Christian conservative Ralph Reed has described the legalization of gay marriage as tinkering with the institution “willy-nilly.”

Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, made his conservative case against marriage equality during an appearance on Wall Street Journal Live.

Pointing to the two cases before the Supreme Court related to marriage equality, Reed said that he feared the cases could diminish the “social value” of the family unit.

“My concern is that if the Supreme Court takes a position that the voters of California were wrong in deciding that marriage should be defined as between a man and woman, then that lays the predicate for future courts to say that making judgments about the social value, the cultural good if you will, of the family unit is undermined,” he told

Reed argued that marriage was good for society, then added: “There would be those who would argue, 'Well then therefore we should allow same-sex couples to have access to the same thing.' My counter argument to that is we have not tested that thesis on a national level. The number of same-sex couples that are getting married, even in the states that have legalized it, is very small and the number of years that have passed is very short. And we should not in my view tinker with or revolutionize the foundation inculturating and socializing institution in the history of Western civilization willy-nilly.” (The video is embedded on this page. Visit our video library for more videos.)