NOMblog: The Official Blog of the National Organization for Marriage

NOM BLOG

Monthly Archives: March 2011

CA county clerk opts to defend marriage in Prop 8 challenge

March 22, 2011 – 9:00 am

Chuck Storey, a county clerk-recorder in El Centro, CA has asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to become the primary defendant in a lawsuit to uphold Proposition 8.

He has home-front support, as the Associated Press reports:

Storey's supporters note that 69.7 percent of county voters approved Proposition 8 in 2008. They say he is protecting voters' wishes, unlike former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Attorney General and current Gov. Jerry Brown and other elected officials who refused to defend the measure.

... County supervisors voted 3-2 in December 2009 to defend Proposition 8 after Supervisor Wally Leimgruber got in touch with Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a Murieta law firm that, according to its website, fights court rulings "that have created a society increasingly devoid of the message and influence of God." The firm represented the county for free.

Last August, the board voted 4-1 to join the appeal after the measure was struck down.

"I don't believe in strange-sex marriage," said Leimbruger, a farmer who has been married 36 years." I believe marriage is between one man and one woman."

Wally (picture above, right with his wife), a former Imperial County supervisor, says he was interviewed for over an hour about this story, but the Associated Press only chose to run these two sparse sentences from him.

Hopefully his view will get more of a hearing in court.

By NOM Staff | Posted in California, Prop 8, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (2)

Peter Wood: Debating Same-Sex Marriage

March 22, 2011 – 8:45 am

In this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, President of the National Association of Scholars Peter Wood writes:

…The debate over gay marriage ought to be considered one of the central social issues of our time, and indeed for many Americans—left and right—it is. It deals with a question of basic social relations within and between generations and I find it perfectly sensible that advocates and critics of gay marriage should both see it as a matter of urgent concern. The perspective that seems less sensible to me is the one which dismisses the controversy as a bore or nuisance: the idea that when it comes to marriage, all we are talking about are private choices that are no one’s business other than the parties directly involved. That’s an atomistic view of society. Marriage, whatever else it is, is a social institution. People marry because it means something beyond a private choice, and we have good reason to concern ourselves with that broader meaning.

One might think on that basis that higher education would be at the epicenter of the debate—that we could turn to the university to hear both sides (or all sides) making their best case. Unfortunately that’s not how it has worked out. Rather, the academic discussion has been dominated by those who view gay marriage as a civil rights issue. Those who argue against gay marriage haven’t been entirely silenced, but you have to look pretty hard for their words. One source is Lynn Wardle’s edited volume, What’s the Harm? Does Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Really Harm Individuals, Families, or Society? (2008) which gathers together arguments on both sides. The unusual thing in this book is the inclusion of academics who dissent, on more or less conservative grounds, from the prevailing pro-gay marriage position. David Blankenhorn’s The Future of Marriage (2007) offers the most extended liberal critique of gay marriage position, and Blankenhorn was notably the star expert witness who spoke in defense of Proposition 8 in last year’s trial.

The voices of dissenting academics are underrepresented in this conversation, mostly because dissenters know that they will be subject to pretty extreme verbal abuse if they speak up. [Continue reading]

By NOM Staff | Posted in Culture, Education, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (9)

What Next? Florist refuses flowers for SSM ceremony in Canada

March 22, 2011 – 8:00 am

What's notable is the response from a local gay-rights activist, who had this to say:

Eldon Hay, a United Church minister in Sackville and a well-known gay rights advocate, said he still sympathizes with the florist.

"The shopkeeper has every right to her own convictions as long as she is a private citizen in her own house," Hay said.

"But if she opens her doors to sell flowers, then she must be prepared to meet and deal with the public."

According to the New Brunswick Human Rights Act, anyone doing business in the province cannot refuse customers based on race, religion or sexual orientation.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Canada, Religious Liberty, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (10)

Openly Gay Congresswoman Proposes New Marriage Act

March 22, 2011 – 7:30 am

National Public Radio hosted this interview with Rep. Tammy Baldwin on her efforts to repeal DOMA in Congress:

Wisconsin Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin is known for her liberal position on issues like the health care and federal spending. The Democrat is the only openly gay woman serving in Congress and is co-sponsoring legislation that would repeal the controversial Defense of Marriage Act, which bans same-sex marriage. In our weekly Political Chat, host Michel Martin speaks with Representative Baldwin about the recently introduced Respect for Marriage Act and gets her take on the developments in Libya and the future of nuclear energy in the U.S.

Please help NOM protect marriage in 3 easy steps by going to www.DefendDOMA.com now.

And tell your friends, too! Everyone can help in some way.

By NOM Staff | Posted in DOMA, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (7)

Legal Experts: Polygamy Challenges Get Boost From SSM

March 22, 2011 – 7:00 am

The Washington Times reports:

[Polygamy is] getting a legal boost from a strange bedfellow: the success of same-sex marriage.

Gay-rights advocates cringe whenever the connection is made between same-sex and plural marriage, but more than a few legal analysts say the recent gains posted by gay marriage in the courts and state legislatures cannot help but bolster the case for legalized polygamy.

... "Unlike same-sex marriage, which has no historical roots and is a new frontier — you can't say the same thing about polygamy," said Austin Nimocks, attorney for the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, which opposes same-sex marriage. "There's a cultural underpinning and support for plural marriage, so one could say the case is actually stronger for plural marriage."

... If U.S. courts do eventually legalize plural marriage, there's an excellent chance that the attorney for the plaintiffs will be Brian Barnard. A Utah-based religious-freedom lawyer, Mr. Barnard has been challenging anti-polygamy laws for decades.

"We haven't been successful, but we think the times are a-coming," said Mr. Barnard, who serves as legal director for the Utah Civil Rights and Liberties Foundation.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Culture, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (9)

DOMA Under Attack! Take the DOMA Challenge!

March 21, 2011 – 3:56 pm

Monday, March 21, 2011

Dear Marriage Supporter,

When President Obama defaulted on his duty to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, gay marriage advocates applauded. When Sen. Feinstein and Rep. Nadler introduced bills to repeal DOMA, they celebrated. Soon DOMA would be history, opening the door to a nationwide same-sex marriage regime.

They know the stakes. If DOMA falls, marriage is at risk all across the nation. Join our $1 Million DOMA Challenge at www.DefendDOMA.com today!

Obama's DOMA betrayal is a grave threat to marriage—but also an unprecedented opportunity. And financial resources will make the difference in our ability to capitalize at this decisive moment. If we act now, we can make President Obama's decision backfire, triggering a political backlash and a renewed and robust defense of DOMA.

SHARE DefendDOMA.com:

We thank Speaker Boehner and the Republican leadership in the House for taking action to intervene in the DOMA litigation. For the first time, we will have government lawyers in the courtroom who actually want to win the case. But the battle is far from over.

We have launched a new national campaign to protect and defend DOMA, and have just received a $1 Million DOMA Challenge Grant to ensure that DOMA is defended in Congress, in federal court, and in living rooms across the country. Under the terms of the grant, every dollar we raise by midnight on April 15th will be matched up to $1 million, providing a total of up to $2 million to defend DOMA.

Will you join us today, doubling the impact of your gift?

Dueling bills in Congress are set to put every Congressman on record for or against marriage, and we need your help to turn this DOMA battle into a decisive victory for marriage. Already, Rep. Vicky Hartzler has 95 co-sponsors on her resolution condemning President Obama's betrayal of DOMA. And on the other side, Rep. Nadler's DOMA repeal bill reportedly has over 100 co-sponsors in the House.

The Human Rights Campaign is crowing about a new poll supposedly showing that 51% of Americans oppose DOMA. You know that's wrong, and I know that's wrong. But the best way to prove it to Congress is for tens of thousands of Americans to stand up and make their voices heard.

Can you give $1 a day for the next 30 days? Your gift, whether $30, $300, or even $3000 if you have the means, will help us fund the next steps of this campaign, supporting the Congressional resolution in defense of DOMA, blocking efforts to repeal DOMA, and assisting in DOMA's legal defense.

Proponents of same-sex marriage are running out of options. They've tried to win in the states—and have lost 31 times in a row when the people have a chance to vote. They've tried to push their agenda through Congress—but last November you helped elect a pro-marriage majority in the House of Representatives.

Now they've teamed up with President Obama to defeat the Defense of Marriage Act. But President Obama overplayed his hand, and his strategy will backfire on him, not only politically, but tactically as well.

Never before have we had such a clear opportunity to defend DOMA. The charade is over. With President Obama having so publicly betrayed marriage, the courtroom door is now open—for the first time—for lawyers who truly want to defend marriage to intervene on behalf of DOMA.

And I know that with your help we're going to win here, too.

These next 30 days are crucial. In order to succeed, we must have the resources to wage a sustained campaign on behalf of DOMA. Please join us at www.DefendDOMA.com to learn more—and help spread the word!

Brian Brown

Faithfully,

Brian brown

Brian S. Brown

President

National Organization for Marriage

P.S.: President Obama has opened the door for a real defense of DOMA. But we need your help to make sure this important opportunity is not wasted. Please join our "30 Days for DOMA" Campaign today with a generous gift of $30, $300, or even $3000 if you have the means. Every gift is matched, doubling its impact. Together, we can put Congress on record for marriage, defend DOMA, and make President Obama regret his decision to betray marriage—but only if we come together today.

By NOM Staff | Posted in DOMA, Marriage | Comments (17)

Freakonomics: Stay-at-Home Mom Knows Best?

March 21, 2011 – 3:52 pm

Via the blog Freakonomics, which writes about "The hidden side of everything":

Just how important is Mom during a child’s first year of life? A new working paper by the economists Pedro Carneiro, Katrine V. Løken, and Kjell G. Salvanes exploits a recent reform in Norway to answer that question. The reform, which increased paid and unpaid maternity leave, “increased maternal leave on average by 4 months,” but had no effect on family income. The authors found that more time with Mom led to lower high school dropout rates later on.

Photo: Kelly Crabtree

By NOM Staff | Posted in Parenting, Research/Study | Comments (4)

NYT: Study Undercuts View of College as a Place of Same-Sex Experimentation

March 21, 2011 – 3:44 pm

Scholar: “A lot of data shows that women’s sexuality is more hetero-flexible, more influenced by what they see around them."

More from the New York Times: "The popular stereotype of college campuses as a hive of same-sex experimentation for young women may be all wrong."

The full study is here (PDF).

By NOM Staff | Posted in Research/Study | Comments Off

A Jim McGreevey Moment?

March 21, 2011 – 2:38 pm

We say nothing, we are in fact speechless at the soap opera unfolding in Glendale, California city council race:

"Things have gotten ugly between Glendale, Calif., city council candidate Mike Mohill and incumbent John Drayman.

Last week, during a city council meeting, Drayman announced to the room that Mohill had been arrested three times, twice in the 1980s for soliciting lewd acts in a public place...

Tuesday night, [Mohill] responded, saying he has been married since 1977, he is gay, and that the two charges brought against him in the '80s for solicitation of lewd acts were the product of him having "gay sex in public."

He said his wife has known he is gay since the arrests and that the two maintain a "marriage in which we share a powerful affection and respect for each other."

Then he accused Drayman of getting personal and said Drayman was rumored to be gay himself.

Apparently there's one more married gay man in California than previously thought.

(Photos: Montrose Patch)

By NOM Staff | Posted in California | Comments (2)

Dr. Jeff Mirus on "Gay Marriage and the Glories of the World"

March 21, 2011 – 1:57 pm

Jeff Mirus, president of Catholic Culture, writes about who is changing their mind on gay marriage, and why:

... once you ask whether a Catholic attends church weekly or more, the numbers shift radically, with nearly 70% opposed to gay marriage and holding.

One of our supporters wrote in to point out how interesting it would be to break the responses down in terms of specific marriage and children issues: Are you currently married? Do you have a sexual partner who is not your spouse? Do you have children? Have you ever been divorced? I would add, Do you contracept? These questions are extremely pertinent, and the answers might well reveal what my correspondent supposed, that “those who are married, especially with children, are strongly against gay marriage.” His point is a good one: To oppose gay marriage, you must first have some understanding of what marriage is.

Have I hinted that the growth of support for gay marriage over the past few years tells us more about the tendency of people to espouse fashionable ideas than about any significant moral shift? It might almost be said that taking significant moral positions, at least from the point of view of one’s own interior life, depends precisely on the ability to resist the temptation to be fashionable...

By NOM Staff | Posted in Culture, Marriage, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (4)

Company which claimed SSM would be good for business in Indiana has 2,200 employees in 81% pro-marriage Tennessee

March 21, 2011 – 12:08 pm

The Speak Up Movement blog, which protects and promotes the rights of churches, points out the hypocrisy implicit in the claims made by Cummings Inc (which Maggie talked about here) that SSM is necessary for a welcoming work environment:

Tennessee’s marriage amendment [which passed by 81% in 2006] carries some of the most powerful language protecting marriage of all the 30 states that have passed amendments (by an average vote of about 68%, BTW). More powerful than that being considered in Indiana.

So why now would Cummins, which boasts of its “top rating” by the radical Human Rights Campaign, publicly gnash its teeth over a proposed marriage amendment in one state after just months ago heralding their expansion into a state that already had a powerful amendment in place?

Maybe because in reality Cummins knows it’s not bad for business to set up shop in states that still understand the value of marriage…but it DOES have its HRC overlords to publicly appease.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Indiana, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (1)

Opinion: Latinos Upset Obama Doesn’t Want to Defend Marriage

March 21, 2011 – 11:22 am

Alfonso Aguilar, the Executive Director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, writes in Fox News Latino:

...Most Latinos understand marriage as the basic cell of the family and society.

The institution of marriage to them is not only a religious sacrament, but an institution of natural law -- an objective instrument of natural design that allows a man and a woman to form a family and educate its offspring. I guess that because they are less influenced by the relativism and skepticism of post-modern western societies, they have no qualms accepting the evident and natural truth that only a man and a woman can conceive a child and that a child needs a father and a mother.

Not two fathers or two mothers.

This has nothing to do with discrimination, by the way. They certainly don’t believe in discriminating or harassing anyone because of their sexual preference. What they want to see is government preserving the basic structure of marriage for the overall well-being of society.

President Obama’s reversal on marriage, therefore, is very upsetting to Latinos. It’s yet another disappointment from someone whom they thought they could trust.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Culture, DOMA, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (28)

A fair shake from the The Economist?

March 21, 2011 – 10:58 am

In January Maggie Gallagher debated SSM with Evan Wolfson over at The Economist.

Now the moderator of that debate, Roger McShane, writes that he found Maggie's arguments "abstruse" (i.e., you need a brain to understand them).

But in fact, 37 percent of The Economist readers, by the last day, did not share Mr. McShane's incomprehension:

That's a lot of Economist readers.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Same Sex Marriage | Comments Off

New Study: Good Things Come to Couples Who Wait

March 21, 2011 – 10:51 am

Via Science Daily:

A statistical analysis showed the following benefits enjoyed by couples who waited until marriage compared to those who started having sex in the early part of their relationship:

* Relationship stability was rated 22 percent higher
* Relationship satisfaction was rated 20 percent higher
* Sexual quality of the relationship was rated 15 percent better
* Communication was rated 12 percent better

For couples in between -- those that became sexually involved later in the relationship but prior to marriage -- the benefits were about half as strong.

Also notable:

Because religious belief often plays a role for couples who choose to wait, Busby and his co-authors controlled for the influence of religious involvement in their analysis.

"Regardless of religiosity, waiting helps the relationship form better communication processes, and these help improve long-term stability and relationship satisfaction," Busby said.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Culture, Marriage | Comments (3)

Why Doesn't the Daily Kos/PPP poll show Increasing Support for SSM?

March 21, 2011 – 10:23 am

If you are a casual reader of newspapers you can hardly fail to note the attention paid to the idea the majority now support SSM. When a group of Hollywood celebrities called on Pres. Obama to join the "majority of Americans" in support of gay marriage, PolitiFact, the allegedly non-partisan fact-checking outfit judged it "mostly true" (even though amusingly the experts they consulted said it was not yet true).

There is one polling company however that finds no such trend: PPP polling, which is a hard-core Democratic and liberal polling firm.

Back in August, the PPP poll, asking a question similar to the recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, found 57 percent of Americans oppose gay marriage and just 33 percent support it.

Since January, PPP has teamed up with the Daily Kos and the question it asks about gay marriage has changed. Rather than asking whether gay marriage should be legal or "illegal" (which sounds like criminalizing behavior), the Daily Kos/PPP poll asks whether registered voters believe "gay couples should be allowed to legally marry, or gay couples should be allowed to form civil unions but not legally marry, or there should be no legal recognition of a gay couple's relationship."

What is the recent trend line in this poll?

In January, 34 percent supported gay marriage. By early March only 31 percent did.

Other pollsters have asked a similar poll question (gay marriage, civil unions or no legal recognition) -- and found that in 2009 somewhere between 33 percent and 42 percent said they favored gay marriage.

In other words, the PPP poll suggests there has been no recent increase in support for gay marriage.

Why is the Democrats' favorite pollster producing results so different from many other mainstream polling outfits?

Back in August, in a press release PPP (once the gap between its polling and other polls was already evident) suggested the real reason:

"Obviously these poll results are very different from a CNN poll earlier this week that showed Americans moving in support of gay marriage, but disparities between live interviewer and the automated polling we do on this issue are not a new thing. Last fall our polling in Maine showed an anti-gay marriage measure passing by 4 points while live interviewer polls by Democracy Corps and Pan Atlantic SMS showed it failing by 9 and 11 points respectively. The measure did end up passing by a margin of 5.5 points.

Why the disparity between automated and live interviewer polls on gay marriage? Americans are still biased against gay people...but some of them know that's wrong and they shouldn't be. Because of that they're more likely to tell their true feelings on an automated poll where there's no social anxiety concern than to a live interviewer who they may be worried about the reaction of."

Gay marriage advocates are no longer persuading, they are intimidating and silencing. If people are afraid to tell the strange person on the phone their real views on marriage, that in itself is evidence of a culturally significant shift--but not one to crow about.

This is an interpretation and time will tell: but this interpretation has the advantage of being totally consistent with the results of recent elections on the issue.

Americans do not believe that gay unions are marriages. But they now understand that America is becoming a place where people have to be wary about saying what they believe.

By Maggie Gallagher | Posted in Culture, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (6)