless, husband-less ascetics.

Thus, the obvious solution is just for people to get married at a younger age.

And that idea seems to be gaining traction among the Religious Right, judging by this recent Associated Press article:

Among evangelicals, there's a tendency to wait because many believe God "is going to deliver me a spouse right to my door," so they don't actively seek one, said Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies for the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family, a young marriage promoter.

Then there's what Stanton calls the "eHarmony philosophy" — the belief God will deliver someone perfect.

Stanton doesn't blame the abstinence movement. "I don't think that it's so much to much focus on abstinence, but the silence on marriage makes the abstinence message sound so much louder," he said.

At Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., associate pastor Michael Lawrence emphasizes that marriage is a covenant, not a convenient arrangement, and offers advice to young couples on overcoming arguments over money, sex and family.

"We probably haven't served our young people well by on the one hand emphasizing abstinence, but on the other hand telling them to wait to get married," Lawrence said. "It seems to be setting them up to fail."

Like most proponents of young marriage, Lawrence does not set an arbitrary "right" age for marriage. Waiting until after college might be advisable if the alternative is crushing debt or dropping out, he said.

Supporters of abstinence programs promote them as both marriage-preparation tools and longer-term support systems for those who don't marry.

Jimmy Hester, co-founder of True Love Waits, part of the Southern Baptist Convention's LifeWay Christian Resources, disagreed with the argument that abstinence past a certain age is too much to ask.

"There are too many examples of people who have done it," he said. "And not out of their own strength, even, but out of a relationship with God who gives them strength."