Gay Marriage Debate | Andrew Sullivan & Doug Wilson

it is now my great honor to introduce our moderator peter hitchens this um this bio was handed to me it's uh i think it's autobiographical peter hitchens claims to be the world's leading expert in starting an argument in an empty room he describes himself as a minor celebrity in his own country britain where he is not famous enough to get airline upgrades but famous enough to be ver to have to be very careful to behave extremely well in public despite all efforts so far he remains hopelessly obscure in the usa he is the author of several unpopular books unavailable in all leading bookstores these works on culture crime patriotism politics and religion have made him many enemies among left-wing thinkers who don't read them because they know they won't like them he has been he has he has been personally abused by two british prime ministers one from each party and recently faced an angry protest against his views on drugs mounted by a solitary fat man in a woolly hat he also he also has a small but dedicated following of embattled social and moral conservatives mr hitchens is 61 and lives in oxford england though he says he would immigrate if he were younger probably to canada he writes a weekly column in britain's mail on sunday newspaper broadcasts whenever the bbc will let him we are very glad to have mr hitchens with us tonight to moderate our debate please welcome peter hitchens [Applause] thank you i shall have some difficulty this evening because as you can tell my voice is nearly at its end and is actually going to be handed to the national archives for preservation tomorrow as an example of what you shouldn't do i'm told it's more authorities than the normal one only you can judge whether it's authoritative at all you may be wondering why alone of the people on the platform i have no beard i did offer to grow one when i was invited to this debate but the department of homeland security said there were quite enough men with beards in the united states as it was now to our debaters andrew sullivan uh is a civilized and thoughtful voice in a debate which is very often neither uh he is a distinguished thinker the author of what i believe to be an excellent and beautifully argued book virtually normal on this very subject which i commend anyone interested in this matter to read he's also an extremely energetic and habit-forming blogger as many of you will already know and a distinguished and experienced journalist and i'm sure that he will debate generously tonight on a subject where generosity is very badly needed against him his pastor doug wilson pastor of christchurch in the city uh the ayatollah of the palus [Laughter] [Music] a purveyor of weapons grade calvinism a serious educational and social reformer and a considerable thinker and again blogger whose writing is infused with wood housing wit as well as powerful biblical force so these are your two speakers and i would like you to applaud them thoroughly now now i'm going to use my emergency powers here as as moderator to make two small points one is that if you have any mobile electronic devices and they are not set to silent i do believe in the death penalty and will personally implement it if your squawking noise goes off during this debate if that is if your neighbors don't do it for me secondly i propose slightly to alter the the soviet discussion not in in any sense in its meaning but to turn it into an actual motion because i believe and i've discussed this with the participants that a debate without a vote is like tennis without a net and what i propose to do is to have a vote at the beginning in which you can support oppose or abstain on the proposition civil marriage is good it's civil marriage for gay couples is good for society so i will ask you to vote for this is a show of hands and against and to abstain i should say that was pretty thoroughly again so now at the end of the debate you'll be asked to vote again and your neighbors will remember how you voted the first time so that no fixing please but at the end i will not offer the opportunity to abstain because you will either have been so wholly convinced by andrew or so wholly convinced by douglas that you will have no doubt left in your minds and i won't allow you to have any so i will now ask andrew to begin his opening 15-minute statement [Music] both the chair swivels around and the podium moves thank you so much for inviting me here tonight first of all thank you douglas for agreeing to debate thank you my fellow christians for inviting me a dissenter in some ways from many christians to participate in what i hope will be a productive and civil debate conducted with above all charity [Music] i want to start with just like a few what i think are sort of empirical things just so that we get some stuff clear the first point i want to make very simply is that gay people exist this was not always believed to be true for the vast majority of human civilization gay people were regarded as straight people who wanted to be perverted we now know that is not true we know that from psychology we know the american psychological association understands it my own church the roman catholic church believes that homosexuality is innate i can tell you and i'm not here to lie that i have been gay my whole life it has only something to do with sex i knew that i was slightly different before i ever entered puberty i knew that there was something slightly virtually abnormal about me but i didn't know quite what it was there was no word i lived in a small town in a conservative catholic household my parents didn't go to college there were no books in my house my siblings didn't go to college i didn't know what a homosexual was but i knew that there was something in me that was different than my friends at elementary school and thereafter and i pondered it grappled with it and the first person i actually came out to was god i remember being in line for communion at mass and walking up but my mother would always say when you have communion you should you should offer it up for something she would often say offered up for your mother's intentions was like i wonder what those are but anyway i did but this day i walked up and just asked our lord please lord help me with that that's all i had i was a young boy i was a human being and i believed and still believe that god loves every single one of us unconditionally and i believe therefore in total orthodoxy with catholicism that homosexual persons and people are human beings made in the image of god worthy of dignity and respect i also believe that there are not that many of us gallup just did a survey i don't know whether you saw it came to a number of 3.5 percent the exit survey says 5 so we've always been a very small minority the question is as a civil society and as a polity what do we do with this population how does a society grapple with the existence of these people how do we integrate those people into our institutions and laws and political and social arrangements that's the question i would ask you to turn it around because one option is do nothing let them be that's the benign option that emerged in this country for a long time it was criminalized the bible tells us that i should be executed people were executed hanged beaten up imprisoned jailed one of the greatest minds of the 20th century alan turing who cracked the enigma code against the nazis was jailed and had female male hormones injected into him to cure him before he killed himself in despair the father of computer science the sistine chapel under which the cardinals will convene shortly was painted by a homosexual doing nothing while leaving them alone was an option for a long time it got a little awkward when they spoke up it got a little weird when they brought their roommate or friend or whatever lie and lie is the right word was used to describe their relationship but now even that is no longer an option because gay people have lost the internalization that we are somehow sub-human intrinsically driven to evil as the holy father has described us so maybe given that homosexuality is obviously and i think quite uncontroversially defined as the emotional and sexual attraction of one person to another person of the same gender just as i think heterosexuality is quite obviously the emotional and sexual attraction of one human being for another of the opposite gender how do we address that phenomenon that phenomenon of love falling in it living with someone sharing your life with them what institution do we have in our society that is most relevant to that phenomenon and the answer of course is marriage that is how we deal with it that is what every straight person who's ever existed has always known that is where we channel our sexual and emotional feelings to another person in dedication and service and often sacrifice so one option then given the fact we can't keep them in the closet anymore because we just won't stay there given the fact we can't be exterminated imprisoned or somehow sequestered away from the rest of society is something called domestic partnerships or civil unions or civil partnerships or any number of other euphemisms that can be used to describe the relationship of these citizens and we are citizens too as equal as anybody as worthy as anybody in the society the trouble for me with civil unions and domestic partnerships is that quite obviously they run two very big risks one is that you divide society by identity politics you create different classes for different groups of people whether by race or gender or sexual orientation but secondly and most importantly by creating an institution called domestic partnership or civil union or civil partnership or whatever you want to call it inevitably that right has to also be extended to heterosexuals the biggest threat to marriage is creating marriage light marriage that we can call something else when they created civil unions in france they've seen heterosexuals especially the men flocking to them because they require less responsibility less commitment less legal force if you want to weaken civil marriage create civil unions give people an easy option undermine the central institution so why not allow me to have the same life dignity and equality as my sister who attended my wedding with her children who were the ring bearers and the flower boys our mothers gave us away and took us up the aisle not i wish you'd all been there in a way because what you would have seen there was a family two families one great sprawling catholic family from detroit and another sprawling catholic family from a small town in england coming together the way they did with every other member of their family to celebrate that one of their children had found someone he truly loved and they were happy this is pro-family what does husband mean to me what does marriage mean to me when i took my vows to be with my husband till death do us part i took a vow to take care of him to be responsible for him to look after him to be there for him to support him in sickness and health because i loved him and committed exclusively to him for the rest of my life you know what that also does it allows for exactly what conservatism believes in it allows for people to take tear-up take care of themselves whereas in the alternative the government would have to take care of them a single person living alone without that kind of commitment an accident happens bad health sickness all the existences and contingencies of a human existence the government doesn't have to be there because your husband and your spouse is it's pro-dignity he treats me in the same way as my brother and my sister and my mother and my father now does it and will it hurt my sister's marriage did her children think well obviously our parents marriage is not as good anymore because uncle andrew and uncle aaron have gotten married no they didn't which state has the lowest divorce rate in the country the first state to bring equal marriage rights and since in the last decade as equal marriage rights for gay people has been in the culture saturated everywhere divorce rates in this country have declined we live oh you live or we stand in idaho not very far from washington state washington state has legal equality for gay couples in marriage this this state does not which state has the higher divorce rate idaho by a mile and you can see that throughout it that this is not attacking anybody's families divorce rates are declining and family and marriage are being celebrated [Music] we gay people cannot be scapegoated for the decline of heterosexual marriage for the one institution we never had any part of and were excluded from and i want you to ask yourselves this when they say the happiest day of your life that's what they mean by your wedding day when i grew up and realized i was gay and looked into the future and asked myself what will my life be i saw nothing but blackness there was no future i could have no family i could not be like my parents i could not have the treatment of my brother and my sister or my friends all i can tell you is that now as i proudly show my wedding ring that my family and my family life is deeper than ever before no one lies no one is dishonest and the love i feel and the care i take of my husband i believe deep down in my heart and conscience and believe me i have searched both is the kind of love that god wants for all of us and the kind of love that makes everything in life worthwhile why why would you take a tiny minority and forbid them from happiness thank you thank you mr sullivan mr wilson you have 15 minutes thank you good evening all of you i would like to begin by thanking the lord for how everything came together here tonight i would like to thank you all for coming and to the organizers of the debate i'd like to thank them for all the work they did and i would like to thank andrew for agreeing with this debate and coming great distance to participate in it i would also like to thank him for editing this book same-sex same-sex marriage prone khan a reader i thought he did a fantastic job of pulling together capable representatives of both sides of this issue and i was very pleased at the absence of straw man argumentation name calling or indignant screeching i thought the position that i'm representing here tonight opposition to same-sex marriage was treated with an appropriate respect throughout and i was most grateful for it in fact i would like to use the mere existence of this book as one of my arguments and since i'm already here let me begin with that while the opponents of same-sex marriage are sometimes compared in this book to their disadvantage to various conservatives of yesteryear who are trying to conserve things they shouldn't have been trying to conserve the overall effect of this book is to make the reader think that the leaders of the opposition to same-sex marriage are morally serious people whether mistaken or not they are not driven by irrational hatreds at least not in this book or characterized by blind phobias in short we do not show up in this book as haters with the appearance of a bull conor sort of opposition now this means that to the extent andrew is willing to treat his opponents as morally serious people which i appreciate who have arguments that should be engaged respectfully to that same extent he appears to be undercutting the view that the continued unavailability of same-sex marriage in many states is a foundational civil rights issue if it is a civil rights issue how could morally serious people be opposed to it if it is not a civil rights issue then why is it being pressed upon us in those terms a similar problem shows up in the arguments in this book against measures like the defense of marriage act or doma on the one hand it is argued that states have historically had the right to have different views on the exact boundaries of marriage legitimate marriage and that the whole thing is a matter of subtle law and procedure and we don't need to worry about it this is actually quite true for example in a situation where two states have different differing boundaries when it comes to something like the issues of consanguinity cousins marrying and that sort of thing nothing nothing to see here folks just keep moving on but to the extent that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue then the arguments against miscegenation laws also found in this book come fully into play if the supreme court could do to a state's prohibition of same-sex marriage what they did in loving versus virginia in 1970 1967 then what would the stance of the gay activists be then would they argue against that move because it violated states rights i don't think that's likely on top of that nobody appears to be arguing that marrying your first cousin is a basic fundamental civil right still less is there a national controversy about it with let cousins marry cousins parades in our major cities so if it is a civil rights issue then the necessary agenda has to be not to not stop until same-sex marriage is the established law in all 50 states if it happens state by state then they'd be fine with that but i doubt i doubt if same-sex marriage activists would object if the supreme court for example gave them 35 states in one stroke but if that end result is not on their agenda then it is not really believed to be a civil rights issue another good thing about this book a really good thing actually was that it represented a serious attempt to have all the basic arguments pro and con fully aired with credible attempts at suitable reposts for each but perhaps not surprisingly one of the major arguments that i would want to use that i would want to advance this evening was answered in a way that seemed to me to just exude inadequacy is that a nice way of putting it that's it hope so first it was notable that in these essays the advocates of same-sex marriage came back at the so-called quote-unquote polygamy argument as a no of course not sort of response there was no attempt to swallow the reductio and say sure this entails polygamy so what the inference was that same-sex marriage would be the inference i'm sorry that same-sex marriage would be a strong shove down a slippery slope was adamantly rejected but such a rejection has ramifications of its own in his essay three's a crowd andrew responds to william bennett and charles krauthammer on this point and i would like to press the point because i think andrew actually missed what a serious challenge this is perhaps the fact that some politic perhaps the fact that some politicians were chortling when they first advanced the argument distracted andrew but there is a real issue here before laying out the particular argument i want to note that this resistance that andrew has to polygamy grants me a very important point that point is the fact that in between what we currently call marriage idaho version not washington version what we currently call marriage and what some crazies out there might want to call marriage there's a line that we must not cross andrew and i actually agree on this between what we currently have and what some people might want to have andrew and i agree that there's a line that we shouldn't cross he draws one of those lines at more partners than just two for example i draw it more tightly but we are both drawing a line and we are both of us in favor of denying marriage licenses to consenting adults who want one and who claim to be deeply in love we both are opposed to that under certain circumstances now if we agree that to expand the word marriage to include a state of marital bedlam and anarchy anything goes does not really expand the word but actually destroys it then the first order first order of business would have would appear to be what standard we might use to determine where that line is this is one of my favorite questions by what standard i would want to appeal to the word of god and to do so in public which of course has implications for secularism andrew wants to appeal to what he wants to draw a line just like i do but what's the standard if it is democratic consensus then it now appears that polygamy could be in our future at least in principle because certain factions of the dmos do appear to want it suppose they get organized on what basis do we say to abdul that a secular democracy necessarily limits the number of partners he may have to just one when the quran says he gets up to four but more is involved than our rejection of islamic marriage marriage traditions in addition we are also placed in the odd position of insisting that there's no possible marital expression for bisexuals if a man is attracted to men and women both then if society restricts his options to just one partner then he must opt either for a same-sex marriage or a conventional marriage his bisexual attraction the other way is one that we're are arbitrarily saying must not be expressed in any legally recognized fashion the best we can do under these circumstances is to tell him to find a partner who's willing for an open marriage who is willing for his bisexuality to be expressed through adultery but this changes the definition of marriage also marriage has historically been placed as a marker of sexual exclusivity adultery has occurred in fact of course but pre-planning for the adultery seems to undermine the whole pair the whole point of marriage in the first place in response to this line of argument andrew argues that homosexuality occupies quote a deeper level of human consciousness than a polygamous impulse close quote but questions immediately cluster around in my head all of them chattering at me deeper impulse how deep and how deep does it have to go to get public recognition and what scientific calipers do we use to measure the depth of bob's affection for bill as over against john's affection for susie and sally how are we supposed to measure such things what do we mean deep if we have grant the authority of self-reports then the polygamist will avow that will avow that the depth of his desire goes just as deep as the homosexuals does he promises if we measure by human history homosexuality polyamory and promiscuity are all common enough but when it comes to being enshrined in what are called marriages polygamy has a much more established record to appeal to and if we measure by the diversity is good approach to culture where then where do we get off sayings diversity diversity is good until we start to get some andrew goes on astonishingly to say that polygamy is quote an activity whereas homosexuality and heterosexuality are states but this starts off another round of q and a q and a in my teaming brain this argument only works if these two states limit the person in such such a state to one and only one sexual partner homosexuality has to be a state with only one true love possible and any sexual partners beyond that one would constitute a perversion of some sort this is the only stance that would allow us to dismiss that sort of thing as a mere activity not worth codifying in marriage law the same thing would go for heterosexuality the position has to be that the heterosexual state necessarily entails one sexual partner and that is all and that all other sexual partners are quote activities that must be gotten over andrew doesn't exactly use the word repentance but one gets the idea andrew has to argue that in the current human condition the desire for monogamous fidelity is as foundational a state as homosexuality and heterosexuality which is a view that i would argue appears to collide with the data we also have the problem of definition again how do we identify states except through activity so judging from the activity it would appear that lots of heterosexual males are in the state of wanting multiple sexual partners and there have been many times in history in numerous places around the globe today where such desires have been codified in marriage laws and it goes without saying that if young male in question is between the ages of 13 and 19 then he is in a state all the time now to argue the way that andrew has is to postulate the existence of a moral hierarchy that can be used to condemn certain sexual choices that numerous people have made but surely this is odd coming from homosexual advocates the the issue for me is not whether andrew is arguing for polygamy i know full well i know for a fact he is not doing so he's arguing the contrary but what i want to know is whether the argument he is using for same-sex marriage works equally well when being pressed by someone else with an induct with an entirely different set of goals than andrew has if i'm the clerk at the county courthouse deciding whether to give andrew a marriage license i can see the line that is that has formed behind him i know that they don't all want to marry in the same way that he does or marry the same same kind of person that he does i know that but i also know that they do want to use the same arguments on me what can i what can i say to them that i couldn't also say to andrew and what can andrews say and reply to me that they can't also throw at me so while i've made while i may have been born at night it wasn't last night newhouse argued that marriage is a quintessentially public institution and that the reason this battle is centered on marriage is because more is being demanded than tolerance of certain private sexual practices this issue is rather public acceptance and approval not no one raindrop believes itself to be responsible for the flood but the cumulative effect is the same nonetheless on the back cover of andrew's book virtually normal it states that the goal is to guarantee quote the rights of gays and lesbians without imposing tolerance that is an interesting interesting phrase without imposing tolerance i i like it a lot and i would call it a nice try but i just don't know but i just don't know how in such circumstances it could be possible would caterers have the right to decline the business of a gay wedding reception would christian owners of a b b have the right to set limits on the use of their place wedding photographers if we are not imposing tolerance what legal forms may the intolerance take at a certain point allowing for changes in the direct object actually changes the meaning of the verb andrew appears to agree with this arguing for quote monogamy as central to all marriage adding a third person would take away the central element meaning that such marriages weren't really marriages making the direct object to women for example instead of one woman means that the verb to marry has been altered so there is a line that we must not cross but what establishes that line who establishes that line by what standard how can we know i'd like to address that question in my closing remarks thank you [Applause] all right it's now my turn to irritate you both and i'm going to ask andrew this question first and it is this which of your opponent's arguments are you most worried by i'm very confident of my own arguments which is why i is there anybody who understands it's over there can someone switch it back on you could do sign language while we wait well i have a very uh loud voice when i try um i wanted to uh address particularly the two questions that you raised turns out you just have to turn it on okay now we'll start all over um i want i want to go if you don't mind i'd like to actually engage directly with the points that douglas just made um in the order that he made them is that is that permissible i suppose so though it's not the answer and i will continue uh just have to ask it again later you aren't going to get away from me um i'm i'm debating this person not you it's perfectly true i'm moderating you this and this is how i do it well it turns out we can redefine the moderator term as well because i think douglas raises a couple of very important and serious points that that that are vital the first and let me go through one by one the first is if this is a civil rights issue why is there any objection to imposing it by the court on the entire united states of america now i am as you may know an outlier in some gay politics circles and when i first proposed marriage rights i was opposed for the first 10 years by the gay left then by the religious right my view was then is now and was stated in front of the very congress in in testifying in 1996 on the defense of marriage act that i believe this should be done state by state federally and that no state should be forced to recognize the marriages of any other state this is because i believe in federalism because i believe in diversity and freedom and the right of people to make their own decisions and because i also believe that when a civil rights movement exists it does not exist and cannot succeed by forcing people to behave in ways and believe things they do not genuinely believe i think it succeeds when you change the hearts and minds and consciences of human beings and enter the democratic process and win the argument and we have definitively won this argument and are winning it you just look at the polls now over 50 percent of americans britain france canada mexico and many states in this country and just yesterday a whole phalanx of republicans supporting the right to marry as a conservative value and a conservative i must ask you a question about that if i may the second okay i might know it's it's very interesting and i i'd like to sort it out because if it's a consistent view it has a number of implications do you believe that moral questions can be decided by a majority no but i think they have in a democratic society that is our only ultimate resource i'm a demo i believe in democracy i do believe at some point that people have the right to determine their own future and i do believe in a limited role it's a different point but again peter i am not debating you i did not agree to debate this is the bit where i ask you two questions however and so to in to an extent you're not debating me but you are answering my questions you are you are you i can stop you and i can turn to your fellow debater as well because i have so then when you want to debate here i just want to ask i want to ask that question because it's an important important thing i am not debating you mr hitchens i am debating i'm mr wilson i'm not sure and i am addressing his points very faithfully and i would i ask you to be quiet while i do so just splendid stuff explaining stuff but somebody has to share it i've come a long way to do it and i haven't actually expressed an opinion i'm asking you questions and i've now asked you to ask me loaded questions which of course they are and you never asked a loaded question in your life um dog i'm going to ask you which of his arguments you find most worrying um most worrying i mean those to say the ones which which nor most um most powerfully at the roots of what you think and give you cause for doubt i would say the argument that he presented that i found most compelling not worrying but compelling was the argument that uh we the last thing in the world we need is domestic partnerships or civil unions or marriage light as he describes it i believe that to go that way is simply a halfway house toward homosexual marriage same-sex marriage to begin with but i believe that he's exactly right that we we could predict that uh civil unions would have to be available to heterosexuals as well and it would simply uh degrade the institution of marriage further i find that argument not worrisome but i do find it compelling it's worrisome that he's with given his overall agenda that he's making any compelling arguments at all but there it is do you think that the conservative christian right as it might be called is in danger of making a fool of itself over this argument that is fundamentally a symptom of a much greater argument which needs to be had and has been lost namely the argument over preserving heterosexual marriage uh yes i believe that the the conservative right um the social conservative right is a day late and a dollar short on this one i believe that of the real battles for marriage were back upstream aways with no fault divorce i think issues like that and when in this book andrew and others point out that the institution of marriage has been thoroughly disgraced by heteros long before any homosexuals came anywhere near it i find that that is a very telling point i think that that's a good point and i think conservatives are too often in the position of watching a movie that they don't like they get a dvd and they they're watching a movie and it gets to a really icky part and they rewind it five minutes and try again and it just doesn't work that way you have to you have to question the whole project okay andrew if i could turn to you for this question do you think that homosexuals in modern america will come to that britain would be as keen on the institution of marriage if it hadn't been so thoroughly weakened especially since the marriage law reforms of the 1960s it no longer resembles the form of marriage which existed before them that is to say largely a lifelong and a not merely lifelong but extremely restrictive covenant in which there were a number of rules uh particularly in uh in religious marriage but generally accepted elsewhere which would now be i think regarded by many people as reactionary do you think the change in marriage has made has actually created this campaign no not particularly i think it has it is related to it um now that we're apparently having an interview uh i think that the the core foundation of the catholic position which is that marriage is entirely about procreating and that anything any sexual activity outside a marital sexual act that is open to procreation is invalid and that is what defines marriage which is what the catholic position is was rendered moot by the pill i think that once sexuality becomes and is universally understood to be non-procreative uh and remember marriage was partly because straight people would have sex and have babies and need to create a way to bring those babies up which is why i support it you won't find any bigger support of heterosexual marriage than me where not for heterosexual marriage i would not exist um i was actually my mother once said your sister was an accident but you were a mistake i i'm living proof of the rhythm method doesn't work uh but once marriage is not about procreation entirely once we allow infertile couples to marry once we allow and completely accept people to have marriages without children once we have created a society in which divorce is common and in fact ubiquitous um what you have done is you have already changed the nature of marriage and if you have to be on the defensive to argue why this group of people um would uh should still be excluded and let me make one final point i take very seriously the vow till death do us part my husband and i recently had a big fight the way married couples too and one reason i'm happy we're married is that i was able to say it the first look i'm going to be with you till i or you die so let's figure out how to live and get through this problem and the only thing that jesus in the gospel says about marriage is that it should be lifelong without divorce yeah the only specific jesus statement of that marriage and i believe that and i intend to uphold that vow and oddly when you have been excluded from an institution deemed subhuman unable to love a pervert a sexual degenerate someone who should really belong in jail for centuries and you long for that you actually kind of value it more you know heterosexuals i think can take marriage for granted it's the default those of us who were kept out of it told we were unworthy of it told that we should be single and have no emotional or sexual life at all let alone a recognized relationship i think we are the strongest believers in marriage in our society right now i i think i think gay people support of marriage equality has been the most encouraging moment in the institution and for the institution of marriage in a very long time doug would you care to respond to that yes i would like to ask why in a secular democracy the words of jesus have any authority at all they don't except but for me as a christian they do and i was talking about my own my own belief in what my marriage vows uh do i i would allow legal divorce because i believe in a free society but you would also restrict marriage to monogamy i would restrict marriage to two people to fidelity and yes monogamy even though we all know that's very hard and i'm i do think that's the ideal i happen to we all know that that breaks down in practice but yes that is the model that i would uphold and believe in right but what standard are you appealing to when someone who is i your your earlier statements that you two are people that you when you when you're cut do you not bleed all of that i accept that but that's true of people who want more than one sexual partner that's also true of them they have hopes dreams aspirations they bleed when they're cut they have desires and you're saying together with me nope sorry deal with it thank you because i'd love to debate that with you if i were allowed to but um and so may i actually debate him oh thank you um you seem to have developed some kind of false impression but no i i was just interested in debating this point it get on with it um you can get over yourself peter um it's impossible your brother warned me about that um it's always about me here's the point a polygamist can be heterosexual or homosexual right right right so the home they both and they both have a choice do they marry one person or more than one person yeah the homosexual in the society that that you seem to agree with has no choice none right i'm not asking to marry anyone i'm asking just to marry someone and i think that when you the reason i oppose polygamy there are many reasons one is that i think it dilutes the uniqueness of the love and the commitment it dilutes it it doesn't pervert it it's divided in two because all three are four secondly i think and i do think the social consequences of these things matter if someone could persuade me that the social consequences of allowing gay people to marry would harm the rest of society i think that would be a very legitimate argument the problem with polygamy is that what happens in polygamous societies since we are as a species 50 50 roughly speaking is that if one man marries a lot of women other men can't marry those women and there exists in that culture a group of young men with no potential female partners that is a very dangerous and socially disruptive situation to be in given the facts of testosterone that i think you and i would agree upon it is destabilizing to the society to allow a group of men to to monopolize the women and and therefore there will be fights there will be you leave men alone i mean this is also true of the of gay men too because they're men as well as being gay and again imagine as a straight person if you've never had the possibility of marrying someone well how do you think straight guys would behave they'd get as much sex as they possibly could with as many women as they could possibly find that is in our genes and our dna it is true but we decided it's better as a society and in fact i think it is clearly the most successful uh society that limits one man to one woman except it excludes these three and a half percent of people who just aren't attracted to the opposite gender now if you force them into a marriage with someone of the opposite gender you're creating a lie it's not fair for a gay man it seems to me to marry a straight woman and lie to her it's a betrayal of the trust and in the past when so many gay men or gay women married members of the opposite gender their families eventually disintegrated so i have a question for you then yes please so why you're willing to say for the greater social good we want to restrict everybody to one partner period and it shouldn't be it shouldn't cramp your style too much because you should be willing to be more like me more like me and you're you're monogamous and you're thinking and you think well if if the guy who wants three would just uh settle down and be like me wanting one then things would go a lot better and i can say well the same thing applies to me if homosexuals would be willing to want what i want then why everybody would agree but i just said i i think i directly address that point if i and many homosexuals throughout history did this force themselves to construct marriages well i'm not talking about now i'm not talking about forcing homosexuals to marry oh no i don't mean you're putting a gun at their heads i mean they feel it's it's against god's law say and therefore they should marry like ted haggard right the leading national association of evangelicals or whether cardinal o'brien the leading catholic cardinal in britain who has condemned gay marriage in the most powerful terms and is now barred from going to rome because he's actually been sexually harassing men for his entire life i think that's screwed up well i think putting gay people into straight marriages means the man or the woman is lying to his spouse and the core issue of a marriage is trust and honesty is it okay for to put a man who wants to be with many women into a relationship where he's limited to one is that yes is that a lie is he lying to everybody no because i don't because why not because he has the access to sex and love not with one person not the way he wants well not the way that any heterosexual man would really want okay i mean so so why are why i mean why so why are you imposing your morality on everybody i'm not imposing morality i'm making you're telling people that they can't express maritally what they would want to do if you would let them do it i am saying in a democratic debate these are the arguments that i would use to say that it's destabilizing for society destroys uh our social stability and therefore we should oppose it and those polygamists already have well let's just call them men uh i don't know many women who want lots of husbands so let's be honest they're not just quite enough yes uh uh i i think as i said and the reasons i gave uh that's uh that's that's destabilizing because of the the society will have a group of unmarried men who will create trouble commit crime have sex with and adultery and there will be all sorts of you know you go back to mitt romney's great great great grandfathers so do you his his greater grandfather was killed by the husband of his 14th wife i think it tends to uh it's not just abdul um um we have strayed a little uh i think uh from point i know we're debating 14th wives what i wanted to ask you andrew was how typical you think your attitude towards marriage your holy monogamous lifelong attitude towards marriage is of the supporters of gay marriage in general let me let me let me just talk for one second about monogamy i think that one of the things that marriage historically was and essentially essentially before the pill as i said before sex became the vast majority of sexual acts in this country 99.9 percent are non-procreative we are all sodomites now that's what sodomy means it means having sex without wanting to have a child so the entire society is that way and therefore the definition of marriage as centered on sex which of course was historically the man owned the woman heterosexual marriage was also about the subjugation of women and the way they were owned by their uh husbands uh was to protect of course the lineage your children make sure they're your children and nobody else's that's the whole point right um but in this day and age it seems to me that monogamy sexual monogamy though i think absolutely critical to many heterosexual marriages my look my own parents my own father uh i probably shouldn't say that no but uh i don't know many marriages that are perfect let us put it that way and we all uphold public standards that aren't totally realistic if i could repeat the question how typical do you think your view is of the campaigners for for those who i i i i i think there's a diversity of views those who tend to believe that that um everything that you and i agree upon are right-wing fascistic patriarchal heterosexist norms oppose marriage rights and i spent 10 years being attacked viciously as a moralizing right-wing bigot for sporting marriage rights by these very people now the marriage movement within the gay community was at the very beginning very small although actual individual gay couples through history have always done it remember the term boston marriage when two women used to live together they were basically lesbians gay couples have always lived together under some sort of guys um so no i'm sure there are many people who support marriage equality who who do simply on the grounds of equal rights rather than the grounds that it is good for society and i think it's both but but also some of these people may not share your views on monogamy you mean they may be they may commit adultery and they may get divorced so why are they singled out and not all the straight people who commit adultery and divorce it's not a question of singing out it's a simple technical question you um as i said at the very beginning in my introduction and distinguished in this argument for your civilized approach to it and your willingness to listen to opponents those of us who have on occasion tried to argue the other thing often find opposition of a slightly shriller nature yes and it's incredible and i exactly but i mean i just really wanted to to see if you felt that there were people on your side of the argument who you did not think would were as sincere as you they've come around i wish i could say that i had persuaded them with my arguments but i didn't but the issue is not the this is important the issue is not whether people commit adultery or stray from their vows the issue is arguing for that as a principled openness right so in heterosexual marriage there have always been adulterers and there there's been adultery as a unfortunately all too common but there have been very very few people arguing for open marriages where the adultery is expected and and i think the question had to do with the social norm the social ideal the social norm and the social ideas and i i think that that marriage as a social ideal should remain as it largely is for heterosexuals for homosexuals which is the social norm is monogamy and fidelity till death do us part but i i do want to emphasize i think focus that that that marriage is as much as you know is as much about taking care of one another loving each other looking out for one another talking to each other watching uh house of cards together uh the in-jokes the family remarks a minuscule amount of a marriage is sex and the longer the marriage goes the less sex there is i always used to argue that if you really want to cut down on gay sex you support gay marriage nothing kills it off more quickly than domesticity but that does not mean that i support a redefinition of marriage that makes the commitment to that person uh trivial but you do agree that there's a line between where we are now and what some people want to call marriage that changes where you change the direct object is to change the meaning of the verb i think people who want to have a relation an open relationship and in a free country that's what people can do tend not to be people who want to get married i'll also tell you this that if you want to find the most monogamous marriages in america go look at some lesbian marriages and the reason is the difference between men and women which i happen to believe is biological um no kidding absolutely [Music] uh well you'd be surprised i mean you you go to harvard and i did and you say something like that you're regarded as a raving bigot you're safe here i know um testosterone is a powerful thing um so in some ways i do i will i will and i have conceded this i do think that two men in a marriage the likelihood of fooling around is going to be higher than in a heterosexual marriage by virtue of the fact that they're men not that they're gay but i also think that the majority of lesbian marriages are likely to be more monogamous than heterosexual marriages uh and it sort of is a wash in the end but what's interesting about the data because we're now beginning to have data actual data we're actually finding out something kind of interesting we're finding that yes indeed lesbians are more monogamous but the divorce rate is higher bit of a shocker the other thing we find is that gay men tend to marry older in other words they sow their oats they get a lot of sexual diversity and then when they start not looking so great and aren't quite the the stunt they thought they were or if they happen like i did to bump into someone and just fall completely in love with them uh they uh they stay together and they and they often do for lifetime why isn't that early promiscuity described by you as a foundational state as opposed to an activity the foundational state is simply the object of the promiscuity not the promiscuity itself i just happen to want to have sex with other men um you happen to want to have sex with other women well in both cases but we both want to have sex i'm talking now about our core desires and wants underneath us what testosterone is doing it makes us both want to be promiscuous and so we are the same state but but you argued in your book that the state is authoritative as opposed to the activity you say homosexuality heterosexuality is a state and promiscuity or polygamy is a choice or an activity yeah but you can't help being straight right i can't help being gay so we both have a choice about whether to be promiscuous or not you seem to be arguing two things at one time because you're saying that you're granting that the state of individuals particularly males is a desire for not just a woman but for many women it's in our dna it's what it's evolution so why is it i don't know a state why is that not a state well it is all right so why isn't that state authoritative you say well it is you say polygamy should not be allowed because it's an activity but it seems to me that the fundamental desire is a state yeah as i said we're all essentially a lot most men are polygamists deep down yes they are we all are we all want more than one okay so the point is why variety is the spice of life are not these people who want all these different women are they not people yes don't they have hopes dreams and aspirations yes don't they want to settle down with their little harem no they don't necessarily have to they can have sex with as many women as they possibly want it's a free society they have to get married and it'd be really rather strange if they got married my point is that they get married and those women are assigned to that one man there's a whole bunch of men in that society with nothing to do but andrew it was a free system with a lot of testosterone it was a free society before the first same-sex marriages were legalized it wasn't fully free for me all right it wasn't fully free in your society because i had no choice right then the polygamist has no choice that he wants yes he well he has a choice but insofar as he's heterosexual he has a choice to have one woman as his wife insofar as i'm a homosexual i have no choice to have another man as my husband that is unequal unfair and irrational that's why we're winning the argument could i ask andrew something here do you think that in this numerality which you are effectively seeking to establish that there should be stigma and disapproval directed against the spouses in gay marriages who stray from the path of monogamy and fidelity well monogamy and fidelity complicated things um i'm not really in favor of stigmas um party having been a victim of one i was a catholic boy growing up in england subjected to considerable bigotry um stigma isn't necessarily bigoted so why stigma isn't necessarily bigoted there are people who might argue that for instance the stigma against divorce was a great protection it was a great protection for children well there are stigma against certain um uh yes a stigma against divorce is something i am in favor of i'm just not in favor of stigmatizing people or classes of people except for cardinals you have to synthesize somebody you can't just speak well no i just think that cardinals who rape children or the indian rape children he he uh molested another man under his authority was abusing his power that's a that's a legitimate stigma we i i share your disapproval i'm not objecting to the stigma i'm just pointing out that no but i wouldn't i would got one i wouldn't i wouldn't i wouldn't make it illegal um although sexual harassment is illegal as you than that but if you are a cardinal talking about the evils of gay people while you are harassing other men which seems to be the case of about a third of the entire curia then i think you have a moral problem i think you have a question of moral authority i'm not standing up here as a cardinal i'm not claiming to be the pope i'm claiming to be merely a citizen seeking equality under the law and trying to explain why that equality will not harm society but actually help it well you won't run into any trouble you won't run into any trouble bashing the roman catholic church around here but i'm not bashing the roman catholic church corrupt members of its hierarchy sorry only it's corrupt anyway i i just wanted to ask a question which i i hope is not infuriatingly subtle but but you you're infuriating for many reasons but not your subtlety [Music] you you write repeatedly about being excluded um from marriage uh now i remember as a child peering through the church of england prayer book and the interesting bits at the end including a thing called the table of kindred and affinity which told me that i could not marry all kinds of people uh but but you could marry someone it no it actually just simply just all the people all the people you can't marry oh you said consent grin the the the it's it yes it's yeah a man may not marry his he's his sister or his sister yeah there are all kinds of holy unimaginable concatenations in this list which i couldn't still don't understand how many could have contemplated but not one of those prohibitions said a man may not marry another man it wasn't a prohibition it just never occurred to anyone that the institution was for anybody other than women really really have you ever played in terms of in terms of in terms of interviews in terms of the i'm telling you what what what the what the church's attitude towards marriage was never occurred it never occurred to them in making that list that a man would marry another man so my question is what were you excluded from marriage no marriage existed and you seek to become part of it and you seek to to obtain marriage and to become married i was forbidden from doing so excluded from it you seek to include yourself in it it is a different thing let me tell you a story let me tell you an actual story that a friend of mine told me during the aids years and maybe this will help you understand what it is to be excluded uh this couple have been together for a long time and one of them uh got sick with aids has happened to 300 000 people in this country who died of it in roughly a decade i grew up in that period i saw suffering that i cannot even begin to describe i also saw unbelievable love and fidelity and commitment of one husband for another in sickness toward death so my friend and one of my best friends a big bodybuilder guy he would always say to me do i look big and i was like he's kind of overcompensating and i would say uh yeah you look big anyway he got aids he was in hospital 90 pounds skeletal my friend robert visits him and says do i look big he said yeah you look huge and there's a pause and there's next to him there's a bed with a curtain drawn around it it's an award this is when they would put people with aids in plastic bags when they died uh and i heard and i didn't hear that robert heard uh from behind that curtain someone singing a little song pop song and he said to joe uh well at least not everybody's unhappy here that guy's singing he's got aids and he's he's singing he said oh no no that's not him he died this morning that's his spouse the family has taken the body away thrown him out of his apartment that he shared with his husband have barred him from the funeral and that is the last place he ever felt will feel close to his partner and that was their song and he's singing it with his head against the pillow and the nurses do not have the heart to tell him to leave yet that's what exclusion is and that's what in my view jesus sought to overcome well on that eloquent note we finished this contentious session and it's time or will be after break of five minutes which is about to begin time for you to put your questions if you would form orderly lines behind each microphone depending on which person you wish to ask a question please do so but we will break now for five minutes and then resume okay when i say questions i mean questions no speeches only questions if you make a speech you'll just have to stop so as i understand it this line is to ask questions of mr wilson and this last question mr sullivan i will take you in strict alternation so madam your question please first i'd like to apologize for interrupting you i find your behavior to be rude and condescending but mine was rude and equally condescending so i do apologize i also want to say that mr wilson you've been remarkably polite and respectful to mr sullivan tonight and i really appreciate that i truly do particularly because over the last decade or so i've been reading much of your work and in your works you gleefully make use of names like sodomite which you know to be an error from the original greek and hebrew usage of the word catamite homo and my favorite bad example of yours you also not only tell jokes that mock and denigrate gay people but you defend biblically the telling of jokes that mock and denigrate gay people i know you wish to be considered a man of integrity who varies not his message from one venue to another so i'd like to know if you would either want to call mr sullivan a in front of all of us since you have a real live gay man here or if you'd like to simply tell him a joke that denigrates the people he identifies with and the people whose rights he is seeking tonight to help secure thank you very much sure first with the joke why do episcopalians not are not able to play chess anymore because everybody on the board is a queen that's hysterical no because they can't tell the difference between a bishop and a queen so that yeah so so so the um to go to the point you have i believe a fundamental assumption that someone can't contend in the public square for certain positions that he ardently believes and treat individual homosexuals with dignity and respect i believe you can do that i'm not trying to alter or trim my sales for one situation to another and what you've seen in the last 10 years you can expect to see for the next 10. okay so under what circumstances would you would you engage in some degree of internal moral consistency why not just go ahead and say mr sullivan i think that you and your husband are real proofters homos i think buggerers i think your first question was wonderful but don't spoil it now um it's it's time mr hitchens the day i need your guidance will be a long day from now on you've had a question i'm being fat can i just make a point yeah please i am notorious in the gay community for hating hate crimes laws i i don't care if anyone calls me a homo a pufter a a queer or whatever i know who i am all it says is who they are and i i will say in one sentence that i while i do have from time to time driven uh 65 miles an hour on the freeway i don't drive that way on the sidewalk i don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to life right um as a cyclist i've missed the point of that it was it was overly subtle like your earlier thing may we now please have our next question from this yes uh perhaps is this microphone okay it is um my name is jared robinson i'm a law student at the university of idaho first i want to thank you mr sullivan for coming i appreciate your presence here and i appreciate both the accents by the way it's it's very entertaining what about we don't have accents i know i lived in moscow for a while mr wilson so i apologize it's not different question yes question i apologize um all right so earlier you brought up the curious fact of the human sex ratio across the world you know relatively being a one-to-one ratio um so i was curious uh how do you you would respond to the argument that perhaps um marriage is not only uh based on a monogamistic perspective but also predicated uh fundamentally on the difference between between the genders between male and female and if that is true then would you think that the government and the public at large would be required to legally recognize and socially sanction an institution which does not um which does not embody that uh fundamental difference between male and female um not if the content of the institution is the same and the people involved have no essential choice in the matter look we know a lot about the catholic church when it's run out of all its other arguments and i have respectfully argued with my own church authorities for 20 years on this i've gone to notre dame boston college catholic colleges which have been good enough to allow me to come and talk with them about the subject and they say the world is made man and woman and it is that complementarity that fit that is the truth about our universe and the world and that you violate that that's what the pope says that i am objectively disordered i think we now understand since we have many centuries past thomas aquinas past darwin that in fact the human species as every species has homosexual behavior within it you can see it not only that but there are not only just two genders people are born intersex people grow up they don't they don't have determined genitalia uh there are species of grass that have dozens of genders there are species of fish that a male become female and then go male again we now know what nature is it's incredibly diverse and it is marked by a superfluity of variation that's why we are who we are because the evolutionary process didn't want to fit the world into a simple binary category but created all sorts of varieties of human experience to see what would be better and there are and e.o wilson one of the greatest uh evolutionary biologists and there are many theories say that in fact homosexuals exist because you know we can't reproduce ourselves we're grateful to the heterosexuals who do such a great job of producing generation after generation of homosexuals you know there will never be a final solution to homosexuals unlike say hitler's disgusting and evil plan for the jews if you exterminated every single gay person on earth you just have to wait a while and we calm always from heterosexual families uh and here wilson posited that maybe having these it's only a small minority it's only three and a half percent uh actually helped human cultures because those people didn't have children to take care of as parents so they became teachers or religious figures or soldiers which is why the military and the priesthood and educational services are so disproportionately gay maybe that was good for those societies societies are able to have these people within them that would conduct religion for example which is in every society uh tended to be gay and because they didn't have to survive and so they they found a way to advance the species so no the world is more complex thomas aquinas was doing a great job in his time as was aristotle but natural law now must accept the truth of darwin and of evolution and of natural selection and of everything we know to be true and those who deny it those who say they are christians are denied are in a self-contradiction because christianity is either true or false and we know that evolution is true we don't have time to go into it but some of us don't know that oh yes you do thank you for your answer please my name is michael irv and i'm a citizen here in moscow and uh this is a question for mr wilson i listened with great interest to your 15-minute opening statement and i heard you talk about drawing lines of acceptable and unacceptable behavior but i did not hear a single cogent argument why mr sullivan and his husband's behavior and his marriage does not fit within the line that you would draw uh and you have not answered the question you haven't given me any reason why civil marriage for gay couples is not good for the society would you care to comment please yes i timed my opening comment when the light was good and the light's not good up here so i've got a little bit left and i was addressing that in my conclusion so i was going to i'm going to incorporate that into my five-minute close basically so you're exactly right that's a missing piece and i urge you to wait for it with baited breath when the missing piece is the actual proposition to be debated [Laughter] concluding marriage for gay couples good for society is it unfair to ask you to answer that now in the uh why didn't you answer it at the beginning in the uh in the tradition that i was trained in the conclusions usually come at the end of the argument this is a premise this is this core of the argument is not a conclusion the the the fundamental conclusion if you if it's your conclusion you don't give me a chance to engage it right so you're actually shutting off the debate by keeping the key it was the gentleman with the card saying 30 seconds left to shut it off no now you have all the time in the world i'm happy to answer your question all right the reason civil marriage and it was implicit in what i was saying in the part that i did present the reason civil marriage for homosexuals is not good for society is that the changing of the direct object from a woman to a man when a man is considering marriage to change the direct object does more than change the direct object it changes the meaning of the verb so the verb to marry is changed for all of us it does not just alter we're not taking a house and adding an extra room what we're doing is we're going into this we're going into a new state of affairs where to allow marriage between a man and a man and a woman and a woman is to open the doors to a dilution of what it means to marry at all and and i believe i know this is an area where andrew and i agree that an established social institution like marriage ought not to be messed with the one nugget i heard was on a minute andrew do you want to respond to that well i understand and respect the core conservative principles don't mess with something this important right i think that's a powerful argument i think so but at the same time you also like understand as i try to say that gay people exist and what to do with us just like polygamists um you're a polygamist as well as i as we just discussed it earlier so why won't you let me marry that way where's the hate man you know um maybe that is the other side of you uh mr wilson uh coming out there uh uh describing a whole group of people who seek this uh version and equating them with something else which i've clearly said i don't agree with what i will tell what i would ask you is this i understand that impulse i think it's a good impulse that's why i'm a federalist i don't want the whole thing to be imposed what has happened in massachusetts over the last 10 years or in those countries where this has been allowed which has shown that this has been a mistake what have been the bad consequences of this development well if you consider homosexual marriage to be a bad consequence that would be one of them that's a complete tautology if [Music] because gays are bad no no no no give us tell me what harm marriage rights for me will do to the society as a whole i'm not a utilitarian i'm a christian and as a christian i believe in the inspiration of the word of god okay there we have it there we have it there we have the answer the answer is not a civil secular argument based upon arguments that all of our citizenry can engage in it is a religious argument based upon authority based upon faith absolutely that's so there you have it that's not a secular civil argument it is a religious fundamentalist argument that's what i heard too you said that it's not the will of god well i've been talking to god and she's she says she changed her mind and it's really okay but it's nice to know that you're in touch um what's your turn thank you for coming and speaking to us tonight mr sullivan um your primary argument for a social argument as it seems uh for or against why polygamy is wrong uh that was doug's challenge to you and you said polygamy is wrong because it would mess up society you know you'd have all sorts of fights and wars everything um so if a gay man so a man marries a man and suppose lots of people do this doesn't that free up a couple women um it seems society would be a little more stable with uh no women women lots of single women are by no means as dangerous as lots of single men um and also it just so happens that they're lesbians too to marry one another now uh so i see i can see that that could be conceivably an argument but i don't i don't i can see that at least that's an attempt to answer the question that was just asked which is it could be a bad consequence have we seen anywhere where we have had marriage equality uh a dearth of men straight men for women to marry and if we do it seems to me it has nothing whatsoever to do with these gays getting married i mean they're 97.5 percent of the population we are 3.5 percent my math is bad maybe that's one 96 and a half but uh so who's likely to influence whom do you know what's happened to the gays gay community since this happened i mean it's an astonishing thing the concer if another minority group had said we want the values we want to serve our country in service the first soldier who lost his leg in afghanistan was a gay man all right i'm sorry but i get passionate about this and and he is sacrificing and serving what is wrong with that why aren't you cheering that why aren't conservatives celebrating that what fundamentalists nonsense is preventing conservatives from supporting people who take care of themselves who are the last people in this society supporting the institution of marriage who are taking care of each other so the government need not take care of them where if they're not a conservative standing and cheering it's taken so long and now they finally are as david cameron the british prime minister leader of the conservative party said i support gay marriage not despite being conservative because i am one and the truth is in this country conservatism has been killed by religious fundamentalism and the the task of the next generation and we we're finding it among younger evangelicals who don't subscribe to the bigotry of some of their elders and don't believe the arguments and or agree with the arguments of some of their elders and although i must say i don't think everybody who opposes this is a bigot i hope you'll accept that some of them are oh absolutely some of them are i think that pete standing outside people's people who died of aids and having god hates uh is is a horrible thing to do um right but they're bigots they're bigots on both sides they're there are actually okay bigotry is a human capacity and some of the hate speech that is directed against principled religious conscientious people is really horrible and i oppose it and i have opposed it and i have been attacked for opposing it right and i buy my husband among other people why are you always giving them giving them an easy time because i think they can we won over i think douglas you will be won over one day i think i think the holy spirit is at work and i think he will persuade people that gay people are made in the image of god and are worthy of love and commitment and family the west [Applause] the westboro the westboro baptist folks are haters and they are bigots and just as you have opposed the hatreds from your side we have opposed that kind of hatred also so basically there's no there's no excuse for that kind of behavior all right in that case it's your journey wilson my name is stephen burley i'm a uc vallado student my question which i think something has been overlooked during this debate is what about same-sex marriage you're opposed to i'm curious if you're opposed to granting them the same the same benefits that same-sex i mean that uh that heterosexual couples receive such as visiting rights burial rights social security retirement benefits if you're opposed to granting them those same benefits or if it's just the name marriage that you're not comfortable with and if you are opposed to granting them the same benefits equal benefits do you claim to be compassionate at the same time um thank you that's a that's a great question actually peter and andrew and i were talking about this during the during the break and i agree with the point that peter was making there are a number of things that in in this debate that are bones of contention um that i think ought not to be bones of contention in other words i don't have i i think that we ought not to have um arbitrary restrictions on who can visit who in the hospital and and you know the things like that that i i would like to i i would like us to be come a less regulatory society for everybody less uptight for for everybody so there are all sorts of things like that where i believe that next of kin issues i i think people should be able to settle their affairs beforehand with relative ease without roomfuls of lawyers having to get involved so there are bones of contention where homosexuals will point to this the story that andrew told in the hospital there are heartbreak stories like that just among heterosexual families where you know a couple of sisters come in mom dies and someone is the executor of the state and someone forgot to change this and and pretty soon you have a disaster basically those sorts of things should be addressed but i think they can be addressed with common sense without redefining marriage so so just to reiterate if if same-sex marriage was called something else would you be okay with it if they're granted all the equal rights all the benefits but it was called something else no but part of the part of the problem is i believe that we have way too many um benefits we americans have um as h.l mencken um said one time that the people tend to think of america as a giant milch cow with 30 million teads and i think that there are way too many benefits for everybody so i'm not interested in opening up more and more benefits economically i'm a libertarian so i'd i'd rather take benefits away from heterosexuals rather than add new benefits or new entitlements for homosexuals tell me a right that you would remove from a heterosexual couple i'm not sure name one a right that i would yes um so federal right for example oh um yeah social security benefits if you are you you have a widow has no right to her husband's uh social security no well uh you know in a few decades uh the ogre math is going to take that benefit away and anyway don't avoid the question no no the point is a very anti-family argument you're making no the family i believe families existed before we started getting checks from the government so well let me let me ask you this we we we are someone's saying that these are not necessarily checks from the government let me give you an example you may be passionate about something for a minute is it not just benefits they are my rights my my great grandchildren have not been born yet and they're already saddled with 16 trillion okay and that's because we cannot control ourselves and we're giving away entitlements we're giving away money we don't have we haven't earned it yet our great grandchildren haven't earned it yet and that is that kind of entitlement mentality is destroying us so yeah i would say you pay out everybody right now let me let me say this for example a spouse could not be forced to provide evidence against his or her spouse in court would you take that away no why not but you would you would not have that right extended to me and my husband no you got a fifth amendment right what do you mean the common law right that allows a spouse to not testify against but i'm not a spouse under federal law my point is that the protection that uh that common law provision provides is the protection against self-incrimination no um let me give you and since that doesn't work let me let's say you you you travel you live abroad for a period of time and you fall in love with someone from another country which happens all the time yes do you think that the heterosexual the american has a right if they marry that person to bring that person back into united states and live as a married couple that's been the law since marriage ever began yes but not if it was a a homosexual couple right why because i'm opposed to homosexual marriage that's a tautology again you're saying essentially that the what's the reason why we say that marriage is special well even if you married someone from a different country you as an american citizen have an absolute right if you marry that person in good faith i mean i want to talk about fake marriages right in good faith to live in your country there is now a growing diaspora of american citizens having to live in other countries with their spouses who are legally married in america who are barred from bringing their spouses into this country that is tearing families apart glenn greenwald one of the greatest bloggers in america has to live an american citizen has to live in brazil because the man he loves is brazilian and they won't let him in when before when we got married and i had not yet gotten my green card we had to enter immigration and we were advised by lawyers in separate rows apart from one another any indication that we had any relationship at all would be a bar for you becoming for you entering the country this is an attack upon family it's an attack upon love by the way that question had an awesome beard i just i just wanna i know i wanna compliment yours too cheers you have no beard but you get him out mr sullivan i've appreciated very many things that you've said tonight especially going back to polygamy when you said polygamy polygamy dilutes the meaning the loving bond of marriage i think that's a pretty direct quote dilutes the loving bond of marriage and it disrupts the male female ratio for marriage i appreciate those statements very much i'm trying to square that and i'm getting to my question when you said earlier in a democracy our only ultimate resort those were your words our only ultimate resort is public opinion so my question is if it was ascertained that a majority of people in this country did approve of polygamous civil marriage would you still recognize public opinion as your ultimate standard if it were the law and i live in a republic governed by the rule of law and if the process that occurred in the due constitutional democratic process yes i would have to respect that even though i would have argued quite strongly against it thank you that's that's their what else where else do we go we know the answer from douglas we go to god his god and the truth is we live in a society there's only one of them in which well many many many human beings on this planet don't believe that and many people in this country don't believe that and their right to their conscience is as important as yours and my point is simply this when you invoke god's authority to determine a social and political question you've ended debate you have made it a matter of fiat you have not you are attacking the very basis of democracy which is the separation of that kind of authority from the only authority this country recognizes which is the will of the people and that is that is the struggle the struggle right now within the conservative movement is between theocrats essentially and i i think what you described is theocracy that it's god's will therefore it must be imposed upon everybody even though large numbers of people don't believe in god at all even though many people believe in a different god than yours even though many people are even believe in the same god believe it in different ways like catholics um we live in a diverse society what if the people want theocracy well they genuine they generally don't like you yes ask the afghans under the taliban whether they like theocracy ask ask the people of iran whether they like theocracy i saw that theocracy gun people down in the streets as it must because if you can't persuade people of the truth you have to force them to obey the key ally of theocracy is violence they go together the key principle of christianity is non-violence this is not christianity it is a perversion of christianity i said what if the people want theocracy well that would be more it would be more accurate to say i don't no one ever really has is the truth and when they've gotten it they've hated it you did earlier on the same and you have the constitution i'm afraid you've got to get rid of before you go over there i can't i can't help mentioning this point you did actually say earlier that moral questions could be decided by majorities however it's time it's time for another question uh hi my name my name is jonah mix i'm not a student lived here for a long time i followed both of your work very closely and um i want to add another not out of perspective but come from perspective in this question is that i'm not a christian like both unlike both of you i'm an atheist and but i have a deep respect for christianity and my question for mr wilson is that um i don't think i don't think you're a bigot in any way but every single argument you've used tonight was used not only uh to say that black people and white people can't get married it was also used uh when we argued whether or not you know jewish people had souls or whether or not women should own property or whether or not every number of social and moral uh movement forward in our community uh in our in our world society our movement towards what now we believe to be just completely obvious truths um it's been opposed by people every step of the way who talk a lot like you and it's been pushed forward uh though every step of the way by people who talk a lot like mr sullivan and my question here is straight straight answer why should we take your arguments that you know doing this is going to lead to social breaking apart it's going to ruin the institution it's going to you know promote moral anarchy when those arguments were used against every class of citizen who we now give rights to without thinking a second thought about it everything you've said if you replace the word gay with black if you replace the word you know gay marriage with rights for women it's happened over and over and over again as men like you have said these things i want to know why should i trust your argument now when the same argument was used by people who we now correctly think of as monsters i think i think that's a fair question and i would answer it um i would answer i would answer it this way um the take for example the miscegenation laws which was struck down by the supreme court in loving versus virginia in 1967. it wasn't that long ago um i was 14 at the time all right so it wasn't that long ago it's within living memory i think there was something like 16 states that had their laws struck down at that time it was not a bagatelle it was not an incidental uh problem it was it wasn't that sort of thing so yeah yeah there are people who argued uh vigorously in defense of they and they said if we allow blacks and whites to marry in our state then then you know um we're going to end up with a president like barack obama yeah right but don't get me distracted um with the um what they what they were doing is they were saying if we allow blacks and whites to marry that's going to open the floodgates and and our pristine state of affairs is going to be ruined by these uh couples practicing miscegenation all right that's what the argument was my argument is not if we let homosexuals marry they're gonna come in and ruin our pristine institution of marriage i think we ruined it i think it's already ruined it's already shot all the blazes all right now i don't think homosexuals are going to come in and ruin marriage i think heteros have ruined marriage so that doesn't really answer the question though i'd really like you to answer the question what is the difference between your argument and the arguments that were used i just i just told you no they they believed that they were defending they believed that they were the last bastion of a pure white race they were arguing for white supremacy and they said if we let these people in they're going to ruin they're going to wreck our perfection here they're going to wreck the state of affairs that we've got so i'm arguing the opposite the difference between them and you is that you don't think it's worth defending but you want to keep him out anyway i'm just one i'm seriously wondering sir no it's absolutely the institution of marriage is absolutely worth defending but as a pa i've been a pastor for 35 years plus and i've had to do a hundred times more damage control on of onslaughts on the institution of marriage that were conducted by men and women in heterosexual marriages all right so the the so should we make it so only gay marriage is legal is that what you know is that what you're arguing here no what i'm what i'm arguing is that you're the premise of your question that that my argument was structurally the same as die-hard conservatives in ages past is false it's not structurally the same i'm doing something completely different than what they were doing i'm saying that marriage is under assault not by homosexuals but by sin marriage is under assault not because of the gay rights agenda and that only it's under assault because people are sinners there are variations of sin they're heterosexual sins they're adulterous sins there's promiscuous sins and i believe that that same sex expression of sexuality is also a sin i believe that because i believe the bible but i don't believe it's the only sin and i don't believe it's the most damaging sin for uh the traditional concept of marriage i believe marriage is worth defending but i have to do a lot more of defending marriage against heteros than i do against homosexuals yes or no answer real quick do you think then i would like just a quick follow-up um which is which is that thank you i mean i'm i'm very grateful for that acknowledgement because i think that is what marks uh a reasoned chris opposition to this in ways that is not uh and hasn't been made in the past i mean to say that gay people the people who've destroyed marriage is self-evidently not true right self-evidently and but you know a lot of people on your side of this argument aren't as open-minded or as conceit as much as you just did so you you those people just blame us for something we had absolutely nothing to do with and i grant the gentleman's question i do believe i do believe there are people arguing for um biblical marriage today who do parallel the old arguments but given that why are you not on a tear against divorce you think it should be illegal what's that do you think divorce should be made illegal again um i believe it should be made a lot harder than it is why should it not be made illegal uh because jesus says that moses jesus is very very clear about this jesus said moses allowed divorce because of hardness of heart and i've seen situations what did jesus then say but from the beginning it was not so right so i believe that within the uh come on you you're a pastor you know what jesus said about me no i just told you no no tell me the whole thing um a man will leave his father and mother cleave to his wife and the two will become one flesh he appeals whoever divorces his wife except for in infidelity what what are you looking for i'm i'm i'm talking about what god has brought together no man can put a son there right and what jesus was talking about in the universe of discourse he said a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife that's what jesus said and never divorce and never divorce correct that's the one it's the one point about marriage that jesus himself insisted upon no divorce and that's and you are violating god's will the standard i will support any any look i would be violating his standard if i was seeking a divorce yes no but if you if but no that's not your standard your standard is what the societal norms are must be imposed because god has said we have jesus words himself the divorce is wrong and yet you are happily able you know jesus said divorce is wrong divorce when when a couple divorce there's always some level of sin involved in it somehow the question is whether divorce should always be a crime there's a difference between a sin and a crime jesus said that moses allowed for divorce in certain but hard cases and the implication is he he overcame that he said that what matters is your love and fidelity forever it's the only thing he said about marriage for goodness sake jesus and yet divorce is ubiquitous and yet christian churches the entire protestant tradition in fact uh supports divorce now all i'm saying is isn't it a tiny bit unfair to focus on excluding the gays we don't support divorce i want the church of england uh i mean that was why the church of england was founded as the only representative of the church of england here i think that's a slightly um um i say inaccurate representation really you think henry viii uh created the church of england because he was converted to protestantism this is your sectarian this is just sectarian propaganda you know perfectly well there's an annulment he wanted now then uh i think we have another question waiting here sure uh uh i've heard you both say very clearly that monography and fidelity until death do its part is right you both agreed on that well i think no i think that it should be the social norm i'm not in favor of legislating opposing or judging people who have failed marriages or or i'm just that's not what i'm saying another question i come from a tradition where people are christian tradition where people are virgins until they get married man and wife and i of course it's more of a civil thing but you made a hint that both heterosexual and homosexual people sowed their wild oats before they fell in love with the right person and i wonder if you have you may have to invoke god although you objected doug to it you just invoked him quite a bit for just in the last paragraph so you may have to answer this morally what is your stand about uh premarital no promiscuity before marriage i i i well promiscuity is a very loaded term well okay um one other person sexually before they make their marriage i think it is actually a good thing okay i think that is uh that those people who have had some sexual experience and have understood themselves better through their sexual experiences are more likely to be able to understand the sexual experience in a a marriage uh and i think that that that that norm as we know because in all those states where these these brands of christianity are strongest have the highest divorce rates i think it is an impossible standard and i think it is an unhealthy standard um and i have no problem with people having sex outside of marriage uh in a free society and i don't think necessarily as long as it is consensual and adult i think it is nobody's business and i think it can be an amazing thing and uh i want to defend sex for a second uh because some of the premises of this is all sex is somehow icky and wrong no it's not it's wonderful it's one of the greatest i remember when i when i found out that i was a sexual being was the most amazing thing i'd ever found out about myself i couldn't imagine that there was anything wrong with that and any human i mean why does a person before marriage have so much ejaculate ejaculate i mean why why do we not have why don't we why are we naturally constantly producing sperm and eggs way more than we need to need [Music] because it's like being um why not tmi too much information not at all everybody in this room has masturbated and the one percent who denies it is a liar and i've said that to a group of catholic priests for goodness sake let's be real about our sexuality yes let's be honest let's also recognize this debate has been going on for a very long time and you've given of yourselves very generously and there are a number of people waiting for questions but alas we're reaching the point where closing statements are called for and i'm going to take one more question from each line so if you would ask yours please and if we could keep the answers brisk so that we can move on quickly to the next one uh hi i'm bree i'm a student here at university of idaho and just so i get your names right wilson and sullivan right yes okay perfect um so i guess this is a good time to go back to the beginning in the title of the actual debate which is why civil marriage for gay couples is good for society and you gave many reasons the divorce rates in the states are down you are a perfect reason but you have not given any reason as to why it is bad other than your weird opposition to the alteration of the literary direct object um and aside from your christian beliefs because christian doesn't necessarily or ever really imply society how is it negatively affecting society please give us one example how gay marriage has negatively affected how it will or how it has other than its obvious progression into polygamy which is completely false but well please anybody who does not see that muslim immigrants will not be the people next in line after andrew clamoring using the same arguments that were used here tonight anybody who thinks that that is not coming is kidding themselves uh what what so sorry i don't so i'm what i'm saying is that my polygamy argument is not a hype is not a a weird hypothetical the andrew talked about people no i'm saying i'm saying one he has given positive effects that have happened now they're we are winning the people who are voting for gay rights are winning what's happening now what has happened that's negative and we have positive effects what are the negatives here here it is in a uh index card three by five card andrew has granted that polygamy in society is destructive correct how does homosexuality affect you negatively andrew has granted that the president andrew is granted that the presence of polygamy in society is is a destructive influence we have a short attention span generation here that was the that was my first sentence i sometimes answered have answers that involve more than one sentence all right now but i'll give you the first one again since you weren't listening to it very carefully andrew is granted that the presence of polygamy in society is destructive to society i believe that we have every reason to believe that advocates of polygamy whether fundamentalist mormons or immigrant muslim men who want to bring all their wives and not just one of them will use the argumentation and the diversity tolerance mantra as a way of advancing their polygamy argument and that task will be a lot easier for them with the gays having done what they did then that task would have been 25 years ago before the uh this whole gay marriage thing started so if if polygamists showed up 25 years ago and said we want i want my marriage my polygamous marriage recognized and i want sharia law to be established and i want you know i want all these things moderator he's not answering the question okay just what have you seen already that's happened you are almost done this lady wants to ask the question because you can't do it you can't do it andrew and i andrew and i agree that polygamy is bad this greases the skids for polygamy andrew do you want to say anything about that or shall we move to the last question i i'll just promise you that if that ever does come up i will be in the forefront of those opposing it and i will make the arguments based on civil arguments about the negative consequences to society as all not invoke some deus ex machina literally uh to end the argument uh and that you cannot provide an answer to the question of why this will be bad for society except some nebulous future hypothetical that shows currently no sign of any support which the gay movement actually opposes uh seems to me to be a very weak strand on which to base your case and and uh i don't i don't care i don't care if the gay movement opposes it the polygamy movement does not you know let me ask you this question do you regard newt gingrich as a polygamist serial polygamist yes okay i think it's time this is the last question i actually have two questions for both of you and mr sullivan you said that you grew up in catholic family and i know it's been hard like knowing that you were gay and since you were a child so how did you overcome that with your family and then for next question for mr wilson imagine if you found out that your son is gay and what would you do what would you reject your own son thank you so well i will tell you i asked my mom and dad i wanted to see them together it's a rare thing you know most families you talk to mom and she tells dad um anyway they sat them down i sat them both down and i said mom and dad look i have something to tell you and they said my mother said what and i said i'm gay. she said what does that mean i said i'm gay i'm a homosexual and she said oh my god i better go make a cup of tea the perfect english response when hitler's bombing you make tea my father who is the captain of the town of rugby team captain of his high school rugby team the jockiest of jocks the manliest of men whom i'd never seen cry in his entire life suddenly bent double and started to sob uh i i it floored me and i said to him the only thing i could say daddy uh why are you crying don't cry i'm i'm finally you know i'm happy i can be myself now um i i'm doing fine and he kept crying now this was unprecedented and finally i said well can you tell me why you're crying so i can answer your question dad and he said words that i will never forget i'm crying he said because of all the things you must have gone through when you were growing up and i never did anything to help you and you think that isn't love the question to me was uh what would how would i handle it how would i process it if someone in my family a son my son was announced what the way andrew did that he was gay god has blessed me with an extraordinary family and i'm very grateful that i'm in a very tight family and we all love each other and it's just wonderful one of the reasons it's wonderful is that everybody in our family is committed to an authority outside our household that authority is deeper richer more important than we are so in a situation where if someone dear to me someone close to me revealed what i have taught my entire ministry and what i believe my entire life to be a sin if someone in my family or if a close friend or anybody confessed that to me what i would want to do i would hope that my response would be to maintain the standard while accepting the person and ministering the grace of christ to the person so uh it's it's been said enough that it has become a cliche but chesterton once pointed out that truisms for all their faults remain true and one of the truisms that conservative evangelical christianity is committed to is that we're to love the sinner and hate the sin so if someone dear to me was confessed to me that they were in this condition had this condition i would want to hate the sin and love the sinner just like i have sought to always do [Applause] what if he said i'm gay and i've never had any sex with any other man what sin did he commit i don't believe that homosexual orientation is a sin at that point i think i would like to move to closing remarks and andrew you have five minutes please to sum up your case yeah i won't take five minutes because i think i've made my case for good or ill so i'll just read you something it was written by hannah arendt who was a controversial person in her time especially on the left and i wish i could find it here it is it was written in 1959 and it was during a big debate in the uh civil rights movement about whether they should focus on striking down the miscegenation laws the anti-miscegenation laws or whether they should be focused on things like segregation in high schools or discrimination in public accommodations and the overwhelming majority said no public accommodations school segregation because you can't touch the marriage then and actually of course we know that a lot of racism and a lot of the foundations of slavery were based on the terror of a black man having sex with a white woman that is the profound deep panic among white southerners in those days and i would add today as well because it would destroy their understanding of what it is to be an american i think the reason that barack obama who if you judge in my view i don't want to digress actually but i think one of the reasons he is enrages so many people it's not that he's a black president is that he is a president he was both black and white but i believe that humanity in the arc of history and i'm not i have to say i was flattered i'm not actually on the forefront of change i'm i'm as i say i'm a federalist i'm happy to allow you to have your right for i want the process to take place which is not a progressive it is a moderate conservative who wants to change and what i would say is that when a group in society emerges when we see them there when they exist the real conservative doesn't deny that existence the real conservative looks at the reality and says how do we integrate this new phenomenon so that we can integrate it and make our society less different than it ever than it was before in other words as burke would put it sometimes you have to change something for it to remain the same as i said to the congress who are we we gays [Music] we are your sons and daughters we're your brothers and your sisters we're in your family somewhere we are absolutely present and we are asking to be brought in we are asking to come home we were born at home and then the knowledge of our sexual orientations often forced us away from it and we're asking to come back we're asking to be part of the family without sacrificing our need and our right to love and be loved by another human being hannah arendt wrote the following the right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which the right to attend an integrated school the right to sit where one pleases on a bus the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement regardless of one's skin or color or race are minor indeed even political rights like the right to vote and nearly all other rights enumerated in the constitution are secondary to the inalienable human rights to life liberty in the pursuit of happiness proclaims and declaration of independence and to this category the right to home and marriage in unquestionably belongs what i want to ask every american here today have any of you heterosexuals who are here today ever believed that the right enshrined in the declaration of independence to the pursuit of happiness would not include the right to marry the person you love this is an american cause it's a human cause and america started this movement and it will finish it mr wilson five minutes thank you peter for your moderating thank you andrew again for debating thank you for being a good group i do not see how we can get out of the impasse that we are now in with the public state of marriage on our own authority as dan phillips has aptly noted the most offensive verse in the bible is not to be found in leviticus or deuteronomy with laws concerning homosexuality it is not to be found in the new testament when paul tells wives to be submissive to their own husbands it is not to be found in places commanding that the amalekites be smitten the most defensive verse in the bible is the very first one in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth genesis 1 1. this means that there are only two ways to go we can work to discover the meaning of the world around us a meaning embedded there by god or we can rebel against that meaning and seek to roll our own once we have rolled it we nearly always try to smoke it which is the problem although there are constituent elements of marriage that contribute um contributors to this book that andrew edited testified to very ably i think more is going on with marriage than just issues of procreation or companionship god decided to imprint his image in the world in this particular way so god created man in his own image in the image of god he created him male and female he created them genesis 1 27. this is in the first chapter of the bible in the third chapter of the of scripture the image of god rebelled against its triune archetype and our race fell into sin and rebellion all our sexual confusions date from that point many heterosexual confusions included but god promised also in the third chapter that he would send someone who had crushed the serpent's head and so the long history began of looking for the messiah to come when he arrived he was revealed to us in his character of a bridegroom one who had come searching for his lost bride he won that bride through his death and resurrection death on the cross and resurrection from the grave so the first marital statement about god's image defaced by our sin was not abandoned by god rather he determined to restore it through a much more glorious marital image that of christ in the church every marriage is therefore a proclamation of the gospel what when marriages go wrong or blow up or go cold what this is is the marital equivalent equivalent of false teaching when they are radically redefined as i believe same-sex marriage seeks to do it is again false teaching about the gospel what the image of god is and what god intends to do to restore the image of god now things have gotten bad enough in the hetero world that one might be forgiven for thinking that this is a sermonic form that has lost its usefulness if marriage is preaching the gospel then perhaps this sermonic form has lost its usefulness but i don't think so i think we have to guard against further erosions while confessing that we are only in this position because our very obvious need for a savior we need a savior we need forgiveness relationships are characterized by accusation condemnation infidelity straying pettiness we just were sinful and the sin the sins that we have uh the sins that we display come in all sorts of shapes and forms and sin disrupts relationships i think we ought to think of sin the way we ought to think of poisonous snake the bible teaches us to to think in these terms god promises that he's going to crush the serpent's head and he does it by means of a marriage he does it by means of the bridegroom and the bride so consequently for a christian when someone says hey let's let's redefine marriage we re it's not just oh ich other people are doing something that we're not used to we believe that at the very center of the restoration of humanity at the center of the rebuilding of the human race which is what jesus came to do and which includes the public square i'm as it was uh made evident earlier i'm not a secularist i believe that we have to acknowledge god and acknowledge jesus and if we don't do that i think we're going to be fi found uh spiraling uh ever downward circling the drain i believe that we need deliverance i believe that we need forgiveness i believe that we need all of us heterosexuals and homosexuals alike we need to be cleansed by the blood of jesus christ and i think that that is a public fact thank you [Applause] thank you you can't go quite yet uh it is one of the knowledge glories of our free civilization that two opponents can engage with such passion eloquence conviction and power without becoming enemies and i think we should all be extremely proud of the way in which we have taken part in an event of such very high quality and democratic purpose i would like you now to set seal upon that by voting either for or against the motion as i said earlier there will not be any abstentions i feel that the moment has come for you to say clearly which side you take the motion again is civil marriage for same-sex couples is good for society all those in favor of that proposition please raise your hands [Applause] you can shout as well as if you like but it won't increase the number of votes all those against the proposition please raise your hands i believe that is clearly lost thank you gentlemen both very much indeed i've usually enjoyed it and i think we should [Applause] you

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 107,822

Rating: 4.7303371 out of 5

Keywords: gay marriage proposal, gay marriages, gay marriage supreme court, andrew sullivan bill maher, andrew sullivan real time, andrew sullivan interview, andrew sullivan debate, andrew sullivan 2019, andrew sullivan david frum, andrew sullivan soccer, andrew sullivan basketball, andrew sullivan catholicism, doug wilson debate, doug wilson, douglas wilson, gay marriage debate, Peter Hitchens, Peter Hitchens debate, gay, same sex marriage, canon press, lgbt, politics, andrew sullivan

Id: XhxteVaoLjY

Length: 138min 54sec (8334 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/offthekirbYouTube]

I can spewll I promise!

[u/HaiKarate]

Interesting debate... I didn't have it in me to watch all 2 hours, but I did watch through the opening statements.

Pastor Wilson's arguments amount to, "OMG, slippery slope! What's next, polygamous marriages? Incestuous marriages?"

First of all, forget "slippery slope". That argument has been used to disenfranchise groups throughout history. It doesn't offer an intelligent reason why equality shouldn't be considered.

Second, WRT other possible forms of marriage... so what? If there's a movement to recognize them, then we can debate each of them in the public forum.