Marriage Quote by Randall Terry

The line isn’t an argument so much as a trap: a rhetorical slipknot designed to make one idea (same-sex marriage) feel inseparable from another (child abuse). Terry’s move is the classic “slippery slope” with an accelerant poured on it. He doesn’t ask whether consenting adults should be allowed to marry; he jumps straight to a nightmare scenario, yoking “adult men and small boys” to “homosexual unions” so the listener’s disgust does the debating for him.

The specific intent is political, not inquisitive. By framing the future as a countdown (“How long before...”), Terry manufactures inevitability and urgency. The implied message: accept one boundary change and you’ve forfeited the right to draw any boundary at all. That’s why he chooses the most morally radioactive example possible. It’s not about forecasting policy; it’s about poisoning the moral atmosphere around gay relationships by associating them with predation.

Subtextually, it relies on an old, durable smear: that homosexuality is less an identity than a gateway to deviance, especially involving children. The phrasing also narrows the target to men, tapping a cultural stereotype that casts male homosexuality as inherently suspect while leaving heterosexual abuse conveniently out of frame.

Context matters: this comes from the late-20th/early-21st-century culture-war playbook, when opponents of LGBTQ rights often leaned on “protect the children” messaging to convert anxiety into votes, donations, and media attention. It’s meant to end conversation, not start it.