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NOM to Join Catholic Bishops, Other Faith Leaders in Fortnight for Freedom Campaign

June 13, 2012 at 4:45 pm

U.S. Catholic bishops are calling for a "Fortnight for Freedom" to be observed from June 21-July 4th:

"Culminating on Independence Day, this special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action will emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty. Dioceses and parishes around the country have scheduled special events that support a great national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty."

NOM's mission is two-fold: to protect marriage and to protect the faith communities that sustain it. There is no doubt that the HHS mandate poses a grave and unprecedented risk to the full expression of religious freedom promised by the First Amendment of our Constitution, so we proudly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Catholics and other faith communities in opposing this intrusive and unnecessary mandate.

As our supporters well know, the redefinition of marriage also poses immediate and grave risks to religious liberty in this country, which is one of the reasons why we track issues related to marriage and religious liberty closely on our blog, have established a Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance, and continue to be actively vigilant when individuals and institutions have their core civil liberties attacked and diminished simply because their faith inspires them to be pro-marriage.

We will be announcing more opportunities for our supporters to participate in the Fortnight for Freedom leading up to June 21st. We entreat your prayers and invite you to prepare to participate actively in the meantime!

By NOM Staff | Posted in Catholic Church, Marriage, Religious Liberty, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (18)

AP: R-74 Qualifies for Washington State Ballot!

June 13, 2012 at 1:00 pm

The AP:

A referendum on gay marriage in Washington state has qualified for the ballot.

The secretary of state's office announced Tuesday that Referendum 74 passed the signature-verification process that has been taking place since last week.

Sponsors turned in 247,331 signatures, far more than the minimum of 120,577 valid voter signatures required.

... The referendum seeks to overturn the measure allowing same-sex marriage in the state. That law was passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Chris Gregoire earlier this year. The law was supposed to take effect last Thursday but was put on hold once the signatures were turned in last Wednesday.

National groups, including the Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for Marriage, have said they'll aggressively fight to strike down Washington's new law.

PreserveMarriageWashington is now rolling out the next stage of pro-marriage activism and volunteer opportunities. Go check it out!

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Washington | Comments (25)

Video: How Does SSM Interfere With Religious Liberty?

June 13, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Kalley Yanta of the Minnesota Marriage Minute explains how redefining marriage affects religious liberty.

She says, "Same-sex marriage impacts the religious freedom of individuals and groups in many profound ways. If marriage is redefined to be genderless and people and groups do not accept that, they will be in conflict with the law and subject to legal consequences. This already has occurred in a variety of ways in other states."

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Minnesota, Religious Liberty, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (72)

Business Insider: Obama Is Doing Stunningly Bad Among African Americans In North Carolina

June 13, 2012 at 11:00 am

The author does not have same-sex marriage on his radar otherwise he might have a better way to interpret these numbers:

President Barack Obama is rapidly losing support among African-American voters in North Carolina, a new poll out today from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows.

The poll finds that Mitt Romney would get 20 percent of the African-American vote if the election were held today, compared with 76 percent for Obama. Overall, Romney has a 48 percent to 46 percent lead on Obama in the crucial swing state.

Obama received 95 percent of the support from African-Americans in North Carolina in the 2008 election, compared with just 5 percent for Republican nominee John McCain.

In PPP's May poll, Obama received 87 percent of the African-American vote to Romney's 11 percent.

All of Obama's numbers with African-Americans are sliding. His approval rating is down from 86 percent to 77 percent. Romney's favorability, meanwhile, has doubled from 9 percent to 18 percent.

Jim Williams, a polling analyst at PPP, said it could be "statistical noise" that comes with a small sample (only about 200 African-Americans were surveyed). But he said it was not something the agency has "ever seen before."

"Seventy-something percent is obviously low," Williams told Business Insider. "It's not something we've ever seen before. It's definitely something we're going to monitor."

Williams added the obvious: If the results keep turning up like this, it would be "very bad news for him."

By NOM Staff | Posted in Election Watch 2012, Marriage, Marriage Election Watch, North Carolina, President Obama, Same Sex Marriage, United for Marriage | Comments (37)

Local Minnesota TV: Marriage Proponents Seek Corporate Neutrality

June 13, 2012 at 10:00 am

This report by KARE-11 includes an interview with Jonathan Baker of NOM's Corporate Fairness Project:

A national group working to ban gay marriage has asked Minnesota's largest corporations to remain neutral on the issue.

The National Organization for Marriage sent letters to the state's 50 largest companies, as well as the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, asking them to remain neutral on the marriage issue.

Gay marriage is already against the law in Minnesota, but voters will decide in November whether to place that ban in the state Constitution. The amendment would define marriage as solely between one man and one woman.

"The corporations all have customers and employees that come down on both sides," Jonathan Baker of NOM told KARE.

"They have customers and employees that want to support the traditional definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman, and customers and employees that would like to extend the definition of marriage to couples of the same gender."

The Target Corporation found itself taking some heat from opponents of gay marriage when it launched a pride tee-shirt campaign in honor of Gay Pride Month, which is June, selling a variety on designs online for $12.99 a piece.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Corporate Ethics, Marriage, Minnesota, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (20)

AP: Church of England Formally Objects to Government Proposal to Legalize SSM

June 13, 2012 at 9:00 am

The Associated Press:

The Church of England and Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales formally objected Tuesday to the government’s proposal to permit gay marriages, both asserting that their historic understanding is that marriage is the union of a woman and a man.

Prime Minister David Cameron is backing a proposal to permit civil marriages for gay couples, despite the strong opposition of some lawmakers in his Conservative Party. Gay couples are already allowed to have civil partnerships, with the first such ceremony in 2005.

The churches‘ responses were released on the day when the traditional marriage group Coalition for Marriage prepared to deliver a petition with more than half a million signatures opposing the change to Cameron’s office. Thursday is the deadline for public comment, which the government will consider in drafting legislation.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, United for Marriage, United Kingdom | Comments (12)

Complaint Against Minnesota Family Council Dismissed!

June 12, 2012 at 3:00 pm

Beth Hawkins of the MinnPost reports on the final result of the spurious effort to harass the Minnesota Family Council through the campaign finance and public disclosure board:

"...Last week, the state Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board rejected a complaint filed in March by Common Cause of Minnesota, which claimed that MFC was violating state law by refusing to name its donors. In arriving at its conclusion, the board relied on two different dictionary definitions — one from Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the other from the Oxford English dictionary — of the word “purpose.”

The MFC hailed the decision as the right outcome.

“We applaud the decision of the board,” CEO John Helmberger said in a statement. “The Common Cause complaint was nothing but a political stunt designed to harass donors to MFC. It is clear that MFC complied with Minnesota law and all of the CFB’s guidance and we anticipated that the CFB would reject the complaint upon completion of their analysis.”

You can read the CFPDB's published findings here.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Law, Marriage, Minnesota, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (25)

Denmark: Mandatory SSM Ceremonies Don’t Apply to Non-Lutherans -- Yet

June 12, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Catholic Culture World News:

Denmark’s minister for ecclesiastical affairs has assured the head of the nation’s sole Catholic diocese that the new law requiring churches to solemnize same-sex marriages will apply only to the official Lutheran church.

“One never knows,” cautions Bishop Czeslaw Kozon of Copenhagen. “Indeed there have been voices who suggested this law should be obligatory for everybody.”

The law permits individual ministers to refuse to conduct same-sex marriages, which have been legal in Denmark since 1997.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Europe, Law, Marriage, Religious Liberty, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (51)

"I am a Gay, Devout Mormon, Happily Married to a Woman, with Three Children"

June 12, 2012 at 12:30 pm

A fascinating post by a devout Mormon celebrating 10 years of marriage, co-written with his wife. Here is a sample:

7. 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.

But that doesn’t really answer the question. And it is an important question.

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.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Children, Culture, Marriage, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (92)

New Study: Children Make People Happier

June 12, 2012 at 11:30 am

The National Catholic Register:

Having children makes you happier.

That’s the conclusion of a team of university researchers from the U.S. and Canada, who looked at data from thousands of couples and concluded that parents are happier than non-parents.

The study flies “directly in the face of conventional opinion,” said Catholic parenting expert Ray Guarendi.

But he worried that, with its purely naturalistic approach, the study would necessarily miss the point that religious people accept and embrace childrearing as “a gift from God.”

The researchers called their report, which was the result of three separate studies, “In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery.”

They begin by expressing popular opinion on the subject, which is that “recent scholarly and media accounts paint a portrait of unhappy parents who find remarkably little joy in taking care of their children.”

But, when the team actually surveyed the research, they found studies on both sides of the issue, says lead researcher Katherine Nelson of the University of California, Riverside.

As for their own study, which was conducted by scholars at the University of California, Stanford University and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Nelson said, “We all got the same findings: It was a challenge to the popular view that parents were miserable. We found parents were at least as happy and often more happy.”

By NOM Staff | Posted in Children, Marriage, Parenting, Research/Study | Comments (6)

Video: Are Marriage Laws "Imposing Religion on Society"?

June 12, 2012 at 10:30 am

Kalley Yanta of the Minnesota Marriage Minute explains why defining marriage in a state constitution is not the same as "imposing moral and religious views on society."

She says, "The proposed Marriage Protection Amendment doesn't impose anything, it simply puts our current law on marriage into our Constitution, so that it will be protected from activist judges or politicians bent on redefining marriage without the consent of the people."

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Minnesota, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (22)

NOM's Peters on Momentum for Marriage in Washington State

June 12, 2012 at 9:30 am

Christopher Goins of CNSNews with some quotes from our own Thomas Peters about the momentum for marriage in Washington State:

"Thomas Peters, cultural director at the National Organization for Marriage, told CNSNews.com that there's little chance that the repeal effort will lose steam. The six-month stretch between now and the election actually gives Preserve Marriage Washington more time to mount a campaign, he said.

“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.”

The next step for Preserve Marriage Washington is to get 100,000 volunteers signed up, says Peters.

Peters added that the experience from the signature gathering process was that Preserve Marriage Washington was able to identify “a much wider coalition in support of marriage” than the similar efforts in the past conducted on the East Coast.

Of the 32 states that have voted on the issue of marriage, all 32 have voted to preserve traditional marriage. The National Organization of Marriage says it is confident that Washington State will do likewise."

Find out how you can be part of the momentum for marriage right here!

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Washington | Comments (15)

Billionaire Paul Singer To Spend Millions More Trying to Convince GOP to Abandon Marriage

June 12, 2012 at 8:30 am

The elites vs. the people once again, as relayed by the New York Times:

"...Singer says, he’s providing $1 million to start a new “super PAC” with several Republican compatriots. Named American Unity PAC, its sole mission will be to encourage Republican candidates to support same-sex marriage, in part by helping them to feel financially shielded from any blowback from well-funded groups that oppose it.

In an interview on Tuesday, he told me that he’s confident that in Congressional races, which would most likely be the super PAC’s initial focus, there are more than a few Republicans “who could be on the verge of support” or are “harboring and hiding their views.”

“And this kind of effort could be catalytic in generating some more movement,” he said.

Singer doesn’t court a high news-media profile. His willingness to meet at the Midtown Manhattan offices of his hedge fund, Elliott Management, and talk about marriage equality reflects the strength of his commitment to the cause. Although he is straight, he has a gay son and son-in-law who were married in Massachusetts, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2004."

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Politics, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (15)

DumpStarbucks.com News: SSM Support NOT Key to Business Success!

June 11, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Dump Starbucks

Welcome to the DumpStarbucks.com News!

Is there a business case to support Starbucks' endorsement of same-sex marriage?

The numbers say no, but same-sex marriage advocates continue to say yes. Let's look at some hard facts.

Earlier this year, ChiefExecutive.net surveyed over 650 CEOs and gathered their opinions on which states were best for business. All of the top ten states they chose define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. According to a 2008 Pew Research Center study, seven of the top ten destination states for population migration had defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman in their state constitution. In 2011, Moody's Analytics forecasted the top ten states for job growth. Nine of the top ten states for projected growth had marriage amendments in their state constitutions.

These facts and figures do not prove that defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman causes economic success, but they do show that same-sex marriage is not a requirement for economic growth or corporate success, nor a sound component of an economic development plan.

What you can do this week:

Last week a committed supporter of marriage shared hundreds of our DumpStarbucks.com flyers at the Texas GOP convention. The thousands of delegates, alternates, and their families had the opportunity to read how Starbucks as a corporation is supporting a cause they find objectionable and learn what they can do about the situation. Please consider printing a few copies of the flyer and share them with family, friends, and at public events this summer.

Our protest continues to grow!

Christian Response Alerts has launched their own boycott against Starbucks and collected over 3,300 signatures of their own. Add that to the current DumpStarbucks.com total and we have over 47,000 individuals who have Dumped Starbucks!

Thank you for your support and have a great week!