Welcome back, friends, to the Line of Fire Broadcast. Michael Brown, yes, here to infuse you with faith and truth, encouraged to help you stand strong on the frontline. If you're not getting our frontline newsletter, which will encourage you, build your faith, bless you, equip you, be sure to sign up right now. Go to TheLineOfFire.org.
TheLineOfFire.org. We're going to do something unique today, but I want to go back to 2011. That's when my book, A Queer Thing Happened to America, was published. Subtitled, What a Long Strange Trip it's Been. I bounced that title off of different gay activists, lesbian folks that I met.
It's different settings, interacted with them. They thought it was a great title. They thought it was clever. Christian publishers were scandalized by it because they thought I was using the word in a derogatory way, queer, which of course I would not do. It was that the words become mainstream. Remember years back, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? The Queer Eye cast throughout the opening ceremony at Fenway Park one day. Go back to 2003 and read about queer being mainstreamed and stuff like that.
It was obviously a double entendre, but it was meant to be fun and clever. Anyone could read it. The book does not presuppose religious background.
700 pages, 1500 endnotes. No major publisher would touch it Christian or secular. We had to start our own publishing house, Equal Time Books, and publish the book ourselves. Subsequently, I had three Christian publishers come and apologize to me and say, we're sorry that we missed the opportunity.
By God's grace, it's been used to touch many over the years. When the book came out, I gave a public offer and said, listen, I will debate any subject in the book. It's quite comprehensive and it did not presuppose religious or spiritual background. I will debate any subject in the book with anyone that's qualified because you want the debate to be fair.
If you're going to do a debate, you want it to be fair to both sides. We couldn't get open doors. I spoke to Christian leaders in different cities and said, hey, could you see if you could arrange something on your campus? They would go talk to campus leaders and Christian campus leaders said, no, we can't touch that.
It's too hot. We can't touch the subject. It would upset things on the campus. Some even said, if you try to bring it on the campus, we will stop it. Christian groups, because they did not want to lose their status on campus and they thought I was going to disrupt things. I said to them, listen, if you let me come in, it will build bridges.
If you let me come in, the way I'll present will open doors. But we had all kinds of resistance. Finally, a door opened at a university in Florida, one of the biggest campuses and universities in the country, and there was a professor there who challenged me, a gentleman named Eric Smaugh, and he wanted to debate me on same-sex marriage. Should it be legal?
Remember, this is 2011. Florida had clearly stated it should not be legal. It is not real marriage. It was before the Supreme Court outrageously overturned the definition of marriage. And we agreed to debate the subject, but not using the Bible. In other words, this was just a secular discussion, a secular argument. Now, it's 14 minutes long, the opening statement. We're not going to play the entire debate. You can just search for it on our YouTube channel.
Just search for Dr. Michael Brown and Eric Smaugh, S-M-A-W, on YouTube and you'll find it. So I want you to see how I presented this, how I laid these things out, just to give you an idea of an argument that we have without even using scripture. So we've used scripture, scripture, scripture, scripture.
That's our foundation. But when we're talking to someone in the secular realm, we have an argument as well against redefining marriage. Now, oddly enough, Professor Smaugh said we're not going to discuss polygamy or anything like that because my question is, well, why limit it to two? Why not three or four or five? Why not throuples? We're hearing more and more about throuples over the years.
If marriage is not the union of one man and one woman, why just two? So we didn't get into that in depth. Of course, I did raise some of those arguments. So what I want to do is I want to play the entire 14-minute content for you. Before I do that, let me right now, we'll do a different order than we normally do. Let me take a quick break, bring you a special announcement for you, and then we'll come right back and go into the opening statement. Staying active is essential for your well-being, whether you're at the gym, strolling in the park or enjoying hobbies.
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So call now 1-800-771-5584, 1-800-771-5584, or online at trivita.com. Alright, welcome back. This is Michael Brown, blessed to be with you today as we do our best to equip you and empower you so you can engage on the front lines as we are all in the Line of Fire together. This is my 2011 debate from Florida Central University there. Same-sex quote marriage shouldn't be legal. My 14-minute opening statement.
Well, thanks so much for coming out tonight. I want to thank Dr. Small for participating in this debate. I appreciate the work of our moderator and I want to thank UCF campus and leadership for providing a forum for this debate. It's an important debate and it's a debate that we need to have. If we think for a moment, 31 states have passed laws upholding historic marriage. Four states have passed laws in favor of same-sex marriage. California is presently deeply divided over the issue. Our president has said he won't defend DOMA anymore, Defensive Marriage Act. Recent polls indicate that opinion towards same-sex marriage is more favorable than it's ever been before. So this is a debate that we need to have.
My hope is that Dr. Small and I can present things tonight in such a way so as to provide a model for how we can have civil and respectful dialogue in the midst of a volatile issue. I want to say what this debate is not about. It's not about what the Bible says about homosexual practice. It's not about the separation of church and state. It's not about whether gays and lesbians can be good citizens, whether they can have loving relationships, whether they can be dedicated parents. It's not about what two or more adults do in the privacy of their home or who they choose to live their lives with. It's not even about gay civil rights. And it's certainly not about which speaker can push the most emotionally charged buttons or is a sharper dresser.
I think I lost that one tonight. The debate is not about whether I or proponents of historic marriage care about gays and lesbians. If I didn't care, I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't take every opportunity I can to interact with the LGBT community so they can share their heart and their perspective with me. Nor is this debate about whether heterosexuals have done a terrible job in recent years with marriage, with rampant no fault divorce and promiscuity and pornography and other problems. There's no debate about that. We've done a mess. We've made things into a mess.
No question about it. Tonight's debate is about the meaning of marriage. And since marriage throughout human history has not been the committed union of two or more people, but rather the committed union of a man and woman for reasons I'm about to explain, same sex marriage should not be legal simply because it is not marriage. And there's no compelling reason for the state to change the meaning of the most fundamental of all social institutions. Not only so, but if we redefine marriage to be the union of any two people, we'll have no defense against other radical redefinitions of marriage. In fact, such radical redefinitions of marriage are being fought for in the courts today in America and abroad. So to be totally plain, of course I understand how volatile this issue is. If you're a gay or lesbian or a gay lesbian ally, for you, this is the ultimate slap in the face.
You can't marry the person you love. This is the ultimate discrimination making you into a second class citizen. This is the ultimate attack on your personhood, something this intimate, something this important.
I understand that. And for those who are proponents of historic marriage, this is wrestling and messing with the foundations. This is tampering with the very meaning of family.
This is separating a child from either a mother or father for life. These are highly charged issues. Again, that's why we need to have this debate. In today's society, there are plenty of religious institutions that are more than happy to perform same sex commitment ceremonies. And there are plenty of gay and lesbian couples who have lived together for decades all around America. No one here is arguing with that issue tonight. The question is, why should the government change the definition of marriage?
And that leads to another question. Why should the government even care about marriage? What in the world does a loving romantic relationship have to do with the state? When we understand that, then we understand why same sex marriage is not marriage. The reason the state conveys benefits on marriage is because marriage conveys benefits on the state. Author Frank Turek asked this, for what secular purpose does government recognize traditional marriage? Traditional marriage promotes public goods. It domesticates men. It protects women.
It provides a nurturing environment for children. Last week, there was testimony before the House of Representatives regarding the Defense of Marriage Act. And an expert witness stated this, and I quote, Marriage is the union of husband and wife for a reason. These are the only unions that create new life and connect those children in love to their mother and father. This is not necessarily the reason why an individual person marries. Individuals marry for a hundred private and personal reasons, for good reasons and less good reasons. The public purpose of marriage is the reason why society creates laws around marriage.
Here the great public purpose of marriage has always been responsible procreation, rooted in the need to protect children by uniting them with the man and woman who made them. Let's face it, a government license for romantic unions is a strange idea. Adults intimate relationships in our legal tradition are typically nobody else's business.
The more intimate and personal adult relationship is the less likely the law to be involved. Why then is the government involved in marriage? The answer in our society and in virtually every known human society is that the society recognizes there is an urgent need to bring together men and women to make and raise the next generation together. Marriage is a private desire that serves an urgent public good. Marriage is a virtually universal human institution. Every human society has to grapple with three persistent facts about human beings everywhere. Sex makes babies, societies need babies, babies deserve a father as well as a mother.
So can I speak plainly, not as a professor or lecturer, can I speak plainly? Everything about marriage, says male and female, and no matter how much we try to get used to it, there's still something wrong, still something doesn't fit when you talk about her wife or his husband. Or marital ceremony where you say I now pronounce you husband and husband or wife or spouse and spouse. And I was not impressed at all in a recent lesbian ceremony where it was bride and broom, broom being the new word to substitute for bride and groom together.
Just saying the words I now pronounce you husband and husband, wife and wife is really enough. So there's a profound reason why marriage has always been about uniting a man and woman together in lifelong commitment, in sexual intimacy, and as a general rule, childbearing. The two opposites making a new wonderful whole and laying the foundation for the next generation. And whereas it is the exception to the rule for a heterosexual couple to be unable to produce their own children, the societal laws are based on the rule, not the exception. It is the rule without exception for a homosexual couple to not be able to produce children, and I don't say that gloatingly, but sadly. There is unique and obvious biological compatibility between a man and a woman, and for those who believe in a creator, you can ask what did he have in mind when he created male and female. And there's unique and obvious emotional and temperamental compatibility between a man and a woman. And male plus male, or female plus female, can never equal male plus female.
If you want equality, it has to be equal parts. In fact, because the tempering effect of the female is absent from male-male relationships, so-called open monogamy is commonly practiced among gay men. And there's no evidence that same-sex marriage has reduced this trend. This is just another reminder to us that marriage is not simply the combination of any two people, but rather the merging of a man and woman into one couple, and in most cases, their own family. Now that Spain has legalized same-sex marriage, you no longer have mother and father on the birth certificate, but progenitor A and progenitor B. Is that progress?
Is that something to celebrate? Radically redefining marriage means that children raised in such households are guaranteed to have either no father or no mother, leading to the question, which sex is dispensable, female or male? And for those of you who were raised by a mother and father, which one of those two could you do without? The implications of this are profound.
As noted by Dawn Stefanowich, whose father was openly homosexual, what makes it so hard for a girl to grow up with a gay father is that she never gets to see him honoring, loving, or protecting the women in his life. And that makes a tremendous difference in a young woman's life. So male plus male, female plus female can never equal male plus female. And to this day, despite all of our scientific advances in fertility, every human being is the product of a male and a female, and there is no other way.
And I want to press this point again. We're talking about the government redefining the very nature of marriage. And since the government has neither the obligation nor the interest to sanction or give special status to every romantic or sexual relationship, what is the compelling reason for the government to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples?
There's none. And to say that it's a matter of equality presupposes that same-sex couples are exactly the same as heterosexual couples, which is clearly not the case. Let's focus now again on the question of the components of marriage. If marriage is simply the union of two people rather than the union of a man and a woman, why should we limit it to just two? Don't say, well, that's icky because some people feel homosexual relationships are icky.
We're going to have to do better than just saying it's icky. Please tell me why marriage should be the union of just two people. What's so magical about the number two if it's not the union of male and female? Tell me if you agree with this statement. This is by an advocate with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Quote, do you agree with this? Consenting adults have the right, the charter protected right to form the families they want to form. Do you agree with that statement? Well, she was arguing for polygamy.
Are you willing to fight for marriage equality for polygamists? Late last year, Columbia University professor David Epstein was charged with carrying on a three-year consensual affair with his adult daughter. His attorney, Matthew Galuzzo, commented it's OK for homosexuals to do whatever they want in their own home. How is this so different? We have to figure out why some behavior is tolerated and some is not.
And students who were commenting on Columbia University's student newspaper website said this. Why is consensual incest a crime? It might not be appealing to everyone, but if they're adults and they consent, who cares what they do? In an interview with the Huffington Post, Galuzzo also questioned whether, quote, prosecuting incest was intellectually consistent with the repeal of anti-sodomy laws that resulted from Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. And he asserted that what goes on between consenting adults in private should not be legislated, because the bedroom is not the proper domain of the law.
Do you agree with that? There are now even scientists who have identified what they call GSA, genetic sexual attraction, where people who are connected by blood, in other words, close relatives, may be attracted to each other. Should they have the right to their sexual orientation of incest? You say, look, polygamy is abusive to women, incest can produce handicapped children, but that still doesn't answer why marriage shouldn't include such possibilities. At least Newsweek said polyamory is the new sexual revolution. Traditionalists better get used to it.
You've got at least half a million families like this in America. Do we now introduce that in the schools? Marriage equality, we've got to be consistent. Tamper with the foundations of human society with the definition of marriage and everything else will be affected. Now, I'm not sure if Dr. Small will argue that gay is the new black, that sexual orientation is akin to skin color, innate and immutable, that just as it was bigoted and wrong to have laws against interracial marriage, it is bigoted and wrong to have laws against same-sex marriage, but this argument, as emotionally compelling as it may seem to be, is hopelessly flawed. As Dennis Prager observed, there are enormous differences between men and women, but there are no fundamental differences between people of different races. Men and women are inherently different, but blacks and whites and yellows and browns are inherently the same.
Therefore, any imposed separation by race can never be moral or even rational. On the other hand, separation by sex can be morally desirable and rational. Separate bathrooms for men and women is moral and rational.
Separate bathrooms for blacks and whites is not. A black man's nature is not different from that of a white man, an Asian man, a Hispanic man. The same is not true of sex differences. Males and females are inherently different from one another. So should the race analogy be used by my esteemed colleague, I'll address it in much more detail during my rebuttal. So to close, let's remember that despite the presence of same-sex attractions in most cultures or many cultures throughout history, and despite the fact that some of these relationships were open and celebrated, no one thought about redefining the nature of marriage, because marriage is about bringing two people together, a man and woman, for responsible procreation.
That is why society and government cares about it, and something that is a guaranteed exception to that rule, there is no reason to give it governmental status recognition to mess with the foundations, to tamper with these things, to change the meaning of marriage. So this is not bigotry. This is not hatred. This is not homophobia. This is not intolerance. This is about the meaning of marriage, and I, for one, thank God for the institution of marriage and do not want to see it change for the good of our society.
Thank you. All right, so, friends, if you watch the whole debate, you'll see that it was somewhat one-sided, because really there's not a strong argument that came back against our position. So you can watch it for yourself, you can make judgment for yourself, but that seemed to be the consensus overwhelmingly from even those who were supporting the professor that was against me, that they were not happy with that overall performance and maybe wished that there had been stronger answers to what I was presenting.
But here's what I want to underscore. The only reason that the government gets involved with marriage is because marriage has to do with the well-being of the society, right? That the government conveys benefits on marriage because marriage conveys government on the nation, on the society. Namely, the bringing of a man and woman together for the purpose of procreation. Natural procreation doesn't mean every couple's able to have a child, but the definition of marriage always has that potential because it's a male plus a female. And then it has an environment, so it provides children for the next generation, and then it has an environment in which those children can be raised in the ideal setting, which is with a mother and father. As the years go on, that continues to prove to be the best setting. And as the years go on, we continue to recognize the importance of marriage as God intended it.
Not only have we seen the trajectory of gay activism, which continues to multiply after itself to the point of LGBTQ++ and there is no end, we not only see that, we not only see the taking away of the rights of those who are believers and hold to conservative values, we also see the changing views of a new generation being raised up, and those changing views are not helpful. This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener-supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the Word, in prayer, in your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to TheLineOfFire.org, TheLineOfFire.org, and click Donate.
