A national group opposed to gay marriage blasted Golden Valley-based General Mills' decision to oppose a marriage amendment in Minnesota, calling it "one of the dumbest corporate PR stunts of all time."
General Mills said Thursday it opposes a proposed Minnesota constitutional amendment to bay gay marriage, the largest company in the state to come out against the measure so far.
... Minnesota for Marriage, a main group pushing for the amendment's passage, accused General Mills of "pandering to a small but powerful interest group."
"By taking this position, General Mills is saying to Minnesotans and people all around the globe that marriage doesn't matter to them," Chairman John Helmberger said in a statement.
... Businesses have found it can be risky to take sides on polarizing social issues. Target Corp. suffered a backlash two years ago after making a political donation to a Republican candidate for governor who opposed gay marriage. The company was criticized again earlier this month for selling gay pride T-shirts to raise money for a group working to defeat the gay marriage ban.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason.com and a nationally syndicated columnist:
Last month, when President Obama finally endorsed gay marriage after years of equivocation, he emphasized that he still thinks states should be free to address the issue as they see fit. Since many voters strongly oppose gay marriage, it is clear why Obama advocates a federalist approach to the question. But it is not clear that he logically can.
... Obama does not argue that DOMA violates the 10th Amendment by impermissibly intruding on a power that the Constitution reserves to the states. Instead he says the law violates the guarantee of equal protection implicit in the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause.
... In fact, [DOJ's] Holder and Obama implicitly have staked out a stronger position against state bans on gay marriage than the 9th Circuit did. Under the heightened scrutiny favored by Obama, the government must show that a legal distinction based on sexual orientation is "substantially related to an important government objective."
... many other states' gay marriage bans could be vulnerable under the heightened scrutiny that Obama applied to DOMA.
Obama may wish to avoid the implications of his constitutional logic until after the presidential election. But if the Supreme Court agrees to hear the California case this fall and asks the solicitor general to weigh in, that may not be possible.
With Fathers' Day tomorrow, what better time to give a gift to protect marriage in honor of your own dad?
Dads aren't perfect—and those of us who are dads know that better than anyone! But even imperfect dads make unique and valuable contributions to the lives of their kids. And marriage is the link that binds the family together—father, mother and children.
Same-sex marriage advocates claim that any two parents are "just the same" as a married mom and dad. And that's the new regime they want to force on America—Parent A and Parent B, as the new Massachusetts birth certificates put it.
Don't let it happen!
Between now and Monday night, we need to raise $20,000 to help the state marriage campaigns in Washington, Maryland, Minnesota and Maine organize volunteers and begin spreading the word in advance of the November elections. Voters in thirty-two consecutive states have voted to protect marriage—but if we lose in even one state this November, gay marriage advocates will trumpet that victory all the way to the Supreme Court.
By making a gift to STAND FOR MARRIAGE AMERICA, you can give directly to the state campaigns, and NOM will match your gift up to $20,000.
As many as one in four gay people in Great Britain oppose gay marriage and only a minority describe SSM as a "priority."
We do not know how this poll was done but it suggests far more diversity of opinion within the gay community than the media conveys:
More than a quarter of homosexual people think there is “no need” to allow same-sex couples to marry because civil partnerships already give them the same rights, a poll suggests.
The first poll of its kind in Britain also found that only a minority of gay people believe redefining marriage should be a “priority” and only half said that having the opportunity to marry was important to them personally.
By contrast a similar proportion of homosexual people thought that David Cameron is only planning to change the law “to make his party look more compassionate” rather than out of conviction.
The survey by ComRes, on behalf of the religious campaign group Catholic Voices found that more than three quarters of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people supported same-sex marriage in principle.
And just over seven out of 10 believed marriage should be “more about love between two people than it is about rearing children”.
But only a minority (39 per cent) said that it was a “priority for gay people” and just over a quarter thought there was “no need” to change the law because civil partnerships, introduced under the last government, already confer the same legal rights as marriage.
But 49 per cent disagreed with this argument and 25 per cent were unsure.
The poll suggests that support for changing the law to redefine marriage among the homosexual community could be more lukewarm than previously thought. -- UK Telegraph
Parents will be powerless to prevent their children being taught about gay marriage at school if ministers press ahead with plans to legalise the move, it has been claimed.
Aidan O’Neill QC has provided the Catholic Church with a legal opinion stating that equality laws mean teachers will be forced to emphasise the validity of same-sex marriages.
Mothers and fathers with “traditional and often religiously-based views” will be “hard pressed” to insist that their offspring are educated in line with their convictions, he said.
The Catholic Church in Scotland, which commissioned the opinion, said it raised the prospect of classrooms being “flooded” with teaching materials promoting gay marriage.
Although the opinion considers the position in Scotland, where Alex Salmond’s administration is expected to legalise same-sex marriage, it is thought it could apply south of the Border where David Cameron is planning to do the same.
As Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, put it:
Dads are disposable. This is the story now being told in certain precincts of our culture, from the Hollywood Hills—"Women are realizing it more and more, knowing that they don't have to settle with a man just to have that child," in the words of Jennifer Aniston—to the Ivy League—Cornell psychologist Peggy Drexler recently wrote a book, Raising Boys Without Men, that celebrated women raising children without fathers.
There is only one problem with this story: it is a myth that does not fit the facts.
Do not get me wrong. I was raised by a single mom, and I think I turned out OK, as do many children raised in fatherless homes. But as a social scientist, I can also tell you that one consistent conclusion from hundreds of studies on child well-being is this: on average, children are much more likely to thrive when they have the good fortune to be raised in a home with their own married father.
With marriage on the ballot in four states this November, what better way to stand up for dads this Fathers' Day weekend than with a gift to defend marriage? Volunteers in Washington and Maryland have just submitted record numbers of signatures to protect marriage and send the message that kids need their mom AND their dad! Campaigns in Minnesota and Maine are making the same argument to voters in advance of the November elections.
Make sure that the state campaigns have the funds needed to take their message straight to the voters through advertising, phone calls, emails, and campaign rallies.
I hope you'll join me in making a generous gift to these state campaigns today. With a gift of $40, you can donate $10 to each campaign—and its impact will be doubled as NOM matches your gift dollar for dollar. Give a gift in honor of your own Dad this weekend!
Here are some helpful links going into more depth and examining the implications of the two landmark studies that were released earlier this week.
Be sure to first to check out a new website on the New Family Structures Study, including links to Mark Regnerus’ and Loren Marks’ studies as well as the three scholarly comments on those studies. The website also has helpful tools for easily comparing outcomes among the different family structures studied: www.familystructurestudies.com
Here are the reactions and op-eds:
Supreme Court Take Notice: Two Sociologists Shift the Ground of the Marriage Debate by Matthew Franck (Public Discourse)
Are Gay Parents Worse Parents? by Mona Charen (NRO)
The Kids Aren’t All Right: New Family Structures and the “No Differences” Claim by Ana Samuel (Public Discourse)
The Regnerus Debate: Most gay-parenting studies are long on bias and short on hard data by Douglas Allen (NRO)
A Liberal War on Science: Don’t bury Mark Regnerus’ study of gay parents. Learn what it can teach the left and right by William Saletan (Slate)
New Research on Children of Same-Sex Parents Suggests Differences Matter by Christine Kim and Jennifer Marshall (Heritage’s The Foundry Blog)
Gay Parents and the Marriage Debate by Ross Douthat (New York Times)
Debate on a Study Examining Gay Parents by Benedict Carey (New York Times)
A Mom and a Dad Make a Difference by Kathryn Lopez (NRO)
Exposing the Schlock Social Science on Gay Parenting: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 by Ed Whelan (NRO’s Bench Memos)
Is Gay Parenting Bad for the Kids? Children of gay couples are disadvantaged – because of family instability by Charles Cooke (NRO)
Peter Breen, executive director and legal counsel of the Thomas More Society, has responded to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s support of gay marriage, and is also planning to file legal papers:
“We are disappointed in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office for not defending this valid law, passed with broad bipartisan support in the General Assembly. While the plaintiff couples in this case are from hundreds of miles outside of Chicago, Lambda Legal and the ACLU sued only the Cook County Clerk and excluded from the case the local clerks for these couples. Today’s announcement by State’s Attorney Alvarez makes it clear that this lawsuit was an ‘inside job’ from the beginning, a crass political move to force same sex marriage on all Illinoisans without providing the residents of the other 101 counties an opportunity to be heard. The Thomas More Society is preparing legal papers to defend the law and prevent this collusive end run around the will of the people of Illinois and their General Assembly.”
One of the ongoing reporting memes that amuses me in covering marriage-related news is the ever-changing number of "rights and benefits" that married couples supposedly enjoy.
"Roger Conner, owner of Flowers by Roger in Middletown for the last 37 years, said gay men and women, if they want, should “have the opportunity” to get married. Married couples have more than 1,400 rights and benefits that same-gender couples are denied, according to a federal tally. Conner mentioned three: next-of-kin status for hospital visits and medical decisions and tax returns."
1,400? I've seen numbers as high as 1,700 and as low as 1,100. So maybe Mr. Conner thought it would be safest to pick a number halfway between the two.
Problem is, all of these numbers are suspect, as Politifact Rhode Island found out when they looked into this claim:
"Given the number of times the 1,100 number has been tossed around, we expected to see a specific analysis of each law cited, or at least some indication of what "right" was at stake.
Instead, we were surprised to discover that the GAO had simply done a search of the U.S. Code to identify laws that use words or word fragments like "marr" (for marriage), "spouse," "widow" or "survivor.""
In other words, the only way a number as large as 1,100 (let alone 1,700) would be to use it in the phrase "marriage and related words are mentioned this many times."
But of course, that's not a very effective figure to point out so instead we are treated to literally hundreds of news reports claiming that marriage confers over a thousand "rights and benefits" (sometimes you see the adjective "responsibilities") without anyone really stopping to fact-check the claim.
Finally, in states that do allow full civil unions with all the rights/benefits/responsibilities, etc. of marriage, that is still unacceptable to activists bent on redefining marriage.
So maybe it's time to drop the 1,000+ rights and benefits canard and get back to debating marriage.
"I don't think there's much question about being able to keep up energy," Peters said. "It's actually more time for us to organize."
More evidence of the big momentum for marriage: a shocking new poll from North Carolina by Public Policy Polling (a Democratic polling firm) shows a huge drop in Pres. Obama’s support among African-Americans, as Business Insider reports.
Back in 2008, Pres. Obama won North Carolina, a key swing state, by just 14,000 votes with 95 percent of the black vote. Today, just a month after Pres. Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, the President's support among black voters has dropped to just 76 percent. Twenty percent of black voters say they will vote for Mitt Romney and another 4 percent aren't yet sure how they will vote.
NOM's own political guru Frank Schubert (who led marriage to victory in California, Maine and North Carolina) took up this issue when Pres. Obama endorsed gay marriage last month:
"As the Cheerleader-in-Chief for gay marriage, President Obama will now have to return to North Carolina – and Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Colorado and Nevada – and explain why his administration is actively undermining the overwhelming votes they cast in support of traditional marriage, and in opposition to same-sex marriage. This will be especially difficult for Obama when talking with African Americans, who oppose gay marriage by a two-to-one margin."
A group of African American pastors is calling on our President to "evolve again" on marriage. (Rev. William Owens, who heads that group, also helps NOM with outreach to black churches). And in Iowa, NAACP national board member Rev. Keith Ratliff Sr. resigned after that organization formally endorsed gay marriage.
The Atlanta Black Star reports that the decision of the NAACP national board to endorse same-sex marriage has caused not only a national board member (Rev. Ratliff) to resign, but it also has caused division within state and local chapters.
I'm sad to say General Mills, the beloved breakfast company, just endorsed gay marriage, opposing Minnesota's one-sentence marriage amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
Earlier this week, NOM's Corporate Fairness Project director Jonathan Baker went on Minnesota TV to explain why corporations have no business redefining marriage:
Corporations don't normally endorse things like abortion "rights." Corporations don't normally wade into culture war issues at all. They know that not only their customers, but also their employees and vendors, all have different views on these crucial issues.
One thing we know: gay marriage is not particularly good for business.
Yahoo! just posted a report from Kiplinger that lists the top 8 U.S. cities for future job growth.
Kiplinger says these cities are "poised to become job-creating machines in the years ahead."
ALL of these cities exist in states that have recently passed marriage amendments.
Nashville, TN
San Antonio, TX
Orlando, FL
Raleigh, NC (just last month!)
Portland, OR
Oklahoma City, OK
Phoenix, AZ
Atlanta, GA
The gay marriage movement believes it can make up stories and get other people to believe they are true. But the data keeps contradicting them.
The amazing thing about marriage is that it transcends ordinary politics. It crosses divides of race, creed and even, for at least one Mormon man who writes "I'm a Gay Mormon, Happily Married with Three Kids"—sexual orientation.
He reports on all the questions he's asked by a culture that increasingly teaches that people like him not only don't exist, but they shouldn't exist.
Why do you not choose to be "true to yourself" and live the gay lifestyle?
First of all, I understand that when people refer to a "gay lifestyle" they are talking about a lifestyle that includes gay romantic and sexual relationships. But I want to point out that because I am gay, any lifestyle I choose is technically a "gay lifestyle." Mine just looks different than other gay peoples'. My hope is that other gay people will be as accepting of my choices as they hope others would be of their choices.
He goes on to say that people do have the power to choose the way they live their life and this always involves sacrifice, of one kind or another:
One of the sad truths about being homosexual is that no matter what you decide for your future, you have to sacrifice something. It's very sad, but it is true. I think this is true of life in general as well. If you decide to be a doctor, you give up any of the myriad of other things you could have chosen. But with homosexuality, the choices seem to be a little bit more mutually exclusive. If you are Mormon and you choose to live your religion, you are sacrificing the ability to have a romantic relationship with a same-sex partner. If you choose a same-sex partner, you are sacrificing the ability to have a biological family with the one you love. And so on. No matter what path you choose, if you are gay you are giving up something basic, and sometimes various things that are very basic. I chose not to "live the gay lifestyle," as it were, because I found that what I would have to give up to do so wasn't worth the sacrifice for me.
Traditionally Christians have understood the virtue of chastity as the ultimate expression of human freedom. Our sexual desires do not need to define who we are. We can choose.
Now, channeling lust or eros is difficult. This one young man benefited, he testifies, from a lifetime's experience in practicing chastity, in learning to tame passion and subordinate it to an ideal.
That's what freedom means, not being buffeted by desire, but becoming, through practice and hard work, the masters of our fate—for most of us that means by the grace of God.
We seldom see this vision reflected in our desire-driven culture. Kudos to this man—and his wife—for their courage in "coming out" in the public square.
Kudos as well to the Social Science Journal for having the courage of its scientific convictions in publishing two new studies that call into question a related desire-driven orthodoxy: sciences have "proven" that the natural family has no advantages for children. There are "no differences" between children with a gay parent and other children, we were told.
Judge Walker, as you will recall, ruled as much in striking down Prop 8: the scientific evidence is so overwhelming that only an irrational hateful person could vote for marriage on the grounds the ideal for a child is a married mom and dad, he claimed.
One new study by Prof. Loren Marks, takes a hard look at the scientific basis for the APA's repeated claims that science has proven that having gay parents makes "no difference" to a child. He concludes that the existing body of scientific research is amazingly weak: small samples, few comparison groups, few outcome measures studied, and, most importantly of all, the data is not nationally representative. It's not based on a random sample.
From a scientific point of view that's a flaw that cannot be overcome. Without a random sample, you simply cannot say whether the children with gay parents you are studying are typical of all such children or self-selected outliers.
That's why the second new study is so significant. The New Family Structures Survey is the first new survey of young adults that is large, nationally representative, and looked at more than 40 varied outcome measures, from the chance a young adult has been arrested, is unemployed, is depressed or suicidal, has relationship problems, or has had multiple sex partners, to how good he or she felt about their family growing up, and whether he or she was sexually abused. On 25 of these 40 outcomes, adult children who reported that one of their parents had had a same-sex romance during their childhood, fared worse.
Overall, 1.7 percent of all American adults between the ages of 18-39 reported either their mom or their dad had a gay romance. Very few of them lived with their fathers during that time. 91 percent lived with their mothers while she had this romantic relationship. But most of these relationships turned out to be fleeting.
The researchers interviewed more than 15,000 people and found just two young adults who had been raised from birth by two moms.
This tells me something really important: gay marriage is not about helping children. The "Modern Family" we see on TV and relayed in the media is vanishingly rare. We aren't seriously contemplating gay marriage because it will protect the children.
Does this new study prove gay parents harm their children? No. Does it tell us how children fare, on average, when raised by two moms from birth? No. We still can't say that from scientific evidence because we don't have good data.
But together these two studies do tell us Judge Walker was wrong. They show us the claim that science has disproven and ruled out of court the idea that children need a mom and dad is just bogus.
The attacks on these studies and their authors will continue—because attack, attack, attack people who disagree is what the gay marriage movement does at this point.
Look, I'm an activist, not a social scientist. But I respect the scientific enterprise enough to wish for open, robust scientific debate unmarred by fear or favor.
After all, in the end I know this: truth and love will prevail over lies and hatred.
God bless you for your courage and thank you for your prayers and your fellowship in these great battles. They mean more to me than you will ever know.
The vice president of National Religious Broadcasters says congressional legislation protecting "gay," lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans from job discrimination would have a "chilling effect on religious organizations."
Craig Parshall told a Senate committee that religious exemptions in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) are inadequate.
...Parshall testified that the federal legislation would have a "monumental chilling effect" on religious organizations. "It's my opinion that ENDA, as it stands now in the form of Senate Bill 811, would impose a substantial, unconstitutional burden on religious organizations," he said. "Furthermore, it would interfere with their ability to effectively pursue their missions."
An odd way of promoting same-sex marriage -- not mentioning it by name:
President Obama never uttered the words gay, same-sex or marriage, but during the loudest crescendo of applause Tuesday in a fundraising swing through Maryland, everyone seemed to know just what he meant.
“We’re moving forward to a country where we treat everybody fairly and everybody equally, with dignity and respect,” Obama told about 600 supporters near the end of a rally in Baltimore. “Here in Maryland … you have a chance to reaffirm that principle in the voting booth in November. It’s the right thing to do.”
... The president’s careful word choices on Maryland’s emotional election-year ballot issues did not bother supporters.
“We are grateful the president highlighted the marriage referendum,” Josh Levin, campaign manager for Marylanders for Marriage Equalitysaid in a statement. “Voters identify with his journey on the issue and are rethinking their own position on same-sex marriage.”
Obama’s 30-minute address repeatedly circled around to the economy. --The Washington Post
The Australian arm of the Seattle-based coffee giant Starbucks on Tuesday endorsed gay marriage.
“Core to who we are and what we value as a company is our belief in equal treatment of our partners [employees] and our customers,” the company said in a statement.
“It is with this in mind that Starbucks Australia would like to publicly announce our proud support of marriage equality for all.”
“Many of our stores and partners are actively participating in events and activities aimed at changing local legislation – together we can make a difference.”
The endorsement comes after gay marriage opponent the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) launched a boycott against Starbucks over its support for a gay marriage law in Washington state. As of Wednesday, 44,329 people had pledged at the group's boycott site to “dump Starbucks.” -- OnTopMag
If you live in Australia or have friends who do -- now is the time to take the pledge at www.DumpStarbucks.com!
A national group opposed to gay marriage blasted Golden Valley-based General Mills' decision to oppose a marriage amendment in Minnesota, calling it "one of the dumbest corporate PR stunts of all time."
