Frank Turek lectures on the case against same-sex marriage

About the speaker Frank Turek:

Dr. Frank Turek is the author or coauthor of five books, including I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God:  Why Atheists Need God to make their Case. As the President of CrossExamined.org, Frank presents evidence for Christianity at churches, high schools, and secular college campuses. He has also debated several prominent atheists including Christopher Hitchens and Michael Shermer, Founding Publisher of Skeptic Magazine. Frank hosts an hour-long TV program each week called I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist which is broadcast Wednesday nights on DirecTV Channel 378 (NRBTV). His radio program and podcast called I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist with Frank Turek airs on 182 stations every Saturday morning at 10 a.m. eastern and is available continuously on the free CrossExamined App.

Frank Turek is one of my favorite speakers, and I admire him for being willing to take a public stand on controversial issues like gay marriage. He’s actually had to pay a price for that in his professional life, and I blogged about that before.

Here’s the lecture on gay marriage, featuring Christian apologist Frank Turek.

Outline:

Introduction:

• how to present your case against marriage safely
• Christians are required to go beyond tolerance
• loving another person can mean opposing the person when they want to do something wrong, even if they hate you
• what did Jesus say about marriage? (see Matt 19:4-6)
• what did Jesus say about sexual morality? (Matt 15, Matt 19)

Summary:

• the same-sex marriage debate is about whether to compel people who disagree with the gay lifestyle to validate and normalize it
• P1: the government has an interest in marriage because it perpetuates and stabilizes society – this is the purpose of marriage
• P2-4: government can take 3 kinds of stances towards behaviors: promote, permit or prohibit
• government promotes behaviors when it has an interest in them
• same-sex relationships should be permitted, but not promoted
• Q1: if same-sex marriage had serious negative consequences, would you reconsider their position?
• Q2: are heterosexual relationships the same as homosexual relationships?
• Q3: what would society be like if everyone married according to the natural marriage definition: one woman, one man, for life?
• Q4: what would society be like if everyone married according to the same-sex marriage definition: man/man and woman/woman?
• Should Christians care about law and politics? or should they just preach the gospel?
• They should care because people often get their cues about what is moral and immoral based on what is legal and illegal
• Many of the social problems we see today can be traced back to problems with marriage and family
• Children do much better when they have a relationship with their mother and their father
• Same-sex marriage necessarily destroys the relationship between a child and its mother or its father
• When a country embraces same-sex marriage, it reinforces the idea that marriage is not about making and raising children
• same-sex marriage shifts the focus away from the needs of the children to the feelings of desires of the selfish adults
• does homosexuality impose any health and mental health risks?
• what has the impact of legalizing same-sex marriage been in Massachusetts to individuals, schools, businesses and charities?
• how same-sex marriage poses a threat to religious liberty
• how should you respond to the view that homosexuality is genetic?

And at the very end, he shows this short video, which is only 5 minutes and explains the logic of opposing the redefinition of marriage:

My biggest concern is religious liberty, and we are seeing how same-sex marriage has proven to be incompatible with religious liberty. But I also care about children… I want them to have mothers and fathers who put their needs first. Marriage is about a commitment – it is the subjugation of feelings and desires to responsibilities and obligations. It is a promise. A promise to commit to love your spouse and children regardless of feelings and desires. It requires more self-denial, self-control and self-sacrifice. Not less.