Having been privileged to share the stage with radio host and Fox News phenomenon Glenn Beck at a recent event, I had the opportunity to form personal impressions about a man that I had only previously observed from a distance.

I came away from the encounter convinced that Beck is real, that he has an unshakable love for our country, and that he is committed to using his platform to promote the values necessary for it to endure.

But those impressions only complicate what I perceive as a glaring inconsistency in Beck's thinking, exposed in a late summer exchange with Bill O'Reilly.  O'Reilly asked "Do you believe gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way?" Laughing, Beck mocked, "A threat to the country? No, I don't...will the gays come and get us?"

As one who frequently faces inane and myopic criticism from those on the left who don't care to actually confront his positions, it was disappointing that Beck would employ the same rhetorical condescension towards so many of his political allies whose opposition to homosexuality is far more nuanced than that.

Opposition to same sex marriage is not born out of a fear of some imminent onslaught of homosexual warlords, but out of a keen understanding that the voices advocating it are part of a larger movement seeking a cultural transformation - a larger movement that, ironically, Beck consistently exhorts his faithful to confront.

Paula Ettlebrick, once the policy director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, put it this way: "Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender, and seeking state approval for doing so...Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family; and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society."

Surely someone as well researched as Glenn Beck is aware of this.  As an enthusiastic proponent of the values of Western civilization, he undoubtedly recognizes the three "f's" that form its backbone: family, faith and freedom.  And as a watchdog and vocal antagonist of the progressive humanist movement seeking to undermine each of those foundational cornerstones, his apparent failure to identify their most insidious strategy is tragic.

For while Beck courageously blows the whistle on their bludgeoning of constitutional freedoms and their rabid assault on faith in the public square, he leaves the most vital of all institutions - the family - open to attack.

As Selwyn Duke previously articulated, what the homosexual activists seek is not the much ballyhooed "redefinition of marriage."  It can't be, since the activists have offered up no replacement definition for the institution's traditional understanding.  Indeed, they can't offer one.  The moment homosexual activists define marriage (in other words, place parameters defining what constitutes marriage and what does not), they would be guilty of the very act of moral exclusion they condemn in others.

For instance, if they seek to redefine marriage to mean the union of two human beings (regardless of gender), they have excluded from their definition those whose preferred sexual expression is polyamory or polygamy.  At that point, the very arguments they have leveled against proponents of "traditional marriage" get turned around on them.  They become the bigots, the haters, the narrow-minded.  Therefore, they will offer no new definition for marriage...thus "un-defining" it.

But un-defining the nucleus of the family is tantamount to saying the family is insignificant and unimportant in the preservation of society.  Reason and experience both tell us otherwise.

In other words, outside of physical intimidation and plunder, live and let live.  Fair enough.  But that Beck or anyone could fail to see how the "gay rights" movement violates both of those principles is astonishing.  Though they may prefer to "break legs" through legal force rather than physical, the results remain the same: charities ended, adoption agencies closed, churches bullied into compliance, and free speech stifled.  Beck should ask his own Church of Latter Day Saints how their legs are feeling after the vicious threats they received for daring to cross this supposedly passive movement.

And when it comes to pocket-picking, the sexual depravity crowd takes a back seat to no one.  Besides their demands for government funding for sex change operations, the rewriting of publicly funded school curriculum to embrace sexual anarchy, and affirmative action for those practicing homosexuality, consider the consequences that come from their cultural ascendancy.  The abandonment of sexual morality in a society breeds illegitimacy, disease, and the breakdown of the family.

Even libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises (Beck considers himself libertarian) recognized that for a free market system to thrive, people had to be willing at times to sacrifice for the future (deferred consumption).  Ask any parent who wants something better for their children...family breeds such sacrifice.  That isn't something to laugh off.

This is one of the only issues where I believe Beck is misguided.  And it's a real shame, because we desperately need his voice.  I am comforted, however, by this one other thing I have come to believe about him: he is a diligent student.  He will eventually get it right.  Given his platform and widespread influence, the sooner the better for the country he unquestionably loves.