RUSH: Good.
CALLER: Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to express one point of view in terms of the gay marriage issue. In the history of our country, we’ve never had a minority group that has had to face public acceptance of them through voting. We didn’t have to have a vote to determine whether or not any individual in this country has equal rights or equal protection under the Constitution.
RUSH: Are you sure you want to say that? We had a Civil War in this country, and there have been civil rights acts, votes, all kinds of things.
CALLER: Perhaps.
RUSH: There was a time when black people in this country were said to be three-fifths human.
CALLER: Correct. Correct. But if that had been put to a vote in the electorate as to whether or not they should receive equal rights, that was never done. And fortunately it wasn’t done. It was a matter of, you know, supporting the Constitution that every man is created equal under the Constitution. It doesn’t delineate race, it doesn’t delineate anything. And, you know, I just think, you know, in terms of the gay marriage issue, I mean is it a matter that the sun isn’t going to rise tomorrow because gays are allowed to marry? Gays are in our society, they have contributed to our society, and they’re going to continue to do that. What is the issue of granting equal protection under the law to these individuals?
RUSH: I don’t think that anybody is opposed to doing that. I think that the issue is best dealt with in that regard with civil unions.
CALLER: But then we’re talking semantics.
RUSH: No, we’re not, though. You know, this is where this gets I think really important. We’re not talking semantics. There is an institution, hear me out on this, and you can respond here in just a second, there’s an institution called marriage, and it has evolved over the course of thousands and thousands and thousands of years, it has a specific definition. Marriage is a union between a man and a woman, it’s like two plus two equals four. Two plus two does not equal five just because somebody wants it to. Two plus two doesn’t equal
If we’re going to come along and say that marriage can be anything that two people who want to get together say it’s going to be, then marriage can be between people of the same sex, could be between three people, could be between four people, where does this stuff stop? And because of this effort that is being made to redefine or I would say it’s not even a matter of redefining it, I think the effort is to destroy it, since the effort is being made to destroy it, there are people who believe in the institution and who accept the definition, we’re not talking about a right, and we’re not talking about – at most we’re talking about a privilege, but we’re not talking about a right.
What we’re talking about is the definition, a specific legal definition of an institution. And in order for people who do not qualify based on the definition to seek entry or admittance to this institution the institution must be weakened, and this is what people oppose. And the proof here is what’s happening in San Francisco where the people who are applying are having to change the forms. There is not bride and groom, there are no bride and groom, there are no husband and wife, applicant one, applicant two, spouse one, spouse two, and the people in California are saying they’re changing the forms, we’re not going to allow this, these are not sanctioned. It all has to do with the maintenance of traditional standards, but there’s nobody that, you know, civil unions are going to allow you the things that you think marriage has denied you because you’re not allowed to participate in it.
CALLER: My feeling, Rush, is that the institution of a marriage is being held up to this pure and wonderful thing. It has already been undermined as Mayor Daley pointed out with divorce. 65% of marriages in this country end up in divorce.
RUSH: So why would you want to enter into one if it’s that rotten an institution?
CALLER: I want equal rights in being as miserable.
RUSH: Wait a minute, now we’re getting into semantics. You can’t say that the institution is failing and then claim to want to be a part of it, you can’t claim the institution is worthless and then want to be a part of it. To be consistent you should say marriage is stupid, we ought to get rid of it, it isn’t working, but no, you’re going to tell me that marriage – the divorce rate is not 65%, by the way, either – and now you want to be a part of it. I don’t understand what’s so hard to understand. Marriage is a specific thing. It was not created to deny anybody anything. It evolved to establish a particular union. There’s nothing discriminatory about it nor in its intentions was there anything discriminatory about it. Now all of a sudden there are people who think they’re being denied rights and access and so forth, not because of what marriage is all about but because of what government has done to marriage in turning it into a welfare recipient receptacle. Hello?
RUSH: But it will.
CALLER: Why? How will it affect your marriage?
RUSH: Uh, it won’t. You know, that’s another one of these trick questions that I as a veteran host am not going to fall for. I didn’t say this is about my marriage. This is about an institution, this is about a tradition. I mean you have forced me to go to this next step so I’m going to take it. There’s a reason that marriage has evolved to what it is, there’s a reason marriage started out and evolved to what it is. The vast number of marriages take place to legitimize children, to provide a family tree, to provide lineage, to provide a genealogical identity. The purpose of marriage is the raising, the procreation of the race, and raising children. It has been found to be the best way to do it. The proof of the fact that it is, is the divorce rate. We cite the divorce rate and we do so in terms of its damage to children. We cite the divorce rate and we cite the out of wedlock birth rate as evidence to suggest that children who grow up without a mother and father in the home don’t do as well as children who do. The nuclear family is the best way to do things.
It is not some authority which has said this to deny people who can’t participate certain opportunities. It has evolved over the course of years and years, thousands and thousands of years of human civilization – civilization. It is the civilized way of creating families, creating human beings, raising them to be responsible people. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t care about the divorce rate. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t care about the illegitimacy rate. There wouldn’t be such thing as illegitimacy, there wouldn’t be people concerned about it.
One of the groups that’s most opposed to this, black Americans who are devout churchgoers know how important it is because it is in their community that the illegitimacy rate is the highest. It’s in the 70%. It is tearing the black community apart, and some people there know it. Now, we can argue about why the illegitimacy rate is what it is, but that’s not the point here. Government is the reason for it. White liberals are the reason for it but I don’t want to go there beyond what I’ve already said. This is simply a fact of time, it is a fact of life. Nobody who got married did so going nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, I can do this and you can’t. They got married because they were in love and they wanted to have a family. Not every married couple does have children, some of them have to adopt, some of them don’t want them, some get married for other reasons, but the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people know that the marriage and the creation of a family is the best way to raise children.
Take anything, somebody wants heroin, mayor says fine, you want heroin, I’m going to make it legal for you. I think it ought to be people are being denied the right to do and have heroin. There’s a law, marriage is what it is. It’s not really complicated. What’s happening here is that a movement of people can only grain ground by creating sympathy on the basis that they are being denied something, civil rights in this case.
Now, I have to tell you, Ron, that I think it’s insulting to people who have a heritage of slavery to compare the homosexual experience in America to that. I don’t think there’s any basis for that comparison, and it trivializes what slavery and the people who lived through it and have it as part of their heritage, trivializes what they’ve experienced and gone through and what their family members have gone through. It’s an unfortunate, cheap attempt to piggyback on something and to co-opt life experiences of others, claim that you’ve experienced them yourselves so that you can advance a cause.
The real question is here, what does this matter? What’s the big deal? If civil unions will get you everything a marriage will, then who needs marriage? What’s the big deal? It doesn’t make sense to me. I keep hearing that we got to have marriage rights so we can get visitation to hospitals, so we can have whatever else goes along. Civil unions will accomplish that. If civil unions will accomplish it and people are still not happy, then what’s really going on here and I think the real answer to that question is, there’s a desire to undermine and weaken institutions because of some anger and rage that exists in certain communities. Over what, I couldn’t tell you, but I know it when I see it.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
RUSH: About this business of no votes. We had the Civil War, we had the Supreme Court of this country affirm slavery. Dred Scott decision. Supreme Court justice Roger Taney. We had to fix that. It’s a cultural move, ladies and gentlemen. Here’s Karen, Wheaton, Illinois, nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I appreciate your taking my call. I really wanted to disagree with your previous caller who was stating that he and other homosexuals do not have equal access to marriage. I’m saying that they do have equal access, if they choose to marry a woman, they have exactly the same access that I do and that anyone else does in this country.
RUSH: Well, what you mean is they can marry someone of the opposite sex.
CALLER: They can marry someone of the opposite sex and they have equal access to it. It is not a discrimination issue. It is not that they’re being denied their rights. It’s that they want new rights, they want separate rights, they want special rights.
RUSH: Uh, that’s one way of looking at it. I still think, maybe I’m just na?ve, and I’m coming to the conclusion that even as I age and get closer and closer to that stage of life where we contract serious illness and die, that I’m na?ve. Marriage is marriage. It is a specific thing. You know, it’s like greed is greed. We’re not going to change the definition of greed and say it’s altruism, just because some people don’t like it. Greed is greed. And I’m not acquainting the two, but marriage is marriage. It is what it is. Well, maybe I’m na?ve. What I mean is maybe I’m na?ve in trying to explain this to people. I’m na?ve for believing that that’s the way it is, huh? Well, I tell you what, there may be people that want that, whatever they want to be they’re going to be, whatever they want to call themselves they’re going to call themselves and they can do it, but it doesn’t make it justified, doesn’t make it right if it isn’t right, if it isn’t accurate. You know, marriage is what it is.
Look, we play around with this game, two plus two equals five, it’s called outcome-based education and there was a time in the American school system, and it may still be going on. We were calling attention to it back in the eighties, early, mid-nineties. Two plus two is five. If the kid was too stupid to figure out it was two plus two is four. We weren’t going to humiliate the kid and say okay, little Johnny, if you do think two plus two is five, then it is for now. We actually did that. We may still be doing it. But it isn’t. Two plus two is four. You wonder why we need Head Start programs still. We’re not teaching things!
You know, there are absolutes. You know what this is really all about? There are two groups of people in this country. Well, there’s more than that, but there’s a group of people that sees absolutes. Something’s right, something’s wrong. Something is, something isn’t. And then there’s a group of people who are on the wrong side of right and wrong and on the “isn’t” side of is and isn’t, and don’t like it. And so they profess to see gray areas and nuances. Well, no, it’s too simple-minded to say that something is just right or something is just wrong. We must look deeper. No, we don’t. We know what it is, we know right and wrong. Everybody has a little voice inside their heads, and when they’re doing something wrong, they know it. Many of us don’t listen to the little voice, but it’s there. We know right and wrong. But because some of us don’t have whatever it is that makes it possible to adhere to the right thing all the time, we want to excuse ourselves by saying what we’re doing is wrong isn’t wrong. In fact it’s right! In fact what we’re doing wrong is even good, that’s how we’ll fix it. And so, by the way, that Constitution, it says that this is wrong, well, that’s not what the founders- we’ve got to have a bending and moving and flexible, shaping Constitution so it can accommodate all of those who are on the wrong side of write and wrong or on the “isn’t” side of is and isn’t. And that’s what’s really going on here. Those are our jets now, Ron! It’s the best way to encapsulate it.
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