NOM BLOG

Video: NOM's Thomas Peters Debates the Future of Marriage on CrossTalk

 

NOM's Communications Director Thomas Peters joined in a spirited debate with Peter Tatchell, a veteran LGBT activist from the UK, over the meaning and future of marriage -- we think you will enjoy it!

On love and its relation to marriage, Peters says in response to Peter Tatchell:

"The proponent of gay marriage keeps saying "love is love is love" but the fact is there's a difference between the love of two men, and the love of a man and a woman the difference being that the love of a man and a woman, in most cases, ends with a child, and the child needs a mother and a father, a child for its entire biological [upbringing] will need to be raised by will be raised best by its mother and father and so that's why it's absurd to claim there's something ethically wrong with with seeing the love between a man and a woman as being unique -- that's what the core of marriage is, it's not an evaluation of one love versus another, it's saying different loves result in different things, and that's why the vast majority of who will experience love heterosexually and will have a child and that child will need a mother and father and all the social sciences show that children to best when they're raised by their biological mother and father. And so marriage just isn't about the emotional needs of adults, it's about the practical, emotional, psychological, social needs of children and that's why, while you can experiment with marriage for a few years, generationally only a healthy society that understands this core meaning of what love actually means, is a successful society."

On the harm gay marriage causes, Peters provides an illustration:

"There's an awful lot of civil society -- churches, communities, government -- that is all built to support marriage because marriage isn't easy. It's not easy to get men and women to commit to raising the children they make with their bodies. But that's what civil society has been doing and a healthy society does that. It is difficult and gay marriage makes it difficult for all of civil society to enshrine that value that children deserve a mom and a dad, and that men and women should stick around and love and raise the children they make with their bodies, and the detraction of gay marriage has made it impossible for things like the Catholic Church, for things like political/civil government to give that message and so when you say "gay marriage won't hurt anyone" it already has because now when I try to say "a child deserves both mom and a dad" you jump in and say "that's against equality!" and so you can actually see already that the more gay marriage becomes accepted and enshrined in law the more difficult it will become for the rest of us to communicate this life saving propagating message for the next generation."

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