The Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage Education Fund, announces Amy Flammanio as the winner of the Early Bird Contest of its first annual Reel Love Challenge, a video contest for young adults around the country inviting them to share what lasting love in marriage looks like to them.

The winning entry, called “Joy and Sacrifice,” was created by 23 year old Flamminio, a recent graduate of the University of Nebraska. As the winner, Mrs. Flammanio will receive a Flip camera as well as the $100 participation prize awarded to early entrants. The Reel Love Challenge inspires young adults ages 18-30 to ask: Is lifelong love possible? What makes it possible? Why is it worth the effort?

Five other young adults will also receive $100 for their participation in the Early Bird portion of the Reel Love Challenge.

These winners include:

• Kendel Christensen, 25, from Brigham Young University
• Emily Deady, from John Paul the Great Catholic University in San Diego
• Daniela McClintock, 21, a newly married Army wife from Texas
• Clarence Say, 19, from the University of California at San Diego
• Tara Stone, 25, from John Paul the Great Catholic University in San Diego

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, President of the Ruth Institute, stated, “I am inspired to see students and young adults taking marriage seriously. This lovely video, ‘Joy and Sacrifice,’ shows that young adults are engaging the question of what makes lifelong love possible. The next generation embraces marriage as a lifelong sexually exclusive union, and not just a contract of convenience. I urge young adults to contribute to this ongoing dialogue by submitting their own videos.”

Entries remain open for the contest until February 1, 2011. The grand prize will be $2,000, with runner up prizes of $1,500 and $1,000. The prizes will be partially based on “People’s Choice” voting. The public is encouraged to wach all the submissions and vote for their favorite video here.

The big news from late Friday:

Reince Priebus, who led the Wisconsin Republican Party to major gains in 
the 2010 midterm elections, won election as chairman of the Republican 
National Committee in a drawn-out balloting process Friday, ousting 
incumbent Chairman Michael Steele after a rocky two-year tenure.

Priebus started out as the top vote-getter in the race, besting Steele by 
one vote on the first ballot. But it wasn’t until the seventh round of 
voting that he passed the 85-vote victory threshold, counting 97 supporters 
on the final ballot.

While all five RNC candidates expressed their support of traditional 
marriage when asked, Priebus led the pack.

Priebus was the only one who spoke to the combined issues of judicial 
activism, the natural basis of marriage, and the social ideal it represents 
for children:

"I don't believe judges can rewrite the constitution and redraft what 
marriage is. There is a sanctity to marriage and I agree with Michael that 
it is foundational in our lives. I believe children should grow up with a 
father and a mother if possible. Certainly we support single parents if 
possible. I don't believe anyone should be denied dignity, everyone should 
be loved, I believe that marriage should be between one woman and on man."

NOM looks forward to Chairman Priebus putting his pro-marriage beliefs into 
action as he works to recruit strong candidates nationwide who support the 
traditional definition of marriage and reflect the views of the majority of 
his party.

In what has been hailed by some as "a definitive defense of the institution of traditional marriage," Robert George, and co-authors Sherif Girgis and Ryan Anderson proffer "that as a moral reality, marriage is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other of the type that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together, and renewed by acts that constitute the behavioral part of the process of reproduction." The paper continues, "that there are decisive, principled as well as prudential reasons for the state to enshrine this understanding of marriage in its positive law, and to resist the call to recognize as marriages the sexual unions of same-sex partners."

The essay also addresses, "the strongest philosophical objections to our view of the nature of marriage, as well as more pragmatic concerns about the point or consequences of implementing it as a policy."

You can read or download the entire page here.

From Chuck Colbert:

The Catholic spiritual leader of Chicago visited Boston College recently, where a doctoral student pressed Cardinal Francis George about the Church's recent opposition to civil-unions legislation recently passed by the Illinois General Assembly.

George told student John Falcone his "argument was not with Mother Church but with Mother Nature," adding that anyone who advocates same-sex marriage or its equivalent "has lost touch with the common understanding of the human race."

"No one has the right to change marriage," George went on to say, neither "the Church" nor "the state."

While it is one thing "creating laws so that people don't feel persecuted," the cardinal explained, "don't create a law that says apples are oranges." For a lawmaker to do so, George added, he "betrays his vocation to pass good law," especially problematic for a "Catholic lawmaker." Continue Reading

I want to do something a little different this week with the precious time you and I have together.

Usually, each week with the newsletter, I try to take you with me on an exciting front-seat ride through the latest news in the fight to protect marriage—and don't get me wrong, there's plenty of news and a lot of it good.

(See for example NOM's new Rhode Island ad, affectionately known around here as “the Moose ad.”)

Today, I don't know, maybe it's the terrible Tucson shooting which has made me want to pause and reflect with you on the “climate of hate.”

Now, I’m not really talking about the Tucson event: Pres. Obama, Charles Krauthammer, and many others have responded to the infuriating charge that mainstream conservative rhetoric was behind the sad, senseless and ultimately monstrous shooting spree that killed a judge, several bystanders, and a 9 year old girl, leaving a Congresswoman in the hospital.

But I do want to ponder, in a deeper way, what it means when a Nobel Prize-winning economist at The New York Times can possibly write this sentence:

"It's the saturation of our political discourse—and especially our airwaves—with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence. Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right."

By "eliminationist rhetoric," Paul Krugman means rhetoric, which suggests that one's opponents are not just wrong, they are illegitimate—that in a better world they would not exist.

Well, you and I know a little about rhetoric that sounds like that don’t we?

(He may only be speaking of rhetoric inciting to violence, and I want to be clear that I don't consider gay-marriage advocates on their worst day to be doing that.)

But for me the worst part of the gay marriage debate is this eliminationist quality coming (in my experience, and of course I'm speaking only about public and visible organizations and spokespeople) almost exclusively from one side: activists who support gay marriage.

They've said over and over again, until they've totally convinced themselves, that there really is “no legitimate argument” against gay marriage, no reason why marriage in virtually every known society is a union of husband and wife.

They do not see themselves as behaving aggressively when they insist that all good people now support the redefinition of marriage, so the public and political resistance of others to their new views on marriage strikes them as incredibly aggressive.

Having already redefined marriage in their heads, living in progressive bubbles and talking mostly with folks who agree with them, too many have concluded that our words must simply be cover for some dark desire to make other people's lives miserable.

I've come to believe that this is not merely tactical on their part; they really experience the world in this way, which makes me sad.

If you say, “The ideal for a child is a mom and a dad,” they hear something very different, something which sounds more like, "You hate me and my family—you want to attack me."

I'm not sure what it is possible to do about reactions like that. Many parents are not married, and all responsible parents deserve respect. But an America where our ideal is seen as a vicious and hateful attack?

I will tell you one thing: I'm very proud of the way you and I have conducted this great fight for the meaning of marriage in the public square.

I'm proud of our victories, but also of the courage and kindness which you and so many decent and loving people have displayed in standing up to those who would redefine moral disagreement on marriage as hatred.

I don't really think that anything I can say is going to stop the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and others like them from calling what you and I do “hatred,” and creating fundraising videos which distort who you and I are and what we believe in. (Particularly reprehensible is suggesting that you or I somehow endorse violence against homosexual people—most reprehensible not because it hurts you or me, but because some gay people who trust HRC might really believe it—a major and mainstream political organization advocating violence?!)

But somehow after Tucson, I feel an obligation today to try again, anyway. Because I know that there are people out there reading this newsletter who do quietly appreciate it when we say it.

I think every gay person is a child of God first and foremost—beloved by their Creator, who sent His only Son to die—for them, as much as for me.

Gay-marriage advocates and I have deep, real and important moral disagreements about the nature, meaning and purpose of marriage (and sex and gender, most likely!). If the expression of these views makes anyone feel personally attacked, I will say: that saddens me, it's not my intention, I wish I could make it otherwise.

No American should be afraid to exercise our core civil rights, to speak, to donate, to organize, or to vote on behalf of deeply cherished moral beliefs, to fight for what we think is right.

But together, can we reach across our deep differences to agree at least on that?

If so, the debate can be drained of a little of its poison.

Thank you again, you and all our fellow marriage fighters, for your good wishes, your company, your thoughts and prayers--and, above all, for your courage in joining with me in this great struggle to defend God's truth about marriage.

Until next week, Semper fi and God bless!

P.S. We are spending over $100,000 on the Rhode Island “Moose” ad this week. Can you help us add a minute or two of airtime—to get the message, “Let the people vote,” to people across America in similar efforts? If you can give $5, $10, or $100 for marriage this week for the marriage fight across this great land, please know that we will steward your gift thriftily, wisely and effectively—towards victory!