About the speaker Frank Turek:

Frank Turek is one of my favorite speakers, and I admire him for being willing to take a public stand on controversial issues like gay marriage. He’s actually had to pay a price for that in his professional life, and I blogged about that before.

Here’s the lecture on gay marriage, featuring Christian apologist Frank Turek.

Outline:

Introduction:

• how to present your case against marriage safely
• Christians are required to go beyond tolerance
• loving another person can mean opposing the person when they want to do something wrong, even if they hate you
• what did Jesus say about marriage? (see Matt 19:4-6)
• what did Jesus say about sexual morality? (Matt 15, Matt 19)

Summary:

• the same-sex marriage debate is about whether to compel people who disagree with the gay lifestyle to validate and normalize it
• P1: the government has an interest in marriage because it perpetuates and stabilizes society – this is the purpose of marriage
• P2-4: government can take 3 kinds of stances towards behaviors: promote, permit or prohibit
• government promotes behaviors when it has an interest in them
• same-sex relationships should be permitted, but not promoted
• Q1: if same-sex marriage had serious negative consequences, would you reconsider their position?
• Q2: are heterosexual relationships the same as homosexual relationships?
• Q3: what would society be like if everyone married according to the natural marriage definition: one woman, one man, for life?
• Q4: what would society be like if everyone married according to the same-sex marriage definition: man/man and woman/woman?
• Should Christians care about law and politics? or should they just preach the gospel?
• They should care because people often get their cues about what is moral and immoral based on what is legal and illegal
• Many of the social problems we see today can be traced back to problems with marriage and family
• Children do much better when they have a relationship with their mother and their father
• Same-sex marriage necessarily destroys the relationship between a child and its mother or its father
• When a country embraces same-sex marriage, it reinforces the idea that marriage is not about making and raising children
• same-sex marriage shifts the focus away from the needs of the children to the feelings of desires of the selfish adults
• does homosexuality impose any health and mental health risks?
• what has the impact of legalizing same-sex marriage been in Massachusetts to individuals, schools, businesses and charities?
• how same-sex marriage poses a threat to religious liberty
• how should you respond to the view that homosexuality is genetic?

And at the very end, he shows this short video, which is only 5 minutes and explains the logic of opposing the redefinition of marriage:

My biggest concern is religious liberty, and we are seeing how same-sex marriage has proven to be incompatible with religious liberty. But I also care about children… I want them to have mothers and fathers who put their needs first. Marriage is about a commitment – it is the subjugation of feelings and desires to responsibilities and obligations. It is a promise. A promise to commit to love your spouse and children regardless of feelings and desires. It requires more self-denial, self-control and self-sacrifice. Not less.