who weighs in on how to defeat isis. after that charles leyland on how banking and monetary systems work. at 8:45 michelle hooker on why we recognize and act on obvious dangers and on afterwards, at 10:00 pm eastern, america online cofounder steve case speculates on the future of the internet. we finish prime time programming at 11:00 with a look at ali baba, the chinese e-commerce site that rivals amazon. that happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> ryan anderson is the author of a book called "truth overruled: the future of marriage and religious freedom". what is the point of your book? >> this is the first book length response to the supreme court ruling on the same-sex marriage decision. i explain why the court got the ruling wrong as a matter of constitutional law and a matter of philosophy, the nature of what marriage is and why

marriage happens and from there i go to say what americans should do to defend religious freedom, those who believe the truth about marriage aren't penalized by the government. >> host: how in your view did they get it wrong constitutionally? >> guest: the supreme court says the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment required states to redefine what marriage is but everyone in favor of marriage equality, we all want the law to treat all marriages equally. we disagreed about what type of relationship is a marital relationship and 5 unelected judges have no greater insight than you or i do for the nature of marriage, the constitution is on the silent on the issue of marriage so the people should have voted to say what consenting adult relationship is a marital relationship. that is the only way the question should have been answered. >> host: is is a moral issue? >> a moral issue, political issue, public policy issue, ultimately for the legal question what sort of relationship should the government be treating as a marital relationship and that

won't be answered to appealing to principles of equality. equality alone doesn't tell us what sort of relationship we should treat equally. for that you need philosophy, a philosophy of what marriage is was what i do and "truth overruled: the future of marriage and religious freedom" the first two chapters his philosophical defense of the conjugal union of man and woman, husband and wife, mother and father. >> host: so much of our society is built around marriage and so many laws are built around marriage too. aren't a class of people being denied those same rights? taxes come to mind immediately. >> guest: i wonder which class of people you're talking about. some would say you are talking about the polyamorous or people who don't want to get married. no matter what law you have on marriage that will be included in the definition and some relationships are not going to be included. what you need is the right definition of marriage. every marriage policy draws a line between what is a marriage and into marriage, the right line to be drawn you have to know what the truth about

marriage is and what get the government interested in marriage in the first place. i argue in "truth overruled: the future of marriage and religious freedom" that marriage is an anthropological truth that men and women are distinct and government, biological fact that requires a man and woman and social reality that children deserve a mother and father and these are the reasons, secular reasons why every society up until the year 2000 recognized marriage is the union of male and female. the second half of the book what do we do now? now that the court has overturned those marriage laws what can we do to protect tolerance and pluralism, diversity and religious freedom so that people who don't support the new vision of marriage aren't harassed or penalized by government? >> host: what is one of your solutions? wikipedia >> guest: after the roe v wade decision, the constitutional right to abortion we said pro-life doctors and pro-life nurses shouldn't be forced to

perform abortions, the supreme court said you have the right to choose an abortion, congress created a law that said you have a right not to perform, same thing here, the supreme court said same-sex couples have a right to states recognizing the relationships as a marriage, we need congress and others to say that means bakers, florists, photographers, adoption agencies don't have to help celebrate, violate their beliefs that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. >> host: what is your background? what drove you to write this book? >> guest: i was an undergraduate at princeton and most of my classmates disagreed with me about marriage and it wasn't they disagreed, they couldn't even understand the other perspective on this, they thought it was something inconceivable. i did my phd on political philosophy at the university of minnesota day so i came at this as a question of political philosophy. many come at at as a typical perspective. i am looking at it as a philosophical question about public policy and the audience i have in mind is my former classmate at princeton, a well-educated individual who is

a secular liberal, this book is written for them to understand why half of america thinks the way i think and to better articulate what it is they believe. it is written for all americans. >> host: right now is it a truth that it is up to congress, has to be on a national level if any changes are made to the status of gay marriage? >> the supreme court itself would have to reverse its decision like the roe v wade decision. states can make good laws on abortion but the court might strike those down unless it says we find a way to have wiggle room in which we reaffirm roe v wade but allow states to regulate abortion. same takes place on the marriage issue, they say you need to have something for situations that don't need to be marriage, civil unions or something like that. religious liberty act, can be done by local government, state government and federal, every

level of government can say we won't penalize catholic charity adoption agencies because they want to find orphaned homes and moms and dads. and three jurisdictions they have been shut down because they didn't want to do same-sex adoptions. i'm suggesting if we want to have civil peace after the same-sex. we have to agree or disagree, if you are -- if you are not in favor of don't have the government force you. >> host: we are at cpac where the c stands for conservative but a lot of libertarians support gay marriage and a lot of libertarians at cpac. >> the panel i am on in a tweet few minutes, two libertarians and two conservatives, one of them is a gay conservative, we disagree about marriage, two of us are in favor of the historic definition, two in favor of the new definition but i'll four of