LOUISVILLE, Ky.  Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Albert Mohler warned in a Jan. 14 debate that sanctioning same-sex unions would eventually destroy society.
Baptist Press reported that Mohler and University of Louisville law professor Sam Marcosson presented opposing viewpoints on legalizing same-sex "marriage" in a debate sponsored by Louisville Forum, a non-partisan public affairs group.
Mohler argued that redefining marriage would imperil the culture.
"In a very real sense, marriage becomes the civilizational DNA of our social genetic structure," Mohler said. "Beyond this, marriage serves as the basic molecular structure for human social organization."
While the family is extended through children and other bonds of kinship, he called marriage the basic "molecule" of human society.
"This molecular reality implies that the structure cannot be changed without destroying the molecule and the organism itself," he said.
Marcosson, an advocate for homosexual rights, called government's sanction of heterosexual marriage "enormously unequal treatment" for homosexuals, whom he equated with racial minorities. Equality demands the same governmental benefits afforded heterosexuals be available to homosexuals, he argued.
"Those of us in the majority at any given time owe it to ourselves not to impose burdens or disadvantages on those in the minority that we would not accept ourselves," Marcosson said.
"Yet when it comes to marriage, we, those who are in the majority, those who have defined marriage through the legislature and legal process, have accrued to themselves the privileged status of marriage and have not treated the minority equal," he said.
Mohler argued that governments have, for centuries, forbidden polygamy and other abnormal marital arrangements for the good of society.
"Civilization requires the regulation of human sexuality and relationships," he said. "No society  ancient or modern  has survived by advocating a laissez faire approach to sex and sexual relationships. Every society establishes some form of sexual norm."
