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

This is part four 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: Did you read or hear about the stories earlier this year where two brothers reportedly got married? And about the same time there was a father and daughter who had been separated since she was a young kid, ended up getting married?

PK: This kind of thing is going to happen, especially given the sheer “logic” of the Supreme Court majority decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Using the arguments that Kennedy and the court’s liberals used to make same-sex marriage a “constitutional right” in all 50 states—you can use any of those arguments in defense of all sorts of entirely new marriage reconfigurations. Again, liberals are playing with fire. This is what happens when you mess with human nature, with the laws of nature and nature’s God.

SM: I heard a pretty funny quote once, that “being on the Left means never having to say sorry.”

PK: That’s right. And listen, be prepared for some maddening contradictions and inconsistencies from liberals when these cases [odd new configurations of marriage] come along. The left with either accept them, make excuses for them—and then condemn the people who are opposing these cases—or the left will do just the opposite and come up with another source of inconsistent arguments to try to deny them. At the very least, I know conservatives who are Mormons, people reading this interview, who are waiting for a great mea culpa, where liberals are going to say, “Oh, we’re sorry, you guys were right”—that is, when you favored marriages with more than one spouse. Well, that’s not going to happen. These progressives will continue to call you names for not supporting their newest configurations of marriage or whatever else. This is why, as I say in the book, progressivism, especially secular progressivism, is a maddening, screaming train-wreck of an ideology.

This is the kind of thing they do, which is why you have to defeat them at the ballot box because they never learn from their mistakes. Look, one of the points I try to make in this book, with the examples of the Oneida colony in the 1800s, the New Harmony colony in the 1800s, both of which were creating new configurations of family and marriage—these were “ideological colonies,” to borrow from a phrase of Pope Francis that I love. There are these new ideological colonies that the Left just keeps re-plowing the ground over and over again thinking that, well, the previous ideological colony just didn’t get it quite right, but we’ll get it right this time. Give us more power and we’ll get it right this time. They never learn. They never learn.

SM: It’s self evident that the vast majority of supporters of gay marriage have absolutely no affiliation with communism, or communist ideas. This must be such a challenge to try and convince these supporter of your arguments because they assume you’re accusing them of being communist. Which is not what your saying, correct?

PK: When you point out at some of what they support is in line with communist principles or goals, they get angry at you. They react with a mix of emotion, mockery and anger. One of the great frustrations of this book is that a lot of the responses from people on the same-sex marriage side are simply snide. They say, “Oh, so same-sex marriage is a communist plot?” No, it isn’t. I’m not claiming that it is. But it is something that communists today have completely embraced, as it fits with the much older and longer communist goal of abolishing the traditional family and marriage. That’s the point. And the vast majority of same-sex marriage advocates have absolutely no idea that that’s the case. They don’t realize how what they’re advocating fits and fuels the extreme left’s longtime goals of abolition and takedown.

One question that they’ve posed to me, which they think is clever, is this: “Oh, well, if Professor Kengor is right here, then how come all the communist countries aren’t supporting gay marriage? How come Russia isn’t supporting gay marriage?” Well, the answer requires some nuance. Putin, for one, is not a communist. He’s an authoritarian, he’s a bad guy, and he’s an autocrat, but he’s not a communist. North Korea, who knows why they do or don’t support same-sex marriage. That society is totally closed. We don’t know the leadership’s true thinking there at all. But I can tell you that Castro’s Cuba is going in that direction. That, in fact, is something that I detail in the book. That shift by the Castro regime, which once persecuted homosexuals quite severely, is one of the reasons that I pursued this study in the first place. I thought this recent move toward supporting the full “LGBT” agenda in Cuba was extremely eye-opening. That prompted me to begin laying out this book on how the communist movement has moved to become such great cheerleaders for the entire LGBT agenda, and especially for same-sex marriage.

But my point on the left is they just come up with cute-sy or clever little responses—or at least what they think is cute and clever—but they don’t ever open their minds to looking into these counter-arguments that I’ve raised. That’s a very frustrating thing.

SM: Did you feel like Jeremiah, crying in the wilderness?

PK: Well, yeah, sometimes. I don’t want to say that because it sounds immodest. It is difficult as a scholar who knows this information and kind of sees how the dots connect and feel like you’re one of the only people that knows it and can put it all together. A lot of times this kind of material torments me. It haunts me. As I research, I see this really dark side of history and humanity. And I see the product of those forces coming to fruition with the often-unwitting assistance of people who aren’t even aware of the darker forces. That can be very depressing. You imagine that the life of a researcher and a scholar is ivory tower-ish and just mundane, but when you’re dealing with these deeper, darker forces in history, it can be depressing and tormenting. Especially when you see their victories.

SM: What do you hope for people to get out of this book?

PK: I hope that they will open their minds to learning about this very important, older, ideological history at work here—these dark, destructive forces that people are ignorant of. And I want them to understand that while same-sex marriage is totally new, and not an old communist plot, they need to know that the movement to redefine marriage and family didn’t just happen overnight. Ground had to be plowed for this to happen. There is a much longer, older trajectory at work. You need to go back a couple of centuries to discern all of these forces. That’s what I hope this book shows to people.