CNN host gives Catholic League epic lesson on equal rights: 'You do not own marriage'

Catholic League President Bill Donohue got a course on modern marriage from CNN host Chris Cuomo on Thursday after he claimed that Christians should be allowed to discriminate against LGBT people because love was never meant to be part of marriage.

In an interview on CNN, Cuomo pressed Donohue on why laws like Arizona's recently-vetoed SB 1062 were necessary if no business in the state had ever been forced to serve a gay or lesbian person.

"If they're so discriminated against, how come they make more money than straight people on average?" Donohue argued. "Is somebody being denied, at Applebee's, a hamburger?"

"That's the exact right question, but it's the reverse," Cuomo observed. "Can you point out a business that was made a substantial burden religiously because of what they had to do vis-à-vis a gay person?"

When the CNN host asked how wedding photographers being required to treat LGBT people equally was a "substantial burden to your Catholic faith," Donohue came back to the issue of marriage.

"If a man and woman don't have sex, we can't reproduce, can we?" Donohue opined. "Kids do best in an intact family. The evidence is overwhelming. You need a father and a mother."

"You need love, and you people that care for you," Cuomo insisted. "Do we have any proof that kids who come from a marriage, straight or gay, have different outcomes?"

Donohue said that it was "too early" to say if children were harmed by being in same-sex households, but there was proof that kids in single-parent homes suffered.

"So you should want gay marriages!" Cuomo exclaimed. "You should want gay marriage because single-parent families are a problem."

"The gold standard is a father and a mother creating a family," Donohue shot back. "That's what was ordained by nature and nature's god."

"Marriage was not ordained by nature," the CNN host replied. "Most mammals don't couples... Marriage is about love and commitment. And the right to it is about equality, and you know that."

"Marriage is about families," Donohue quipped. "It's not about love. Two sisters can love each other."

"Marriage is not about love? Are you married?" Cuomo said in shock. "Your faith is about love."

"It can't be the condition, otherwise you can sanction all the kinds of things I'm talking about," Donohue remarked.

"The bigger proposition is, why do you want do discriminate against gays?" Cuomo asked as the segment concluded. "You say, 'We don't, as individuals. Only the marriages bother us.' But that's the same thing. Because their right as an individual is to marry."

"You do not own marriage. It was not developed by Christians. It is a civil situation. It's secular," he added. "If they are equal, they have equal rights."

Watch the video below CNN, broadcast Feb. 27, 2014.