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Monthly Archives: January 2012

Five Reasons Why Obama Should Fear the Vest?

January 7, 2012 – 3:00 pm

Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller writes:

Barack Obama and his team have spent months assuming Mitt Romney will be their opponent. But while Romney is still the favorite to win the GOP nomination, the surging Rick Santorum might be a much tougher opponent to defeat.

This is true for a variety of important reasons — many of which overlap:

...4. Values voters. In the post-Bush era, there has been a backlash against so-called “compassionate conservatism.” While conservatives were correct to repudiate the big-spending days of the 2000′s, traditional conservatives haven’t suddenly become selfish Ayn Randians, either. James Pethokoukis picked up on this recently, comparing Santorum’s Burkean philosophy to Mitt Romney’s more Hayekian economic stance. He writes that Santorum

isn’t satisfied with an economy that’s more efficient and competitive if it doesn’t result in stronger families. As it says on his campaign website: “Rick Santorum believes that to have a strong national economy, we must have strong families.” The family is at the center of Santorum’s economic vision. GDP growth is a means, not an end.

Santorum’s focus on cultural issues — in an era when they have been downplayed by many Republicans — has made him a very appealing candidate to Evangelicals.

Watch the Media Invent A False Narrative on Romney and Santorum

January 7, 2012 – 2:00 pm

Reuters asks the question: will Santorum's rise draw Romney into the culture wars?

"The sudden rise of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who has emphasized his Christian faith on the campaign trail, is threatening to draw front-runner Mitt Romney into difficult territory - the culture wars."

It begins with the false premise that:

"Romney has talked about job creation on a daily basis, bashed Democratic President Barack Obama relentlessly, and cast himself as an experienced businessman who can fix the economy since launching his second bid for the White House in June. He has steered far away from divisive social issues like abortion and gay marriage."

Yes Romney, like Santorum, has emphasized jobs and the economy. Duh.

But he has never backed away or downgraded his stance on marriage. He's been rather good at debate--more comfortable than most other candidates--at defending his views.

The new prominence of "culture war" issues is coming from the ferocity of the attacks directed at Rick Santorum, fanned by the mainstream media.

And unlike what Reuters suggests this will be a net vote-getter for the GOP candidates. This is why Pres. Obama, according to senior advisers, is staying away from endorsing gay marriage before the election. He knows the issue will cost him votes and gain ones for the GOP.

By Maggie Gallagher | Posted in Election Watch 2012, New Hampshire | Comments (13)

New Child Trends Brief on Unwed Childbearing

January 7, 2012 – 9:00 am

Elizabeth Marquardt writes at FamilyScholars:

Having children outside of marriage–nonmarital childbearing–is increasingly common in the United States. A new Research Brief, Childbearing Outside of Marriage: Estimates and Trends in the United States [PDF], describes how the population of women bearing children outside of marriage has changed, often in ways that challenge public perceptions. Nonmarital childbearing remains a significant public concern as it is linked to negative outcomes for women and their children across a range of measures, as well as with a reliance on public assistance.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Children, Marriage, Parenting, Research/Study | Comments (9)

Video: Gay Former Aide to Santorum Stands Up For His Boss

January 6, 2012 – 3:30 pm

Via TownHall, Chris Matthews attempts to bait Robert Traynham into impugning the character of his former boss, Rick Santorum.

Traynham, to his credit, won't stand for it and presents Santorum's views far more fairly than the interviewer. Will Traynham be treated as fairly by those who hate Santorum for his stalwart defense of marriage?

By NOM Staff | Posted in Election Watch 2012, Marriage, Media, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (23)

Santorum Engages Pro-SSM NH College Students in Rational Conversation

January 6, 2012 – 2:30 pm

He's rather charming here. And patient. Why doesn't marriage equality include all marriages, including polygamous marriages, if the only principle at stake here is all people have a right to have their relationships treated equally if those relationships are important to their happiness? The students have no answer, so they try to claim its not a legitimate question:

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, New Hampshire, Same Sex Marriage, Youth | Comments (120)

Ron Paul Meets His Waterloo on Marriage, NOM Marriage News, January 6, 2011

January 6, 2012 – 11:52 am

NOM National Newsletter

My Dear Friends,

What a night in Iowa!

The top two winners in Iowa—separated by a hair's breadth—were both men who signed NOM's Marriage Pledge, frontrunner and winner Gov. Mitt Romney and the incredible, surprise come-from-behind (to within eight votes) Sen. Rick Santorum.

Congratulations to both of them, and to all the other candidates who agreed to be marriage champions.

Which means, I hasten to remind you, everybody but Ron Paul, at this point. More on that in a minute.

I was there at the caucus in Waterloo, Iowa, watching democracy happen. It's an incredible experience! I wish you could have been there with me.

If you don't follow politics all that closely you might not know how close Ron Paul came to winning the Iowa caucuses.

Ron Paul was holding at a steady 16, 17, 18 points in Iowa polling, up until support for frontrunner Newt Gingrich collapsed. I started becoming concerned because I began receiving calls from many of the good people—including pastors—with whom we worked in the campaign to defeat Iowa's activist judges. These people, who opposed same-sex marriage, were searching for a candidate and were actually beginning to gravitate to Ron Paul. By mid-December, three separate Iowa polls were showing Ron Paul as the winner, with his poll numbers going as high as 28 percent of the vote.

I knew we had to act. Can you imagine the field day the liberal mainstream media would have had if Ron Paul won the Iowa caucuses?

"Look, even evangelicals in Iowa don't care about marriage any more," they would have lied, and they would have used that lie to try to persuade Republican legislators in gay marriage battles across the nation.

Ron Paul, to his credit, has always been a stalwart pro-life vote, and at NOM we know from our past experience in other elections that faith-based voters who see a strong pro-life candidate often just assume he or she is good on marriage too.

In Paul's case that's just not true, and we had to let Iowa voters know the truth.

Ron Paul's a good man, but he's just wrong on marriage.

We put up a TV ad that Time's Joe Klein called "very effective" (even though he didn't catch that it was NOM's ad):

"I saw a very effective anti-Ron Paul ad on the air last night, but I don't know who was responsible for it. It was about gay marriage, which Paul tolerates because he doesn't believe the state should involve itself in marriage. This is somewhat akin to supporting human sacrifice among the Christian Conservatives out here, and I suspect it will move some votes away from Paul over the next 24 hours," Klein wrote.

Klein was right. It was a very effective ad. Combined with strategically-placed internet ads which drove voters to a website where they could view the ad, and the outreach with our newsletter (which reaches 12,000 Iowan households each week) and more than 580,000 phone calls we made to social conservative voters, we made sure evangelicals and others in Iowa who care about marriage were informed that Ron Paul's not with them.

And they responded!

And once again a truth we prove over and over again became clear: It's a really bad idea to be for gay marriage (or, in Ron Paul's case, just to avoid opposing it) if you are a Republican.

Ron Paul's surge, as Gingrich's polling numbers fell, was stopped in its tracks.

Paul did end up with a respectable third place finish in Iowa, with 21 percent of the vote, but here’s the kicker: That third-place finish by Ron Paul was largely fueled by the large turnout he got from non-Republican voters, a large plurality of whom went for Ron Paul.

Ron Paul also grabbed the lion's share—40 percent—of votes from self-identified moderates and liberals in the Iowa caucus vote.

I like a lot of what Ron Paul stands for, but I don't think it was his libertarian budget-cutting ideas which were pulling his voters into places like Waterloo that chilly night. I suspect a big chunk of Paul's vote was anti-war Democrats attempting to sabotage the GOP's message. Of course we can't know that for sure.

Guess who emerged as the favorite of Tea Party voters—those whom the media says don't care about the social issues? No, it wasn't the libertarian Paul. It was Rick Santorum.

The New York Times' political blog also noticed NOM's ad, crediting us with putting marriage front and center to likely GOP caucus goers—only 22 percent of whom a December New York Times poll noted said they supported gay marriage. (These were probably the moderates and liberals planning on voting for Paul!)

"But the National Organization for Marriage ad injects a new and volatile issue into the race, one that has so far largely remained on the sidelines. Same-sex marriage has been a contentious issue in Iowa—voters have removed some of the state judges who paved the way for its legalization—but it has not been a major factor in the presidential campaign."

Not until you helped us put it front and center, educating the public so they could make an educated choice.

As I wandered the halls in Waterloo, I met many wonderful Iowans, many of whom came up to thank me for NOM's ad campaign. (Two of the people I met on election night in Iowa were Mr. and Mrs. Duggar, stars of hit TLC reality show "19 Kids and Counting.")

Here's the important thing I want to tell you: Those people who came up to thank me? It was you they were really thanking.

You and the hundreds of thousands of other good people who make our work here at NOM possible.

In just a few short years NOM has become the nation's leading pro-marriage organization, your voice for your values.

And we have a lot more good fights to fight in 2012, which I can't wait to share with you.

But I keep thinking back to those early days with Maggie—just a few short years ago, New Year's in 2007, when we were a tiny new organization which nobody yet took seriously, deciding to take on what seemed like the gargantuan, impossible task of getting Prop 8 on the ballot in just a few short weeks.

One of our dear friends and supporters at that time in San Diego, seeking to cheer us all on to tackle the impossible, quoted Mother Theresa: "We are not called to be successful, but we are called to be faithful."

True. Very wise and very true.

But as Maggie quickly added, "Personally, I feel called to be successful."

So do I, with the grace of God!

Thank you for the joys of fighting the good fight with you. God's blessings on you and your family.

And Happy New Year!

Brian Brown

Brian S Brown

Brian S. Brown
President
National Organization for Marriage

P.S. As we begin a new year, full of new challenges, consider whether you can stand with us. When you give to NOM—whether you can give $20 or $200—you are helping to forge a future in which marriage is protected, for your children, grandchildren, and the generations to come.

By Brian Brown | Posted in NOM Marriage News, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (29)

Why President Obama Won't Tell Voters the Truth About SSM Until After the Election

January 6, 2012 – 11:30 am

Albert Mohler at LifeSiteNews:

...In the aftermath of the Stephanopoulos interview, New York Magazine stated the obvious with this headline: “President Obama Won’t Say if He’ll Stop Pretending to Oppose Same-Sex Marriage Before the Election.”

Now, The New York Times has published a major article arguing that the President is allowing his surrogates in the Administration to advance the issue for him. In “Obama Still Lets Surrogates Take the Lead as Gay Rights Momentum Builds,” reporter Mark Landler explained:

“President Obama has long relied on his oratorical gifts to ease him through tricky political situations. But on the emotionally charged issue of gay rights, Mr. Obama has been content recently to let his lieutenants do the talking. And they have said some striking things.”

On the specific issue of same-sex marriage, Landler reported: “There is little indication that Mr. Obama plans to endorse same-sex marriage before the presidential election in November, despite recent statements that tiptoe right up to that position.”

Thus, the dance continues. The reason for the President’s reluctance is clear enough. Landler nailed the rationale head-on, explaining that the President “is reluctant in an election year to be drawn into a culture-war issue — one that reliably helps Republicans turn out evangelical voters in their favor and also strikes a particular nerve with religious black voters, a bedrock Obama constituency in battleground states like North Carolina and Florida.”

This disingenuous waltz will be a hard dance to maintain, and the President must know it. Nevertheless, some political authorities in Mr. Obama’s own party are advising him to keep it going.

... President Carter said, “If your main goal is to get re-elected, avoid a controversial subject as much as you can in the first term.”

Mr. Carter recalled that he alienated too many voters during his first term, and, as he told a group recently, was “involuntarily retired.”

Maybe that explains it all.. The first Obama term is all about “evolution” on the issue. Clarity will come only after the 2012 election Then, and only then, will the dance end.

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

Post-Iowa South Carolina Poll: Romney 27%, Santorum 24%, Gingrich 18%

January 6, 2012 – 11:05 am

Rasmussen Reports polled South Carolina yesterday and found:

What a difference a caucus makes. Rick Santorum who two months ago had one percent (1%) support among likely South Carolina Republican Primary voters now is running a close second there with 24% of the vote.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the Palmetto State finds former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney still in the lead, earning 27% support from likely GOP Primary Voters, up from 23% in early November. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is in third with 18% of the vote, followed by Texas Congressman Ron Paul at 11%.

... In the first Rasmussen Reports survey of the South Carolina Republican Primary race in November, Georgia businessman Herman Cain came in first with 33% support, followed by Romney and Gingrich. Cain has since dropped out of the race.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Election Watch 2012, South Carolina | Comments (4)

Post-Iowa New Hampshire Poll: Romney 42%, Paul 18%, Santorum 13%

January 6, 2012 – 10:45 am

Rasmussen Reports polled New Hampshire yesterday and found:

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is pulling away from the pack in New Hampshire as Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary nears. His nearest rival now trails him by more than 20 points.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary Voters in New Hampshire finds Romney earning 42% support. Texas Congressman Ron Paul is a distant second with 18% of the vote, followed by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, hot off his photo finish with Romney in the Iowa caucuses, at 13%. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who has focused his campaign efforts on New Hampshire, captures 12% support.

... Given his lead, Romney appears comfortably ahead since 61% of primary voters in the Granite State say they are already certain of their vote. But 33% say they still could change their minds. Those whose minds are made up include 71% of Romney voters and 70% of Paul supporters. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Huntsman’s backers, 56% of Santorum supporters and 55% of Perry’s also say they are sure how they will vote on Tuesday. Just 49% of Gingrich’s voters say the same.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Election Watch 2012, New Hampshire | Comments Off

Video: Minnesota Marriage Minute Episode 1

January 6, 2012 – 10:30 am

The Minnesota for Marriage coalition has just released the first episode of their Marriage Minute series explaining in clear terms what next November's constitutional amendment does and why it is needed:

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Minnesota | Comments (2)

LATimes on the Crises the Fertility Industry Can Cause

January 6, 2012 – 10:00 am

The Los Angeles Times:

They fell in love, moved in together in a house in central Florida and had a baby girl. Now they are fighting over who should raise the child. But unlike most couples, they are two women. One donated the egg. The other had it implanted into her womb and carried the child to term.

So which one is the mother? The woman who bore the child says it is she and she alone.

... A circuit judge in Brevard County, writing that it broke his heart to say so, ruled that she's right. Under Florida law, a woman who gives birth is the mother. Late last month, however, a state appeals court in Daytona Beach overturned his decision, saying the other mother has parental rights too.

The 5th District Court of Appeal ruled that the U.S. and Florida constitutions trump Florida law and give parenting rights to both women. State law, it added, has not kept up with the times.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Children, Law, Parenting, Science | Comments (15)

Why Santorum Appeals to Women and Evangelicals

January 6, 2012 – 9:30 am

Peggy Nance of Concerned Women for America in Fox News opinion:

... After playing the field for weeks, women in Iowa finally settled down with their man. In fact, CNN entrance polls showed that the majority of women were supporting Santorum at twenty-seven percent (despite the sweater vest). It wasn’t a woman candidate this time, but I’m convinced that it will happen.

...Santorum’s appeal to women and evangelicals centers on a desire for authenticity. Rick’s been consistent in behavior and record. His stance on the sanctity of life and traditional marriage gained the voters’ attention.

His personal story of a strong marriage and eight children, including baby Gabriel, who died, and beautiful Bella, who is severely handicapped and the apple of her father’s eye is beyond reproach. His record in the U.S. Senate is one of unwavering support of conservative principles. His foreign policy acumen is equal to anyone on the debate stage.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Election Watch 2012, Iowa | Comments Off

Gay Canadian Editor: "We Will Teach Your Kids the New Norms"

January 6, 2012 – 9:00 am

Robin Perelle, managing editor of the gay magazine Xtra Vancouver, admits the effort to redefine marriage means redefining society's cultural norms, and that one of their ways to do this is to teach kids to view their parents as bigots:

"Just as the black civil rights movement changed the rules of what is and isn’t acceptable for racism, the gay rights movement is shifting norms in Canada. And with that comes a message to those who won’t evolve: your outdated morals are no longer acceptable, and we will teach your kids the new norms."

By NOM Staff | Posted in Canada, Culture, Education, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (16)

Hawaiian Democrat Candidate: Obama Shares My Opposition to SSM

January 6, 2012 – 8:00 am

Honolulu Civil Beat:

Former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann is in the minority of 2nd Congressional District candidates when it comes to his views on same-sex marriage.

While most of the candidates in that race told Civil Beat that they believe same-sex marriage should be legal, Hannemann says that "marriage is between a man and a woman."

As a Democrat, Hannemann likely realizes how divisive his stance may be among some voters in his party. In Hannemann's recent response to a Civil Beat survey, he made sure to point out that he's not the only Democrat who doesn't support same-sex marriage.

"I do not support same-sex marriage as I believe that