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Superbowl Legend David Tyree On Supporting Marriage and Life After the NFL

January 30, 2012 at 2:00 pm

USAToday Sports tells us where Superbowl legend David Tyree is now:

...The spectacular catch launched [Tryree] into various marketing opportunities and, more important for him, onto a pedestal to share his views. He co-wrote a book, More Than Just the Catch, in which he discussed his strong religious convictions. Tyree and his wife, Leilah, are the parents of six children they home-school in Wayne, N.J. The couple are working on another faith-based book that Tyree says "is going to challenge the core of our culture."

Last summer, he appeared in a video for the National Organization for Marriage. At the time, he said pending legislation of a gay marriage bill in New York would promote "anarchy" if passed. New York later legalized same-sex marriage.

Tyree was deluged with criticism.

"I don't value marketability — I value the honor of my God,'' he said. "When you talk about this being a (nation) where everybody is entitled to their opinion … (but) the moment you say something that goes against what is relevant to our culture, all of a sudden you are (called) a bigot. I got tons of flak, but I expected that."

You can watch Tyree's NOM interview (which has been viewed almost 70,000 times on YouTube) from last summer here:

By NOM Staff | Posted in Same Sex Marriage | Comments (19)

Detroit FreeP: EMU Counseling Student Wins OK to Sue

January 30, 2012 at 1:00 pm

The Detroit Free Press on Julea Ward's victory at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals:

An Eastern Michigan University student who was expelled from a counseling program because she refused to counsel gays and lesbians about their lifestyles won a key victory today in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A three-member panel of the court said Julea Ward can argue her religious discrimination suit against the university before a federal court jury in Detroit.

... “Although the university submits it dismissed Ward from the program because her request for a referral violated the ACA (American Counseling Association) code of ethics, a reasonable jury could find otherwise — that the code of ethics contains no such bar and that the university deployed it as a pretext for punishing Ward’s religious views and speech.”

... Although Ward refused to counsel gays and lesbians about their sexual orientation, she said she was willing to counsel them on other issues.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Education, Free Speech, MarriageADA, Michigan, Religious Liberty | Comments (1)

Mitt Romney to Faith Leaders: Obama's Assault on Marriage and DOMA

January 30, 2012 at 12:30 pm

Mitt Romney on a call with faith leaders said about Obama's record on Marriage:

"There's been an assault on marriage. I think [the President] is very aggressively trying to pave the path to same-sex marriage. I would, unlike this President, defend the Defense of Marriage Act. And I would also propose and promote once again an amendment to the Constitution to define marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman."

By NOM Staff | Posted in Election Watch 2012, Marriage, Marriage Election Watch, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (8)

Newt to Faith Leaders: Gay Marriage a "Fundamental Violation of our Civilization"

January 30, 2012 at 12:00 pm

On a call with faith leaders, Newt Gingrich said about gay marriage:

"Marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deeply into the bible. Both in the old testament and in the new testament. And it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization."

By NOM Staff | Posted in Election Watch 2012, Marriage, Marriage Election Watch, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (26)

Gov. O'Malley's Wife Apologizes for Calling Opponents of SSM "Cowards"

January 30, 2012 at 11:00 am

Matt Palmer of the Catholic Review:

Maryland First Lady Katie O’Malley has apologized for calling members of the House of Delegates who opposed voting on changing the definition of marriage in 2011 “cowards.”

A bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage in Maryland was never voted on in the House of Delegates after passing in the Senate last year. The bill was returned to the House Judiciary Committee after a lengthy debate.

O’Malley created a firestorm Jan. 26 at the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s annual Creating Change conference in Baltimore when making the comments about the House of Delegates.

“We didn’t expect the things that happened to the House of Delegates to occur, but sadly they did, and there were some cowards that prevented it from passing,” Katie O’Malley said.

O’Malley also made comments about how religious organizations should not be involved in the debate.

... After word leaked out that Katie O’Malley made the comments, she was roundly criticized throughout the state. It forced her to release a statement the morning of Jan. 27.

“I regret my recent choice of words at the Creating Change Conference last night,” she said. “I let my feelings get the better of me. I deeply respect that there are strongly held and differing views on marriage equality in Maryland, but hope that our state’s elected officials will come together to fairly address this important issue for our families and children.”

... Mary Ellen Russell, executive director of the MCC, bristled at O’Malley’s comments and defended the House of Delegates.

“It’s completely ironic that anyone would call legislators who stood up for traditional marriage cowards,” Russell said. “It took extraordinary courage on their part to withstand the arm-twisting and political pressure that they were under last year, and it will take the same kind of courage and even more this year.”

By NOM Staff | Posted in Civility, Marriage, Maryland, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (21)

Proposed NY Redistricting Attempts to Save Flip-Flopper Grisanti

January 30, 2012 at 10:30 am

A sign that the GOP leadership is worried about Sen. Mark Grisanti's re-election effort because of his vote for gay marriage?

The long-awaited proposals to redraw state Senate and Assembly boundaries are finally out. And reviews are harsh particularly for the redrawn Senate map which would grow from 62 seats to 63.

“When you have legislators drawing their own designer districts, this is the product that you get,” said Barbara Bartoletti, league of Women Voters Legislative Director.

New boundaries for state and federal offices must be redrawn every 10 years based on the latest Census data. The process has been decried by good government groups for being stacked in favor of incumbent parties. The theory is that by carving the state into enough of a jigsaw puzzle, the reigning parties stay in power. It's created some odd looking shapes, including one known as Abe Lincoln Riding a Vacuum. That's gone under the proposal, but this new one could be called The Flying Bat.

“They're using every trick in the book. They're drawing new districts where they don't belong. They're throwing Democrats in districts together,” State Senator Michael Gianaris said.

GOP Senator Mark Grisanti district would now be entirely in Erie County, which increases his chances of keeping the Conservative Party line, even though he voted for same-sex marriage. There's also a new Senate seat proposed for the Albany region carved out with areas that contain Republican voters. When viewed as a whole, the map shows a representation shift to Republican heavy upstate, which could help the party maintain control of the chamber. - YNN

By NOM Staff | Posted in New York, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (2)

NY Redistricting Proposal Sidesteps Storobin Challenge for Ex-Sen. Kruger's Seat

January 30, 2012 at 10:00 am

The New York Daily News Politics blog:

If the new Senate redistricting lines are approved, it would render the upcoming March 20 special election to fill the Brooklyn seat of convicted ex-Sen. Carl Kruger practically meaningless.

That’s because the two candidates running, Democrat City Councilman Lew Fidler and Republican David Storobin would no longer live in the district under the plan. The two would be shifted out of the district as part of the creation of an Orthodox Jewish-heavy district centered in Borough Park.

Fidler, under the propposal, would reside in Senate Democratic Minority Leader John Sampson’s district while Storobin would share a district with Democratic Sen. Diane Savino, according to a city-based source.

"The special election is March 20 with two people running, neither of whom can represent the district once things are settled," a source said.

By NOM Staff | Posted in New York, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (1)

Georgetown U's Tom Farr on the Critical Need to Respect Conscience

January 29, 2012 at 11:00 am

Thomas Farr, visiting associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, served as a diplomat and was the State Department’s first director of the Office of International Religious Freedom.

Farr talks to Joan Frawley Desmond at the National Catholic Register on the challenges ahead for religious liberty and respect for conscience:

...When it comes to marriage, abortion or other issues of concern to Catholics, it leaves us in a precarious position. The remedy must be to engage with energy and optimism in public-policy debates, and to win.

Let me give you one example — among many — of the problem we face. The new health-care law may require Catholic associations like colleges and hospitals to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs in their health-care plans. Catholics are, quite reasonably, fighting to broaden the conscience exemptions from that requirement (exemptions which now appear to apply only to churches themselves).

Conscience protections are important because they acknowledge, in principle, that protecting the conscience of the religious dissenter is more important than the law itself. But the conscience approach is, in my view, insufficient. Catholics need to marshal their resources more effectively to defeat these laws in the legislatures. We have not done this well, and we should ask ourselves why.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Ethics, Law, Marriage, Religious Liberty, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (7)

Charles Murray on The New American Divide Over Marriage

January 29, 2012 at 9:00 am

Charles Murray essay in last Saturday's Wall Street Journal previewing his new book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010:

... When Americans used to brag about "the American way of life"—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions.

... Marriage: In 1960, extremely high proportions of whites in both Belmont and Fishtown were married—94% in Belmont and 84% in Fishtown. In the 1970s, those percentages declined about equally in both places. Then came the great divergence. In Belmont, marriage stabilized during the mid-1980s, standing at 83% in 2010. In Fishtown, however, marriage continued to slide; as of 2010, a minority (just 48%) were married. The gap in marriage between Belmont and Fishtown grew to 35 percentage points, from just 10.

Single parenthood: Another aspect of marriage—the percentage of children born to unmarried women—showed just as great a divergence. Though politicians and media eminences are too frightened to say so, nonmarital births are problematic. On just about any measure of development you can think of, children who are born to unmarried women fare worse than the children of divorce and far worse than children raised in intact families. This unwelcome reality persists even after controlling for the income and education of the parents.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage | Comments Off

The Invention of Heterosexuality?

January 28, 2012 at 9:00 am

Thomas Rogers interviews Hanne Blank in Salon:

Blank mentions her personal story at the beginning of her provocative new history of heterosexuality, “Straight,” as a way of illustrating just how artificial our notions of “straightness” really are. In her book, Blank, a writer and historian who has written extensively about sexuality and culture, looks at the ways in which social trends and the rise of psychiatry conspired to create this new category in the late 19th and early 20th century. Along the way, she examines the changing definition of marriage, which evolved from a businesslike agreement into a romantic union centered around love, and how social Darwinist ideas shaped the divisions between gay and straight. With her eye-opening book, Blank tactfully deconstructs a facet of modern sexuality that most of us take for granted.

Salon spoke to Blank over the phone about the origins of heterosexuality, the evolution of marriage and why the rise of the “bromance” is a very good thing.

... [Salon:] As you point out in the book, for much of human history, marriage had absolutely nothing to do with sexuality or sex.

[Blank:] It’s more that marriage didn’t have a lot to do with desire. Marriage has always had to do with sex, and the ability to have marital sex and preferably procreate has always been central to marriage. But what was not so important was whether or not you necessarily wanted to have sex with that person. It was your duty, it was paying the marriage debt, and you were gonna do it, by golly, but this was a co-worker, this a partner in business enterprise — not a person you chose to satisfy your own personal whims and desires with. If you happen to also like them and think that they were swell or pretty or handsome then that’s great. But that’s not what you were in it for.

And now everything has changed, because we now prioritize attraction, desire, love, romance, over the strictly economic and community-building aspects of marriage. We live in a culture now where we find it very odd when women don’t support themselves, if somebody chooses to be a stay-at-home mother. That is a huge change, and that’s a huge change just in my lifetime. I’m in my early 40s and I know that when I was a very small child those discussions were not happening in the same way. The economic and legal enfranchisement of women has gone hand-in-hand with both women’s and men’s ability to choose marriage partners based on their own desire, desires for sex, love, companionship, all of those things, and to put that first.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Culture, Marriage | Comments (41)

URGENT MARRIAGE ALERT: Repealing Gay Marriage To Be Voted On Feb 1st! Tell your Legislators to vote YES on HB437!

January 27, 2012 at 5:46 pm

NH Alert

Dear Marriage Supporter,

I've got exciting news! We've been told that HB437—a bill to repeal same-sex marriage—will be voted on Next Wednesday, February 1st!

Now is the time to call your legislators—especially House members—right away and ask them to VOTE YES ON HB437!

For more than two years, we've been working towards this moment. Thanks to your hard work and dedication, a majority in both houses now supports marriage and we are optimistic about next Wednesday's vote.

But Governor Lynch has already made it crystal clear that he plans to veto the bill—meaning it will take a 2/3 majority to override his veto.

That's why it's imperative that everyone makes calls right now on behalf of marriage and HB437! And the closest battle will be in the House of Representatives.

Please make at least two phone calls right now!

Please also take the critical step of calling all your friends and family and encouraging them to do the same. Please forward this email on to them, or print this alert out and bring it with you to your church or community center! Everything you can do to encourage people to make calls helps the cause!

A personal phone call from a constituent is, after all, one of the most powerful and effective ways of contacting elected officials, especially New Hampshire state house members who answer their own phones.

Please take a moment to make a few phone calls right away, and plan on making a few calls later as well as we approach the vote next Wednesday. Tell them it's time for them to follow through with the mandate voters gave them in 2010 and repeal same-sex marriage. Time is short! The vote is next Wednesday!

In addition to your phone calls, with just a few clicks of the mouse—and a couple of minutes of your time—you can also send an email to each of the state senators and representatives from your district, giving your legislators a written record of your support for marriage.

Click here to send your email now!

HB437 is a compromise bill—but it's a compromise that respects and restores the definition of marriage, while also allowing existing same-sex marriages to remain intact and providing benefits through civil unions.

Every vote counts, so please contact your legislators right away. I'll be sure to keep you up to date as things continue to develop. And please join me in praying and working for good news come next Wednesday!

Faithfully,

By Brian Brown | Posted in Marriage Election Watch, New Hampshire, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (10)

PPP Polling: Marriage Amendment Winning in Minnesota

January 27, 2012 at 4:45 pm

Democrat-leaning Public Policy Polling finds the Minnesota marriage amendment leading in the polls (PDF results here):

Should the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?
Yes - 48%
No - 44%
Not sure - 8%

We've found that those who answer "Not Sure" tend to vote to protect marriage when given the privacy of a voting booth.

On the leading question "Do you think same-sex marriage should be legal or illegal?" Minnesotans respond:

Illegal - 47%
Legal - 43%
Not sure - 10%

Another interesting factoid: 34% of self-identified Democrats in Minnesota don't believe gay couples should be allowed to wed.

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Minnesota, Same Sex Marriage | Comments (17)

Dr. Morse to WA Legislature: "History Will Not Be Kind To You"

January 27, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute testifies to the Washington State Legislature.

"I'm here today to address you who've already made up your minds to redefine marriage. History will not be kind to you. Previous generations of social experimenters have caused unimaginable misery for millions of people. Particular people advocated the policies that led today to the 50% divorce rate, and 40% out of wedlock childbearing rate. And none of these people have ever been held accountable. But I'm here today to hold you to account for the predictable harm that you have already caused and will continue to cause in your effort to redefine marriage."

"And to those of you who vote for man-woman marriage: stay strong. History is on your side."

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Washington | Comments (36)

Christopher Plante to WA Legislature: "Marriage Should be Left to the People"

January 27, 2012 at 3:00 pm

NOM Regional Director Christopher Plante speaks before the Washington State Legislature.

"[Marriage] is a decision that should be left to the people. NOM is committed to making sure that if [you] redefine marriage ... the people of Washington will have the say that they deserve, that basic right to vote on marriage and the definition of it."

By NOM Staff | Posted in Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Washington | Comments (12)

Breaking News: Major Victory for Julea Ward!!

January 27, 2012 at 2:15 pm

We've been following Julea Ward's story since last March, and today we're thrilled to report that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has found in her favor, as David French at NRO reports:

So far, 2012 has been a good year for religious liberty in federal court. Two weeks ago the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that religious organizations have a First Amendment right to choose their ministers — even in the face of federal nondiscrimination policies. Today, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial-court ruling that essentially allowed Eastern Michigan University to erect a “no Christians allowed” sign outside its graduate counseling program.

... The trial court had essentially ruled that the university could do whatever it wanted with its curriculum, and if it wanted to mandate that Christian students affirm homosexuality while granting referrals and exemptions to other students on other issues, it could. The Sixth Circuit disagreed, strongly:

A reasonable jury could find that the university dismissed Ward from its counseling program because of her faith-based speech, not because of any legitimate pedagogical objective. A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems based on a phantom policy as the price for obtaining a degree.

The stakes of this case were very high. If the university had prevailed, students would truly have been at the mercy of ad hoc ideological demands reformulated as “curricular requirements.” Understanding the stakes for individual liberty, theMichigan attorney general, the American Center for Law and Justice (where I’m a senior counsel), the Becket Fund, Eugene Volokh, and others submitted amicus briefs on Ward’s behalf. They were opposed by, among others, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, LAMBDA Legal, and the ACLU.