Facts are stubborn things and no amount of PPP's framing can avoid the simple fact that North Carolina's Marriage Protection Amendment is up 20 points, six weeks before voters head to the polls.
It is also being supported by a majority of Democrats in the state:
Learn more about the North Carolina Marriage Protection Amendment at www.VoteFORMarriageNC.org.
Full results of the PPP poll here.
Politics on the Hudson Albany Watch blog:
Carl Paladino, the failed 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate, endorsed Neil Di Carlo today in his GOP primary bid against Sen. Stephen Saland, R-Poughkeepsie.
... Like Paladino, Di Carlo is a conservative Republican, and both oppose abortion and same-sex marriage. Saland was one of four Republican senators to vote in favor of same-sex marriage last year.
Paladino doesn’t mention the same-sex marriage vote specifically, but said Di Carlo shares the values of the district and is a businessman “with an unwavering commitment to conservative Republican values.”
Paladino, the Buffalo businessman who lost to Cuomo during a troubled campaign, has vowed to back candidates this year for state Legislature and overthrow the Senate GOP leadership.
Yet more fall-out from Sen. Mark Grisanti's unpopular flip-flop on marriage, as Capital Tonight reports:
"...[Ramapo Town Councilman Yitzchok Ullman] also argues that the new lines have been “impermissibly drawn based on religious considerations.” He’s not the only one in the state with that complaint. The black churches that used to be represented by WNY Republican Sen. Mark Grisanti are none too pleased that they’ve been drawn out of his new district – a move seen as done in part to insulated him against backlash for his “yes” vote on same-sex marriage, and also to make his district less Democrat-dominated.
[NOM co-founder Maggie] Gallagher said that she doesn’t “generally support boycotts.” “But Starbucks has voluntarily decided—as a corporation—to associate its brand with a major political issue,” she said, noting that the decision would seem to contradict the company’s promises in some parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East, not to subsidize political causes.
NOM Cultural Director Thomas Peters told LifeSiteNews.com that the boycott is only in its first stage. “People don’t want their coffee company taking sides in a culture war,” said Peters.
Ultimately, he said, companies should allow employees to exercise their beliefs with individual donations. “Certainly we want Starbucks employees to feel free to individually support marriage without it hurting their career advancement chances within Starbucks,” he said.
For more information, click here.
Dear Marriage Supporter,
"Gay marriage has backfired on the Democratic Party."
With those words one of my personal heroes, New York State Sen Rev. Rubén Díaz (a Democrat from the Bronx) opened his press release titled, "What you should know."
"You should know that since Governor Andrew Cuomo pushed for gay marriage in the State of New York and convinced the Democratic Party in the Assembly and the Senate to follow his lead to legalize gay marriage, the Democratic Party in New York City has not won a single victory.
"Starting with the defeat of David Weprin by Bob Turner for the Congressional seat vacated by Anthony Weiner, and most recently with the embarrassing defeat of Lew Fidler by David Storobin for the Senate seat vacated by Carl Kruger, the Democratic Party lost. In each special election, the Democratic candidate was expected to win handily given the composition of registered democrats in each district, and given the low turnout expected in special elections."
Gay marriage hurt Democrats in each of these races, he points out, and there is no way to spin it:
"For a time, the Democratic Party was key in New York City politics, and it was virtually impossible for a Republican to win a seat in the State legislature in New York City. That was before gay marriage. ...This has shown to be destructive for the Democratic Party and I hope that elected officials in other states are paying attention."
Of course the Democrats were not alone in bringing gay marriage to New York. Republican majority leader Dean Skelos volunteered to bring the bill up for a vote—he did not have to. And four Republicans provided the crucial margin of difference.
Sen Rev. Díaz goes on to point to the other side of the aisle:
"Now we can all wait and see what happens to the future of the four Republicans who supported gay marriage when it was forced to the floor of the Senate for a vote, because the way I see things, The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and its Executive Director, Brian Brown has been active and instrumental in contributing and supporting with financial resources those individuals who run against gay marriage supporters. So far, Brian Brown has been very effective and it might happen, that the four Republicans, might lose their Senate seats solely because of their vote on gay marriage."
NOM is not a partisan organization or a stalking horse for either party. We are a movement of people of every race, creed, color—and party—willing to stand up for marriage.
Sen. Rev. Díaz happened to speak out the same week that the mainstream media decided to pick up on a story that the National Organization for Marriage is playing racial politics "dividing gays and blacks."
It's a media brouhaha based on language in a three-year-old in-house document that was released by the Maine courts describing a number of NOM projects for 2009 and 2010.
Let me be the first to say that the tone of the language in that document as quoted by the press is inapt. Here's something I know from the bottom of my soul: It would be enormously arrogant for anyone at NOM to believe that we can make or provoke African-American or Latino leaders do anything. The Black and Hispanic Democrats who stand up for marriage do so on principle—and get hit with a wave of vituperative attacks like nothing I have ever seen. We did not cause it, nor can we claim credit for these men and women's courage in standing up in defense of our most fundamental institution: marriage.
To Joe Solmonese and the Human Rights Campaign and Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry I would say: This is your movement. You are its leaders. Only you can hope to change the vicious attacks being made on Black and Hispanic Democrats (or white Republicans for that matter!) who don't agree with you on gay marriage.
We had another small example of the kind of vituperation gay-marriage advocates are generating when a woman wrote a letter to her local newspaper in Syracuse politely supporting our DumpStarbucks.com campaign:
I have just learned that the Starbucks Corp. has begun a public campaign to rewrite our marriage laws and to recognize same-sex marriage. I was shocked to hear of a major corporation willing to alienate such a large portion of their constituents in favor of a political agenda.
I have decided that I will no longer buy my coffee at Starbucks—there are plenty of community coffeehouses that both support my values and need my business. ...
It's time to dump the Starbucks habit, at least for my family. And I invite others to join me by learning more at DumpStarbucks.com.
On the newspaper's website, an advocate of gay marriage threatened to go after her job as a result:
"As a gay man I actually have to question your ability to provide fair and balanced judgement and therefore treatment to gay people in your job as a nurse. For this reason I am sending a letter to Crouse Hospital detailing this and asking that they look into it."
Now you and I know he's probably just spinning hot air. But the NOM Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance was launched to give a voice to people who have actually lost their jobs because they oppose gay marriage.
But another blogger on the site noticed how unusual and ugly that kind of attack is:
"Someone is going to go to their employer and put their job at risk, because they have a belief that differs? Are we in second grade? Talk about hatred, discrimination and lack of respect for the feelings of others! If one can't have, or does not possess, the attributes they demand of others, what does that make, or say about, them? There are plenty of people, in life and on this site, that disagree, wholeheartedly, with many of the things I believe and post. ... Never, ever, have I dreamed of, or been tempted to, curtail their right to their opinion, their ability to state that opinion or 'go after' their employment, their families or any other personal aspect of their lives."
It would be wrong for anyone to try to generate that kind of hatred against good people who disagree on important moral issues like same-sex marriage Right, Joe? Right, Evan?
This is your movement, Human Rights Campaign. The ugliness it is generating is not consistent with the civil rights movement you claim to want to represent.
The underlying narrative of the MSM attacks on NOM generated by this document's release is absurd: The guts of the "Not a Civil Right Project" was to reach out across lines of race, creed and party to work with great heroes like Sen. Rev. Díaz, Bishop George McKinney and other pastors at the Church of God in Christ (the largest black Pentecostal denomination), Bishop Harry Jackson, and other leaders in the black and Hispanic churches.
Moreover, we at NOM are not the only people who have noticed this split over gay marriage in the Democratic Party. The Atlantic reports that Pres. Obama refuses to endorse gay marriage because of the strong opposition to gay marriage among African Americans:
"The conventional wisdom has been that supporting gay marriage would alienate blue-collar whites, and that's been the main reason he's [Pres. Obama has] been hesitant to come out in favor before the general election. But in this case, it's a crucial element of his own base that's preventing the president from taking bolder steps to advance a cause that he seems to believe in, but hasn't publicly embraced."
According to The Capitol Tonight, Albany political elites have reportedly responded to the political fallout of gay marriage vote by trying to limit the power of Orthodox Jews—by splitting up Ramapo Jews into multiple districts to dilute their influence, and taking black churches out of the Buffalo district of GOP marriage-betrayer Mark Grisanti:
The black churches that used to be represented by WNY Republican Sen. Mark Grisanti are none too pleased that they've been drawn out of his new district—a move seen as done in part to insulated him against backlash for his "yes" vote on same-sex marriage, and also to make his district less Democrat-dominated.
As for the kind of hatred directed against African-Americans who oppose same-sex marriage? Don't believe us. Believe the Washington Post, which published a front page story on Feb. 23, "Black Pastors Take Heat for Not Viewing Same-Sex Marriage As a Civil Rights Matter."
"All of a sudden, they are bigots and haters—they who stood tall against discrimination. ...They are black men, successful ministers, leaders of their community. ...Sometimes, the pastors say, the name-calling and the anger sting."
This is your movement, guys, only you can change its tone.
Meanwhile, in just a few weeks people of every race, creed and color will come together to decide the future of marriage in North Carolina. If you want to know why we stand up to the attacks, it's because I know we are speaking for so many good people like you.
Here's a few of many voters in North Carolina, talking about why they will vote yes on the Marriage Amendment.
Last week we launched our Dump Starbucks campaign, and boy have you responded!
As I write this Thursday morning, 23,585 people have signed the petition, promising to dump Starbucks. (The neat thing about the website is that if you put in your zip code, it will pull up for you the number of the local Starbucks so you can also call and make your voice heard.)
If you haven't done so yet, can you please take just 30 seconds, go to DumpStarbucks.com, and add your name to the petition? My goal for this week is to get to 25,000 signatures. We are so close—can you help?
Rich white guys like Mayor Bloomberg, Tim Gill and Howard Schultz are determined to push gay marriage on us "whether we like or not!" Here's your chance to fight back!
We are in this for the long haul. We know the left is far more organized online. This is our chance to not only speak back to Starbucks but build the infrastructure we need to make sure your voice is heard.
Next week, and for weeks thereafter, we'll have important news on widening the reach of the Dump Starbucks protest campaign. Thanks to the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, CatholicVote.org, and every other group—and person!—who has promoted Dump Starbucks.com on their blogs or in their newsletter. Shane Vander Hart, an influential Iowa blogger at Caffeinated Thoughts, for example, wrote this:
...Starbucks has claimed to be "post politics and post partisan" nevertheless decided to jump into the political fray back in January in order as a corporation throw its support behind same sex marriage legislation in Washington State. They are obviously free to do that, and we are free to demonstrate our disapproval. It seems to be a odd business decision to make a decision that will alienate roughly half of your customer base.
And yet they did. Voluntarily and apparently enthusiastically. ...
If the CEO, Howard Schultz, decided to just personally get involved that's a completely different thing, but they decided as a corporation to get involved—shareholders, employees, and customers who believe differently be damned.
Until they shift back into a neutral position, while I'll miss my French Roast Coffee Beans and Café Americanos, I can get my coffee elsewhere.
Here's how Christian Broadcast News reported it.
And here's the head of NOM's Corporate Fairness Project, Jonathan Baker, in an interview with the Christian Post.
The debate over gay marriage in Great Britain, which is being promoted by the once-Conservative party there, has brought some interesting new voices into this fray.
Brendan O'Neill is a self-described libertarian and humanist who once wrote for a Marxist publication.
I want to leave you with this thought from his incredibly insightful essay, "Why Gay Marriage Is a Very Bad Idea":
"The reason the gay-marriage issue can feel like it came from nowhere, and is now everywhere, is because it is an entirely top-down, elite-driven thing. The true driving force behind it is not any real or publicly manifested hunger amongst homosexual couples to get wed, far less a broader public appetite for the reform of the institution of marriage; rather it is the need of the political and media class for an issue through which to signify its values and advertise its superiority. Gay marriage is not a real issue—it is a cultural signifier, like wearing a pink ribbon to show you care about breast cancer."
A new morality is being created and fobbed off on the American people, complete with "enforcers" to "stigmatize" good people who disagree. At the end of his press release, Sen. Rev Díaz said "Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, friends and foes: Fasten your seat belts, because I am afraid that it's going to be a very bumpy ride."
Thank you for being there with NOM, every step of the way.
Colleen in Syracuse took action and wrote a letter to the editor of her local Syracuse newspaper explaining why she has pledged to DumpStarbucks:
I have just learned that the Starbucks Corp. has begun a public campaign to rewrite our marriage laws and to recognize same-sex marriage. I was shocked to hear of a major corporation willing to alienate such a large portion of their constituents in favor of a political agenda.
I have decided that I will no longer buy my coffee at Starbucks — there are plenty of community coffeehouses that both support my values and need my business. While there's little that I can do alone to make Starbucks reconsider its position, together we can make a statement. There are many in our community, I know, who believe in marriage and would be deeply offended to know that a portion of every cup of Starbucks coffee they buy is being used to lobby in favor of same-sex marriage.
It's time to dump the Starbucks habit, at least for my family. And I invite others to join me by learning more at DumpStarbucks.com.
Bravo, Colleen! You can join her and send a letter to your local newspaper right here.
The Washington Post claims Maryland is "split" on marriage even though marriage is actually leading by a few points, and leading by an even wider margin when it comes to voter intensity.
Also note the charged way the question was asked (voters were asked about making same-sex marriage "illegal"):
"...With a referendum on the issue expected this fall, the poll by the independent firm OpinionWorksfound that 43 percent of registered voters would vote to make same-sex marriage illegal, while 40 percent would vote to make it legal.
...Previous polls — including one in January by The Washington Post — have shown somewhat rosier results for same-sex marriage proponents.
...Opponents of same-sex marriage have an advantage in intensity. While 37 percent of Maryland voters “strongly” feel they will vote to make same-sex marriage illegal in Maryland, 31 percent of voters “strongly” feel they will vote to make it legal.
Visit the Maryland Marriage Alliance website for easy ways you can help the marriage win in November!
Support same-sex marriage, or focus on keeping clients worth $41 billion happy?
In November of 2011 two banks, while under investigation by the Ohio Attorney General for defrauding four Ohio pension systems, decided to sign on in support of eliminating the federal Defense of Marriage Act (which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman).
Can massive financial institutions multitask? Sure, but when they have an unhappy client worth $41 billion why are they getting involved in a culture war over marriage?
The cost for Bank of New York Mellon is a $16 million lawsuit by the State of Ohio over their alleged manipulation of exchange rates. For State Street Bank the cost is defending against multiple state lawsuits and the federal government.
Perhaps, like Goldman Sachs, they could use a little more focus on their corporate culture and do a little less worrying about marriage.
-- Jonathan Baker is the Director of NOM's Corporate Fairness Project
New Hampshire conservative politics blog Granite Grok:
Standing Up For New Hampshire Families was, and is, a faux group funded from outside the state, run by a lobbyist. Measuring it’s effectiveness is merely a measure of the hypocrisy of Democrats who deride outside influence and the ignorance of Republicans who are too lazy to see where the message is coming from. The guy running it is Tyler Deaton. Tyler, like Mo Baxley before him, is propped up by national, out of state money, running their national, out of state agenda. It is neither local, nor grassroots, nor the pulse of public opinion unless the power of a nationally funded propaganda campaign counts.
The New Hampshire Republicans for Equality PAC (nHrFe), the latest, “popped up out of nowhere” web presence to splash ads across your facebook pages and web sites of New Hampshire, has something in common with Standing Up. Tyler Deaton is the front man for both (nHrFe, SUFNHF) and is even listed as the “Treasurer” of the nHrFe PAC.
Same hired gun. Same agenda. And probably the same out of state money. Not really New Hampshire. Not really Republicans. Not that surprising.
Brandan O'Neill, who claims to be a "libertarian marxist", serves as editor of the UK magazine Spiked:
"...Given its surreality, it is remarkable that so many intelligent people are taking the gay-marriage issue at face value, seriously saying ‘Yes, I fully support the enactment of this long-traduced historic right’. What they should be doing is asking why gay marriage is an issue at all and untangling how it came to be a defining battleground in the modern Culture Wars. Because it strikes me that what is happening here is that, under the cover of ‘expanding equality’, we are really witnessing the instinctive consolidation of a new class, of a new political set, which, lacking the familiar moral signposts of the past, has magicked up a non-issue through which it might define itself and its values.
The reason the gay-marriage issue can feel like it came from nowhere, and is now everywhere, is because it is an entirely top-down, elite-driven thing. The true driving force behind it is not any real or publicly manifested hunger amongst homosexual couples to get wed, far less a broader public appetite for the reform of the institution of marriage; rather it is the need of the political and media class for an issue through which to signify its values and advertise its superiority. Gay marriage is not a real issue - it is a cultural signifier, like wearing a pink ribbon to show you care about breast cancer."
... One of the most striking things about gay marriage is the disparity between mass feeling for the issue (which is best described as weak to non-existent) and elite passion for it (which is intense). All sorts of elite institutions, from political parties to massive corporations, are lining up to back the gay-marriage ‘cause’, clearly having sensed that it is the issue through which their kind can now make a display of their sanctity...
... The transformation of gay marriage into a barometer of moral decency explains why the debate about it is so shot through with censoriousness and condemnation. That is another striking difference between the old genuinely democratic reformers and today’s gay-marriage supporters - where the proper reformers were in favour of openness and debate, the gay-marriage lobby seems far more keen to stifle dissent...
... Some people will say: so what if the campaign for gay marriage is a bit off and snobbish? At least there will be the byproduct of greater equality, actual ‘marriage rights’, for gay people. But even in its own terms, gay marriage is a bad idea, for many reasons. Primarily because, while it is presented to us as a wonderfully generous act of cultural elevation (of gay couples), it is more importantly a thoughtless act of cultural devaluation (of traditional marriage). An institution entered into by millions of people for quite specific reasons - often, though not always, for the purpose of procreation - is being casually demoted, with the Lib-Con government even proposing that the terms ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ no longer be used in official documents. The overnight Orwellian airbrushing of two such longstanding titles from public records demonstrates the extent to which the elite is willing to ride roughshod over traditional identities in pursuit of its own new identity as gay-friendly and moral.
Thomas Roberts of MSNBC was supposed to interview NOM co-founder Maggie Gallagher but MSNBC mistakenly booked the wrong studio.
Thomas Roberts apologized by twitter:
This came after the scheduled segment took place, during which Roberts tried to claim Maggie missed the interview intentionally:
After plugging the interview several times this morning, MSNBC host Thomas Roberts just showed the above empty Seattle studio and said, "This empty studio chair was supposed to hold Maggie Gallagher, former president and co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage. But as you can see she is missing in action, although we did confirm an hour ago that she would be in that studio. I would say, 'Hello Maggie,' but you're not there."
Maybe in future it would be best for hosts to not automatically presume their guest is the one at fault.
MSNBC is working with Maggie to reschedule the interview soon.
Polygamy has had very little support in the U.S. since the Republican Party in 1854 declared it, along with slavery, one of the “twin relics of barbarism,” and Congress banned it in 1862. The Mormon church officially abandoned plural marriage in 1890.
... But when the California Supreme Court ruled in 2010 in favor of homosexual marriage, one dissenting justice warned that it would not be illogical to expect that support for polygamy soon would follow.
In fact, a polygamous group in Utah just last month challenged a ban on the practice in court, and now a new WND/Wenzel Poll, conducted exclusively for WND by the public-opinion research and media consulting company Wenzel Strategies, indicates there is a surprisingly high level of support developing across the U.S.
A full 22 percent of the respondents say there is no legal justification for denying polygamy, based on the fact that legislation and judicial decisions have affirmed the validity of same-sex “marriage” for homosexuals.
The New Hampshire House of Representatives has spoken, killing legislation to repeal the state’s 2-year-old law legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples last week.
But this fight is far from over. It now shifts to the ballot box, where the four candidates for governor present a stark choice: Two Republicans back repeal, and two Democrats are sworn to veto any such effort.
The National Organization for Marriage and the local Cornerstone Action New Hampshire combined during the 2010 elections to spend more than $1.5 million to try to defeat Gov. John Lynch and elect a historic Republican super-majority.
... National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown said his organization has no intention of giving up after last week’s vote.
“Because of the vote, we now have a target list,” Brown said. “Both Ovide Lamontagne and Kevin Smith support traditional marriage. We will be very involved in the general election.”
Meanwhile, internal discussions have begun among the National Organization for Marriage, Cornerstone and like-minded socially conservative groups about how to protect their legislators who backed repeal of same-sex marriage and add to their numbers in the November election.
Ruth Institute President Dr. Morse often says that gay marriage reduces marriage to a "government registry of friendships" and this Star Observer coverage of a proposal to legalize same-sex marriage in Finland makes it clear that redefining marriage would, in the minds of SSM proponents, reduce marriage to simply a "government registry of relationships":
"...Considered one of the most conservative Nordic nations, there is already a relationship register in [Finland] for same-sex couples, which has been in place since 2002.
... European Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Alexander Stubb, the first signatory of the initiative, spoke passionately for the amendment during debate.
“This initiative [to legalize SSM] is aimed at dismantling a system that causes inequality, in which couple relationships are divided into A and B categories” he said.
Really? There is no difference in category whatsoever between heterosexual couples that can create new life through each other and homosexual couples that must always rely upon a third-party to become parents?
And the only thing that marriage does to distinguish the union of husband and wife from every other union is simply to put a label (A or B) on it?
Frankly, if the no difference between relationship A (opposite-sex couples) and relationship B (same-sex couples) why should there be a difference between relationship A (two sexual partners) and relationship B (three sexual partners)? What's so special about couples?
The two Catholic bishops of North Carolina have responded to President Obama's announcement that he opposes the May 8th Marriage Protection Amendment, as LifeSiteNews reports:
“In his comments on the upcoming referendum in our state, the president regrettably characterized the marriage amendment as a matter of discrimination,” [the bishops] wrote, adding: “While we are respectful of the office of the president, we strongly disagree with this assessment.”
“His stated opposition to the referendum on the marriage amendment in North Carolina is a grave disappointment, as it is reported to be the first time the president has entered into this issue on the state level, further escalating the increasing confusion on the part of some in our society to the very nature of marriage itself.”
The Catholic Church has strongly supported the amendment, which will appear on the ballot during the May 8 primary election. The state’s pro-family organizations say they are thankful for the bishops’ leadership.
... The bishops’ letter states, “Children have the right to the indispensable place of fatherhood and motherhood in their lives as they grow, are loved, nurtured, and formed by those whose unique vocation it is to be a father and a mother through the unique bond of one man and one woman in marriage.”
