Marriage Equality

According to Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality, America may head toward outright revolt and a second civil war. Staver told Janet Parshall that marriage equality will mean that the institution of marriage, freedom of speech and the freedom of religion will be “destroyed” and “bulldozed over.”

Like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins who last month maintained that the Supreme Court may start a “revolution” and “break this nation apart” by striking down gay marriage bans, Staver said that the court “could split the country right in two” as “this is the thing that revolutions literally are made of.”

“This would be more devastating to our freedom, to our religious freedom, to the rights of pastors and their duty to be able to speak and to Christians around the country, then anything that the revolutionaries during the American Revolution even dreamed of facing,” Staver said, “This could cause another civil war.”

Staver: Basically marriage will be completely destroyed, families will be destroyed, children will be hurt by this and freedom of speech and freedom of religion, including in the pulpit itself, will absolutely be bulldozed over. This would open a floodgate of unimaginable proportions. That’s why with those kinds of consequences to have five of the nine justices ultimately have this kind of power in their hands, that’s not how this court and this country was established, to have five individuals to be able to have that kind of catastrophic, social reengineering power in their hands, that’s just not something that was envisioned by the founders.

Parshall: Absolutely right. God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind so we need to be in prayer, but I also think we need to be preparing our hearts as well Mat that if in fact the Supreme Court decides to trample underfoot the truth of God’s word, we as a church are going have to decide what we’re going to do. Mat, you know I’m going to appeal to your pastor’s heart, that means that every single pastor who is called to hold out the word of life is going to have to decide whether or not he is going to sidestep certain passages for fear of some sort of response from the government.

Staver: This is the thing that revolutions literally are made of. This would be more devastating to our freedom, to our religious freedom, to the rights of pastors and their duty to be able to speak and to Christians around the country, then anything that the revolutionaries during the American Revolution even dreamed of facing. This would be the thing that revolutions are made of. This could split the country right in two. This could cause another civil war. I’m not talking about just people protesting in the streets, this could be that level because what would ultimately happen is a direct collision would immediately happen with pastors, with churches, with Christians, with Christian ministries, with other businesses, it would be an avalanche that would go across the country.

He even argued that marriage equality laws “destroy the very foundation of our family” and have “catastrophic consequences,” including “the unraveling of the United States.”

Parshall: There is no ambiguity as to what the definition of marriage is. Here are nine people in black robes who are basically going to judge, and I’m going to put this in the vernacular of the common man, these are nine people who are basically going to say: God didn’t say that and here’s our ruling. I know I really distilled it down but you’ve got judges who are basically going to decide for us at the high level, potentially, how marriage should be defined. That’s amazing. Who would have thought we would ever find ourselves in that place?

Staver: It’s stunning. That’s why I am very concerned that this has made its way to the United States Supreme Court because only five of those nine can make a decision and so five people, potentially, in the United States, only five out of the hundreds of millions that we have, have in their hand this opportunity to literally wreck marriage, to destroy the very foundation of our family and the biblical definition of marriage. The consequences are staggering. This could be the Roe v. Wade of marriage and family. If we ultimately say as a court and if the country follows it that marriage is between two people of the same sex and it’s now how common sense, history and the Bible ultimately defines it, that has catastrophic consequences. That is staggering and it is actually something that we ought to be in significant prayer about because this could be the unraveling of the United States.

Pacific Justice Institute president Brad Dacus warned today that if the Supreme Court overturns the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) then the U.S. will likely legalize polygamy and incest “as society continues to slip down that slippery slope.” While speaking to Jim Schneider of VCY America’s radio show Crosstalk, Dacus also agreed with George Will’s assessment that “quite literally, opposition to gay marriage is dying,” alleging that teachers unions and Hollywood have spearheaded the “indoctrination” of youth.

Dacus: If the Supreme Court rules that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and that the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman is unconstitutional, then we’re basically going to have an open heyday for homosexual marriage as well as other kinds of “marriage” being introduced and being protected through this case law precedent, such as polygamy, perhaps adult incest and who knows what else will be attempted to be added on.

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Schneider: This past Sunday syndicated columnist George Will appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and said that the opposition to same-sex marriage is “quite literally dying” he said because opponents tend to be older Americans. What are your thoughts on this?

Dacus: Unfortunately, I have to agree with George Will on this. The polls show and the stats show that older people are the number one supporters of traditional marriage, they are older people and they are literally dying. The people who are the biggest proponents of homosexual marriage, they’re young people, they’ve come out of our public schools, the teachers unions have been establishing this agenda and this indoctrination through our public schools for quite some time. So they’ve succeeded in this indoctrination process in many of our public schools across the country for a new way of thinking, a new perspective. Along with Hollywood, we have a whole new mindset and in fact young people are overwhelmingly, I think it is 2:1, in favor of legalization of homosexual marriage. Of course, that number could easily change to include other forms of marriage as society continues to slip down that slippery slope.

After four defeats on the issue of marriage equality at the ballot box and a failed attempt to remove an Iowa justice who favors same-sex marriage, right-wing activists are starting to panic and offering their advice to the GOP and groups like the National Organization for Marriage and Focus on the Family: you’re not anti-gay enough. Yesterday, Matthew Cullinan Hoffman of LifeSiteNews similarly argued that organizations that oppose same-sex marriage need to get nastier.

According to Hoffman, who is also a correspondent for the National Catholic Register, “the very fact that” gay marriage is even up for debate “is an indication of a level of moral confusion and decadence that borders on the apocalyptic.”

He went on to maintain that same-sex unions are a “narcissistic parody” of opposite-sex relationships as “homosexual relationships do not represent an authentic intimacy, but rather involve mutual exploitation for the sake of satisfying an unnatural lust” and lead to suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, violence along with other “destructive consequences.” “Homosexuals themselves, who are the greatest victims of the ‘gay lifestyle,’ and are in desperate need of the truth,” he writes.

“Until and unless pro-family activists adopt a comprehensive and coherent answer to the ideology of the culture of death,” Hoffman concludes, “we will continue to suffer defeat after defeat, until the institution of marriage is completely destroyed.”

If Hoffman really thinks that conservatives aren’t being aggressive enough in their attacks on gays and lesbians, then we suggest he listen to the extreme anti-gay tirades we consistently find coming from right-wing talk show hosts, televangelists and many of the Religious Right groups behind the marriage campaigns.

Although questions of tactics are always relevant to the postmortem analysis following an election loss, they ultimately cannot address the essence of the problem these defeats represent: a grave sexual perversion, one rightly denounced by virtually every society that has ever existed, is being converted in the mind of the public from a vice into a public institution, with associated privileges and rights, including access to infants and small children.

In short, the losses experienced in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington State could never have happened in a healthy society that upholds basic standards of sexual morality. The very fact that they were on the ballot at all, that the subversion of the institution of marriage has become a topic of polite conversation, is an indication of a level of moral confusion and decadence that borders on the apocalyptic.

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Although millions of dollars have been spent on massive campaigns to counteract the homosexual lobby’s well-financed propaganda machine, and numerous dedicated individuals have committed many hours of labor to the cause of defending marriage, pro-family activists have made the catastrophic mistake of accepting many of the false premises upon which homosexual activists base their claims in the hope of appearing moderate and reasonable, while fatally weakening their own position.

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In reality, homosexual relationships do not represent an authentic intimacy, but rather involve mutual exploitation for the sake of satisfying an unnatural lust. Such behavior harms bodies and minds, causing physical damage and spreading diseases, and leading often to depression, drug abuse, domestic violence, and even suicide. Numerous studies have documented the destructive consequences of the “gay lifestyle,” although they should be hardly necessary if one merely considers the physical and psychological incompatibility of same-sex relationships, which substitute the natural complementarity of an opposite-sex companion in favor of a narcissistic parody of the same.

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If we really wish to make the case for marriage, we must take a comprehensive natural-law approach to human sexuality that does not evade the more politically difficult aspects of the question, one that affirms the integral nature of sexual relationships and the corresponding duty of the state to defend sexual morality and repress vice. That is the approach laid out by then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in an instruction issued by the Holy See’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during his leadership of the same. While affirming the goodness of natural marriage, Ratzinger also noted that homosexual unions, without qualification, must always be explicitly opposed, and that governments should act to “contain the phenomenon” of homosexuality.

Although such an approach will entail short-run difficulties and will not yield immediate victories, it is the only long-run solution to America’s terrible moral decline, which is not isolated to the definition of marriage, but includes an almost total corruption of the nation’s understanding of human sexuality, reproduction, and the value of human life. It is also the only truly charitable approach towards homosexuals themselves, who are the greatest victims of the “gay lifestyle,” and are in desperate need of the truth. Until and unless pro-family activists adopt a comprehensive and coherent answer to the ideology of the culture of death, we will continue to suffer defeat after defeat, until the institution of marriage is completely destroyed.

Peter LaBarbera and John Kirkwood hosted the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios on the Americans For Truth About Homosexuality Radio Hour to respond to the victories of marriage equality activists and Neal Boortz’s post-election rant against the Religious Right. Rios said that Boortz was just one of many conservatives trying to push the GOP to abandon social issues like abortion rights and gay equality in order to win elections. According to Rios, it isn’t that most people don’t oppose the gay rights movement anymore; it’s just that they simply don’t understand how horrible it is!

She said that “education elites” are using gay rights to push “the most horrible trash down our children’s throats” and that even the child abuse scandal at Penn State is part of the “whole fabric” of gay rights. Rios went on to say that she wouldn’t want her family to have gay neighbors just as she wouldn’t like to live next door to a brother or an abortion clinic.

Rios: They find themselves totally shocked when a coach like Jerry Sandusky comes after little boys, that’s shocking, and yet that’s the very thing, the whole fabric of gay marriage is part of that issue of where we draw the lines on sexuality. We have very good reasons for feeling the way they do and they aren’t just scriptural, Scripture is the basis but all truth is God’s truth, we can make our case without Scripture. Most people naturally speaking abhor the things that homosexual activists really working towards, they just don’t know about them. So Neal Boortz is just speaking out of ignorance.

Kirkwood: You’re talking about a movement and activists but you like to be challenged so here’s my challenge to you. I’m going to put it in his leading words…he said he’s going to be waiting for a year for somebody to tell him one reason that the gay couple down the street from Sandy Rios will have any effect on your life.

Rios: Because I have children and grandchildren in school, at least not yet but I will, but I have kids that are going to be in school and because I know how the National Education Association and the education elites have been pushing, pushing, pushing the most horrible trash down our children’s throats in the guise of mainstreaming homosexuality and gay marriage is just a part of that. It may be that a couple next door to me doesn’t affect my life but on the other hand if I’m raising children and I care: do I want to live next door to a brothel? Do I want to live next door to an abortion clinic? There are things that we morally object to and we don’t want our children to consider as normal.

Rios also repeated her claim that the success of abortion rights and gay equality at the ballot box is proof that America is under divine judgment, warning that God is using a “a veil of deception” to confuse people and lamenting that the Republican Party is no longer “a champion of moral values.” She concluded by warning LaBarbera and Kirkwood that they may soon face jail time or a fine for preaching against homosexuality.

Rios: The confusion and the people that we look up to failing us and being confused themselves, I see God’s supernatural hand in this. I really do think that there is a veil of deception and I think that it’s kind of like the way we see God, the way he works in the Old Testament, how when people have chosen to be rebellious he eventually says okay, go for it, you can have it. I think the American people are getting what we want.

We want licentiousness, we do not want moral restraint, whether its homosexuality or living together or abortion or birth control so we can have all the sex we want without consequence. We desperately want that so badly, women want it so badly, it’s all that matters to them on the left, that’s all they can think about, is not having to give up abortion and birth control. Of all the issues it really does drive them and I think God is going to give it to them.

I think He is going to give us homosexual marriage; I don’t see it stopping. I don’t see the Republican Party surviving in any form or fashion in the way it has been. I don’t see it being a champion of moral values; it gave up that ground a long time ago. You’ve seen it happen in Illinois and certainly we’re seeing the death, like the last gasps of death, here in DC. I believe God is bringing judgment.

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Kirkwood: Regarding homosexuality then, it is going to be transformed from a marriage issue, which it has been, to don’t you think the transformation is now that activism is going to center around religious freedom?

Rios: Absolutely, you better believe it. Pastors like you, you will be fined or jailed like they have been in Canada, that’s coming.

Voters in Maryland and Washington this year voted to affirm their state’s marriage equality laws after anti-gay activists collected enough signatures for a referendum to overturn them. Mainers also approved marriage equality, reversing a 2009 “citizens’ veto” of the state’s marriage equality law, and Minnesota voters defeated a GOP-backed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

But since opponents of marriage equality went 0-4 on Election Day, now Star Parker of CURE is angry that voters had a say at all.

One significant development in the recent election was votes in four states approving same-sex marriage initiatives. Until now, all previous state referenda to approve same-sex marriage – 32 of them – failed.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page – a place where conservatives usually turn for intellectual capital – saw this as cause for celebration.

According to the Journal, marriage definition should come from voters, not from court orders. Americans, they argue, have “shown themselves more than capable of changing their views on gay marriage the democratic way.”

In other words, our definition of marriage should follow process, not principle. Let voters decide.

While Parker mocked the Journal’s editorial board for its “let voters decide” message, that is the exact same sentiment her allies in the Religious Right have expressed: Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage clearly stated that “we support letting voters decide this issue,” and Jeremy Dys of the Family Policy Council said “voters know that there is no legitimate reason not to let the people vote on the definition of marriage.” Apparently, anti-gay activists are only okay with voting if their side wins.

Parker went on to compare voting to legalize same-sex marriage to voting to enact slavery, arguing that they are both “evil” and lead to “moral chaos”:

In the 1850s, Stephen Douglas proposed solving the dilemma of whether slavery should be permitted in new states by suggesting that they should just vote. What could be more American than submitting the question of slavery to the democratic process of each state?

To this Abraham Lincoln observed: “God did not place good and evil before man telling him to make his choice. On the contrary, He did tell him there was one tree, of the fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of certain death. … I should scarcely wish so strong a prohibition against slavery in Nebraska.”

Lincoln’s rejoinder to the idea of “popular sovereignty” – that states should vote to determine if slavery would be legal – was that there are core truths – truths that define right and wrong, good and evil – that precede the democratic process.

To reject this premise is to buy into moral chaos, which is what we are approaching today.

The claim that somehow it is a sign of a healthy, free society that by way of the vote we can rewrite our language, our dictionary, our oldest, time-tested traditions is a sign of how lost we are.

Same-sex marriage advocates argue that their efforts will save the embattled institution of marriage. But this takes a symptom of the disease and calls it a cure.

As American society has become more self-centered and materialistic, family and marriage have been imploding.

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To deal with the crisis of the collapse of family and marriage by redefining what they are is the sign of a society losing its way.

Fortunately, America is still a free country. Individuals can make their own choices about how they choose to live.

But taking personal choices to deviate from our social standards of right and wrong, true and false, and decide to change those truths and standards, so that nothing is any longer considered deviant, is a bridge to nowhere.

After warning that the re-election of Obama will bring God’s judgment and ultimate destruction, Franklin Graham while speaking to David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network asserted that Obama’s second term will “usher in the largest changes in our society since the Civil War.” He later maintained that Obama’s re-election is proof that Americans have “turned our back on God,” and said that “we need someone like a Jerry Falwell to come back and resurrect the Moral Majority movement.”

Graham also told Brody that same-sex marriage puts society in jeopardy because it “takes the family away and there is no way you can have a family with two females or two males, if you just think biologically how God made us our plumbing is completely different.” “There is no room for us to consider gay marriage or same-sex marriage,” Graham continued, “that is redefining what God gave us.”

Fearing for the fate of our nation after the election, Pastor Kevin Swanson of Generations with Vision Ministry cautioned that socialism, homosexuality, the legalization of marijuana, and most of all, independent women will contribute to the destruction of America. Swanson emphasized that single women are “leading the charge toward socialism,” and that they have been conditioned to “think like feminists,” abandon relationships with their family and become utterly dependent on government. Women no longer seek security from their fathers and husbands, asserts Swanson, but from the government and Barack Obama. And it’s not just the single women that Swanson vilifies, but the women acquiring leadership positions. He contends that “one of the other indications that a nation is falling down…is that women are leading the nation,” citing “God’s descriptions of the breakdown of empires in the BC years.”

Remember, it’s mostly independent women that are leading the charge here. Remember that the majority of households are led by independent, single women today in America, and what is it 54% to 45% voted for the most socialist than the lesser socialist on the ballot. Our nation is being led by single women, independent women who have been trained to think like feminists, they no longer see the family as an important social unit, and their security does not come from their fathers and husbands, it comes from Barack Obama. And we’ve been saying this for the last ten years, friends, I’ve crisscrossed the nation I’ve told hundreds of thousands of people this, and of course, many of them will lead their daughters to become independent so that they will vote for Barack Obama, or somebody even more socialist in years to come.

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One of the other indications that a nation is falling down according to Isaiah 3 and Isaiah 19 is that women are leading the nation. This is clear, really, really clear from God’s descriptions of the breakdown of empires in the BC years. You’re going to get this all the way through the Old Testament…I know it’s unpopular, people don’t want to hear oh, when women lead, this is an indication that men aren’t leading and women are leading and you’re going to see a breakdown of systems and a breakdown of nations and empires. I’m sorry but that’s just the way it’s been over the last six thousand years so get over it.

Swanson, who previously implored America to revert to the biblical law of Pilgrim society where homosexuality was punishable by death, also claimed that “homosexuality is on a roll.” He attributes this to the liberal education system and the “pro-homosexual” agenda of the schools, alleging that there will be “a seven times increase in incidents of homosexuality in the 2020s and 2030s.”

Homosexuality is of course on a roll, and will be for the next twenty years at least. And we have been saying so many times, this is no surprise at all because of what’s going on in the schools, because you educate children in a pro-homosexual anti-God’s law perspective over twenty, twenty-five years, of course they’re going to be pro-homosexual. When you’ve got a liberal education system, and you’ve got a breakdown of the family…42% of these little boys are born without fathers up from six percent in 1960, of course you’re going to have a seven times increase in incidents of homosexuality in the 2020s and 2030s, you’re going to continue to see homosexual marriage on the roll.

Sandy Rios of the American Family Association invited Americans for Truth about Homosexuality president Peter LaBarbera on her radio show to discuss what went wrong with the four state ballot initiatives won by gay rights advocates. She said the problems began when Religious Right leaders such as James Dobson and the late Chuck Colson were pressured by Karl Rove and Republican establishment during the fight over the Federal Marriage Amendment to only talk about marriage but not discuss homosexuality and same-sex relationships, which she compared to using the word ‘chattel’ instead of ‘slavery.’ “They though it was okay just to protect marriage, not to talk about homosexuality, that was banned from the discussion, we could only talk about the word marriage,” Rios explained. “My point was always, if we were talking about slavery, we would say we would allow ‘chattel’ just not ‘slavery,’ ‘chattel’ is the same thing, the word doesn’t matter.”

Probably one of the most difficult battles I faced as president of Concerned Women for America was the issue of same-sex marriage. I was there during the time when Massachusetts passed it, Peter worked for me in the Culture and Family Institute and we were into this up to our knees, up to our shoulders. Let’s go back ten years and the polls were showing that people were not, there was no way they were ready to accept same-sex marriage, and not only that but they were not willing to accept legalized same-sex partnerships: no civil unions, domestic partnerships, they were sill wildly unpopular in polls. So when we pushed for a federal marriage amendment that would outlaw acknowledging through law any kind of same-sex coupling, we had all the stats on our side and that’s what we were pushing for.

But the Republican establishment pushed back, Karl Rove pushed back, and he managed to pressure some people that we all love and respect dearly here in Washington, D.C., to buckle, I would include Chuck Colson, who I love dearly, I would include James Dobson, they decided that it was enough to protect the word marriage. That was the battle. They though it was okay just to protect marriage, not to talk about homosexuality, that was banned from the discussion, we could only talk about the word marriage. My point was always, if we were talking about slavery, we would say we would allow ‘chattel’ just not ‘slavery,’ ‘chattel’ is the same thing, the word doesn’t matter.

She even tied the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to the scandal surrounding David Petraues, saying that more military officials will be “distracted with issues of sexuality” and the country “will be less protected.” Later, Rios argued that homosexuality itself causes depression, high suicide rates and violence and that a “tragic” consequence of the gay rights movement “is the gay community itself,” which she described as a dysfunctional and sad place. LaBarbera, meanwhile, said that the “the Glee kiss that was on national TV” told him “that America was in deep, deep trouble” as gay rights supporters are “taking away the natural revulsion that most people have or used to have toward homosexual behavior.”

Rios: The military is going to transform tremendously and I don’t think when men are distracted with issues of sexuality, just like David Petraeus just had to step down because he was having a long term affair after as far as I can see did a terrible job of overseeing Benghazi, perhaps because he was distracted, we can expect we will be less protected. Peter, take it from there, what other things do you see coming?

LaBarbera: It’s just unbelievable Sandy that young people are going to be exposed to more and more homosexual behavior. I keep going back to the Glee kiss that was on national TV, that told me that America was in deep, deep trouble. We had two boys kissing for twenty or thirty seconds in a romantic set up on Fox’s Glee during prime time. It’s getting so bad that they’re taking away the natural revulsion that most people have or used to have toward homosexual behavior. To understand the homosexual agenda it’s this pathological drive for acceptance and they will use the government to force acceptance on people if necessary. There’s a drive by people practicing homosexuality, trying to rationalize that sin, I believe that deep down at least at one point they knew it was a sin but they are trying to overcome that. So that’s why we see this tremendous push in the corporate world, in society by government, to push the acceptance of homosexuality on people and it will reach the church, it already has, and it will only get worse like you said.

Rios: I would be remiss without saying this, what I always say, because I believe it with all my heart, one of the most tragic results of this is the gay community itself. The men who are dying early of diseases, who are having their hearts broken over and over again because it’s not satisfying, men are not meant to be with men and women are not meant to be with women, so there’s depression, and you know people who date and break up and date and break up, this is what happens: rejections, suicide rate and violence.

Pastor Kenneth Hutcherson is blaming leading conservative groups for sidelining him in the unsuccessful campaign to overturn Washington state’s marriage equality, and while speaking to Sandy Rios and Fred Jackson of the American Family Association said that churches who aren’t involved in anti-gay campaigns are “an abomination to God.” Hutcherson also reassured Rios, who predicted that Obama will “bring in gay marriage nationally” and “human misery,” not to feel discouraged and to remember that he is the “gayest guy you know.” “I am sick and tired of the homosexuals taking words that God has given us, I am sick and tired of the homosexual community taking our rainbow,” he said, calling on the “evangeli-fish” in the Religious Right to stop being “irrelevant” and “sissified” in the culture wars.

Rios: Dr. Hutcherson, I know that it’s hard for all of us to fight human discouragement, how could we not be, you know four defeats on the marriage amendments and all the other propositions, plus we know that another Barack Obama four years I think is going to bring in gay marriage nationally and so many other things, huge debt, I think we’re going to see human misery. From a spiritual standpoint, Christians are going to suffer some real persecution, I think. So this human discouragement, there’s human reality that we have to face, but speak to us if you will as a pastor, are you there yet? Are you still filled with discouragement this morning? Are you there yet? Are you ready to speak to us as a pastor?

Hutcherson: I think the first thing we are going to have to do to really be discouraged is to speak to the church. I have been preaching and pushing and talking unity till I am blue in the face and you guys know how black I am in the face. I have continued to look that God is still on the throne, this is not a man’s decision in these elections, there is no way in the world that we should have had the votes that we had. So I am praying that we really get in the face of the church, really get in the face of the conservative leaders, really get in the face of churches. We have major churches out here that did not stand up, did not even raise a finger to defeat this whole thing on same-sex marriage and that is just an abomination to God.

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Hutcherson: Don’t forget guys, when you think about pastor Hutcherson out here, think about the gayest guy you know, I am sick and tired of the homosexuals taking words that God has given us, I am sick and tired of the homosexual community taking our rainbow when God gave us that promise that He would not destroy the earth with water again. We have just become irrelevant, we are just sissified, we are evangeli-fish with no spiritual vertebrae and we need to wake up.