Greg Gutfeld of Fox News
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld had some startling comments for supporters of traditional marriage during a panel appearance on “The Five.”
Arguing that conservatives need to use homosexual marriage “against the left,” Gutfeld said: “Gay marriage, in my opinion, is a conservative idea. The left generally hates traditions. It’s all about breaking with traditions, and in this case it’s embracing a tradition, one that stabilizes a community, one that is valuable for families. Why would you exclude that from a group of people who are born that way?”
Gutfeld expanded his critique to the traditional religious teaching of marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
“If they are born that way, the idea that you are saying that you cannot be part of this, that’s an exclusive belief! As somebody who is not religious, who has been but not [now], I was under the impression that faith should be inclusive.”
Juan Williams congratulated Gutfeld on his comments, but claimed conservatives historically used opposition to homosexual marriage as a “wedge issue.”
Panelist Eric Bolling responded that the reason traditional marriage became so important to the American right is because “the first few caucuses [and] elections are so important, and they’re so heavily Christian, they’re so heavily evangelical.”
Bolling said expressing a belief akin to Gutfeld’s would likely result in a candidate losing the Christian, evangelical vote, thus dismissing adherence to traditional marriage as merely a political necessity.
Paul Kengor, a professor and author of “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage,” strongly disagrees with Gutfeld’s comments.
In an interview with WND, Kengor stated: “With all respect to Greg Gutfeld, who I appreciate and usually agree with, gay marriage is absolutely not a conservative idea. Not unless, as liberals do with marriage, you redefine conservatism. I understand Greg’s point, and I’ve heard the argument he’s making before, but gay marriage cannot possibly be construed as conservative.”
Kengor believes homosexual marriage fails the most essential definition of conservatism – resistance to radical change.
Watch the exchange:
He observed: “Conservatism aims to conserve the time-tested values, ideas, and principles that have been sustained over time by previous generations and traditions. These are values – usually with a Judeo-Christian basis – that have endured for good reason and for the best of society, for citizens, for country, for culture, and for order. That’s a brief summation of conservatism that the late Russell Kirk, probably conservatism’s pre-eminent philosophical spokesman, would endorse – as would (and did) Ronald Reagan.”
Kengor said conservatives need to remind people of the startling newness and radicalism of homosexual marriage, a legal mechanism utterly unprecedented in human history.
“It isn’t even as old as the cell phone. You would never expect a conservative to rush into trying something as utterly new and unprecedented – and that directly repudiates the laws of nature and nature’s God – as this completely novel current-day concept called ‘gay marriage.’ Same-sex marriage not only revolutionizes and redefines marriage but also human nature generally and family specifically, which conservatives have always understood as the fundamental building block of civilization.
“One would expect a secular, radical progressive to support redefining marriage, because for progressives, everything is always in a state of never-ending, always-evolving flux and change. Progressives have no trouble rendering unto themselves the ability to define human life itself. To redefine marriage is small potatoes for them. A progressive can wake up tomorrow and conjure up a new ‘right’ over a grande skim latte at Starbucks.
“For conservatives, however, this is unthinkable. A conservative cannot even ‘conserve’ when it comes to gay marriage, because gay marriage is an idea unimaginable by any people until only very recent times.”
But Dr. Michael Brown, an expert who holds a Ph.D. from New York University and has researched and written a multitude of books on homosexuality including the upcoming “Outlasting the Gay Revolution” suggests Gutfeld’s comments reflect the successful strategy of homosexual activists to disguise the radicalism of their agenda.
In an interview with WND, Brown observed, “As I explain in my new book, early gay activists despised the institution of marriage and wanted to undermine it, viewing it as destructive, antiquated, and patriarchal. But over time, other gay activists realized that the radical strategy wasn’t working – chanting ‘we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it’ only went so far – and so new strategies were needed.”
Brown suggests gay activists framed their language to appeal to more conservative Americans.
“One of those strategies was to be pro-marriage and pro- family, partly because many couples did want their relationship to be recognized as legitimate, and partly because that was the only way to win the cultural battle. So, oddly enough, the only way the gay revolution has succeeded is by arguing that, ‘We’re just like everyone else and our families are just like the rest of yours.’”
Unfortunately, as Brown explains, there is an essential deception at the heart of this strategy. He says, “The problem, of course, is that this is not true because two men or two women do not equal a man and woman, and the world’s best mother does not equal a father nor does the world’s best father does not equal a mother.”
Like Kengor, Brown believes Gutfeld is redefining marriage and thereby rendering it something different.
“Marriage, no matter what Greg Gutfeld says, has never been the union of any two people but the union of a man and a woman. This has nothing to do with being inclusive, any more than saying an aquarium should have lions and tigers is a matter of inclusivity. It is a matter of changing the meaning of words until they have no meaning at all.”
More importantly, Brown says the real target of homosexual activists is heterosexual marriage. And this goal, he maintains, remains the same no matter how eagerly conservatives try to appeal to them.
“Many gay leaders openly state that own of their goals is to change the nature of heterosexual marriage – I cite them in new book – and so once again, we see that no matter how ‘conservative’ gay activism may become, it remains a radical movement bent on transforming society, and transforming it in a way that will not be for the best in the long haul.”
Kengor said Gutfeld doesn’t understand the real basis of intellectual conservatism and cites President Ronald Reagan, who stated at the 1977 Conservative Political Action Conference:
“Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from willingness to learn, not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before. The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and that what we know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations – found through the often bitter testing of pain or sacrifice and sorrow.”
Recalling Reagan’s words, Kengor pronounces, “That’s a solid definition of conservatism.”
And by Reagan’s standard, Kengor claims: “Gay marriage, merely by its total newness alone, not to mention other problems, totally fails that definition of conservatism. It may be many things, but it certainly isn’t conservative.”
PropagandaGuard 