The Two-Minute Warning with Chuck Colson:
Chuck Colson is “flabbergasted” at President Obama and his administration’s breath-taking usurpation of power. And he has a message for the church: Your silence is deafening.
The Two-Minute Warning with Chuck Colson:
Chuck Colson is “flabbergasted” at President Obama and his administration’s breath-taking usurpation of power. And he has a message for the church: Your silence is deafening.
This analysis in WaPo by political science Prof. Todd Eberly is interesting for several reasons. He acknowledges that the conventional wisdom - which said the House would be the easy part for SSM - has been "upended." He also points to Gov. O'Malley's recent backtracking, from supporting SSM to adopting Sam Arora's position: "Let the people decide."
All of this reflects the huge, unexpected outpouring of public opposition to gay marriage in deep-blue Maryland.
The Gazette reports this as a "mixed" reaction, but the news point is clearly the rising opposition to SSM in this key county:
Outside First Baptist, Keisha Huggins of District Heights said gay people worship at First Baptist but said her pastor, John K. Jenkins Sr., has made it clear to his congregation that same-sex marriage does not line up with Bible scripture.
"As a Christian we have love for everyone, but we're following the word of the Lord that a man and woman should be together," Huggins said. (source)
Encouragement:
More than a dozen ministers from churches in Prince George's County were among religious leaders lobbying Maryland lawmakers in a last-ditch effort to defeat same-sex marriage legislation, which they say violates God's law.
The Prince George's pastors said they took a stand on behalf of family. "We didn't come tonight against anybody. We came for the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman," the Rev. Joel Peebles, pastor of the 19,000-member Jericho City of Praise in Landover, said Monday night in Annapolis.
He was accompanied by his wife, Yolanda, and dozens of church members as he headed for a meeting with Del. Veronica L. Turner (D-Prince George's). "We believe that this is something that is beneficial to children, so we had to bring folks here to support that," Peebles said. (WaPo)
That's what the editors of The Advocate think he is saying. Here is what Walker, Texas Ranger actually had to say:
The impact of progressivism is being experienced by students across this land, hundreds of thousands of whom have already cried out with complaints of academic inequity. A sampling of the hundreds of student grievances from across the academic spectrum can even be found on websites like the Students for Academic Freedom and No Indoctrination.
It is also no surprise that an average of 6,000 students every year are leaving the approximately 94,000 public schools in America. If the powers-that-be over our public schools, like government and unions, continue to oppose conservative curricula and impose overarching liberal educational revisions and laws, public schools will continue to experience an exodus.
Read more: "U.S. public schools: Progressive indoctrination camps"
Through Attorney General Eric Holder, President Obama instructed federal attorneys “not to defend” the Defense of Marriage Act in court, deeming it unconstitutional and reversing White House policy.
Joining us to discuss this development is TOBIAS BARRINGTON WOLFF, Penn law professor and White House advisor on LGBT issues; MAGGIE GALLAGHER, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage; and LIZ BRADBURY, executive director of the Allentown-based Pennsylvania Diversity Network.
The interview took place on March 2nd.
Maggie's appearance begins at 15:25 in the show.
[You may listen to the mp3 file
here, or streaming on the WHHY website]
The Alliance Defense Fund is asking the European Court of Human Rights to intervene in the case of a mother - the 10th parent jailed for not paying a fine waged as a penalty for protecting children’s Christian beliefs. (source)
CA State Senator Mark Leno has issued a proclamation to coincide with the launch of "My Uncle's Wedding", a new book which introduces children as early as 4 to same-sex marriage (Amazon.com has the book listed under "Marriage & Divorce" and "Gay & Lesbian Parenting & Families"). Here is Leno's proclamation:
“Congratulations as we celebrate the launching of ‘My Uncle’s Wedding!’ As one of the few children’s books that address LGBT issues, it serves as a conduit by which to bolster understanding in our community. The book plays a vital role in creating a brighter future for our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth and their parents. Congratulations and thank you for all you do!”
More about the book:
‘My Uncle’s Wedding’ is a 34 page children’s book aimed at children ages 4-8.
... Writer and director, Del Shores, best known for his movie Sordid Lives and work on Queer as Folk, also had great things to say about the book. “Eric Ross has written a wonderful, heartwarming and important book in today's climate -- a beautiful educational tool for children -- showing that all love is equal and good." (source)
Margaret A. Bengs, a state employee, writes in the Sacrament Bee:
Whatever one's view of same-sex marriage, we all must be disturbed when the constitutional process whereby we exercise the right to govern ourselves is undermined.
... In our country, a president or a governor cannot decide what is constitutional and what is not. Their authority cannot override a law passed by Congress and signed by a president, or in California an amendment to the Constitution enacted by the people.
What's more, whenever there is a question of authority among the three branches of government, "the legislative authority necessarily predominates," James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, as it most closely represents the people.
The refusal to defend laws supporting traditional marriage is not "progressive," as politicians pandering to the same-sex marriage lobby would have us believe. It is a regression to political systems based on brute power, not on individual liberty and self-government.
... Our representatives have become our rulers. If they don't like what we decide through the legitimate voting process, they just refuse to implement the law or defend it in court.
... The true victims of discrimination are the voters whose rights are being trampled by rulers who do not represent them
Ross Douthat's latest column in the New York Times:
...there are different kinds of premarital sex. There’s sex that’s actually pre-marital, in the sense that it involves monogamous couples on a path that might lead to matrimony one day. Then there’s sex that’s casual and promiscuous, or just premature and ill considered.
This distinction is crucial to understanding what’s changed in American life since the sexual revolution. Yes, in 1950 as in 2011, most people didn’t go virgins to their marriage beds. But earlier generations of Americans waited longer to have sex, took fewer sexual partners across their lifetimes, and were more likely to see sleeping together as a way station on the road to wedlock.
And they may have been happier for it. That’s the conclusion suggested by two sociologists, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, in their recent book, “Premarital Sex in America.” Their research, which looks at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults, finds a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression.
Laurie Higgins, Director of School Advocacy for the Illinois Family Institute, writes to the editors of the Chicago Tribune:
... most of the cultural damage [of the Chicago SSU bill] will not be seen for years to come. Any thinking person understands that cultural change rarely happens instantaneously. For example, Stanley Kurtz has documented the destructive impact same-sex marriage has had on heterosexual marriage in Scandinavia--changes that did not appear in a period of weeks or even months. The Tribune editorial board continues its assault on marriage without ever feeling the need to engage the fundamental and fundamentally flawed analogy upon which the entire homosexuality-affirming movement, including the effort to radically transform marriage, is built. The entire house of cards is built on a specious comparison of race to homosexuality, and yet, I cannot recall reading a single editorial defending with evidence the ways in which race and homosexuality are ontologically analogous or equivalent.
I also can't recall the Tribune editorial board wrestling intellectually with the fundamental question that Princeton Law Professor Robert George recently debated with homosexual journalist Kenji Yoshino, which is: What is marriage?
From the C-SPAN website:
Maggie Gallagher and Brian Moulton talked about House Republican efforts to defend the law that forbids federal recognition of same-sex marriages, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Obama administration said recently it would no longer defend the law in court. National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher is against same-sex marriage. Brian Moultrie of the Human Rights Campaign supports it. They also responded to telephone calls and electronic communications.
Maggie, after appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning, is also going to be on DC's News Channel 8 at 10:30am ET on their show "News Talk". She will be discussing DOMA and Speaker Boehner's comments last week.
The authors of this study claim that same-sex couples respond quite similarly to opposite sex couples when it comes to "Demand-Withdraw" Dynamics. But what their actual data suggests is that gender dominates the demand-withdraw dynamic. Women demand. Men tend to withdraw, in response to demand.
This suggests two women are remarkably different from two men, and both will be different in their dynamic than opposite sex couples. But reporting it that way would violate a taboo: "Gender, Topic, and Time in Observed Demand–Withdraw Interaction in Cross- and Same-Sex Couples."