Why Draw the Line at Couples?

RUSH: Here's Art in Windsor, Connecticut, as we go back to the phones. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Look, I just think, you know, there used to be laws that said black people can't marry white people. I don't think this is any different. I mean, if you're gay and you want to marry somebody who's gay, marry somebody who's gay. That's your business. What is the business of the state government or the federal government telling me who I can and can't marry?

RUSH: You are serious with this? You want to equate interracial marriage to homosexual marriage?

CALLER: Yeah, I think that a person should be able to make their own personal decision. I think actually this should be something the Republican Party should be in support of. It's individual rights, you can marry whoever you want.

RUSH: You don't have to worry, the Republican Party's moving in that direction, it is.

RUSH: Well, let me ask you this. Where does this freedom to do what you want stuff stop? And what, in your case, what would two people wanting to do raise a red flag for you? What would you say, "Now, wait a minute, no, no, no, you shouldn't do that?"

CALLER: Well, I think if you were talking about like a three-party marriage, an eight-party marriage --

RUSH: Why? If you love one, you can love two. What if all three people love each other and they want the benefits and all that, who among us should deny those three people their love?

CALLER: I think they can be loved, I just don't think you need to give it a legal status because --

CALLER: Because two people would make a family, they could raise kids, adopt kids, do whatever they want, I don't think --

RUSH: Wait a minute. But why can't three people do that? In fact, if you have two of the same sex and one of the opposite sex, you've handled the adoption issue. You don't need to adopt. You can have one woman and two guys in a marriage, and the woman could be impregnated by the two, and, voila, you got a family.

RUSH: Well, wait, society's determined, you know, by the way, human civilization, from the beginning of time, has determined that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. The Republicans didn't do it.

RUSH: Churchill didn't do it. Margaret Thatcher didn't do it. Gorbachev didn't do. It was humanity which did it. You just said society has determined that -- well, society has determined that marriage is between a man and a woman, but I don't think society's right in that case.

CALLER: No, no. I don't agree with you. I think society has evolved away from that. I think the people in general think that you want if you want to marry somebody you should be able to marry them.

RUSH: Well, someday society is gonna evolve away from marriage by two people and could be three or four, and you're gonna oppose that then for some reason. You're gonna deny those people their love.

RUSH: Why? I don't understand. Why would you discriminate that way? What does the number matter when we're talking about love here?

CALLER: 'Cause I think that in general, two people are necessary to raise a family unit. You need two parents.

RUSH: Well, why? Because every family's got grandparents and aunts and uncles. It's always more than just two people raising the child. It's a village doing it sometimes in the Clintons' case.

CALLER: Not in my family. I never had the village come to my house and raise my family. I think it generally takes two people. I'm not homosexual. I became a Republican after Lieberman got thrown out of the Democratic Party --

CALLER: -- because I said if the party doesn't have enough room for Joe Lieberman, it doesn't have enough room for me. But I think that once that decision has been made, that in our society, financially and economically, you need who people to raise --

RUSH: Well, let me play devil's advocate with you because in the case of homosexual marriage, without additional steps, those two people can't produce a family.

RUSH: Do you think marriage evolved in society precisely because it takes one of each sex to make another human being?

RUSH: Let me ask you this. Do you believe or not believe, do you think it matters or not that a child grow up with two parents or one?

CALLER: I think in an ideal world it's better to have a male and female parent, but I think that the world is never ideal and I think having two parents of the same sex is better than having one parent who is not the same sex.

CALLER: I think two-parents are better than one parent. I think two parents help to raise a family properly, and I think it really helps if you have a two-parent family.

CALLER: Well, they produce more income. They have more time to divide among their kids. If one parent needs to take the kids to school and the other one needs to go to work, they can do that, I mean they can divide the -- it's a more resource available situation.

RUSH: But with feminism you don't have anybody at home anymore. Both husband and wife go off to work and they either got day care or a nanny or somebody else not in the family raising the kid.

CALLER: I think that was a temporary thing. I think that's kind of shifting back the other way now, as you were talking about just a few days ago, I think, weren't you?

RUSH: Well, the phenomenon, yes, of feminist women deciding after birth that, "You know what? I think I want to stay home with the child." Yes, that is happening.

RUSH: It has been happening for awhile. So we could say that you hate single mothers. You hate single parents.

CALLER: No, I don't think you could say that. I just think it's not the ideal situation.

RUSH: Well, no, but that's what's gonna happen to you. I just want to warn you, you're gonna become a hater and a bigot. This is how the people, if there's a movement out there for single parent families and it's perfectly fine, it's nobody's business, but you, Art, come along say, "No, there have to be two parents, even if the same sex," you are gonna become a hater if you oppose the single parent family movement, should there ever be one, you will be called a hater and a bigot. I'm just trying to prepare you for it.

RUSH: Okay, so our caller here hates single mothers. That's what we've learned today from Art --

RUSH: -- at the end of the call. Art, I appreciate your call. I really do. I hope you have a wonderful day out there.

RUSH: There is a movement in this country that you don't hear much about called polyamory. Our caller Art said, "Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no. That's where I draw the line." You can't have more than two people get married.

Well, there's a movement for that, and the proponents are being urged to shut up about it and just do it.

RUSH: Now, we had a guy on the phone here a moment ago named Art who steadfastly maintained that he does have limits on this stuff. He thinks it's fine if two men want to get married and if two women want to get married. That's cool. None of our business. They love each other, that's great. And two parents, even the same sex, better than a single parent. So Art clearly hates single parents, as things work out in America today. But I said, "Well, okay, Art, at what point will these kind of arrangements become something you can't agree with?" He said, "Well, three people, if three people want to get married, I'm gonna draw the line."

"Well, why? I mean, the more love, the better. Two people in love, three people in love. Two people of one sex, one of the opposite sex, I mean you got constant sex that way and you've got constant babies being born, and, oh, you don't need adoption."

That did it. He couldn't go for that. I kept probing. Why not? What's wrong with three? Why not four? It's just like the minimum wage argument. You can eventually reach an amount that even proponents say is too much. And here with the gay marriage argument, you can construct a definition of marriage that even proponents of same-sex marriage will say, "No, no, no, no, that's going too far." But, see, once you cancel the definition of marriage, then it can become anything. And that's another thing that Roberts is saying. Once you take something that has a specific definition, and you obliterate that, then it can become anything you want and there's no limit to it.

So there's a church out there, folks, called the Unitarian church. Many of you have heard of it. You just don't want people to know that you know. There's a joke about Unitarians. The joke is -- and this is the Washington Post saying this. This is not an El Rushbo joke, just so you know. It's right here in the Washington Post. "The joke about Unitarians is that they’re where you go when you don’t know where to go. Theirs is the religion of last resort for the intermarried, the ambivalent, the folks who want a faith community without too many rules. It is perhaps no surprise that the Unitarian Universalist Association is one of the fastest-growing denominations in the country, ballooning 15 percent over the past decade.

"But within the ranks of the UUA over the past few years, there has been some quiet unrest concerning a small but activist group that vociferously supports polyamory. That is to say 'the practice of loving and relating intimately to more than one other person at a time.'" Now, you people in Rio Linda know all about this. But for the rest of you, polyamory is loving and relating to three people in a relationship, four people in a relationship at the same time. And the Unitarians have "a mission statement by Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness (UUPA)." That's the acronym, UUPA. He-he. It is. "The UUPA 'encourages spiritual wholeness regarding polyamory.'"

Now, here's the problem. What's the limit? Where do you draw the line on polyamory? Two women and one man? One women and six men? Three women and two men? Twelve people? Where do you draw the line? The line has not been drawn. The polyamorists don't want any such lines. They don't want any limits whatsoever. A great example of this would be the famous rapper Shawty Lo. Remember him? He was gonna have that great TV show, the rapper in Atlanta. The Oxygen network canceled it. Boy, this guy was ahead of his time. This guy had 11 kids with ten baby mamas. They canceled this show because it was upsetting. But this guy fits right in now. That show could be exactly what's called for, especially to humiliate Roberts. You know, you could put that show on a DVD and drop it off at Roberts' office and say, "Here, these are my friends."

So it is happening out there within the Unitarian church. But the headline of this story is: "Many Unitarians Would Prefer That Their Polyamory Activists Keep Quiet." In other words, don't talk about it, don't call attention to what we're doing here, just do it. If you have a spiritual wholeness and an intimate relationship with three people, do it, but don't tell anybody. Don't run around and brag about it when you go to the IHOP, you know, just do it. And this church is growing.

RUSH: Here is Paul in Ottawa, Canada. Hi, Paul. I'm glad that you called and got through. Welcome.

CALLER: Okay. You're absolutely right in what you say about, if same-sex marriage is made a civil right, then it's gonna brand everybody who's opposed to it as a bigot. That's pretty much what's happened up here, and it hits hardest on teenagers, I think, really, 'cause the peer pressure they face from other teenagers or from the educational system is really intense. You know, at times it drives a real wedge between parents and children.

RUSH: This is the #1 issue among people under 30 in this country, even conservative young people under 30, and it is this technique that has secured it. I think you're right.

CALLER: It often drives a real wedge between both kids and their church as well if they're active in a church. It really goes beyond just branding individuals as bigots, though. If you say that same-sex marriage is a human right or a civil right or something along those lines, then every single church that stands for traditional marriage suddenly becomes like the KKK. That's a very dangerous situation to be in.

RUSH: Because they're opposed to "civil rights." The KKK was opposed to civil rights, and gay marriage is a civil right. So if you're opposed to it, you're no different than the Klan.

CALLER: Yeah. So how can the government justify giving you a break on property taxes or counting you as a charity if you're an organization opposed to a civil right.

CALLER: That would give the government a lot of power to impose very harsh penalties on churches under that circumstance. If you go back to the late 1800s where there was this big fight between Mormons -- who were practicing polygamy, that definition of marriage -- and the federal government that had a monogamous definition of marriage, was a bill passed called the Edmunds-Tucker Act. That law wound up stripping anyone who didn't accept, like swear an oath to accept the state's definition of marriage, of rights.

If you didn't do that, you did not have the right to vote. You did not have the right to serve in a public office. You did not have the right to serve as a juror. Wives could be compelled to testify against their husbands or be sent to jail if they didn't. The Mormon Church itself was dis-incorporated and its assets were seized. And, you know, this sets a legal precedent that could be turned around at Catholics, Baptists, Mormons again, and every other church that holds to traditional marriage if you go and say that same-sex marriage is a right.

RUSH: Right. You know, it's not just that. It also works on the Manhattan, under-30, bar scene conservatives. Nobody wants to be called a bigot. Nobody wants to be thought of as discriminating against "love," which is apparently a commodity in short supply.

RUSH: Because whenever people find it, we're supposed to stop everything and celebrate it. It's so hard to find it out there now that when it is discovered, we gotta stop and celebrate it and proclaim support for it no matter what. Let me ask you this philosophically: Could we get to the point where we would say opposite-sex couples are bigoted because they're not marrying people of the same sex?

CALLER: I think the real issue here isn't, you know, is same-sex marriage a right or not but who gets to decide what's a human right or not. That really is fundamental to what kind of government you have. You know, if you have a monarchy, the king has the ultimate power. If it's a theocracy, then some church or religious body has the ultimate power. Who has the ultimate power in the United States to decide what's a human right and what isn't? Is it some oligarchy of judges or politicians, or is it the people?

RUSH: It's a combination of both, but it's an oligarchy of judges that are deciding everything in this country. But you raise a good point: How long will it be before churches lose their tax deductions if they don't perform same-sex marriages? I'm not joking. People who engage in opposite-sex marriage, are they going to someday be bigots for not marrying somebody of the same sex? Which is the popular and hip thing to be doing. (interruption) Now, Snerdley, you're smirking at me, but I'm just taking this...

See, I love logic and I love context. I love to take things and ask, "Okay, do something today. Where will it lead down the road?" Which hardly anybody thinks about. (interruption) Why do we think it's popular? (interruption) What, same-sex marriage? (interruption) Well, Snerdley is telling me that everybody he knows is sick and tired of hearing about it and they just want it to go away. I will have to concur. A lot of my friends have a different reason they want it to go away.

They are so worried about what's happening to the economy, they are so worried about what their kids' futures economically are not gonna be, that they don't care about this. They think, "Just to hell with it! Why are we wasting time on something like this that doesn't matter?" That also is being taken advantage of in pushing the effort. But, you see, the reason why it all matters and the reason why it's all linked... (big sigh) Boy, am I gonna get in trouble in this. It's just whole concept of morality.

There's gotta be a moral foundation to every aspect of life in a free society or it's gonna vanish. We were talking earlier about this. When freedom is defined as anything you want to do with no moral underpinning, with no virtue attached, freedom without virtue is not really freedom. And I forget, Oz somebody, his book, I quoted from. I forget his last name, but he said this is the root to the decline of free societies is this open-ended definition of freedom to which no virtue is attached. "Hello, Rome," for example, is his point.

You are right (under the argument made by the left). Who says love has to be romantic/physical love? How about platonic love? Brotherly love? Since marriage is no longer about procreation and family, all bets are off.

You posted: If you don’t consummate, it’s not a marriage.
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That is old, backward thinking. We are redefining marriage, so what is to continue to require that it be consummated? /sarc

But, by the way, what is the meaning of consummate? Can a marriage (under the current, for now, definition) be consummated any way other than by “straight sex”? Forgive me, but would anal or oral sex qualify to consummate a marriage?

It's hard to argue against such people when the standard objects we put forth against gay marriage are met with "Yeah, that's a church thing and it's no business of mine. I don't do church."

Yes, you've raised the answers that liberals provide when faced with these questions.

The next question after they've provided an answer to the first is, "Why is the state in the business of marriage at all? Since any two adults can enter into a contract, why don't we leave marriage to the churches and contracts to the state?"

The liberals cannot abide this, because they need the lever of bias to crush the churches. That's where this is going: destruction of religion.

If we aren't supposed to care about what other people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms (leftist argument), then we shouldn't care about what they DON'T do in their bedrooms, either. And if "love is love", then any kind of love should do: best friends, family, etc.

"Why is the state in the business of marriage at all? Since any two adults can enter into a contract, why don't we leave marriage to the churches and contracts to the state?"

You see, this is an argument that I don't understand why we try to make, since everyone knows that a regular contract or a civil union contract is legally inferior to a marriage contract with the state. A civil union isn't worth the paper it's printed on, since it can be busted into by any blood relative who cares to try. You have a civil union with someone, you die, and all the stuff you have was left to the other person in the civil union? Here comes Uncle Crabby, busting up the civil union in court with the "Blood relations trump!" argument, bogarting all the possessions. There's no way around that; civil unions are crap shoots.

The liberals cannot abide this, because they need the lever of bias to crush the churches. That's where this is going: destruction of religion.

I hear this a lot, but to be frank, I don't believe it. Every gay I've ever talked to at work just wants those federal bennies they can't have that the married people do and don't give a crap about religion to give in.

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