What Will Happen If America Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage? - Program 1

Five False Assumptions about Marriage and Children

Introduction

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. We’re talking about the truth about same-sex marriage. We have two great guests. And I know that we have a diverse audience that is watching. Possibly you are against same-sex marriages. Some of you may be living homosexually right now. And some of you may be somewhere in the middle: you don’t know what you believe.

I think we’ve got something for each one of you. And we want you to listen. And hopefully we’re going to present this information in a way that you’ll be able to understand it and that will help you.

Now, we’re talking about, what should the definition of marriage be in this country? Should it be limited to one man and one woman? Or should we change it? That’s the topic that’s for discussion.

And I want to set the parameters of what we’re talking about. This, as you know, touches the political arena; it touches our ethical arena, the morality that we’re going to have in our country. It touches what we’re going to do in terms of what we think about a man, what we think about a woman. And it’s going to affect our children. So this is very, very crucial.

Now, we’ve got two great guests that can talk about this, and we’re glad that they’re here today. Glenn T. Stanton is the Senior Analyst for Marriage and Sexuality at Focus on the Family. And Glenn, we’re glad you’re here.

Glenn T. Stanton: Good to be with you.

Ankerberg: And our old buddy, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago, IL. And they’ve both written books on this topic. Erwin’s got a book, The Truth About Same-Sex Marriage: Six Things You Need to Know About What’s Really at Stake. And Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage by Glenn T. Stanton.

And guys, we’re glad that you’re here.

Erwin, I’d like to start with you. In your book you had a quote where you said, if we legalize homosexual marriage: 1) we’re going to destroy marriage as we know it; 2) it’ll hurt our children and our grandchildren; 3) it will dehumanize women and men; and 4) it’ll take away our religious freedom.

I want to start with that area of religious freedom, because our people, I’m not sure understand why religious freedom would be at stake here if we legalize same-sex marriage. Explain that.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: John, this is very important. An Assistant State’s Attorney spoke to me and put it this way. He said, until now the church has always had a niche where it could exercise freedom of religion. But once same-sex marriage becomes legalized and becomes constitutional, it will no longer have that niche, because it will be unconstitutional for churches to deny people of the same sex if they want to be married.

And if we want to know how this can come about, all that we need to know is what is happening in Canada. You know, Bill C-250 has already been approved by the Legislature. I was up in Canada three weeks ago, and I was talking to Canadian pastors and I said, “Can you still speak against homosexuality in your churches? Can you read Romans 1 and comment on it?” And the answer that I received from one pastor was, “Yes, until the first court case.” And these pastors do not believe that the liberal courts in Canada will uphold freedom of speech.

Perhaps I can put it this way. A lesbian attorney in Canada said, very candidly, that the real issue is between freedom of religion and gay rights. And what she was saying is that both cannot co-exist. And so freedom of religion has to give way to the liberal agenda. This is very, very serious.

You know, we hear about the tax exempt status of churches being taken away if we don’t perform same-sex marriages, and I think already in Sweden—and maybe Glenn can comment on that—in Sweden, we have examples of exactly what will happen when same-sex marriages become legalized.

Ankerberg: Yes, in World magazine, Glenn, I read that article about… Well, you tell the story about a pastor, wasn’t it?

Stanton: A pastor in Sweden preached a sermon. And in that sermon he spoke against homosexuality. And it’s interesting, a couple of weeks later, it wasn’t anybody that was in the church—somebody had heard about it who wasn’t even at the service, went to the police, went to the authorities and complained. And the authorities in Sweden brought this pastor in for questioning, not for anything that he did against anybody, for words he spoke in a sermon. And that pastor is in jail now, for a month, for something he said.

And it’s important to understand what Bill C-250 is in Canada. It wasn’t too long ago that Canada passed same-sex marriage, and then just a couple of months after that they passed Bill C-250, which criminalized hate speech against homosexuals. It says that if you say something that could be deemed mean or hateful against homosexuals, you could spend up to two years in prison. Two years in prison! Not for physically harming anybody or slandering anybody, but simply saying something that is unfashionable against homosexuals.

And we could deal with the same thing here. It’s really quite simple how that would happen, and you laid it out very nicely. If same-sex marriage is seen as a fundamental human right, then there are going to be activist couples who go to your church and say, “Pastor, will you marry us?” And you’re going to say, “No, I’m sorry, we don’t believe in same-sex marriage. You’ll have to go elsewhere.”

They’re going to go straight down to the local ACLU office and they’re going to say, “Doesn’t Church XYZ on the corner have tax exempt status from the federal government?”

“Well, yes, they do.”

“Well, they denied us our fundamental human rights!”

The ACLU is going to be on you so fast! And the churches are going to be threatened with losing their tax exempt status because they do not endorse and do not perform same-sex marriages. It’s going to happen. And it’s already happening around the world.

Ankerberg: Okay, so the question I want to talk to our people about is, we’ve seen this happening in Canada; we’ve seen it happen in Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Belgium. Now we’re debating the topic here in America, and where are we at in the debate?

Let’s start with the fact that before Massachusetts did their thing and found this constitutional right and they started okaying gay marriages in Massachusetts and a bunch went there, went back to the states. Before that even took place, some of our other states, I think at least 33 of them, they, the state legislatures, saw this coming. And the state legislatures said, “Let’s pass laws that says if any other state pulls the trigger and they make it legal in their state for people to be married, this constitutional phrase, namely if you do something in one state it should be accepted in the other states, it’s not going to happen here in regards to same-sex marriage.”

So 33 of them passed what is called a Defense of Marriage Act, saying if some state pulls the trigger, it will not be legal here. Okay. Five other states actually voted on it.

Stanton: Right.

Ankerberg: Tell us the states, because this is really something here.

Stanton: Well, it’s an overwhelming majority of states that have done this and have said—and it’s exactly because of this threat—that if some other state legalizes same-sex marriage, people get married there and then come back to their home state and try to force a change among all the rest of us—we want to have it codified in our law that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. And only a few of these states have done it constitutionally. All the rest of the states have done it legislatively through their law.

And they’re vulnerable now, because if a court says that this is a fundamental human right, then that trumps state law. So the DOMA’s as we call them, these Defense of Marriage Acts, that are in a great plurality of states, really are vulnerable under judicial usurpation, these judges saying, “You know what, this is what marriage is going to be about: it’s going to be about any grouping of people who we think it might be.”

Ankerberg: What got me is the five states that actually voted on it.

Stanton: Yes!

Ankerberg: Okay? You’ve got California, Erwin! Hawaii, Alaska, Nebraska and Nevada. And the majority of people in those states voted it down…

Stanton: Overwhelmingly.

Ankerberg: …and said, “We want traditional marriage.” So that which you cannot pass with a vote, and that which 33 other states, through the Legislature, said, “We don’t want,”—that would be 38 states—okay? Now it’s in jeopardy. Why? Tell us what happened in Massachusetts.

Stanton: Well, it’s really the wishes and desires of an elite group of judges against the people. As you well pointed out, you know, the American people have spoken clearly through the legislative process and through the voting process. They do not want same-sex marriage. But what we’ve got in Massachusetts, in November 2003, really it came down to one judge—very thin majority on the court—saying that same-sex marriage is a fundamental human right; and that the law, as it has existed since the beginning of the colonies in Massachusetts, is unconstitutional and somehow rooted in what they said was animus toward homosexuality; and that that was wrong and that we’re going to have a new definition of marriage, and that’s going to be that it could be between two men, two women, whatever we want it to be.

And so it’s this small group of judges, as I say you could put them in a minivan and take them anywhere! They are imposing upon all of us, really a radical new definition of marriage that very few of us are comfortable with.

Ankerberg: Alright, now talk about what happened in the Senate.

Stanton: Well, recently, the Senate took this question up. And this was really the first hurdle or the first question to determine the Senate’s resolve in protecting marriage. And this was all about the Federal Marriage Amendment, the FMA. And this would be a constitutional amendment to the United States Constitution to define marriage to be what it always has been in this country and in most other countries, and that is, a relationship of one man and one woman.

And the Senate did not have the resolve to support that kind of amendment. Most of the Senators said, “Oh, yes, we believe in marriage; we believe in the sanctity of marriage; and marriage ought to be between a man and a woman; but we really can’t support this amendment.”

Ankerberg: Yeah. The bottom line was 52 voted against it and 48 voted for it.

Stanton: That’s exactly right.

Ankerberg: Okay, so then after that, the Congress, just before they all went home on vacation, they passed a little amendment saying, “Listen, we’re going to support those DOMA’s,” the states that have already created the Defense of Marriage Acts. You’ve got the Congress backing the states, and the states already have either voted or passed legislation. But now this thing has already happened in Massachusetts, and I’ve heard that there’s like 48 couples that have gone from Massachusetts, that were married in Massachusetts, they’ve gone back to 48 different states. They’ve already filed lawsuits, many of them, in those states that are in the pipeline going toward the Supreme Court, to challenge the DOMAs.

Stanton: Exactly. Right.

Ankerberg: And the question is, when we get to the Supreme Court, okay? What’s the Supreme Court going to do? Are they going to uphold what the states have voted on, or the State Legislatures have passed, or the Congress has recommended, and the Senate says “Oh, I think we’re all for this”? Or, do you,… What do you think they’re going to do?

Stanton: Well, we know what they’re going to do pretty much…

Ankerberg: Tell us.

Stanton: …and that is what they did last summer. Last summer they had a case before them about a Texas law which said that sodomy was against the law. And the constitutionality of that law—and this was a law that was passed by the Legislature of Texas. And other states had similar sorts of laws. And the Supreme Court decided last year, in its Lawrence Decision, that this was an unconstitutional law. It struck the state law down. And all the other state laws say you can’t have a law that prevents people from doing this. Because, in effect what they said was sodomy, if you can believe this, is a constitutional right! I doubt the Founding Fathers had that in mind when they wrote our Constitution!

Ankerberg: Okay, so if the Supreme Court’s already found a constitutional right to sodomy, the fact is that when you get to this area of, are they going to okay same-sex marriage, the options are that most likely they will.

Stanton: Smart money would be on that they’re going to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Ankerberg: Okay, and that was why President Bush said, “Look, we need to have a constitutional amendment.” And yet, now we’re bogged down because, the Senate, first time around said, “No.”

Stanton: Yes.

Ankerberg: And the fact is, it’s going to be debated in the political arena. But our people need to know what? What’s the bottom line?

Stanton: They need to understand that our United States Constitution is going to be changed one way or the other. Either a very small handful of unelected, unaccountable judges are going to write radical family redefinition into our Constitution, or the American people can have the say through the Federal Marriage Amendment process, and state themselves that “We believe, constitutionally, marriage ought to be between a man and a woman.”

Ankerberg: Alright, now this is just the legal parameters of what we’re facing. But this does not get down to the main issue of, “What should we do?” And that’s a question where you’ve already written [Stanton], and you’ve written [Lutzer]. The fact is that this is going to affect the way we look at men and the way we look at women. Because the women that are lesbians that say, “Look, we just want to have same-sex marriage between two women—we don’t need you men.” And the gays are saying, “Look, we have two guys—we don’t need you women.” So they’re not important.

The question is, how does this affect our children? And is it really true, according to the social studies and the sciences that we’ve seen, that this is what they’re saying it is? Or will it actually harm our society?

And when we come back we’re going to take some of these questions, but we’re going to take the number 1 question and that is, “Look, if I’ve been created gay, if I’m automatically gay coming up in my life and I don’t know anything else but my gayness or my homosexuality, then wouldn’t it be against my civil rights for you guys to forbid me from marrying?”

Okay? We’re going to take that question when we come right back. Stick with us.

Ankerberg: Alright, we’re back. We’re talking with Glenn Stanton from Focus on the Family, and Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago. And we’re talking about The Truth About Same-Sex Marriage.

Two questions are on the boards, guys: Number 1 is, if we do oppose having same-sex marriages legalized in this country, having a constitutional amendment passed, gays would come back and say, if we do that, aren’t we forbidding, writing into the Constitution an amendment that denies the gays, the lesbians the right of civil marriage, and we’d be saying it’s okay for heterosexuals but not for gays and lesbians; so we would be reserving it for one and denying it to the other, we’re actually opposed to their civil rights. What do you say to that?

Stanton: Yes, it’s real simple: homosexuals do have a right to marry in the United States. And there are plenty of homosexuals that are married, as marriage is defined, not just in this country but in all other countries: a relationship between a man and a women. Okay?

No homosexual shows up to get married and they ask him their orientation. If you’re getting married under the law, the state doesn’t care about your orientation. They just care about what marriage is. So we need to understand that this is not just about the right to get married. Homosexuals already have that. Heterosexuals and homosexuals can marry under the law. No heterosexual, no homosexual, can marry somebody of the same sex—it applies to both groups equally.

This is about the right or the ability to radically alter permanently, or change the definition of marriage to really say that husband and wife, mother and father, really do not matter. And no one has the civil right to do that.

Ankerberg: Yes. We don’t have time to cover all the arguments for this because we’re going to spend a whole program on this topic. Let’s take the spiritual side of it. Somebody says, “Hey, Erwin, I was created gay. The fact is, God would be sadistic if He doesn’t let me express my love for somebody else that I love.”

Lutzer: First of all, John, we need to point out that we have certain requirements to get a driver’s license. And if you don’t meet those requirements, we don’t have a whole group of people over here who say, “You know, you’re denying my constitutional rights.” You just don’t meet the requirements.

Now, as far as God saying, “Well, you know, because of the fact that you were created gay…”. I don’t know if we have time on this program to talk about that, but nobody is created gay. Let’s remember that everyone is born either masculine or feminine. And gays and lesbians express their femininity and masculinity in a way that is inconsistent with the Creator.

But getting back to the issue of marriage. You think of all the heterosexual young people, or older people, who are unmarried. Obviously there are many people who can’t marry for a number of different reasons. They may not find a sufficient spouse that really meets their needs; there are different reasons, maybe physical reasons, that they don’t marry. These people have to live also without marriage. So we’re not making a special category there for lesbians and gays.

The simple fact is that marriage is not some kind of a right. It is a privilege, but it isn’t some kind of a right that people can demand if they don’t meet the conditions of marriage. And that, I think, is very, very important.

Ankerberg: Yes. Touch on this things that the sciences… I’ve interviewed LeVay out at the Salk Institute, and I remember doing research on Pillard at Northwestern. And LeVay was talking about the hypothalamus gland in the brain. And the fact is, it seemed to have evidence that showed that homosexuality was genetically given. But then he came to the point of saying, “No, that’s not true.” Pillard, the same thing.

There were basically three studies in the ‘90s. Touch on those briefly, because we’re going to spend a whole program on those.

Stanton: Right. Those studies got a whole lot of media attention. And the media was saying that they showed that homosexuality was rooted in genetics; that it was fixed, and that nature enforced it. But you know what? Each of those researchers have told us that no, their studies did not prove that. In fact, it’s not for wont of trying, but there has been no study, no scientific study, no academic study, nor any court in the United States that has found that homosexuality is rooted in nature, or is genetic or fixed, that we’re born that way.

You know what? It’s a function of environmental and psychological issues. It’s certainly not rooted in nature. And no study, no academic researcher, has found evidence that that is the case.

Ankerberg: We’re also going to spend time in talking about that there has been no culture in world history that has ever mandated or had homosexuality as the standard in their society.

Stanton: That is exactly right. Or raised kids in same-sex homes, opposite or exclusive of a mother and a father. Every society raises kids with mothers and fathers. So we need to understand that this is a very vast and untested social experiment that we are about to subject a whole generation of children to.

Ankerberg: Also we’re going to look at that the social research shows how much it hurts children. And we’re saying that, even in terms of the genders, we have all these beautiful love stories, and so on, that the social sciences show that a love between a man and a woman really is something; it’s beneficial to their health, their happiness, their job, to all kinds of things. And to the children; they need both a mother and a father, and there’s certain things that both give. And it’s just amazing the research that most people don’t know about. We’re going to spend time on that.

Erwin, we’re out of time. We need to talk about the fact of, we said we have a diverse audience that are watching. And I’ve had friends, you’ve had friends, that have surprised us, and said, “You know, I’ve been involved in homosexuality; I’ve been involved in lesbianism; and I’m struggling with this thing. I am a Christian, but I’m struggling this thing.” And they’re watching. And this becomes a load on them.

There’s other people that are saying, “Well, listen, I’ve never even heard that people could change, or that Christ really would accept a person that’s in the lifestyle here.”

Give a word of hope here, because I want them to hear that above all.

Lutzer: And John, I know we have only time for about a word of hope here, but I encourage people, no matter what level that they are struggling with: heterosexual or homosexual, we are all sinners. We, as a church have failed the gay community oftentimes by stressing homosexuality as some great sin and oftentimes overlooking adultery and pornography.

We all come to Jesus Christ as sinners, and Jesus Christ might create within us different desires. There may be others who continue to struggle with homosexuality, and God calls them to celibacy.

But for now, on the end of this program, all that I can do is to urge you to come to Jesus Christ as you are. Come as a homosexual. Come as a heterosexual. You don’t have to change to come to Jesus for forgiveness, for cleansing, and for a new nature. He’s there to give it to you: “As many as received Him, to those He gives the power to become the sons of God, even to those who believe on His name” [John 1:12].

So I end today by urging you, come to the risen Christ for forgiveness and help.

Ankerberg: Yes. People haven’t understood this whole idea that when you need help, that’s why you come to Christ! Because you can’t do it without Him. You need His help. And the fact is, I would suggest that as well.

Next week, we’re going to talk about, how did we get to this point? What has been the gay agenda, that they have put in print, of how to change the thinking in America? And we’re going to talk about the thoughts they have put into our minds. And we’re going to talk about what the sciences actually say about those thoughts. It’s a fascinating topic, and I hope that you’ll join us.