November 14, 2011 – 2:00 pm
The US Bishops are holding their annual meeting in Baltimore beginning today and one of their first orders of business was to announce a new website to support and educate about the institution of marriage:
What is marriage? Are a man and a woman really essential to marriage? What about the child … and the role of mothers and fathers? Is it discriminatory to defend marriage as the union of one man and one woman? What impact does the redefinition of marriage have on religious liberty?
These are just a few of the many questions about marriage today. They all hinge upon the first question: What is marriage? When the answer to this question is understood, everything else falls into its proper place.
Marriage is unique for a reason. We invite you now to find out why.
Learn more at www.marriageuniqueforareason.org
Bishop Cordileone, who has been entrusted with Catholic efforts to protect and promote marriage, said during his presentation:
"In the midst of these various challenges, we continue to be mindful and pray for those efforts seeking to protect the definition of marriage. These include the constitutional amendments protecting marriage in Minnesota and North Carolina, the continued efforts to do the same in Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and efforts to repeal the redefinition of marriage and New Hampshire and Iowa. To all our brother bishops and efforts to protect marriage in these states, thank you for your courage and witness, please count on our continued support and prayers."
The bishops also announced plans to produce and release three new videos on the topic of marriage.
November 14, 2011 – 1:30 pm
Patrick Krey, president of Catholic Attorneys for Life and Liberty, writes in the New American:
Rose Marie Belforti, a part-time town clerk for the small town of Ledyard, a rural farming community in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, won her reelection on Tuesday, November 8; however, her struggle is just beginning. The soft-spoken Belforti finds herself on the frontline in the battle between the aggressive same-sex-marriage promoters and those who uphold traditional values.
... The mild-mannered Belforti, a grandmother and artisan cheese farmer, has been the subject of almost daily offensive e-mails, phone calls, and other attacks for standing up for her Christian beliefs. The following is a sampling of the remarks from opponents found in the comment section of news articles about her case. A review of them gives the reader an insight into the mindset of those who are vehemently opposed to her:
“Sue the pants off her, fire her, and throw her in jail.”
“Look, Ms. Belforti: You are a PUBLIC SERVANT! No one cares that you follow the false religion Christianity. LOL Ok? If you allow your filthy religion to impede you in your duties, then maybe you should resign.”
“She can go be a religious bigot at her church or to her cows.”
“She should be fired. Religious beliefs have no business in state mandated laws.”
“Ancient mythology and superstition should absolutely determine whether someone should do the job they were hired to do. If the perfomance of the job conflicts with the mythology and superstition ... then plainly ... one should not have to do the job. Really? This is what the supporters of Rose Marie Belforti are saying.”
“Lets [sic] bring back the Roman lions for these misguided folks.”
“Find a write-in candidate and vote her out. It's the easiest way to deal with this. THEN go after her business interests. After all SHE is the one who CHOSE to make a political statement here!”
“We can't put her six feet under, but we can put her business six feet under. Stop buying her products whatever they are today. Then she will lose her job and her livelihood.”
As mentioned in the comments above, even with all the venomous attacks already directed at her, there is another effort underway to boycott her meager artisan cheese dairy farm. Removal from office and attempted humiliation are not enough for some; they want to bankrupt her as well. [Any who feel sympathy for Mrs. Belforti's plight may feel free to purchase some of her artisan cheese for their upcoming Thanksgiving feast.]
November 14, 2011 – 1:00 pm
An update from New Yorker's Family Research Foundation:
A lawsuit challenging the legality of the process that brought gay “marriage” legislation to the floor of the New York State Senate was filed in the Livingston County Supreme Court on Monday, July 25, 2011.
New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, Rev. Jason J. McGuire, Rev. Duane R. Motley and Rabbi Nathaniel S. Leiter are listed as plaintiffs.
... Rev. Jason J. McGuire, Executive Director, New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, said, “Constitutional liberties were violated. We are asking the court to intervene in its rightful role as the check and balance on an out-of-control State Legislature.”
“It is unfortunate that state senators chose to protect their personal interests, rather than the people they were elected to represent. Some of the players may have changed, but it looks like same old Albany game. It is time the curtain be pulled back and the disinfecting light of good government shine upon the Cuomo Administration and our State Legislature,” McGuire concluded.
November 14, 2011 – 12:45 pm
Gay marriage activists in Oregon recently gave up their bid to redefine marriage by letting the people decide. Now, Washington opts to skip the people and push for gay marriage in the legislature:
State Rep. Jim Moeller announced Thursday he’ll join dozens of other legislators next week in introducing a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in the 2012 Legislature.
... Washington has one of the most sweeping domestic partnership laws in the nation. But gay marriage legislation has failed to pass repeatedly, most recently in the 2011 session, when a bill Moeller co-sponsored with state Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, failed to come to a vote. Moeller and Murray are among the Legislature’s openly gay members.
... Washington’s 1998 Defense of Marriage Act defines marriage as between a man and a woman. It survived a legal challenge when the Washington Supreme Court upheld it in 2006. -- The Columbian
November 14, 2011 – 12:05 pm
The Des Moines Register Caucuses blog:
Evangelical conservatives seeking an alternative in the not-Mitt Romney six-pack have yet to flock to a candidate they believe can salvage enough credibility to beat Romney in Iowa.
But some leading evangelicals see a different question arising from their quandary: Should Romney himself be working to be their man?
A forum this coming Saturday in Des Moines hosted by the Family Leader is designed to ensure that the 1,500 or more likely caucusgoing Christians in the audience find a permanent home. Six candidates have RSVP’d, but Romney hasn’t decided yet whether to attend.
November 14, 2011 – 11:17 am
Taylor Garrett, a cast member of a gay reality TV show, says he was phsyically attacked for being friendly towards Ann Coulter:
A cast member of the gay reality TV show “A-List Dallas” tells The Daily Caller that he was punched to the ground and bloodied Friday night by someone vandalizing his car because he’s a gay conservative associated with commentator Ann Coulter.
Taylor Garrett, a Republican consultant in Texas who stars in the reality series on the channel LOGO TV, said in an interview that he was attacked outside a birthday party in Dallas after finding a vandal scratching “F*** Coulter” on the side of his car.
... The point of having lunch with Coulter, [Garrett] said, is to show people that “just because you don’t support gay marriage doesn’t make you a bigot, doesn’t mean you hate gay people, it just means you disagree on gay issues.”
Coulter did not immediately return a request for comment.
“The left has turned on anyone that might not agree with gay marriage, they have demonized them,” he said. -- DailyCaller
November 14, 2011 – 9:00 am
George Will comments on a situation we've mentioned before at Vanderbilt University:
Illustrating an intellectual confusion common on campuses, Vanderbilt University says: To ensure “diversity of thought and opinion” we require certain student groups, including five religious ones, to conform to the university’s policy that forbids the groups from protecting their characteristics that contribute to diversity.
... The question, at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, should not be whether a particular viewpoint is right but whether an expressive association has a right to espouse it. Unfortunately, in the name of tolerance, what is tolerable is being defined ever more narrowly.
Although Vanderbilt is a private institution, its policy is congruent with “progressive” public policy, under which society shall be made to progress up from a multiplicity of viewpoints to a government-supervised harmony. Vanderbilt’s policy, formulated in the name of enlarging rights, is another skirmish in the progressives’ struggle to deny more and more social entities the right to deviate from government-promoted homogeneity of belief. Such compulsory conformity is, of course, enforced in the name of diversity.
November 14, 2011 – 8:00 am
For those not up on their tax law, a New York law firm has issued a tax guidance for same-sex marriage and employee benefits.
While this area of law is complex, one particularly interesting thing to note is that New York's redefinition of marriage means employers will now have to offer health coverage to unmarried opposite-sex partners if they offer domestic partner benefits (as many employers do).
What constitutes an opposite-sex partner? That remains to be seen (and litigated). Does it mean that cohabiting opposite-sex partners must both be covered on an employee's health plan? What happens if employers drop that type of coverage, does that mean gay couples in a domestic partnership who choose NOT to get a marriage license will lose their health benefits?
Regardless of one’s opinion of the law, it certainly shows that redefining marriage does impact lots of people beyond the couples who want to get a marriage license: it impacts every employer.
November 13, 2011 – 9:00 am
The New York Times with an uplifting story:
Ryan Fitzpatrick, married for nearly five and a half years, says he never removes his wedding band. Not when he clips his nails. Not when he changes diapers. Not when he slings footballs around the field on Sundays for the Buffalo Bills.
For Fitzpatrick, the conscious decision to wear his ring makes him something of an anomaly in the N.F.L., where most players — especially quarterbacks — opt to leave it in their lockers, fearful of injuring their hands or fingers. Fitzpatrick understands the hazards of his workplace, but he has a pragmatic reason for thinking he can ignore them: because he throws right-handed, wearing the ring on his opposite hand does not affect his performance.
“I haven’t seen a reason to take it off, I guess,” Fitzpatrick said in a telephone interview this week. “It stands for something. It’s not like I’m trying to throw a message in anybody’s face. It’s just a personal thing between me and my wife. It’s important for me not to take it off.”
... Tampa Bay’s quarterbacks coach, Alex Van Pelt, who was Fitzpatrick’s offensive coordinator in Buffalo in 2009, said he was not surprised about the ring.
“He’s just a loyal family guy, there’s no question,” Van Pelt said.
... As a reward for his superb season, the Bills last week signed Fitzpatrick to a six-year contract extension worth $59 million.
November 12, 2011 – 11:00 am
Redefining marriage continues to be an unpopular proposal, even in the UK:
David Cameron risks losing the votes of churchgoers by pressing ahead with controversial plans to redefine marriage, a new survey has revealed.
The poll, conducted by ComRes, has revealed that 83 per cent of churchgoers are opposed to Mr Cameron’s plans to rewrite the definition of marriage.
And 57 per cent said that the Prime Minister’s commitment to rewriting the definition of marriage made them less likely to vote for the Conservatives.
In contrast, not one of the survey’s 544 respondents said that Mr Cameron’s support for the radical proposal made them more likely to vote for the party.
Nearly 90 per cent of those surveyed were concerned that schools would be required to teach the equal validity of same-sex and heterosexual relationships. -- The Christian Institute
November 12, 2011 – 10:00 am
LifeSiteNews:
A study by researchers at Brigham Young University focusing on marriage stability and relationship quality found that materialistic couples may have more money, but also have more marital problems.
An analysis of data collected from 1,734 couples showed that even among spouses who shared the same materialistic values, “materialism had a negative association with marital quality.”
Each couple completed a relationship evaluation, part of which asked how much they value “having money and lots of things.”
... The researchers’ statistical analysis showed that couples who say money is not important to them score about 10 to 15 percent better on marriage stability and other measures of relationship quality than couples where one or both are materialistic.
Here is where the research can be accessed online:
Carroll, Jason S., Lukas R. Dean, Lindsey L. Call, Dean M. Busby. "Materialism and Marriage: Couple Profiles of Congruent and Incongruent Spouses." Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy, Volume 10, Issue 4 (2011) [online]
November 11, 2011 – 2:34 pm
Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog is sympathetic to the original ruling which the 9th Circuit has now "erased", but he must concede that it's decision couldn't be more final:
One of the modern gay rights movement’s most significant courtroom victories — a California judge’s ruling last year striking down the military’s ban on gays and lesbians — is about to vanish from the federal record books, as if it had never happened. It will do so because the Ninth Circuit Court refused on Wednesday to reconsider a ruling that erased the decision, and everything about it, and barred any gay rights lawyer from ever trying to use it to help in any other case. The brief order by the Circuit Court, denying rehearing by a three-judge panel, also noted that no judge eligible to vote even called for a tally on reconsideration by the full en banc court. This was a final legal victory for the Obama Administration in a case that at times had been bitterly contested.
... The denial of further review by the panel and by the full Circuit Court also left intact a blistering critique by one of the three judges of any jurist who would use a 2003 gay rights ruling by the Supreme Court — Lawrence v. Texas — as the basis for recognizing new rights for homosexuals.
... The panel said: “We vacate the district court’s judgment, injunction, opinions, orders, and factual findings — indeed, all of its past rulings — to clear the path for any future litigation. Those now-void legal rulings and factual findings have no precedential, preclusive, or binding effect.”
November 11, 2011 – 12:12 pm
At a press conference yesterday, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said about his party's efforts to overturn DOMA:
“This bill will pass. Marriage equality will pass. The question is not if but when and we should just go forward and do it,” Schumer said at the Capitol Thursday, where a group of Democratic senators reacted to the Respect for Marriage Act passing the Senate Judiciary Committee.
He then referenced King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” likening the fight against racial discrimination to the effort to repeal DOMA. [Daily Caller]
Senator Schumer said:
"I remembered Martin Luther King's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail'. The leading so-called moderate business leaders of Birmingham came to Dr. King and said 'wait, just be patient' and his letter said 'Why We Can't Wait' and a line it it says 'to most of us, wait means never'. We can't wait. And just as people had all these reasons we shouldn't have racial equality, economic reasons, social reasons, some even cited religious reasons, we see the same thing happening today. They come up with all these reasons, but they know they're wrong in their hearts. We know we're on the side of history and we know that this will happen. And we just hope it's sooner not later."
