Gay rights campaigners have held a mock wedding outside Holyrood as a sign of support for same sex marriage.
The staged event comes ahead of the Scottish government making its views known on the issue.
Currently the law in Scotland, as in the the rest of the UK, allows civil partnerships between couples of the same sex.
In the Scottish Parliament, the party leaders are united in support of a change to the law.
Although civil partnerships offer the same legal treatment as marriage across a range of matters, such as inheritance, pensions provision, life assurance, child maintenance, next of kin and immigration rights, they are still distinct from marriage.
... Outside the Edinburgh parliament, lesbians Jaye and Ruth Richards-Hill took part in a mock wedding conducted by Rev Jane Clarke of the same-sex marriage supporting Metropolitan Community Church.
BBC: "Mock Gay Marriage Takes Place Outside Scottish Parliament"
National Eat at Chick-Fil-A Day on Wednesday!
Dear Marriage Supporter,
Thanks to your recent efforts at DumpStarbucks.com and DumpGeneralMills.com, we've shown the cultural elite, the gay millionaires who fund anti-marriage initiatives, and the biased media that the defenders of marriage are willing to put our money where our mouth is.
Well, this Wednesday, we have a chance to do it again—and this time even more literally—by coming out in support of National Eat at Chick-fil-A Day.
Imagine if folks all across the country united together in support of heroes like Dan and Truett Cathy that stand for strengthening marriage and family!
Imagine the potential impact of the message that companies favoring the radical redefinition of marriage risk fallout with their customers—combined with the message that heroes who stand for marriage and family cannot be silenced!
Imagine how clearly that message would be heard across the nation if Chick-fil-A reported record sales this Wednesday!
Well, let's not just imagine it—let's make it happen.
On his radio show this week, Mike Huckabee called on his listeners to support the principled stand of the Cathy family by making this coming Wednesday (July 25th) "National Eat at Chick-fil-A Day."
Please join me this Wednesday in supporting this courageous company, while at the same time sending a powerful message of support to every individual and every company with the courage to stand for marriage.
Visit your local Chick-fil-A restaurant for lunch or dinner on Wednesday. Better yet— stop and tell the manager that you're there to honor and respect the integrity, faith and courage of Dan Cathy and the Cathy family.
Show your support! Eat Mor Chikin!
Video: John Stonestreet on Sexual Brokenness (Parts 1&2)
John Stonestreet of the Colson Center is releasing a short series of videos on "sexual brokenness" one week at a time.
Here are parts 1 & 2.
"When Sex Got a Divorce":
"How Sexual Brokenness Victimizes People":
One Child’s View Of Single-Motherhood
Michael Dougherty at the American Conservative shares his experience of being raised by a single mother:
"....there are some things only a child of a single-mother could tell you about single motherhood.
... Not having a father around meant I took on more student debt than I would have otherwise. It meant I would be recalled from college to do things around the house on the weekend, or I would come home just to make sure she was alright and make sure she spent time with someone. Instead of her helping me start life financially, I was helping her manage her mortgage payment, or paying for a new water-heater. I was happy to do so when I could. Though I often wondered where her actual inabilities were real, or when they were manufactured (even unconsciously) to bond me with her, even in hardships. In other single-mother households I knew, things functioned much less smoothly.
Helping her meant diminished resources for starting my own family when it came time. It also meant that there was no one else to manage things when she became sick and died last year.
My young childhood and adolescence (maybe my whole life) was wrapped up in searching for substitute father figures: uncles, neighbors, teachers, professors, priests, even God. I know I’m not alone in this. This state of life makes one especially vulnerable to peers and to predators. I survived just fine, others in similar situations don’t.
Dawn Stefanowicz Speaks
Lots of people know about Zach Wahls, whose two lesbians parents seem to have done a fine job raising him, by his own account. How many people know the experience of Dawn Stefanowicz? We don't know how the average child raised by a same-sex couple or gay parent fares, yet. Do we care? Or would we just like to demonize researchers and people who disrupt the nice-nicey images we are always given?
Dawn gave this interview to the Catholic World Report last month:
CWR: One thing you stress is that you didn’t observe a monogamous relationship in your home when growing up.
D.S.: "...When I was growing up, I wasn’t surrounded by average heterosexual couples. In my home there would be my father’s partners and male friends, and they would often take me along to meeting places in the GLBT community. I was just a child, but I was exposed to overt sexual activity. When I was about nine, for example, my father took me to a downtown sex shop. He said he wanted to expose me to sexuality so that I wouldn’t be prudish. There was no sense of privacy around sexuality. Sex was very public; that was part of the gay culture."
Another Celebrity Voice for Marriage! NOM Marriage News
Dear Marriage Supporter,
It's not the criticism, it's the death threats that have apparently scared Brad Pitt's mom into silence after (as we told you last week) she wrote a letter to the editor urging her fellow Missouri Christians to vote for Romney based on shared moral values, including opposition to gay marriage.
However, these ugly attacks have a silver lining. They've brought one more celebrity voice for marriage onto the stage, Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight (the father of Angelina Jolie, aka Mrs. Brad Pitt).
"Good for her," Voight told FOX411's Pop Tarts column, adding that he agrees with the points-of-view expressed by Jane Pitt.
(Totally irrelevant digression: Jon Voight's brother and Angelina's uncle is Chip Taylor, the singer/songwriter responsible for the hits "Wild Thing" and "Angel in the Morning." That's a lot of diverse talent for one family!).
The rarity of celebrities speaking up for marriage underscores the courage it took for Kirk Cameron to stand firm. His focus has always been helping husbands and wives build happy and faith-filled marriages. The gay marriage issue is not something he typically concentrates on; but when he was asked his opinion, he gave it. And when the furor ensued, he did not back down.
If you missed Kirk Cameron's interview with Damian Goddard, NOM's Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance spokesman, take a look. You will like what you see.
Fact: It requires courage to speak out for marriage, and more
courageous voices are joining in—over 12,000 pro-marriage people said
they supported Cameron's message when we shared it on our Facebook page!
More marriage heroes are standing up.
Witness Dan Cathy, President of Chick-fil-A whose commitment to his faith has landed him at the center of a trumped-up controversy. Here's Dan speaking up for marriage in the Baptist Press:
"We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.
"We operate as a family business...our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized.
"We intend to stay the course," he said. "We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles."
After dealing with a gay rights boycott based solely on one franchise owner's decision to donate chicken sandwiches to couples attending a marriage education workshop sponsored by the Pennsylvania Family Institute, Dan Cathy still is not backing down.
That boycott was spectacularly unsuccessful, by the way, as Get Equal's spokesperson more or less admitted to the Atlanta Constitution Journal this week.
"We've moved on," said Heather Cronk, managing director of Get Equal, a national LGBT rights organization that has initiated previous boycotts of the chain. But Cronk added that while many in the gay community already choose not to eat at Chick-fil-A, the latest statements may influence "some of our straight allies who may decide to go somewhere else."
Dream on, Heather.
In a prepared statement, emailed Wednesday evening to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Chick-fil-A spokesman Don Perry said:
"The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect—regardless of belief, creed and sexual orientation," the statement said. "We will continue this tradition in the over 1,600 restaurants run by independent Owner/Operators. Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena."
In his own words, Perry said, "There is no change of course in our previously stated Chick-fil-A position."
Thanks to the Cathy family for all they've accomplished: for their wide-ranging philanthropy; for their special commitment to marriage education that builds strong families; and—not least of all—for all those great chicken sandwiches!
Julie Goodridge, one half of the lead plaintiffs in the court case that launched gay marriage in America (in Massachusetts), has just cut a video for a liberal Super PAC slamming Romney for opposing gay marriage:
"Mitt Romney did everything he could do to block gay marriage," Julie Goodridge testifies.
(You can see her video released by a liberal Super PAC here.)
She was appalled when Gov. Romney refused to answer her question: "Gov. Romney, what would you suggest I say to my 8-year-old daughter about why we can't get married?"
(A few years later the Goodridges filed for divorce but I won't ask how they explained that to their daughter, given how important marriage allegedly was to her.)
This is one video that is going to help Gov. Romney, I'm predicting. Share it with your friends.
Let me close by sharing with you two important and very different essays you may want to read.
The first is by NOM's founding Chairman of the Board, Prof. Robert George, over at Public Discourse.
It's called "Marriage, Religious Liberty and the ‘Grand Bargain'."
Prof. George speaks to the recurrent belief among some Christians that it is possible to conduct some kind of grand bargain or great compromise on the marriage issue, surrendering marriage in exchange for promises that religious liberty will be respected.
There are a lot of reasons why that strategy doesn't work. For one thing, as Maggie has pointed out in the past, that's not the way culture works. There is no-one with whom you can sign a deal who will permanently protect our religious rights, once we concede that our position on marriage is not publicly defensible.
But the strategy doesn't work on a fundamental level either, as Prof. George points out:
[A]dvocates of redefinition are increasingly open in saying that they do not see these disputes about sex and marriage as honest disagreements among reasonable people of goodwill. They are, rather, battles between the forces of reason, enlightenment, and equality—those who would "expand the circle of inclusion"—on one side, and those of ignorance, bigotry, and discrimination—those who would exclude people out of "animus"—on the other. The "excluders" are to be treated just as racists are treated—since they are the equivalent of racists. Of course, we (in the United States, at least) don't put racists in jail for expressing their opinions—we respect the First Amendment; but we don't hesitate to stigmatize them and impose various forms of social and even civil disability upon them and their institutions. In the name of "marriage equality" and "non-discrimination," liberty—especially religious liberty and the liberty of conscience—and genuine equality are undermined.
The fundamental error made by some supporters of conjugal marriage was and is, I believe, to imagine that a grand bargain could be struck with their opponents: "We will accept the legal redefinition of marriage; you will respect our right to act on our consciences without penalty, discrimination, or civil disabilities of any type. Same-sex partners will get marriage licenses, but no one will be forced for any reason to recognize those marriages or suffer discrimination or disabilities for declining to recognize them." There was never any hope of such a bargain being accepted. Perhaps parts of such a bargain would be accepted by liberal forces temporarily for strategic or tactical reasons, as part of the political project of getting marriage redefined; but guarantees of religious liberty and non-discrimination for people who cannot in conscience accept same-sex marriage could then be eroded and eventually removed. After all, "full equality" requires that no quarter be given to the "bigots" who want to engage in "discrimination" (people with a "separate but equal" mindset) in the name of their retrograde religious beliefs. "Dignitarian" harm must be opposed as resolutely as more palpable forms of harm.
Ideas have consequences.
If you want to know why I think marriage is an idea worth fighting for, read another essay published this week in the American Conservative.
It is by a son of a single mom, about why we cannot just give up on another part of the marriage fight: the fight for the idea that children need their mom AND dad.
He's reacting to Katie Rophie's calls to stop criticizing single motherhood because it hurts feisty women struggling to raise children on their own.
There are some things only a child of a single-mother could tell you about single motherhood.
...As a single mother, helping to take care of her parents and her son, she wasn't in a position to make men be courtly with her. So she stopped trying. That was the sexual revolution for her. Men willing to sleep with her, but not willing to build a family.
...Obviously all the social science the Times presents in its article point to a basic truth: broken homes divide and scatter resources...
Not having a father around meant I took on more student debt than I would have otherwise. It meant I would be recalled from college to do things around the house on the weekend, or I would come home just to make sure she was alright and make sure she spent time with someone. Instead of her helping me start life financially, I was helping her manage her mortgage payment, or paying for a new water-heater. I was happy to do so when I could...
Helping her meant diminished resources for starting my own family when it came time. It also meant that there was no one else to manage things when she became sick and died last year.
My young childhood and adolescence (maybe my whole life) was wrapped up in searching for substitute father figures: uncles, neighbors, teachers, professors, priests, even God. I know I'm not alone in this. This state of life makes one especially vulnerable to peers and to predators. I survived just fine, others in similar situations don't.
Pointing to these truths does not undermine the dignity of every single mom struggling to raise her children alone, he points out.
"Did my mother live a life of dignity? Yes, of course. She fought so much for what little she had, and cared for me almost recklessly. ...I remember telling myself little fantasies as a child and a young man, that my home, peaceful and harmonious if strapped, was probably better than the bickering and arguing and likely divorce that came with having two parents around. As if the only alternative to homes like mine are ones filled with resentment, yelling, and domestic abuse.
Writing checks, delivering take-out dinners, and trying to fit in 20 minutes of quality time with my empty-nester mom shook those fantasies out of me. We told ourselves all sorts of things while I was growing up, but my mother would have been happier, healthier, and more secure with a man to love, and with one who loved her. She would have had more of that if she had more children too.
He concludes, "Just because I turned out fine doesn't mean that everything is fine."
I read his essay as a child of divorce, lucky enough to have a mom and dad who both remained closely involved in my life.
But like him, I remain committed to building something better for my children and for my children's children: An America which understands that children need their mothers and fathers; which expects adults to make sacrifices, if necessary, to achieve that good goal; which raises men to take fatherhood seriously and to understand the only decent path to fatherhood is to become a husband, and to take care of his children and their mother too.
That's the cause for which we fight. That's the idea we cannot abandon.
Bless you for your own courage and faithfulness. It means so much to me. You are what, God willing, has made our good fight—and our victories—possible.
Scotland Herald: Religious Freedom Inevitably Threatened by Gay Marriage
The editorial board of the Scotland Herald honestly confronts the inevitably tension between religious freedom and redefining marriage:
When equality for one person erodes the religious freedom of another, clear moral thinking is required.
... The proposal is that faith groups and their celebrants should not be obliged to solemnise the ceremonies but this pragmatic solution could be open to challenge under the equality laws. While same-sex marriage is not a human right, the European Court has stated that, once it is on the statute book, no institution licensed to conduct marriages can have an opt-out. This naturally leaves churches and religious groups alarmed that they or their priests could face legal action if they refused to allow same-sex ceremonies in places of worship.
... The issue has ignited a debate between gay rights supporters and the Roman Catholic Church in particular but other religious groups, including the Muslim community, also oppose the proposal and this year's General Assembly of the Church of Scotland affirmed that it understands marriage as a contract between one man and one woman. Supporters of same-sex marriage are equally passionate that the law must be changed on grounds of equality. Religious beliefs which are central to the lives of many must be protected, not least by those who support the legalising of marriage between same-sex couples in the name of liberty. We must not replace one form of discrimination with another.
Black AIDS Institute: Obsession with Marriage Equality Hurting Black Gays
![](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif)
HIV-AIDS is affecting black gay men in the United States on a scale unseen among any other group in the developed world, said a report issued Wednesday ahead of the International AIDS Conference.
So grave is the crisis that in some US cities, one in two black men who have sex with other men are HIV positive, according to the report from the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV-AIDS think tank focusing on African Americans.
"AIDS in America is a black disease, no matter how you look at it," its president and chief executive Phill Wilson, who is himself HIV positive, said ahead of Sunday's opening of the six-day global conference.
... Wilson also faulted mainstream gay rights groups for putting the HIV-AIDS crisis on the back burner, now that it is no longer a pressing issue for affluent gays in big cities whose bigger concern today is marriage equality.
"There are almost no national LGBT organizations today that give a rat's a** about the lives of black gay men as they are impacted by HIV-AIDS, and that's disgraceful," he said. -- AFP
Bioethics Expert: "Marriage Leads to Children - Gay Marriage Leads to Surrogacy"
Michael Cook, editor of the bioethics newsletter BioEdge and a columnist for Australian Science in the Brisbane Times:
In heterosexual relationships, the birth rate rises when couples are married. One would expect similar dynamics to apply to same-sex couples. For lesbian couples, this is not a huge problem; all they need is a sperm donor. But male couples need surrogate mothers.
Where will these women come from?
Unless the law of supply and demand is repealed, the answer is: where wombs are cheapest. At the moment, this is India, where surrogate motherhood has become a $2.3 billion industry, with the enthusiastic encouragement of some state governments. A recent investigation by the London Sunday Telegraph found there were only 100 surrogacies in Britain last year, but 1000 in India for British clients. The proportion in Australia is likely to be the same.
There are no official statistics, but it appears gay couples account for a substantial chunk of the overseas market. So will the legalisation of same-sex marriage lead to even more surrogate mothers in India? BioEdge, the bioethics newsletter I edit, emailed IVF clinics in India and the US asking whether they were preparing for a rising demand for surrogate mothers.
The answer was a resounding yes.
NOM's Peters Responds to "Young Conservatives for Freedom to Marry"
NOM's Thomas Peters responds in an interview with The Christian Post to Freedom to Marry's attempt to split the GOP vote on marriage:
"...Conservative groups including the National Organization for Marriage, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council have all come out against Freedom to Marry's new campaign, insisting that while Freedom to Marry might talk of supporting conservative principals, in practice they fall woefully short.
"It is absurd to claim that redefining marriage is a conservative value and especially once you get into the practical political alignment … marriage is a core conservative value. So for Freedom to Marry to try to create a group of conservatives for redefining marriage shows you how much they understand about conservatism," Thomas Peters, Cultural Director at the National Organization for Marriage, told The Christian Post during a phone interview.
... Peters explains there are more people who are not being heard from who could offer some differing opinions when it comes to the long-standing place that traditional marriage has held in society.
"There is a segment of America that we are not hearing from, the 10 to 12 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 who tell pollsters that they do support the traditional idea of marriage. These are voices that we haven't heard from yet," he acknowledged.
... And that is the largest variable, changing attitudes and perspectives do not just occur cross-generationally, but attitudes can also change from within a generation during the course of a lifetime leaving to wonder what the societal landscape will look like in 40 to 50 years.
"Young people's minds change all the time, if you ask a group of 100 18-year-olds a question about sexuality and marriage and then ask that same group when they are 45 or 50 what they think about sexuality and marriage they would give you very different answers," Peters explained.
Elton John: "It Will Break My Son's Heart To Realize He Hasn't Got a Mother"
Since his son’s birth 18 months ago, Sir Elton John has been the epitome of the proud father.
But the flamboyant star, now enjoying life as the parent of a toddler, has admitted it will be ‘heartbreaking’ for Zachary to grow up without a mother.
The singer, 65, and his civil partner David Furnish, were delighted when Zachary arrived on Christmas Day 2010.
Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John – to give him his full name – was born via surrogate in California and was conceived using a donor egg.
Sir Elton and Mr Furnish, 49, have made it no secret that they want to have another child, and may start trying to father a sibling for Zachary this summer.
However, in an interview, Sir Elton confessed: ‘It’s going to be heartbreaking for him to grow up and realise he hasn’t got a mummy.
Barney Frank's Wedding Vows
Doug Mainwaring says its a mockery of marriage -- what do you think?
Here is what Rep. Frank and his partner vowed:
“Do you promise to love each other and be each other’s best friend,
In sickness and in health,
In Congress or in retirement,
Whether the surf is up or the surf’s flat,
For richer or for poorer,
Under the Democrats or the Republicans,
Whether the slopes are powdery or icy,
Whether the book reviews are good or bad,
For better or for worse,
On MSNBC or on Fox,
For as long as you both shall live?”
CitizenLink Video: Marriage "In the Eyes of the Law"
This video by CitizenLink uses a fictional traffic stop to explain the consequences of redefining marriage "in the eyes of the law":
James Taranto on the Politics of Single Motherhood
The marriage gap far outpaces the gender gap in politics -- does undermining marriage end up serving partisan purposes?
As pollster John Zogby notes in a Forbes.com column, the "marriage gap" between Democrats and Republicans is "even more dramatic" than the so-called gender gap:
In an analysis provide [sic] by my colleagues at Gallup after the 2008 election, all married voters supported Senator John McCain over his Senate counterpart Barack Obama by a 12 point margin--56% to 44%. Single voters favored Obama overwhelmingly by 30 points--65% to 35%. . . .
We see every indication thus far that married voters will turn out and we see pretty much the same patterns as in 2008 in our 2012 polling. Thus, [Mitt] Romney leads Obama among married voters by 13 points--50% to 37%--which is about the same as McCain's margin in 2008. But Obama's 18 point lead among all single voters--52% to 34%--is far short of his performance four years ago.
If these numbers hold up in November, it will be good news for Republicans. But if the marriage gap persists, then it will be in the Democratic Party's long-term interests to undermine the institution of marriage. -- James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal
Ann Widdecombe: "Freedom of Speech and Thought at Risk" Over SSM
Ann Widdecombe writes about the conference that our own Brian Brown spoke at, which was denied access to two venues because organizers wishes to silence the pro-marriage speeches:
It is reported that a large conference centre in London, much used by government, is facing being sued after it refused to allow a pro-marriage conference to take place despite having already allowed a similar gathering in favour of gay marriage.
The arguments in favour or against gay marriage are not important in this context.
The issue is a simple one: freedom of speech.
I would never seek to prevent a conference taking place just because I did not share the views of the organisers.
I hold passionate views on abortion and hunting but those who take the opposite stand also have passionate views and in a true democracy both sides of any argument must be equally free to voice their beliefs.
A society where only those who agree with the state's view about something are free to be heard does not even begin to offer liberty of expression and nor does one where freedom of assembly is restricted to those of prevailing orthodoxy. -- The UK Express