Joe Rogan torches Republican aversions to marriage equality and reproductive freedom

Controversial podcaster Joe Rogan issued a powerful defense of marriage equality and admonished the Republican Party's assaults on civil liberties during Saturday's edition of The Joe Rogan Experience.

Silhouetted in a haze of smoke, Rogan and his guest, comedian Andrew Schulz, lamented the right-wing's cultural crusades.

"It's not just abortion rights, now they're going after gay marriage too, which is so strange to me, that people like [United States Senator] Marco Rubio [R-Florida] was saying that it was like a silly thing to argue about, to be concerned about. And then some other Senator, who is a gay woman, confronted him. She was furious at him," Rogan said in reference to Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin.

READ MORE: House passes bill to protect same-sex marriage

"Gay marriage is not silly. It's marriage," Rogan continued. "It's marriage for people that are homosexual and for them it's important. They want to affirm their love and their relationship, and the fact that they're going after that now almost makes me feel like they want us to fight. They want to divide us in the best way they can and this is the best way for them to keep pulling off all the bullshit they're doing behind the scenes is to get us to fight over things like gay marriage or get us to fight over things like abortion."

Schulz responded with an emphatic, "yes! Yes!"

Rogan tried to pivot to the issue of gun rights but Schulz pulled him back into the initial topic.

"If you're gonna say that marriage is an important cultural institution to the fabric of America, you can't remove it from Americans. You can't go and say, 'this is important, this is what we do, we create a family, we love one another, this is how we express our love' and then say, 'ah these Americans, they can't do that shit,'" Schulz said.

READ MORE: Trump-appointed judge blocks Biden from enforcing LGBTQ civil rights protections

"It's so homophobic because you're saying there's something wrong with being homosexual," Rogan continued. "By saying you are opposed to gay marriage, you're saying you're opposed to gay people. Because if gay people are in love with each other and they want to have a celebration and they want to be legally bonded and connected – and there's all sorts of benefits to that in terms of financial benefits, taxes – but not only that. If your loved one is in the hospital, you have access to them. And you're the only one who has access to them cause you're their spouse. You're the one who has power of attorney if they're incapacitated. There's a lot to affirming that relationship and the fact that they're going after that now, like, that's the kinda shit that keeps me from becoming a Republican."

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: Matt Gaetz argues against abortion by suggesting same-sex couples can only adopt from raped lesbian women

This story has been updated.