Summit Lecture Series: Societal Effects of Same Sex Marriage with Frank Turek

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Every person in society, including people who never get married, benefit from the government promoting traditional marriage.

How?

Because society is stabilized. Imagine if we didn’t promote traditional marriage and couples didn’t stay together but instead broke up even more than they do now. Our nation’s children would be less taken care of than they currently are. Crime rates would soar. Poverty would increase. Welfare demand would skyrocket. The destruction of society would follow right behind.

Everybody benefits by promoting traditional marriage.

We do this same thing with vocations.

We, as a society, promote police work. We pay people with our tax dollars to be police officers. Police protect the citizenry. They enforce our laws. They keep the peace. They keep commerce moving by ensuring the safety of local businesses. Police officers are also a visible deterrent to crime, which helps stabilize society.

Meanwhile, our government permits just about every other vocation, while it prohibits a few (drug dealers, gangsters, etc.)

Now, I’m not a police officer. But I am not being discriminated against because of my choice to not be a policeman. Similarly, nobody is being discriminated against because they choose not to take part in the relationship between a man and a woman that perpetuates and stabilizes society.

If you choose not to participate in traditional marriage, because either you don’t want to or you are physically or emotionally unable to, that’s fine. But don’t claim that you are being discriminated against. Because you’re not.

In fact, there is no such thing as a Civil Right to Marriage.

The laws passed by our legislature do recognize heterosexual marriage because of the great benefit that it brings to everybody, but it doesn’t have to recognize every type of relationship.

If it did, then polygamists would be able to claim discrimination. So would incestuists.

We are not discriminating against people. We are discriminating against behaviors. And that’s what all laws do.

Consider these two questions:

1. What would be the effects on society if everyone lived faithfully in natural marriage?
2. What would be the effects on society if everyone lived faithfully in same-sex marriage?

The answer to the first question is that if it were true that everyone remained faithful in traditional marriages, the society would be greatly benefitted. Crime, welfare and child abuse would go down. Of course, people abandoned by their spouses would end. The economy and the rest of society would be better off.

However, if the second question would come to fruition, the world would die out.

Now, I’m not saying that promoting same-sex marriage would cause this. I’m only asking these questions so that we can look at the answers to these questions and realize that the behaviors are not the same.

Same-sex coupling is not the same as opposite-sex coupling. It’s not the same physically, emotionally, biologically, nor procreatively. It’s not the same, so don’t treat it the same.

Political liberals want to treat people, who ARE equal, unequally; while treating behaviors which are UNEQUAL equally. In other words, people are equal but they want to treat some people (like say, through affirmative action which give special treatment to some people groups) as unequal. Yet, when it comes to behaviors, which demonstrably are different, they want to treat same-sex marriage and opposite sex marriage the same.

They’re not the same. They can never be the same.

So, what are the stakes?

Consider an evening photo of the Korean Peninsula taken from the International Space Station at night. In any such photo, you can see a stark difference between South Korea and North Korea when it comes to light and productivity.

South Korea is one of the most “Christianized” countries in the world. It has freedom and productivity. It has the Gospel. It’s got light. North Korea, on the other hand, is a concentration camp. You can see one speck of light coming from their capital, but that’s it. This all stems from one difference between the two divided peoples: Politics.

Too many times, we hear people say that Christians and their ideologies ought to stay out of politics.

But, if you like eating, electricity, freedom of religion and freedom of speech, the ability for someone to choose their own vocation, then you need to understand that all these things are political.

The economy we run is affected by the laws we make, federally and locally, which makes it political. Even what we can and cannot say in church is affected by our laws, so therefore nearly all things in our society are political.

You may think that I am being overdramatic, but if there is one issue in our society that can stop the Gospel – not completely, but blunt it – it’s same-sex marriage.

How?

We’ll address that, specifically, next week.