Hi there, it's Eric Eurickson. Glad to have you with me. The phone number is 8779373-725 if you want to be on the program.

More than welcome to. I went a little bit of a tirade yesterday and I thought a little more about it.

And I actually want to spend a little more time on that tirade.

In all seriousness, since I got involved in politics,

I have been told repeatedly, reliably, and regularly that conservatives and Republicans, they need to abandon their fixation on social issues, cultural issues. They're icky issues. They'll alienate women. They'll alienate

other people and they should give them up. And there have been several of these issues.

One of which was gay marriage.

Now, I get regularly attacked for opposing gay marriage, and I want to state yet again for the record and clarify my position on that issue.

Because I think it's necessary for you to understand where I come from on that issue, to be able to put the rest of this in package. We are not a theocracy, nor do I really truly believe we were founded as a Christian nation. And I know a lot of my conservative friends grew up thinking that, believing that. There are lots of people who say that. But if you know anything about the founders of the country and the religious divides of the day, yes, many of them were Christian or deist, at least. They believed in a God, but they were not founding us as some sort of second Jerusalem.

They are the ones who put into place the First Amendment at the federal level. Now, at the state level,

there were churches. At the federal level, there were not. But the country and the government,

they didn't create marriage. Marriage predated the government. Marriage predated the United States

of America. When the country was founded and the Constitution

was ratified, Americans did not have to go back through and reauthorize their private property

or their marriages. They weren't given new marriage certificates or licenses or new deeds.

Everything was just ratified as is.

The government did not create these institutions.

The government did not create the institution of private property and it didn't create

the institution of marriage.

Marriage predated it.

Marriage was defined as between a man and a woman.

My position has always been if your state wanted to have gay marriage who am I to stop

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