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Editor’s Note: The following is part 3 of a 4 part series. To see part 2, click here. To make sure you don’t miss the next installment, subscribe to Meridian for FREE by clicking here.  

This is part three of my interview with Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College (Pennsylvania), about his most recent book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage (WND Books, 2015).

SM: When I was working on my Master’s degree in counseling a few years back. I had an eye opening experience in one of my classes. The question came up as to whether it’s better for a child to have a mother and a father, or if having two fathers or two mothers could accomplish the same goal. The consensus of the class was that it didn’t matter if the child had a mother and father, or father/father and so forth. What matters is love, whatever that means. It became clear that the arguments for gay marriage are entirely emotionally-based given the undeniable evidence that a child does best when being raised by a mother and a father.

PK: Yes, and as for the people who say it doesn’t matter, that’s complete nonsense and they know that it is. Because common sense and experience tells us that that’s nonsense. If they search their hearts and their minds, they’ll admit that they’re only saying that because of their ideological marriage to same-sex marriage. Their support of same-sex marriage is forcing them into those bizarre intellectual gyrations. They’re forcing their minds to accommodate their acceptance of same-sex marriage. They know—they absolutely know!—that the best thing for a child is a mother and a father. They know that. Everyone knows that. It’s common sense.

The idea that it doesn’t matter if a child has two men as parents or two women as parents or a mom and a dad is an absolute and utter and complete rejection of common sense. Everyone knows that it matters.

Now that’s not to say that two male parents or two female parents can’t love a child and put a roof over the child’s head and can’t provide for tuition and take the child to soccer practice and so forth. We all know that they can do that, but it’s just common sense that a child needs a mom and a dad. Mothers and fathers are different, everyone knows this.

And by the way, I would say this to supporters of same-sex marriage: I’ve heard many times your argument that two men as parents is better than a single-parent household, or that two women as parents is better than a single-parent household. Okay, then why not a three-man household? Why not a three-woman household? Why not a household with a man and three wives? You would have four parents there. That would quadruple the parental inputs. Four parents in one house could cover a huge amount of ground in taking physical and financial care of the kids. So, why not?

Liberals don’t like it when you make that argument. That’s when they suddenly erect their own standards and boundaries for marriage. A lot of the arguments that they make eventually fail. If your argument is that “love wins”—the slick slogan of the same-sex-marriage movement—and the more love the better, then why not a three-person or four-person marriage with even more love? And I ask the liberal who refuses, say, a one-man-two-women marriage: Who are you to deny the man and two women who all love each other and are consenting adults and who are coming to you and saying, “Where are our marriage rights? Where is our marriage equality? Why are you discriminating against us? Why can’t we have marriage?” I want to know how these secular-progressive redefiners of marriage are going to logically deny marriage rights for those people. I want to know by what standard, especially given the “love-wins” standard they’ve used to allow for same-sex marriage.

SM: Have you ever had a good answer?

PK: No, not at all. They’ll say to me, “Well, how do YOU tell them no.” I say that it’s easy for me. My reason and standard is the same that my religion has had for 2,000 years, which is that marriage actually means the union of a man and a woman. I don’t have a problem, or conflict here, my standard is the same and works. I say to them that it’s YOUR foolish standard of thinking that you can redefine marriage. You’re the one that’s going to have a problem, not me. You’re the one who’s playing with fire. I’m not reinventing the wheel, you are.

SM: I had another professor cite a study showing that gay couples are better parents than heterosexual couples. I said to the professor, “If that’s true, than gay parents should be given priority in adoptions since the State’s first priority should be what’s best for the kids.” The professor was not too amused.

PK: There’s no way that same-sex-marriage supporters have enough data yet to be making those claims. And to see how they would just rush, hell-bent, knowingly, aggressively, into redefining marriage without at least a few decades and some form of reliable sociological data is extremely imprudent at best.