December 8, 2011 – 10:00 am
Over at Public Discourse, in the second part of her two-part essay (read part one here) Helen Alvare explains how changes in family law over the past 50 years have been detrimental to child wellbeing:
Family law has changed during the past 50 years to the detriment of child well-being, paving the way for the arguments in support of same-sex marriage. But there is a new strategy available to us to respond to this situation.
The first part of this series summarized two centuries of Supreme Court opinions identifying the state's interest in marriage with its interests in children, their formation for self-government, and the building of a decentralized society. Today, however, those who demand state recognition of same-sex marriage either ignore or minimize the relationship between marriage law and children's welfare. In light of the Supreme Court decisions discussed here yesterday, this seems a foolish strategy, bound to fail.
December 8, 2011 – 8:00 am
From the Alliance Defense Fund:
An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney representing a central Illinois bed and breakfast filed answers Friday to complaints filed against it with the state’s Human Rights Commission. Two men filed the complaints after TimberCreek Bed and Breakfast told them that it does not host “civil union” ceremonies, but only weddings, on its premises.
“No business owner may be forced to violate his sincerely held religious beliefs merely because someone demands it,” said Steve Amjad, one of more than 2,100 attorneys in the ADF alliance. “Constitutional and state laws guarantee religious freedom for every American, including business owners. These complaints ignore those fundamental freedoms and are further examples of the threat the homosexual legal agenda poses to every American’s basic rights.”
December 7, 2011 – 3:45 pm
Dear Marriage Supporter,
Tomorrow afternoon beginning at 2:30 pm PT / 5:30 pm ET, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit will be hearing oral arguments on California's Proposition 8.
The three-judge panel, while continuing to deliberate on the constitutionality of Prop 8, will additionally be hearing oral arguments on whether Judge Walker broke the law when he allowed the public release of videotapes of the original Prop 8 trial and whether Judge Walker's decision to overturn Prop 8 should be reversed because he was involved in a same-sex relationship at the time.
Ruth Institute Founder and President, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse will be in the courtroom providing live updates via the NOM blog and Twitter (follow us @NOMtweets).
Check the blog tomorrow afternoon and on Friday for updates to get a full report on the proceedings.
The path to this point has been circuitous to say the least...last December the court heard arguments on the case's merits, but because Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris have refused to defend the law, in January the 9th Circuit asked the California Supreme Court to decide whether the Protect Marriage coalition had legal standing to defend Prop 8.
Just last month, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Prop 8 proponents did have standing in the case. The 9th Circuit will now take the California Supreme Court's unanimous decision on the standing question into consideration in their deliberations.
Please follow along with us on the NOM blog and on Twitter as we continue to uphold and defend the people's right to protect marriage at the ballot box and in our nation's highest courts.
Brian S. Brown
President
National Organization for Marriage
December 7, 2011 – 1:00 pm
We welcome Wolfson's comments, acknowledging that a majority of Maryland citizens are opposed to redefining marriage. Legislators of Maryland, take note!
This from The Washington Blade (a gay newspaper):
The head of the national advocacy group Freedom to Marry startled leaders of Maryland’s campaign to pass a same-sex marriage bill in 2012 when he implied this week that organizers weren’t doing the work needed to defeat an expected voter referendum to overturn such a bill.
Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, told the Washington Blade on Monday that his group chose not to join a coalition of local, state and national groups called Marylanders for Marriage Equality. The coalition is leading efforts to lobby the Maryland Legislature to approve a same-sex marriage bill when it convenes in Annapolis in January.
“We are deeply committed, as we have been for years, to ending exclusion from marriage in Maryland and throughout the country,” Wolfson told the Blade in an email.
But he added, “In Maryland, because of the likelihood that marriage legislation can be forced onto the ballot, the key question is not just passing a bill in the legislature, but defending it against an attack campaign via ballot measure,” he said.
“Freedom to Marry has made it clear to members of the coalition and to lawmakers that our goal is to win, not simply to pass a bill, if there is not sufficient groundwork and investment in a campaign to win at the ballot,” he said.
“We have continued to press for clarity and progress on benchmarks for success, and have urged elected officials, national organizations, and advocates on the ground to show the plan, investment, and activities needed now to build public support and succeed at the ballot, not just the legislature,” he told the Blade in his email message about the Maryland marriage campaign.
December 7, 2011 – 9:00 am
Helen Alvare of George Mason School of Law and a senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute argues in this first part of a two-part series for The Public Discourse that "The Supreme Court was more right than it knew during the past two centuries as it identified the state’s interest in marriage as children and their formation":
Why is there a gulf between those who see same-sex marriage as an impossible legal and cultural revolution, a bridge too far, and those who see it as the logical next step on a path well-trodden in family law? In part, it is the difference in perspective between those familiar with classical expressions of the goods and goals of marriage found in over a century of Supreme Court decisions, and those with their eyes fixed upon more recent legal developments that call those goods into question or ignore them.
Those who champion marriage between a man and a woman would like to see the Supreme Court settle the matter according to a long series of precedents treating procreation and child-rearing as primary state-recognized goods of marriage. But given that one ought to be realistic about judicial willingness today to ignore precedent in favor of some perceived zeitgeist, an additional strategy to preserve the link between marriage and children in the Court’s reasoning is warranted.
December 6, 2011 – 2:00 pm
Peggy, a 40-something woman who was in a relationship with another woman for over ten years, writes for the Marriage Matters blog of the Minnesota Catholic Conference:
...I grew up Catholic and abandoned my faith for 18 years, the last ten-and-a-half years of that period in a monogamous lesbian relationship. I considered myself married to my partner and organized my life accordingly. In the end, though, I recognized a deep spiritual emptiness, had a change of heart and left the relationship. (After her own spiritual struggle and devastation from the end of our relationship, my former partner ultimately reconnected with her faith, too, and today we remain friends.)
At no time during my relationship with my former partner did I feel cheated or at a disadvantage by not being able to marry her. We knew that we needed to take steps to insure that we prepared for our future, with or without each other, in the case of sickness or death.
My living will and medical proxy gave her the ability to speak for me and make medical decisions. We were the beneficiaries on each other’s life insurance policies and retirement accounts. If for some reason I needed to add her to my benefits at work, I could. We could have had a commitment ceremony performed by a minister at any number of gay-affirming churches in the Twin Cities, attended by our family and friends who loved and supported us. I considered myself married. I didn’t expect the state or the federal government to extend to me the same benefits a husband and wife received.
It leaves me wondering how exactly extending the civil definition of “marriage” to same-sex couples truly helps society as a whole when that change would affect such a small percentage of Minnesotans (10,207 households are same-sex couples in Minnesota, according to the 2010 Census). This is compared to more than a million husband-wife households who would have the public definition of their relationship altered so that their benefits could be extended to same-sex couples. After all, civil benefits for married households are fundamentally meant to support and promote the ideal environment for the raising and rearing of children, our future citizens.
December 6, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Over at my personal blog I reported yesterday on the Cardinal Newman Society's new report which connects the dots between gay-activist money and a series of conferences sponsored at Catholic universities designed to confuse Catholics about what their faith really says about marriage and family.
This from the Newman Society release:
In a special investigative report released today, The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) provides evidence of “a well-orchestrated attempt to undermine the Church’s doctrine and its stand against homosexual ‘marriage’” at a series of conferences co-sponsored by two Jesuit universities and funded by a radical foundation.
The presidents of Fordham and Fairfield Universities had promised New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Bridgeport Bishop William Lori that the “More Than a Monologue” conference series would “not be a vehicle for dissent,” according to the New York Archdiocese. However, Newman Society reporters found evidence of dissent, sacrilege and opposition to the bishops’ efforts to protect marriage.
[Continue reading Press Release] [Click here for the full report]
My reaction and suggestion:
"... in the interest of transparency, the presidents of Fordham and Fairfield should reveal their correspondence with Archbishop Dolan and Bishop Lori and explain how this happened on their watch. Did they, for instance, make any serious effort to supervise the planned content of the events and review the speaker list? It is, after all, a very serious matter that these presidents of Catholic universities promised the bishops that these conferences would not violate their responsibilities and then failed to follow-through on that promise.
As I’ve written before, there’s a very clear project underway which, financed by well-moneyed gay rights activists, seeks to undermine the Church’s teaching on these issues from within, by sponsoring events such as the “CatholiQ Eucharist” and “More than a Monologue” conference and by funding Catholic organizations that allow their name and institutions to be co-opted by this agenda.
Catholic laypeople who care about the identity of our Catholic institutions ought to work with the bishops to demand a response from the administration of these two schools and to see that proper reparations are made. Issuing a formal apology, promising not to allow this to happen again, and sponsoring a second round of conferences where the Church’s teaching on these issues is articulated and defended properly are all good places to start."
Catholics have a right to believe what their Church teaches and to expect that their institutions will fairly present that teaching as part of their mission.
December 6, 2011 – 11:00 am
Mark Lee writes in the Washington Blade (a gay newspaper):
...[The District of Columbia] Council testimony and media reports during consideration of the modern marriage bill touted extraordinary local economic benefits to come once gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in Washington.
Unfortunately, although no commercial benefit was — or should be — required to justify the expansion of the civil right to marry, those projections have proven overstated and the level of anticipated revenue for local businesses has not materialized.
The shortfall is due to both unrealistic economic forecasting by some marriage equality advocates and a notably lower number of same-sex marriages performed in the District than projected.
December 6, 2011 – 9:00 am
Wesley Smith at a First Things blog:
Pro choice and pro life women have come together in coalition to protect women from being exploited for their eggs by Big Biotech. Reason? Women would take all the risks and the companies could make all the money but for the small payments to women to undergo the unnecessary extraction procedure.
And now, three very prominent feminists have written a letter to Nature warning of the risk. They begin by pointing out that an earlier cloning-type experiment–which we discussed here at SHS–used eggs purchased and extracted in excess of IVF recommended amounts.
... I support outlawing the sale of human eggs for any purpose–internationally–but certainly, for biotechnology. No woman should be enticed to put her health at risk so others may reach the stratosphere of scientific fame and fortune.
December 5, 2011 – 3:00 pm
But now, after pressure from the gay lobby, they will be given the option of naming ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’.
