Dear Friends of Marriage,
After passing the state senate by an overwhelming 38-10 margin in late January, the Indiana Marriage Amendment has now been formally transferred to the House for consideration.
Preliminary vote tallies already show a majority of House members in favor of the amendment, with a number still undecided. But House Speaker Patrick Bauer is threatening to bury the bill in committee, without even receiving a hearing in the Democrat-controlled House.
Dear Friends of Marriage,
In a story this Sunday (Feb. 7), the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Prop 8 Judge Vaughn Walker is gay and called his orientation, "The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage."
We have no idea whether the report is true or not. But we do know one really big important fact about Judge Walker: He's been an amazingly biased and one-sided force throughout this trial, far more akin to an activist than a neutral referee. That's no secret at all. Read More
Dear Friends of Marriage,
The Perry trial is over and the first poll is out: Americans overwhelmingly want the Supreme Court to support marriage. Americans want to uphold the right of Californian voters to amend their own constitution to protect marriage.
By a 2-1 margin, Americans are rooting for Perry and Prop 8! Fifty-eight percent want the Court to uphold marriage, while only 34% want it redefined. Read More
Marriage Update/Maggie Gallagher
The Chief Rabbi's eloquent defense of religious liberty:
"There are times when human rights become human wrongs. This happens when rights become more than a defence of human dignity, which is their proper sphere, and become instead a political ideology, relentlessly trampling down everything in their path. This is happening increasingly in Britain, and it is why the Pope's protest against the Equality Bill, whether we agree with it or not, should be taken seriously.
Let me make it clear that I believe homosexuals have rights that need defending. Like Jews, they have been a persecuted minority for far too long. They too, like Jews, were victims of the Holocaust. They have a case that should be heard. . . .
[R]eligious vision burned brightly in the minds of those such as John Locke, who first formulated the idea of rights in the 17th century. It was integral to the American Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal [and] that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." John F. Kennedy made a similar statement in his great inaugural address: "The rights of Man come not from the generosity of the State, but from the hand of God."
. . . .using the ideology of human rights to assault religion risks undermining the very foundation of human rights themselves. When a Christian airport worker is banned from wearing a cross, when a nurse is sacked after a role-play exercise in which he suggested that patients pray, when Roman Catholic adoption agencies are forced to close because they do not place children for adoption with same-sex couples and when a Jewish school is told that its religious admissions policy is, not in intent but in effect, racist, we are in dangerous territory indeed."
CONTACT: Tara DiJulio, 202-224-5444, Washington DC 20510
For Release FEBRUARY 2, 2010
BENNETT DEFENDS TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE IN NATION'S CAPITAL
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) introduced legislation today that would guarantee residents of Washington, D.C. the right to vote and decide whether same-sex marriage licenses should be issued in the nation's capital rather than allowing the decision to be made by the D.C. city council. Read More
Dear Friends of Marriage,
Breaking news from Washington . . . .
9 U.S. Senators have agreed to co-sponsor a bill that would guarantee the right of DC residents to vote on same-sex marriage.The bill will be introduced shortly and will complement a similar bill introduced in the House in January. The House bill is HR4430, and I'll keep you posted when the Senate Bill is introduced and assigned a number. Read More
Marriage Watch / Maggie Gallagher
Heather McDonald has just published a very thoughtful and brave piece on National Review online.
It begins this way:
An image from a TV ad for gay marriage, reproduced in the January18 New Yorker, provides a Rorschach test for reactions to America'songoing revolution in family structure. Two men in black suits stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a group of people, looking into each other'seyes. In their arms are two newborns in white baby clothes and blankets. Though it's not immediately apparent from the photo, the men are at a baptism for their infants. The ad, still being test-marketed, is called "Family Values," and is intended to emphasize the "conventionality of gay couples," explains The New Yorker.
If your reaction to the image is: "Where's the mother(s)?" you may not yet be fully on board the "conventionality" bandwagon. If your reaction to the foregoing question, however, is: "Why does it matter?" then you are keeping pace with the revolution. "Why does it matter?" may ultimately prove the more appropriate response, but no one should pretend that it represents anything other than a radical revision of the traditional relationship between parents and children - one whose consequences no one can predict.
Dear Friends of Marriage,
The defense rested in the Prop 8 trial this week. The same week, as it happens, a new government study came out which examined how family structure affects child abuse.
The study, released by the Office of Planning Research and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is called "Fourth National Incident Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4)."
Ted Olson and David Boies have claimed that Science Says there is no evidence that kids need a mom and dad. That's just the rednecks confusing the research, which only says two adults in a family are better than one. The only reason people think a mom and dad are special is, well, because they hate gay folks.
Well, stay with me a second. This new study did not just compare married parents to single parents. Instead it compared married biological parents to four other family structures: solo parents, cohabiting parents, other married parents, and children living with no parents at all. Read More
Marriage Watch / Maggie Gallagher
A new government study just came out that looks at child abuse.
Question: What kind of family structure best protects children from child abuse?
Answer: Married biological parents. (see page 5-25).
All the other family structures studied (which does not include same-sex parent families probably because these are such a small part of the population), but does include solo parents, other married parents (remarried primarily), single parents living with a partner, cohabiting parents, and no parents.
The big gap is between the intact married biological family and every other family form. Children living with both their mom and dad united by marriage have one-third the rate of serious child abuse, compared to children in any other family structure.
Here's my question for Ted and David as they strive to prove that Science Says same-sex unions are just like opposite-sex ones, when it comes to children.
Perhaps you are right. Perhaps alone of all the family structures science has ever studied, children living with same-sex couples do just as well as children in intact married families. (Perhaps that is true even though your own expert witness admits there is no research on gay male families and child outcomes, and there is no nationally representative study that follows children raised from birth to adulthood by same-sex outcomes and compares how they do to children in other family forms ).
Perhaps.
But does this study, which is one of hundreds with similar results favoring the natural family give Ted Olson and David Boies pause late at night as they assert the scientific irrationality of respect for the natural family at all I wonder? Ted and David, I'm wondering: not even a little bit?
Marriage Watch / Maggie Gallagher
NOM filed this letter regarding Rule 77-3:
January 27, 2010
Hon. Phyllis Hamilton
Chair of the Rules Committee
United States Courthouse
1301 Clay Street
Oakland, CA 94612
Re: Local Rule 77-3
Dear Judge Walker,
My objection to televising high-profile trials is not theoretical. It emerges directly from the experience of the attempt to televise the trial for Proposition 8. Two-thirds of the expert witnesses-people who had been willing to sit for deposition, to prepare testimony, to fly to Sacramento to testify-dropped out under the prospect of having their faces and names televised. I understand their reluctance, because I know (personally) the kind of hatred and threats that adopting a high-profile position against gay marriage now generate. Many people I know who had a low profile-donors of a few hundred dollars or less-unexpectedly faced a tidal wave of hate that has impacted their personal and professional lives. People I know have been attacked on the street for holding up a "Yes on 8" sign, received death threats, and lost their jobs. Read More
