Peter Hitchens on Andrew Sullivan Debate

uh welcome Peter Hitchens to Moscow it's good to have you here always pleasure to be here um uh for the viewers uh Peter is came to Moscow in order to moderate a debate that I had last night with Andrew Sullivan on the subject of um same-sex marriage and uh the event uh drew a a large crowd and fairly orderly crowd I thought and uh I wanted to spend at least a little bit of time walking through some of the issues that the debate raised thank you for moderating it thank you for your engagement and your entertainment value in in keeping us all in line I def to give satisfaction yes um the U Peter lightheart who was there last night wrote a wrote a post debate commentary for first things and um and he was highlighting the uh the issue that Christians have the the challenge that Christians have in explaining a Christian vision for marriage and a Christian vision for anything actually to this generation which seems to be um badly educated but you know misinformed um and to the extent that folks are are educated and and are informed they've got a completely different Paradigm for processing information and it it seems to me that um that in some ways when we're debating same-sex marriage we're trying to we're trying to catch a train that left the station half an hour ago um do you have that same uh sense or what would your observations be about longer than half an hour ago I think it's an argument which is about a a symptom of a of a much greater Revolution which has already happened right and against which hardly anybody has fought uh rather than as it so often I feel mistakenly portrayed as a a part of the general assault upon Christian marriage it the assault on Christian marriage really took place long before as I think we discussed last night partly thanks to the contraceptive pill and the implications of that and then because of the extraordinary divorce reforms which came into existence in your country and mine in the 1960s we call them no fault divorces what well it's not it's not so much no fault I that is an element of it but it was once described to me and it's always stuck in my mind as being the most graphic explanation of what's happened under the new Arrangements a mutual pledge made by two people to each other privately but but powerfully has been transformed by law into a pledge which can be revoked at will by one party and the party who wishes to maintain the marriage and to stick by the original vows can in the end be dragged by force under threat of Prison from the family home mhm and this immense invasion of privacy and Liberty once understood in that form can be seen for what it is but most people don't see it that way it's not a matter of no fault it's a matter of ultimate state power to destroy marriage and will basically all the Leverage is has been granted to the party who wants to break the vow yes and that is that is the weight of the state not merely in terms of of formal law in terms of what happens when one party seeks to break up the marriage but also in the disposition of property and the custody of children afterwards okay the presumption is all against the person who wants to maintain the marriage if um so would you would you agree then this was something that was said at the debate um and it was an uh one small intersection where Andrew and I agreed but would you also agree that homosexuals the the press for gay marriage the press for same-sex marriage is simply um vandals running around in the ruins of a great City they didn't ruin it they didn't capture it they didn't overthrow it I think that's I think that's true there are elements of it which I think an intelligent person can can criticize and indeed oppose because there are thing there are parts of the argument in its favor which are fundamentally either dishonest or wrong but in terms of whether it is the great threat to marriage that it's that it's portrayed as no the the marriage is a ruin as you rightly say and in it we Scurry about so we're not we're not in the situation where if we don't fight off this assault on um Christian marriage the institution is going to die we're we died a while ago and we we need to be praying for a resurrection now oh let's not be too sure about died but certainly were very badly damaged [Music] and reforms and uh recoveries do happen right they're not impossible I think the the 18th century in England establishes that the Revival of the Christian religion for almost complete collapse right in England at that time was the most astonishing achievement and show it can be done so we don't necessarily say it's it's all up but right what's wrong with this cause is not is not just that it's it won't make much difference if we win right is that it's also an elephant trap into which conservatives are lured to make them look foolish by their opponents so the soone such as Andrew Sullivan very eloquently put his case last night and very emotionally did it as well that so that it would have had to been a very cruel individual listening to what he said who could have dismissed out of hand The Plea that he was making uh though the use of emotion to Trump reason always seems to me to be slightly suspect but the point is is that because of this approach the person who opposes same-sex marriage will be very easily portrayed as a bigot and as a hater and as all kinds of other things which will immediately lose him any almost any argument among particularly among the college generation and is that what you mean by elephant trap so why don't we maneuver you into a position where we can PL plausibly call you this list of names that we have up that's right and and in and in we come here we come again charging across the Horizon straight into the great big pit which has been dug for us okay um what would you suggest well I like to think that when I see a pit dug in front of me I go around it okay very good how how does one do that well partly by by not concentrating upon it uh partly by not being led into it partly by keeping your discourse very very civilized right last night was an example of how to do it as opposed to it so often is screeching and yeah but it was part it was only possible because in Andrew Sullivan you had an exceptional individual who is intelligent and educated enough to despise the low tricks which so many of his allies will automatically reach for right and if um going back to uh uh the the point about not not uh not pronouncing um Christian marriage dead quite yet seems to me that we have to make a distinction between Christian marriage as practiced by the many faithful Christians who are still living in the old order they're they're keeping their vows they intend to keep them um Andrew brought this up last night when he was quoting what Jesus taught there are many Christians in the first century who despite the fact that all the laws were against them lived Faithfully yes in in terms of what God expected and it seems to me that we have many many Christians who are keeping their vows who understand their vows properly who are living the way they ought to and they're going to be they so Christian marriage is by no means dead in that sense but you might call Christendom marriage is uh dead sort of the cultural expectation of everybody else the assumption that we live in a society which is Christian right is one that I think Christians have to discard mhm it is if if we had expected a law to be passed saying your country is no longer Christian uh against which we could fight in an open battle then we were foolish it was never going to happen like that it's happened by a salamy slicing process and we now wake up and find that we do not live in a Christian country therefore to some extent we simply have to demonstrate by our own practice that what we believe in is as good as we think it is and there are we have many arguments on in the in the conservative World here on the Christian right on the religious right uh we have many back and forth arguments about whether America in its founding was Christian and I think they're compelling Arguments for saying it it was and is and our institutions presuppose um uh the the biblical framework and all of that but to to your point uh it's not a qu it's not a um open question in England the queen is the head of the church and you know it's it's an established church but that doesn't keep it from being a secular Nation but this is this is a cardboard Frontage concealing an emptiness right we could not for instance and and this will alas inevitably come to be proved D in the foreseeable future we could not hold a correlation service of the kind which we held in 1953 now MH the profoundly Christian nature of it and the the the Christian affirmation of the basis of our constitution could not be made in that form and will not the next time and the only reason the only reason the the frontage continues to stand is because an individual still lives right but when she's no longer there it'll be clear that it's it's gone now I've I've understood that um Elizabeth is defender of the faith Charles would like to be defender of faiths something like that or nice thoughts defender of nice thoughts I think excuse me I think that's unfair on Charles who I think thinks quite profoundly about it uh and who I think said what he said because he you had that feeling that many of us have that those of us who do believe in a Godly order and need to huddle together for warmth a bit with other people who feel the same way even if we don't agree with them about much else and I don't think you should make too much out of that but it's not within his power I don't think okay to demand a return to a robust holy Christian Constitution okay um so if I'm hearing you rightly should judges in our courts have specifically ruled that Christianity has Bears no particular weight in judgments over moral questions okay all right so for American conservatives to pass an amendment to the Constitution you know naming naming Jesus isn't going to forall the salami slicing process no um the I am always reminded of the Lou M po bagpipe music the glass is falling hour by hour the glass will fall forever and if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather you don't change fundamental circumstances by passing symbolic laws right right thank you

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 30,336

Keywords: peter hitchens brexit, peter hitchens debate, peter hitchens oxford union, peter hitchens interview, peter hitchens 2019, peter hitchens question time, peter hitchens christopher hitchens, peter hitchens boris johnson, peter hitchens the rage against god, 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 catholicism

Id: BbEQn7_4kgU

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2013