Thumping the Bible, says Bill O’Reilly of those who support opposite sex marriage.

It was a startling statement coming from O’Reilly, who has made much — and correctly so — of what he calls “secular progressives.” The other night O’Reilly himself sounded like a secular progressive on the issue of gay marriage, and Mark Levin took up the point on his own show.

Here’s the O’Reilly quote, which came in a discussion with Fox’s Megyn Kelly. (Hat tip to Real Clear Politics)

KELLY: What I’m saying is that when you ask — for example, I had an interview with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. What is it about calling a marriage — calling a gay union a marriage that offends you. How does it hurt a traditional, or a heterosexual marriage? And I didn’t hear anything articulated that was particularly persuasive. What people go back to —

O’REILLY: And I agree with you 100-percent. A 100-percent!… I agree with you a 100-percent. The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. That’s where the compelling argument is. “We’re Americans, we just want to be treated like everybody else.”

That’s a compelling argument. And to deny that, you’ve got to have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible.

Mark Levin picked this up and immediately, and correctly I would say, took issue with this. (Hat tip here to Right Scoop, here’s the excerpt from Levin’s show.)

“I heard this today and I really couldn’t believe it,” said Levin of O’Reilly’s Bible thumping comment. “It sounded like Barack Obama with his clinging to guns and religion line.” And yes indeed, it did. Bill O’Reilly, it seemed, was taking a whack at “the folks.” Yow.

What was even stranger was O’Reilly saying this:

The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. That’s where the compelling argument is. “We’re Americans, we just want to be treated like everybody else.”

That’s a compelling argument. And to deny that, you’ve got to have a very strong argument on the other side.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but there is a compelling argument in response to gay marriage. (And as said before, in this corner we sign on to civil unions.) That response — that compelling argument, which I share — has been made by… yes… Bill O’Reilly himself.

Back on June 5, 2006, O’Reilly was discussing this very same issue of gay marriage on his radio show, “The Radio Factor.” And he said this (hat tip to O’Reilly’s less than favorite media friends — Media Matters.):

Do I think it’s a threat to the union? No. Gay marriage, to me, not a big issue. But I will tell you this. If gay marriage becomes a reality, then polygamy has to be legalized, because you can’t say one alternative group is OK and the other isn’t. That’s not equal protection under the law. So, if you legalize gay marriage, then polygamy has to be legalized.

And right there — made by Bill O’Reilly himself — is the compelling argument against gay marriage. Once we go down this road — and as discussed previously in this space with the lawsuit for polygamist Kody Brown and this op-ed in the New York Times by George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley – the push will be on to legalize polygamy. And then polyamory. And then….to anything and everything.

The result: the effective abolition of marriage.

So.

O’Reilly, in our view, made a mistake with his “thump the Bible” remark the other night, and Mark Levin called it exactly right. It was a needless — not to say wildly inaccurate — characterization of O’Reilly’s own audience. “The folks” as O’Reilly likes to say. The folks who are in a war with, again as O’Reilly says, “secular progressives.”

And for Megyn Kelly of all people — she the lovely wife and Mom of 2 and a half — to not get the impact of 2,000 years of tradition from every faith on the face of the earth, not to mention the core of the compelling argument — is baffling.

The real key here is the “compelling argument” business.

Yes indeed, Mr. O’Reilly and Ms. Kelly. There is a compelling argument against gay marriage.

And it was made clearly and concisely by…..Bill O’Reilly himself back there in the mists of 2006.

If gay marriage becomes a reality, then polygamy has to be legalized, because you can’t say one alternative group is OK and the other isn’t. That’s not equal protection under the law. So, if you legalize gay marriage, then polygamy has to be legalized.

To borrow a phrase: The spin stops here.