NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE - "Why not gay marriage?"A new Focus on the Family DVD and accompanying booklet with that title aim to equip Christians with answers to some of the most-often asked questions in the "gay marriage" debate.
Nearly 70 minutes, the DVD features Focus on the Family's Glenn Stanton, who travels the country approximately 12-15 times a year debating the issue. Most of the time, it's a hostile setting.
"The way we have made gains in the pro-life movement,” Stanton noted, “is by finally getting our talking points right -- finally being able to talk persuasively about the unborn child. We thought, we need to do that on this issue. The same-sex marriage issue is like the abortion issue in that it's a hugely consequential issue that addresses fundamental questions about what it means to be human.
"We have got to figure out as a movement very quickly -- and more quickly than we did in the pro-life movement -- our talking points."
The DVD, he said, is aimed at both individuals and small groups. It features 10 questions, each on a separate track. The answers range from two to 10 minutes. Among the questions:
-- How will my "same-sex marriage" hurt your marriage?
"How does your [gay] marriage hurt my marriage?" Stanton answers on the video. "It hurts my marriage by teaching my children that their gender does not matter. As a father, I will never, never allow that to happen."
-- But haven't medical and psychological groups said same-sex parenting is fine?
The American Academy of Pediatrics, Stanton says, came to its position on same-sex parenting by a vote of a nine-member committee -- sparking a backlash among members. The move, he says, was not based on social science.
"Social science needs two things in order to come to a sure and definitive conclusion," Stanton says on the DVD. "It needs a large population of people to study and it needs a very, very long time to study that large population.... We do not have either of those things.... How can we conclude anything when the research is just beginning?"
But the DVD also features questions that Christian conservatives could raise in a discussion:
-- Is it healthy to subject children to experimental families?
Stanton quotes the authors of "The Lesbian Parenting Book" as writing, "It will be interesting to see over time whether lesbians' sons have an easier or harder time developing their gender identity than do boys with live-in fathers."
"No society at any time, primitive or developed, ancient or modern, has ever raised a generation of children in same-sex homes," Stanton says on the DVD. "... Same-sex marriage is a vast, untested social experiment on children."
-- Could "gay marriage" lead to polygamy?
Some homosexual men, Stanton says, already are living in multiple-partner "open" relationships.
"There is no logical stopping point," Stanton says. "Once we say that there's no real definition of marriage, then marriage becomes everything and marriage becomes nothing."
Stanton told Baptist Press he came up with the 10 questions over time by "talking to reporters." He soon discovered that there were few new questions.
"Journalists are going to ask you some of the best questions," he said. "So you're refining your answers, refining your answers. The same questions keep coming up time and time again, or different variations on the same questions."
The DVD, he said, is aimed at people who want to be "articulate and persuasive" on the issue.
"Know these 10 and don't worry about knowing much of anything else, and you are going to do fine," he said.
The "Why not gay marriage?" DVD and booklet packet from Focus on the Family is available for $15 by calling 1-800-A-FAMILY or by visiting www.family.org. A packet of 10 booklets also can be purchased for $7.
from The Baptist Press
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