Ben Shapiro on Gay Marriage, Gun Control, and Piers Morgan

Okay, we've talked about a lot of things we agree on. I don't agree with everything, but I'll let you talk. People always yell at me. They say no. Do not yell at me. You let's do it, let's do it, so let's get into other things, then, the gay

marriage

thing, let's talk about gay

marriage

, you're not very good at gay marriage, no, I'm not on a social level, I think. the government should be completely out of the marriage business. I think the government sucks at everything. This is my short message for today. The government is terrible in everything.

If the government's goal was to promote traditional marriage, it obviously failed completely as a test, but I don't care at all that it is out of the traditional marriage business. No, I think I think the government should exclude all marriage. I think the government sucks. You already know this. I'll say that. I think I believe. the idea of ​​the government subsidizing gay marriage is nonsense because I don't think gay marriage benefits society if you're going to argue that the government should get involved in marriage, which isn't even an argument I agree with. I agree at this point, let's say how things are right now.

Let's build on that, so before we get there, a quick point: the reason I want the government to get out of the marriage business is because now that the government has consecrated gays. marriage, the next step will be to go to religious people and tell them that they have to have same-sex weddings, so as a religious person, this is problematic for me. I want a society where I can do what I want and I don't. You don't have to care what you think and you can do whatever you want and you don't have to care what I think.

That doesn't mean you can come to my synagogue and get married, nor does it mean I have to. go to your gay wedding and you will see that it is an interesting place to have the discussion because I would defend gay marriage for the exact reasons why I don't want the government to get involved in all this stuff and that is exactly why gay marriage should exist and I think if Rand Paul had hit that point more forcefully, it would have been a sensible libertarian argument for limited government and you know what you want to marry a guy, go ahead, and you want to smoke pot, you're right.

I tend to agree with both. I agree with those things and, by the way, I find people who smoke marijuana incredibly irritating, but that's none of my business. I mean, this is the beauty of America. You don't have to give a shit I think you usually end the show taking a bong hit oh yeah well then it'll be awkward but as for the subplot let's take the predicate that the government is now involved in the marriage yeah , should the government subsidize gay marriage and heterosexual marriage the same way? No, because the only purpose for the government to be involved in marriage is the procreation of the Next Generation and the raising of that generation, and I think that a man and a woman do a better job of raising a child and producing it, obviously biologically, two men or two women, but no, the child is not part of this, it is something secondary.

I mean, there are a lot of people that Mar marries, gay couples and straight couples who don't have children. Marriage itself is not almost, but at the government level I don't care about those people, I mean, I care, I'm happy that they're happy, but no, I don't really care what they do. In theory the government has an interest in producing the Next Generation right, that's the only interest in marriage, so in fact you could even argue that the government should basically give you tax benefits for having children, um and There is no benefit to marriage, but the truth is that the reason this was created in the first place, obviously, is because before the Advent, I mean, long before the advent of modern birth

control

, the assumption fair was that if you had sex then we were going to get pregnant, at least if you had heterosexual sex you were going to get pregnant, you were going to get pregnant and so we wanted to incentivize people to stick with that because the Single motherhood is bad for the community and that's why we were going to subsidize that with tax benefits, by the way, there is no marriage benefit, there is a marriage penalty, my wife and I pay a significantly higher tax rate because we have a right to income combined, so you are not against it, so despite coming from some In a way, this is not a religious argument, so that is what I want to distinguish because of course we should be in favor of separation of church and state and I believe that you are in favor of the separation of the church.

So the separation of church and state means I just want to make a quick distinction between church and state doesn't mean I can't apply my religious values ​​when it comes to voting, it just means I can't take advantage of Jewish ritual with you, there is no establishment of Jewish religion or Christian religion, but I should be able to make a secular argument as to why what I say is correct, is my general rule, because otherwise we will operate in different spheres. If I quote the Bible, you don't care, you don't care about the Bible. true, very true, then I am a secular Jew.

I would consider it, I mean, I'm an atheist, so it's not like that. IR Judaism is ethnic and irrelevant in all other respects. I like to stop you, like stopping who. KB Your enthusiasm oh Yeah, I mean, that's cultural Judaism like bagels and matab balls. I don't care, you know, it's still pretty good, okay, okay, so let's not get hung up on it, but then you're making the distinction between this doesn't come from a religion. place now, I think part of the problem when it comes to gay marriage is that a large portion of the Christian right is trying to impose their religious values ​​on this, so their politics itself is not religious, but there is no basis for the policy.

That's why I'm making a distinction: the reason people vote may still be religious, but if the policy is not religious, if there is a secular reason, this is what Scalia said about it, actually, if there is a secular reason, then the motivations. of the voters doesn't matter, since I don't care what the voter's motivation is in virtually any circumstance. It matters what the right vote is and if someone wants to vote for lower taxes, I don't care if they are doing it because they are in favor of lower taxes on principle or if they personally want lower taxes on their income.

I only care about the result of the vote, the result of the vote is fine, so basically you don't care about the Gay Sea the way this country is. At this point you just don't care, your only worry is that this will ultimately lead to the government forcing gay marriage on synagogues that don't want to have it or on mosques that don't want to have it. Yes, ultimately, not like California has now passed laws requiring same-sex marriage to be taught in public schools, for example, as if that changes the nature of teaching. My opinion on this is that I don't know why I went to public school during elementary and part of high school.

High I don't understand why the government is teaching me anything about these things. This is for my parents to teach me. This is a values ​​thing, so I guess that's where values ​​come together with what we. We are taught as if it were some kind of yes and no. I mean, there are no values ​​for mathematics, true, there are no values, well, mathematics, true, but there are no values ​​for biology, they have values ​​for history, that is why what the left says is risky and false. what it has done to the education system, there are multiple perspectives on history and the monopolistic takeover of the liberal arts is a real problem, yes, and you can have multiple perspectives on that, but we are not teaching marriage in the context of history or English.

We're teaching it in the context of science that has nothing to do with anything and again a PC comes up, I mean, when I was doing sex education when I was in high school, they were putting a lot of importance on the The idea that everyone who You know are equally likely to get AIDS, for example, that's not true. I mean, it's just not true. AIDS is a behaviorally driven disease. If I will never get AIDS. No, I don't use interventional drugs and I don't have promiscuous sex and I was a virgin when I married my wife and she was a virgin when she married me, so we're, we're safe. right, we're fine, we're as safe as we can be in this and so I don't like that again the facts are being overtaken by what we wish the facts were so that we could push certain political agendas properly, so how?

So you take this argument from a secular place? How do you feel then to be in the same party as so many people who are taking it from a right-wing Christian place? Because there seems to be an apparent alliance there, I think. Actually, no, I agree with them on the final point. I even agree with them religiously. I just don't think they are good spokespersons for their cause. I mean, I think if, if, if you are, if your main quote to your opposition to gay marriage is Leviticus 18:22. I don't think it's a solid argument that will convince many people.

I think you know there are better arguments against gay marriage than that, so you know this. It's something I talk about in religious schools and you know, pastors, rabbis and priests have asked me to talk to students about whether they have these religious principles, is there any justification outside of the Bible that says why this is right? As a religious person who has really thought through his positions, I tend to believe that there is something like me. As a religious person, I believe that God did not create stupid rules, so if you believe that God did not create stupid rules, then you have to come up. with some kind of justification for the rules that are stated like there are some that you can't understand, that's just an Article of Faith, but the most important ones about human behavior there should be something decent that you can explain to people who don't .

I don't believe in Revelation, so I would just say, well, you're basing your belief on God, it's just a belief, it's not something that can be proven right, but that's the way it is, no, but anyone who bases something on Religion is only based on something. something unproven, so I would say I don't want anything to do with my life, which is fine and that's why we live in America. Well, you know, but I will say that every belief system is based on something unproven, all of them human. Rights mean nothing. Where do you get the basis of human rights?

A feeling about that. Well, exactly subjective. I gave it to you. Okay, but that's a mix. So you're basically saying where liberals would say I'm in favor of this. because I'm pro-gay, I want gay people to be able to do whatever they want and, you know, pursue happiness like anyone else, you'd say well, just this doesn't say anything to do with the government and whatever, so I can't. not much, no, there's not much conflict here, my government policy because I'm basically a libertarian, is that I don't care about that, I mean again the government, so what do we do to strengthen that group of people?

I don't agree with the age, but it's normal and you're not trying to get gays to get married. I think right now, I think right now, the next conflict will not come from the right, it will come from the left pushing the ball. which means it will come from the case in Oregon with this Baker who, who you know, doesn't want to attend a same-sex wedding, doesn't want to have to attend it, yeah, sure, you know, I think that's good. good hearted people should say well, do what you want, cross the street to the bakery, who cares, that's what I would say, I'm not forcing, this is the difference between a liberal and a leftist in a this It's the difference between a liberal and a leftist a liberal says it's your business I don't care a leftist says no no no no I think it's imperative that you care, just as Eric Ericson says, you will care someone is going to come to your side, a man is going to come to you. house with a gun and will tell you that if you don't attend this wedding, this is what they were forced to pay a $175,000 fine for not attending a lesbian wedding.

There is a bakery across the street. You know, this is a really bad thing. So this is where you ask where the drive comes from. This is where the drive comes from. So when I point out to conservatives and religious people that the government should get out of the marriage business, I'm not saying it because I'm in favor of gay marriage. I am very against gay marriage in the social sense. I don't think you know homosexuals as religious people. I believe that homosexuality is a sin. I think a lot of things are sins that people engage in.

I think they should be free to participate in them, but as a religious person that's not my thing. I don't think hehomosexual marriage is something enormously good for society on a social level, but on a governmental level if the boys do not completely get out of this business, the left has no end point, its only end point is to use the government as a club against you, so now that they have gay marriage, it's going to, it's going to, we're. we are going to stop accrediting schools that do not teach gay marriage or hire gaysthe employees are right and there are catholic churches that say I don't want to pay for health benefits for someone's gay partner who is a catholic church why should I be right , but the left would say no, they have to do it, will they make you worry? this is you are a bad person if you don't do this and if so what is my argument to the right here is where I am a sensible liberal and it is exactly right so this is but but this you would really get heavy argument from liberals not so sensible ones that probably include all the Democratic candidates, the fact is that what I'm saying is that the best argument for the right's libertarian position here is going to be a rearguard action, it's not going to It's better for straight people and it's bad for gay marriage to take it out of that area.

I think if you want to fight against gay marriage, do it on a social level with your church, teach your children what you want to teach them. but when it comes to making this argument to conservatives, the real argument is that if you don't take power out of the hands of the government, if you don't take that ring from Gollum and throw it into Mount Doom, then it will be used in your con, the government is just the government is the ring, so does this. In my DM at the beginning of the show I was talking about how stupid our electoral system is and how it all boils down to sound bites and everything that I know our debate is so absurd and everything, that everything you just said expose has a much cleaner and clearer explanation and where you are really separating Church and State and applying intellectual rigor to present a sensible argument about where they do speak. because of how little they have talked about gay marriage which I'm glad because I don't think it should be talked about so much so so be it and that would be fine in my opinion um but no one knows Marco Rubio He will talk about family, but he will do it purely from a religious perspective.

Well, there is an identity politics that has been created on the right in response to the identity politics of the left, so if we are going to be attacked as religious people, we have to speak up. like religious people, so I have to go preach from a pulpit and if I don't, you know, if I don't quote Genesis to talk about a man he'll leave his parents and cling to his wife if I don't do it, yeah I don't so I haven't spoken the code that shows that I care about the values ​​of people like you and this is the way the political game is played so again I wish Americans would see through the political game in all the sides, meaning I wish religious people would just say: I agree.

I understand that you are against gay marriage. I also understand what you are doing here to protect religious people and you don't have to quote Bible verses. You ask me to prove it and you end up with idiotic stuff like Donald Trump on stage waving a Bible around pretending he doesn't give a damn what's in it right after two marriages and several adulterous affairs and all that and bragging about having had his experiences with married women. to stand there with the Bible and say, this is an even better book than the weird deal, it's like this is how you vote, if you can be pandered to that way, it's a sad commentary on American politics. and in her own way, it's really no different than Hillary Clinton going to the black community and saying you are the victims, you are the victims and now I'm going to speak the language that you understand, that's how you know I care about you.

Yeah, I'm not big on worrying, you know, I'm not. I think the people who pretend to care about you are usually people who want the power to

control

your life, the only people I want power in their lives and they want the power in my life is my immediate family, that's all, you know, my parents, my sisters, my wife, my children and they are also independent human beings, so caring, caring is the way the left controls like never before. They don't come with the Jack Boots first, they come first and say we care a lot about you, we have to do these things for you, and by the way, we brought some weapons to help, so it kind of shows. beauty or the terrifying of identity politics because it sounds so good I guess that's why they always say socialism will come with a big smile, right, yes, exactly, this is John Goldberg's point, liberal fascism, yes, yes, it's okay so we only have a couple of minutes left but let's get a couple more things out of the way so I watched it when you were at Piers Morgan with that whole gun thing a long time ago and I watched it again in preparation for this and I never liked Piers Morgan.

I thought he was doing a talk show. in the wrong way, I hope people don't see me that way, uh, but what you did with him in the discussion was really brilliant and goes towards some of the 11, but before I let you say anything, I don't. I really don't agree with you on your stance on guns, so can you summarize what happened? So we are sure that, first of all, we like Trump, now that you have congratulated me like Putin, now you are a good person, now you are a good person. person I told that I read the rules, everything is fine, so what happened in that debate is that Pierce Morgan had basically been doing a lot of the things that we're talking about for weeks, he had been saying after Sandy Hook that anyone who disagreed with him on gun control, the only possible reason to disagree with him is because you don't care what happened on gun control and you saw Barack Obama do this, you know, after of the last mass shooting right after unqua Community College and he he stood up there and he did the teary eye routine and I don't like to stop the tears just give me your politics so what what did I say to fake the tears, People said he touched his eye in a strange way. breaking down here I think Obama I think Obama is an unusually skilled politician and I think he worked himself to tears I think I think good actors can I think you know the idea that emotion is false, I don't know I think emotion is false, but the emotion of the actors is not false either.

If you talk to actors who work themselves to tears, they actually feel sad when they cry. That's how you get to cry. Otherwise, I think Obama got excited. He would be a method actor, otherwise he would be crying at every press conference. I mean, he's talking about all kinds of nonsense that happens in the country, which is terrible, like how much every time he comes out and he talks about the economy. you would be crying, I mean you would be completely emotionally unstable, it's one of the two, so what I told Pierce Morgan is that you are a bully and the way you bully people is that you stand on the Tombs of the sons of Sandy Hook to push his political agenda and he didn't know how to get back to that because that was his whole strategy and now it had been unmasked and in fact during the break he had planned to bring in a boy who' was shot and was in a chair wheels and say, well, you said it to me now, tell it to this little boy in the pool and he couldn't do it because if you had done that, he would have immediately told you first that you stood on the children's graves and now you are standing in this poor guy's wheelchair, it's terrible, yes, um, but that's how it is, that was the content of the argument he tried to make, that Ronald Reagan was in favor of banning assault weapons in I don't care, since I said what Ronald Reagan had to say, he is a man, sometimes he is right, sometimes he is wrong, yes, then he was not a God, that's it yes, you are exactly confirming that, as a religious person, I only have one in not him, yeah, exactly, okay, so that's not the one we knew there.

I knew there was one, right, it's just not Reagan, it's just not Reagan. He's fine, I understood it and I know it because he hasn't come back. My opinion on the gun issue is that basically, because I believe in the Second Amendment, people should have access to guns. As you make clear, it's clear after an hour together, I'm not a big fan of the government, so I think people should be. able to protect themselves and all that stuff, what I think is that we should be able to control it a little more than we are. I think the NRA wields too much power and then I would say to the same At that point, as I wanted to say, two things can be true at the same time, we have a massive mental health problem in this country and that's the part we're not talking about because every commercial on every cable news channel is for some other drug. "It turns out that a crazy percentage of these shooters are right, so when it comes to violence, there are two problems: violence in the inner city, which is really a matter of gang violence and people shooting each other unfortunately because it's because" We are involved in gangs, uh, and this is what happens every day in Chicago, but never in Los Angeles, Washington DC and all the major cities.

I mean, these are all heavily gun-controlled areas. Democratic areas, these are the places where they kill people. on mass and then there is the issue of mass shootings and the issue of mass shootings is largely because in the 1960s and 1970s this is the area that I think the government should really get involved in. In the 1960s and 1970s a decision was made. Basically, across the country to empty out all the mental facilities because there was an idea that spread across the country and gained a lot of traction that mental illness was basically the flu. About the Cuckoo's Nest, no one was really crazy, everyone was just eccentric, right? and that.

That's why there was a massive growth in homelessness in 1960. How many people do you think were in mental institutions in the United States in 1960? I mean, I can't imagine it. I guess half a million, half a million people, half a million people. right, and we had half the population, so today there are 25,000 people in psychiatric facilities, so you have a lot of violent people on the streets, and if you have a lot of violent people on the streets, you're going to end up with more mass shootings. and that's why every time there's a mass shooting it's almost invariably someone who is crazy and we know they're crazy and the involuntary commitment laws are actually very difficult because you have to prove that the person is a threat to themselves or to others. others, instead of According to the old standard, which was that they were incapable of taking care of themselves, one of the big problems with paranoid schizophrenia that affects many of these shooters is that you have a condition where you literally can't even recognize that you have the condition so he won't take his meds, if we let him off he will just quit the drugs and go back to doing what he was doing in the first place but even drugs are often part of this are people who don't take drugs and they are people who take most of the physical education.

Most people who commit these acts do not take strong medications. Most people who commit these acts are people who have stopped their medications. and they have significant mental illnesses and need to be medicated, so know that this is an area where the mental health system is dramatically underfunded, the laws are comprehensive when it comes to people who legitimately cannot care for themselves. I'm speaking and I'm speaking as someone whose father was a schizophrenic who was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, given lithium, and then spent the rest of his life as a happy, productive human being. These are things that might not have been possible now. and so this is an area where I actually think there's a role for the government in this because John Lock would have thought that John Lock himself said this in his writings, he said that You know the problem of mental illness It's one that falls on society as a whole because you have a group of people who can't take care of themselves.

That's the real problem with mass shootings. You know, take away my weapons or take away my weapons. Another law-abiding person's gun away from them is not going to stop the mass shooter. In fact, you know it will probably create more mass shootings because now I can't defend myself. So would you say the NRA is a problem at all? Within this, I think the NRA is an incredibly valuable organization because it's putting pressure on people on the other side. I don't have to agree with everything the NRA says to think it is an incredibly valuable organization that is channeling the legal hopes of many Americans to protect the Amendment, and we are one vote away in the Supreme Court from the Second Amendment goes away completely, then okay, so let's do some supreme court stuff and that's howWe're going like this with this whole thing with Scalia right now and where you stand on it.

It seems to me that Obama has to nominate someone, that is his job, he is the president, you with me until now, he is the president at this moment, he can. he doesn't have to do it, but it's his job, it's his job and if he were a Republican, of course he would do it right and now it's over and I don't care if he does it, that's what you say he has the ability to do. It's one of the only things you're really allowed to do as president that you're doing, as opposed to all the other things you're doing that you're not allowed to do, but we have to get it done, so we have to focus on this one, so it's OK. soWe agree on that and then it will be up to the Senate to confirm this person or not.

They don't have to vote for or against, although they can do whatever they want. Then what do you do? of, you know Mitch McConnell and the rest of these guys that say ah, you know, he shouldn't even nominate anyone and all that, I think it's an idiotic line of argument, I mean, I think it's an idiotic line of argument Really stupid, I hear. I wrote my I went to Harvard Law School and I wrote my third-year article at Harvard Law School on the idea that Marberry versus Madison was wrongly decided. I don't think the Supreme Court should have the ability to decide for everyone like it does for conservatives.

To think that the entire future of the Constitution depends on one person not dying is really sad, and the reason for this is that the Supreme Court has now been seen as a great moral arbiter. I do not think it is. I believe that the Supreme Court has been responsible for some of the worst decisions in human history. I mean, the Supreme Court is responsible for the dispute, which is a disaster. The Supreme Court was responsible for py v. Ferguson. Everyone always wants to talk about Brown vs. Bor if First of all, you don't need Brown vs.

Bor secondly. The action ends in 1900, so the Supreme Court is a serious problem, it's nine unelected people and I don't even care about them. unelected, but they are nine people who are given the power to control everyone's lives in the name of a document that most of them don't even take seriously, so the irony with the Supreme Court is that it is supposed to be above partisan politics and yet the entire system to get them there is partisan and they themselves are partisan. I mean, He and Kagan is a staunch Democrat. Elena Kagan was Barack Obama's attorney general, come on, I mean, I was. she was a dean when I was at Harvard Law School she was a staunch leftist, so the idea that people are free from politics I'm what they call a legal realist, I think that Mo that practically everyone is has his perspective about life and that manifests itself in how they and how they judge, uh, and you have to work very hard to get away from that.

I think most judges don't. I think most judges decide based on what they feel. Anthony Kennedy, you can't tell. Whatever you think about same-sex marriage, you can't tell me that the United States Constitution or the 14th Amendment there too, which was ratified in 1868, required states not to pass laws in favor of traditional marriage, that's absurd, it's absurd, no, but he, but equal protection, he was using that AR right and you, equal protection, the argument that we should all be treated equally, that's a load of crap, because equal protection doesn't mean that everyone, that a law should have the same effect on everyone, no law. has the same effect on everyone, the question is whether the law itself discriminates against someone on the basis of an immutable characteristic and one of the problems with the fact that gays are black is that gays are not black, I mean, the The fact is that a gay person who never has sexual relations with another man is not going to express his homosexuality in a way that society cares about, he may be gay, he may have a sexual type who is going to shoot up a place, Well, maybe, maybe I will, maybe I will win.

I mean, I guess over the last few hundred or thousands of years, when gays weren't treated well in Western society, it wasn't all these fancy gays going out and killing people, I think more gays. Besides that, I think you know that homosexuals have the same self-control as heterosexuals. I don't think they are better. I don't think they are any worse in terms of sexual self-control. I will say that I think that men in general are less good in terms of sexual self-control than women, which explains why yes, I mean, that's why gay men have sex with more people than straight men because women They don't want to have sex with men.

As much as men want to have sex with men, men have strong sexual urges, so yes, but that's off topic. Going back to Scalia for a second, the problem here is that the Republican Party, when it says things like it's the timeline, it is. On the schedule it's fine if someone replaces Justice Scalia, who is a leftist and I don't care when that is, if Hillary is elected, if in 20 years we have one more vote on the Supreme Court and leftists on the court. the Constitution as a piece of law that must be interpreted as the Sherman Antitrust Act or as Obamacare, they see the Constitution as a piece of poetry that must be interpreted as their feelings dictate and this is the point I'm talking about Keny, this is the dividing line of everything we are talking about, that is correct and this is the point that I am making specifically about Kennedy and in the gay marriage decision there is not one iota of evidence that the law that when it was written meant anything in this sense or that it meant leaving an open space for the Supreme Court to enter and take advantage of the states.

Same-sex marriage laws mean what they mean when they are written, they don't mean what they mean. That's what they mean in 200 years, if someone picks up this interview in 200 years and starts reading into my perspective that I'm super pro-homosexual. Behavior. I would be a little surprised, but that's essentially what happened in 1868. a clause that was written by a group of people who were not in favor of even forgetting gay marriage, who criminalized Sodom and told them, well, those people they really meant that what they really meant here was pro-samex marriage, if you will. legalize same-sex marriage legalize it, you know, that's what you can do through the ballot box is the beauty of a republic, but you can't have nine unelected judges who are these special moral people that have been criticized by the hand of God I do not believe that all human beings are capable of doing good I believe that all human beings are capable of doing evil I believe that all human beings are selfish and we are all capable of altruism I do not believe that there are nine perfect human beings who sit on the Supreme Court and rule us like a magical angelic oligarchy.

I think it's a pretty solid ending to this. Do you think that sounds good to me? Yes I say it seriously. I think what we did here was exactly what I want. It is that we do not have to agree on everything, but I feel a kind of new center that unites with people who are on the right, I made it my left, but there are people who are on the left and on the right that that there's a way you can be moral and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with religion or you can be moral and it has something to do with religion, but that's not how you want to be governed.

I think that will be my conclusion. From this, no, I think that's exactly what I mean, what I tell people who don't agree with the beauty of the country is that they don't have to care what I think at the time they make it. the government says I have to care about what So you think we're at a disadvantage, yeah, as long as the government is out of this, we can have these discussions all day and it's a lot of fun when you bring the gun to the party, you are the fascist.