Radio host and conservative pundit Rush Lumbaugh's marital status has come under fire in the past few weeks as the talk show host has continued to discuss the issue of same-sex marriage and draw his lines very heavily in the sand on the subject.
On the March 28 broadcast of his show he admitted, no matter what the decision handed down by the Supreme Court on the issue might be, those in favor or "traditional marriage" have already lost the battle.
"I don't care what the Supreme Court does, this is now inevitable," Limbaugh said, "and it's inevitable because we lost the language on this."
ABC News writes Limbaugh took issue with the idea that the word "marriage" had been being applied to gay couples. As a result, tacking on words like "hetero" or "opposite-sex" onto the word gave viability to denote all versions of marriage that way, including same-sex marriage.
"I maintain to you that we lost the issue when we started allowing the word 'marriage' to be bastardized and redefined by simply adding words to it - because marriage is one thing, and it was not established on the basis of discrimination. It wasn't established on the basis of denying people anything," the radio host said. "Marriage is not a tradition that a bunch of people concocted to be mean to other people with. But we allowed the left to have people believe that it was structured that way."
Prior to that statement, Limbaugh came under fire for comparing homosexuality to pedophilia. This prompted many people to call his own marital status into question arguing if "traditional marriage" allows him to marry four times and be divorced three, how can he argue it is inherently better than allowing same-sex couples to marry and, furthermore, how it is logical the next step after same-sex marriage is pedophilia. The argument has gone viral in recent weeks prompting many to criticize Limbaugh's stance.
Limbaugh, however, is not necessarily against a union between two men or two women, just allowing them the institution. In the same March 28 rant, he said:
"No one sensible is against giving homosexuals the rights of contract or inheritance or hospital visits. There's nobody that wants to deny them that. The issue has always been denying them a status that they can't have, by definition. By definition - solely, by definition - same-sex people cannot be married. So instead of maintaining that and holding fast to that, we allowed the argument to be made that the definition needed to change, on the basis that we're dealing with something discriminatory, bigoted, and all of these mystical things that it's not and never has been."
