This week Megyn Kelly interviewed a panel of pastors on FoxNews about their views on marriage and how the debate needs to change:
Monthly Archives: April 2013
MacLeod: Marriage, Religious Liberty, and the Ban Myth
Adam, an associate professor at Faulkner University’s Thomas Goode Jones School of Law writes in the Public Discourse that "It’s a myth that marriage law 'bans' same-sex relationships because it treats marriage as the union of a man and a woman":
In a column at CNN.com, Marc Stern asks whether “gay rights” will infringe religious liberty. By “gay rights” he means eradication of sexual complementarity from marriage laws.
His answer is yes, sometimes: “In some instances the rights of same-sex couples will unavoidably trump religious liberty rights.” Why? If the Supreme Court redefines marriage by judicial fiat, religious observers will be forced to choose between obedience to conscience and full participation in public life, because the definition of marriage applies to everyone, including those who perceive inherent differences between men and women.
The evidence is now too extensive to ignore that one effect of redefining marriage is to force everyone to embrace a conception of marriage as a genderless institution, grounded in norms of companionship and personal fulfillment, rather than complementarity, fidelity, and permanence. Even half measures, such as civil unions, leave few domains for religious liberty. When the law abandons the traditional conception of marriage and sexuality in favor of the companionate conception, citizens must deny sexual complementarity, even in contravention of their core religious convictions, in order to participate fully in public life.
Video: All the March for Marriage Speakers!
Did you miss the March for Marriage? Now you can watch the whole program of our rally on the National Mall!
This playlist plays the individual speakers one by one, as well as the introduction and closing remarks by our President Brian Brown:
What's the next step? Signing our citizens petition to the Supreme Court!
GOP Flip-Floppers Silent On Religious Freedom, Other Implicating Questions
Breitbart News sent the questions below on non-discrimination ordinances to the four Republicans in Congress who have flip-flopped on marriage.
They have yet to receive a response from their offices.
That's because these Republicans are in the process of learning that a) their new position is hugely unpopular with their base and b) betraying marriage isn't the end of the pressure they will receive from far-left activists -- it's only the beginning:
- Should business within the wedding/marriage industry be protected from lawsuits resulting from a refusal to service same-sex couples at wedding halls, photography services, catering, etc..?
- Should Catholic adoption agencies be forced to include same sex couples when a baby is up for adoption?
- Should Christian marriage therapists lose their jobs or licenses b/c they refuse to see same sex couples ?
- Should children in public schools be mandated to learn about homosexuality, when the parents do not think it is appropriate to be taught?'
- Where does the member stand on the Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA)?
Video: Jeremy Irons Shares His Reservations About Redefining Marriage
Movie star Jeremy Irons, in a moment rarely scene in interviews of celebrities, speaks honestly and intelligently about his concern that redefining marriage will have serious consequences:
Academy-Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons raised questions about same-sex marriage in an interview yesterday with HuffPostLive.
“Could a father not marry his son?” asked Irons.
“Well, there are laws against incest,” said the host.
“It’s not incest between men,” Irons replied. “Incest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don’t breed.”
“It seems to me that now they’re fighting for the name,” Irons said. “I worry that it means somehow we debase, or we change, what marriage is. I just worry about that.” (First Thoughts)
Douthat in NYTimes: Conservatives Correctly Predicted the Consequences of SSM
Ross Douthat in the New York Times on conservatives accurately predicting what changing marriage will do:
"...the conservative view [of what would happen if we redefine marriage] has actually had decent predictive power. As the cause of gay marriage has pressed forward, the social link between marriage and childbearing has indeed weakened faster than before. As the public’s shift on the issue has accelerated, so has marriage’s overall decline.
Since Frum warned that gay marriage could advance only at traditional wedlock’s expense, the marriage rate has been falling faster, the out-of-wedlock birthrate has been rising faster, and the substitution of cohabitation for marriage has markedly increased. Underlying these trends is a steady shift in values: Americans are less likely to see children as important to marriage and less likely to see marriage as important to childbearing (the generation gap on gay marriage shows up on unwed parenting as well) than even in the very recent past."
... But there is also a certain willed naïveté to the idea that the advance of gay marriage is unrelated to any other marital trend. For 10 years, America’s only major public debate about marriage and family has featured one side — judges and journalists, celebrities and now finally politicians — pressing the case that modern marriage has nothing to do with the way human beings reproduce themselves, that the procreative understanding of the institution was founded entirely on prejudice, and that the shift away from a male-female marital ideal is analogous to the end of segregation.
Defending Marriage: On Capitol Hill and On the Airwaves! NOM Marriage News
Dear Marriage Supporter,
Here are the faces of the people the mainstream media want to persuade you do not exist:
Cliff Kincaid, Director of the Accuracy in Media Center for Investigative Journalism, accurately notes how dishonestly our movement has been covered by the mainstream media:
Significant news came out of last Tuesday's March for Marriage demonstration in Washington, D.C. But it didn't make "news" in the major media.
As one who covered the event, it was significant that there were so many members of minority groups. This was not a mostly white crowd. In addition to the presence of black, Hispanic and Asian supporters of traditional marriage, there were some notable Democrats, such as New York State Senator Ruben Díaz, and he let people know he was several minorities in one.
[...] J.C. Derrick [of WORLD magazine] has a good analysis of how the major media, led by The Washington Post, virtually ignored the March for Marriage. But unless you actually see what happened on the ground, as the thousands of traditional marriage supporters held their demonstration, you would miss the true significance of how dishonest the media's coverage of this issue has become.
It took a major British newspaper to notice and cover the extraordinary outpouring from people of all races, creeds and colors to defend marriage: "[T]he ideological confrontation on Tuesday was genuine. Both sides of the debate were out in force, with Christian opponents easily outnumbering advocates for gay marriage" [emphasis added].
(Most of our opponents on the other side were respectful and decent as we marched past them in front of the Supreme Court. But the U.K. Daily Mail did note at least one punch thrown by one over-zealous demonstrator from the other side, as well as the man dressed in a pink fishnet devil costume, dancing with a less colorful fellow protestor, holding a sign that said, "I bet Hell is fabulous!" I pray that he never finds out—and I truly mean that!)
Confronting That Biased Media Head-on
If you didn't catch it, here I am on Easter Sunday's Meet the Press:
"The truth is the truth," I said.
The truth is marriage is based upon the distinction between men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. . . . apart from all this inevitability talk, 31 states have voted to say that is the truth, they've embedded it in their state constitutions, only 4 have voted against it. There's a myth that somehow this is inevitable, look, North Carolina passed its constitutional amendment 8 months ago by 61%.
The truth about marriage is something the trendy media doesn't usually cover fairly. Witness marriage hero Doug Mainwaring, a brave gay man who is being denounced by The Daily Kos as a hatemonger at a "hate rally" for standing up for marriage! You can see video of Doug's remarkable testimony here:
Please pray for Doug and for all those who face this unjust discrimination in the media and culture simply for speaking out on behalf of marriage.
The Emerging "Next Gen" Leaders For Marriage
And speaking of those who speak out on behalf of marriage: here's what I really want to do this week. Thanks to the March and the coverage, I can introduce you this week to some extraordinary people the MSM never want you to meet, so you can see for yourself: the able, intelligent, and extraordinary Next Gen leaders for marriage that are now emerging in this fight:
Meet the young heroes facing down the Goliath forces opposing us!
You know of course our own able and extraordinary Thomas Peters, NOM's communication director.
He went on MSNBC and fought and held his own in the lion's den (with God's help I take it!):
... [C]urrently gay marriage activists are claiming that they are politically powerless and that's why we have to strike down laws defending marriage like the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8. Whereas what the Chief Justice is saying is that actually gays and lesbians are very politically powerful—the President supports them, the Democratic party platform supports them—and so the idea that we need to strike down laws protecting marriage is absurd.
[...] What we need to uphold is that people have the ultimate right to decide marriage laws. The states, the democratic process is working, and we hope the Supreme Court will acknowledge the votes of over 45 million Americans who have voted to protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
But Thomas is no longer alone!
Meet Gia Coluccio, a beautiful and brilliant young staffer at the American Principles Project, explaining why she chose to March for Marriage:
A version of her speech was published in The Blaze:
I marched for marriage and I spoke for marriage because I wanted to speak for millions of other young people around the country who believe that marriage should be defined by the law as a union between one man and one woman. Young people like me may have been quiet in the past, but we are here, and we are not giving up on marriage.
Ryan Anderson is one of the co-authors (alongside Professor Robby George and Sherif Gergis) of the brilliant new book What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense.
You may have seen the amazing denigration he endured on CNN last week at the hands of Piers Morgan and Suze Orman, who called this Phi Beta Kappa Princeton grad (who is a PhD candidate at Notre Dame) ignorant(!) and "uneducated"(!!!) about marriage.
Set up, excluded from an equal place on the stage, under great and condescending provocation, Ryan remained himself: gracious and intelligent and calm under fire, the very model of a young Christian gentleman, as well as a fiercely competent public intellectual.
Undaunted, this week Ryan took on a whole panel of young libertarians—including S. E. Cupp (who recently and without much explanation switched her views and now favors gay marriage)—to explain to these confused young people why DOMA and Prop 8 are defensible: because marriage is not just a plaything of government, something legislators or judges get to dream up new meaning for. Marriage has a history, a purpose, and deep roots in human nature as well as in God's law.
Here again see this Next Gen leader for marriage at work:
Many things happened at the March for Marriage but one of the things I want to make sure you know about is an announcement by Eric Teetsel—the able young Next Gen leader who heads up the Manhattan Declaration project.
Eric's big announcement: Along with Chris Marlink, Andrew Walker, and Prof. Owen Strachen, Eric is launching a new initiative—Marriage Generation—to be the voice for marriage as a lifelong, life-giving union to next generation Christians and others of good will.
The initiative's webpage describes its identity this way:
We are millennials who understand that marriage is a lasting promise between one woman and one man. It is the unique human relationship where bodily, emotional and spiritual differences converge to form something new, often leading to the creation of life itself.
Let me give the last word this week to Gia Coluccio. The 22-year-old reminds us:
My generation has a choice—we can either recognize the truth of the importance of our classic understanding of marriage or we can deny it. We can either protect marriage and fight for it, or we can hand it away to people who want to redefine it—to undefine it, to separate it from its deep roots in human nature. But when we see hard evidence that traditional marriage is better for children and better for society than a new definition of marriage, why would we do anything other than protect and defend marriage?
Why indeed?
Thank you for all you have done to make this March and this movement possible. Keep up your prayers, your letters, your suggestions; keep up your keenness and your kindness and above all your spirits!
Some things are more important than politics. Some ideas are deeper and richer than the narrow postmodern mind can comprehend. Some things are worth defending.
I will never stop thanking God for the honor of being your voice for His values!
CNA: Study Shows African Americans Reject Civil, Gay rights Equation
A new survey of African Americans shows that most disagree with the claim that the effort to promote gay rights is comparable to the historic movement for racial equality.
About 55 percent of respondents to a Zogby Analytics survey said that equal rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons are not the same as equal rights for African Americans. Only 28 percent agreed, while 17 percent said they are not sure.
The online survey of 1,002 adults used respondents recruited through partners or random telephone samples. It was commissioned by Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, and was conducted Feb. 14 through Feb. 20.
Holloway: Justice Sotomayor and the Path to Polygamy
Carson Hallowoy argues in The Public Discourse that "The oral arguments on Proposition 8 at the Supreme Court suggest that there is very good reason to believe that the declaration of a “right” to same-sex marriage will set us on the path to polygamy":
Opponents of same-sex marriage resist it because it amounts to redefining marriage, but also because it will invite future redefinitions. If we embrace same-sex marriage, they argue, society will have surrendered any reasonable grounds on which to continue forbidding polygamy, for example.
In truth, proponents of same-sex marriage have never offered a very good response to this concern. This problem was highlighted at the Supreme Court last week in oral argument over California’s Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman.
Surprisingly, the polygamy problem that same-sex marriage presents was raised by an Obama appointee, the liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor interrupted the presentation of anti-Prop 8 litigator Theodore Olson to pose the following question: If marriage is a fundamental right in the way proponents of same-sex marriage contend, “what state restrictions could ever exist,” for example, “with respect to the number of people . . . that could get married?”
WorldTribune: The Newsworthy March for Marriage that Did Not Make the News
Cliff Kincaid, Director of the Accuracy In Media Center for Investigative Journalism, on what he saw at the March for Marriage -- and what you won't see if you only get your news from mainstream media:
Significant news came out of last Tuesday’s March for Marriage demonstration in Washington, D.C. But it didn’t make “news” in the major media.
As one who covered the event, it was significant that there were so many members of minority groups. This was not a mostly white crowd. In addition to the presence of black, Hispanic and Asian supporters of traditional marriage, there were some notable Democrats, such as New York State Senator Ruben Díaz, and he let people know he was several minorities in one.
... J.C. Derrick of World magazine has a good analysis of how the major media, led by The Washington Post, virtually ignored the March for Marriage. But unless you actually see what happened on the ground, as the thousands of traditional marriage supporters held their demonstration, you would miss the true significance of how dishonest the media’s coverage of this issue has become. (World Tribune)
Video: Anderson Debates S. E. Cupp on Marriage and Libertarianism
Last week Ryan Anderson debated a panel of libertarians and S. E. Cupp and explained to them why protecting marriage is the libertarian and pro-limited government position:
Hat tip: Heritage's The Foundry blog.
Video: Brian Brown Defends Marriage on Meet the Press
This weekend our President Brian Brown appeared on Meet the Press to defend marriage and counter the lie that redefining marriage is inevitable:
On the question of marriage and the Supreme Court he said:
"The truth is the truth. The truth is marriage is based upon the distinction between men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. Marriage is the one institution that brings together the great halves of humanity male and female in one institution to connect husbands and wives together and to any children they may bear. The question before the court is not only on this issue of what is marriage, marriage is by definition the union of a man and a woman and apart from all this inevitability talk, 31 states have voted to say that is the truth, they've embedded it in their state constitutions, only 4 have voted against it. There's a myth that somehow this is inevitable, look, North Carolina passed its constitutional amendment 8 months ago by 61%. The polls in California had us at 36% support for traditional marriage but when people came out they voted to support traditional marriage so the real issue is, is the court going to launch another culture war by trumping the votes of these states and of the duly-elected members of Congress who passed DOMA."
On the question of whether the Supreme Court will rule on Prop 8:
"I don't think the court is going to punt, the court is going to answer the question, the question is simple: 'do the people of the state of California, do the people of the states of this country have the right to votes and voices heard, or is the court going to trash over 50 million votes.' The lower court ruling wasn't just about Proposition 8 and what is being brought forward is this myth that somehow embedded in our Constitution something the founders didn't see and we haven't seen up until now 'there is a right to redefine the very nature of marriage'."
Palko on the Emerging Coalition for Marriage
Christopher Palko at First Things comments on the ethnic diversity of those who united for the March for Marriage last week -- and sees in it a sign of things to come:
Last Tuesday’s March for Marriage contained many of the standard elements for a socially conservative protest march. There were young families pushing strollers, some Catholic parishes that rented buses, youthful nuns praying. In short, it was easy to view as a smaller scale version of the March for Life.
But one thing was conspicuous about the participants: It was a majority-minority group. The March for Marriage had without a doubt the most racially diverse crowd that I had ever seen associated with a right-of-center political cause. On the Mall, you would hear Spanish being spoken behind you, an African-American gospel group singing in front of you, and members of an Asian-American church standing beside you.
... There have been two main pieces of advice given to the Republican party after its 2012 defeat: Win over more minority voters and minimize social issues. These notions contradict each other. If there is anything currently present within the GOP that non-whites are attracted to, it’s precisely the social issues that so many are convinced are an electoral albatross.
Video: NOM's Peters on MSNBC: Marriage Should Be Decided by the People, Not the Court
Over the weekend our Communications Director Thomas Peters went on MSNBC to stand up for the rights of pro-marriage people to have their votes and voice respected by the Supreme Court:
On whether gays and lesbians are "politically powerless" he said:
"I think what John Roberts was asking was a really fascinating question because currently gay marriage activists are claiming that they are politically powerless and that's why we have to strike down laws defending marriage like the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8. Whereas what the Chief Justice is saying is that actually gays and lesbians are very politically powerful -- the President supports them, the Democratic party platform supports them -- and so the idea that we need to strike down laws protecting marriage is absurd. What we need to uphold is that people have the ultimate right to decide marriage laws. The states, the democratic process is working, and we hope the Supreme Court will acknowledge the votes of over 45 million Americans who have voted to protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman."
On the question of whether Americans who are pro-marriage are akin to those who opposed interracial marriage he said:
"Laws against interracial marriage were meant to keep the races separate so they wouldn't have children together and they were wrong, marriage is meant to bring men and women together so they have children which is right. You cannot compare these two things at all and furthermore, I think it's really important what she brought up, the 45 million Americans who have voted to protect marriage are not motivated by animus towards gay people, they're motivated out of love for the institution, and [crosstalk] if the Supreme Court were to rule that laws defining marriage are akin to bigotry, then every person in this country who believes that children have a right to a mother and father will be treated as bigots under the law, that's why Steve and others might agree with me that the Supreme Court's not going to go there. We can work this out through the political process. The debate can continue. Questions as central as marriage should not be decided by the Supreme Court they should be decided by the people."
Video: Thousands March for Marriage, Media Reports 'Dozens'
The Family Research Council, which co-sponsored the March for Marriage, has posted a video calling out the media for under-reporting the march and for under-estimating its numbers: