Robert George, the founder and chairman emeritus of the National Organization for Marriage, appeared on Saturday’s edition of Eagle Forum Live with Phyllis Schlafly to “explain why redefining marriage as merely an emotional bond is a very bad idea.” George warned that legalizing same-sex marriage “would be a disaster for children, for communities, for society as a whole” because marriage would lose its “direct link to procreation and children.”
Schlafly, the arch antifeminist, added that while gays are out to ruin marriage, it is actually the feminists who are the bigger threat. She said feminists are “the cause of most of our problems” because they don’t want men “to have any authority.”
George: What’s at stake is whether we’re going to retain that understanding of marriage with its link to procreation and children, its essential and direct link to procreation and children, or whether we are going to just ditch the idea of marriage altogether, replace it with a different way of organizing social relationships, transform what was known as marriage into mere sexual, romantic, domestic partnership, companionship, which the state would not have any interest in and then reassign the label marriage to that relationship. That would be a disaster for children, for communities, for society as a whole.
Schlafly: In the normal course of human behavior with men and women around these helpless little creatures do appear who could not possibly take care of themselves, isn’t marriage the answer for dealing with that problem?
George: Here’s the way I see it Mrs. Schlafly, I’m borrowing here a thought from my friend Maggie Gallagher who is a great pro-marriage campaigner, when a child is born it’s a pretty good bet that there’s going to be a mother somewhere in the vicinity. Nature provides for that. The real question, one that every culture has to face is: will there be a father around who will help that woman to raise the child? To raise the child in a bond of commitment between mother and father and who will provide the distinctive contributions to child rearing that fathers provide.
Schlafly: That’s exactly why I think the cause of most of our problems are the feminists who don’t want the father around, they want to kick him out, they don’t want him to have any authority and they just don’t think men are necessary.
Later, George responded to a caller asking how “this homosexual thing” will “bankrupt America” with warnings about “big government” and “financial catastrophe.”
Caller: I think that this homosexual thing is not to have equality of people but to bankrupt America by destroying the family.
Schlafly: Well it is true Professor George that when you get rid of the father and you break up the family, the welfare rolls increase and that contributes to destroying our system.
George: Yes it’s an invitation to big government, it makes big government inevitable for the two reasons I articulated: one, the provision of social welfare services; and two, the provision of security, both of which expand with the breakup of the family. Of course, big government eventually means financial catastrophe and bankruptcy because as Mrs. Thatcher famously said, ‘sooner or later you run out of other people’s money to spend,’ and that’s the condition that we find ourselves in and I again would broaden the blame here.
