NOM BLOG

Merry Christmas!

Click to allow images to see a special Christmas message from NOM's President Brian Brown!

We Can't Stop Now!

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Money Raised So Far

Dear Marriage Supporter,

I have reviewed our updated financial reports and they look fantastic!

As you know, one of our most generous donors has offered to MATCH—dollar for dollar—every single gift we receive before New Year's Day, all the way up to one million dollars!

Friend, I don't need to remind you how much of a blessing this was to us. NOM has never been able to match our opponents' financial resources. But this is our chance to level the playing field! We can raise more, be better organized, and succeed for our cause.

Thus far, we have set the bar high and raised $782,111. Even with this amazing outpouring of support, we cannot stop now. We need to push harder, stay strong, and work together to put us in a position to continue winning victories for one-woman one-man marriage.

If we can take full advantage of this Year-End Million Dollar Match, we will enter 2012 ready to go toe-to-toe all across America with the anti-marriage radicals...taking the $782,111 we have already raised and strategically deploying it in preparation for early fights in the courts, over the airwaves, in the halls of power, and at the ballot box...and WIN.

Friend, will you please stand with and make a generous contribution today?

Donate Now

We are counting on you to make sure we receive every penny of this $1 million matching gift offer. I know you stand for marriage—answering our calls to take action, speaking out when necessary—but now we need your financial support.

So please make one more urgent gift to NOM right away.

As soon as your donation is processed, we will immediately match it with funds from our anonymous donor and DOUBLE the size of your contribution.

With so much at stake in 2012 (marriage under fire in dozens of states, the legal case to uphold Prop 8 in California, a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act moving through the Senate, and the most important Presidential election for marriage ever), we MUST build on the $782,111 we have raised and close out 2011 on even stronger financial ground.

That's exactly what we'll do with this Million Dollar Matching Gift offer, but only if you join us today by making an urgent, generous gift to help us level the playing field in the fight for marriage.

Donate Now

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Brian Brown

Brian S Brown

Brian S. Brown
President
National Organization for Marriage

P.S. Friend, in case you were waiting until we were fully in to the 2012 Election Year to make another gift to the National Organization for Marriage, please do not wait one more day! Your gift right now will be instantly matched by an equal amount from an anonymous donor. We have come so far, and we truly cannot stop now

So every dollar you send today to fund our pro-marriage 2012 campaign will pay for twice the amount of hard-hitting direct mail pieces, twice the number of radio and TV ads, and twice the number of Get-Out-The-Vote phone callsall designed to produce a landslide of voters to SAVE marriage from being destroyed.

Please don't delay. You know how important this is. When thinking about how much you can afford to stop same-sex marriage from being imposed on your state in 2012, consider that your gift will be immediately matched for maximum impact.

So please be as generous as you possibly can right now. Thank you so much, and God bless you!

Donate Now

Fwd: Momentum For Marriage in New Hampshire

Dear Defender of Marriage and Family,

In this busy Christmas Season I want to take just a moment of your time to share some great news about you and your neighbors in New Hampshire. Below is a wonderful email from Jason Rose, Director of the July Fourth Forum PAC and one of the leaders in the fight to restore the righful definition of marriage in New Hampshire.

Right off the bat you see that you are not alone in your belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, and that the state should recognize this unique institution. 61% of likely GOP primary voters agree, that the New Hampshire legislature should restore the rightful definition of marriage.

Even with this overwhelming suppport we still need you to be active - to call your legislators and your neighbors urging them to support the upcoming legislation that will restore the rightful definition of marriage while providing civil unions for gay and lesbian couples.

Thank you for your continued support and action. The National Organization for Marriage looks forward to continuing to stand with you until marriage is fully restored in New Hampshire.

For our families and children,

Brian Brown
President, National Organization for Marriage
www.NationForMarriage.org
2029 K Street NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20006
Main: (888) 894-3604

This message has been authorized and paid for by the National Organization for Marriage, 2029 K Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006, Brian Brown, President. This message has not been authorized or approved by any candidate.

Copyright © 2011 National Organization for Marriage.

NOM  |  2029 K Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006


From: Jason Rose
Date: Thursday, December 22, 2011 7:50 AM EST
Subject: Momentum for Marriage

61% Support Traditional Marriage

Dear Friend,

A new poll shows primary voters believe 2012 is the year we stand up for values! Your legislator should, too!

The July Fourth Forum Political Action Committee (PAC) is working to take back the Granite State from liberal, out-of-state millionaires who bought and paid for New Hampshire's flawed gay marriage law in 2009.

Tell your legislator its time to restore traditional marriage in New Hampshire! We need your help to fight the out-of-state millionaires working to make gay marriage the law of the land in every state in our nation!

Visit NHforMarriage.com and sign up to receive breaking news updates, and for information on ways that you can take action right now, such as:

  • Calling, writing, or e-mailing a legislator
  • Writing a Letter to the Editor
  • Engaging your social networks, like Facebook and Twitter
  • Posting a yard sign!
  • Calling into a Radio Talk Show, and make your voice heard!

While national activists descend on our state to fight the restoration of traditional marriage, anew poll shows a clear majority of New Hampshire voters in the upcoming, first-in-the-nation primary—sixty one percent—support a legislative definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman, while also allowing for civil unions.

In today's Union Leader, Granite Status columnist and veteran political reporter John DiStaso writes, "The survey of 500 registered likely primary voters by Kellyanne Conway's firm, named "inc./Woman Trend," showed that 61 percent backed such legislation and 33 percent were opposed."

It's not about partisanship. In 2009, 32 House Democrats got the message, and stood with the people of New Hampshire in voting against same sex marriage.

And, last Election Day, voters like you tossed out most of the liberal politicians who pocketed big dollars from gay marriage lobbyists, and voted for gay marriage. Because of your hard work, we overwhelmingly replaced them with a new majority in Concord that cherishes the restoration of traditional marriage.

Now, the gay marriage activists are at it again. Don't be fooled by those national activists from New York and Washington fighting to keep gay marriage in New Hampshire.

Republican primary voters overwhelmingly support the restoration of traditional marriage. Make sure your state legislator does, too!

Do your part by standing up for families all across New Hampshire against the liberal status quo. Join the fight to restore traditional marriage by visiting NHforMarriage.com right now!

Sincerely,

Jason Rose

PS: 2012 is the year we take back New Hampshire from liberal, social activists. Visit NHforMarriage.com and sign up today!

 

Santorum Surge (cont.)

With the latest polls showing Santorum at double digits in Iowa for the first time, his SuperPAC is adding $150k to its Iowa air buy, via Politico:

The Daily's Dan Hirschhorn reports that a pro-Santorum super PAC is doubling its media buy in Iowa:

The Super PAC, the Red White and Blue Fund, is adding $150,000 to its initial $200,000 buy, according to a person familiar with the buy. This gives Santorum a bigger presence on the Iowa airwaves than any candidate other than Rick Perry and Ron Paul...

Santorum also picks up HuckPac's former grassroots Iowa organizer Shelley Ahlersmeyer:

Shelley Ahlersmeyer, the grassroots coordinator for Mike Huckabee’s political action committee, today joined Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign.

“The way Shelley works, we don’t consider her one person, she’s more like having a hundred people,” Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, said in a written statement.

Iowans who are fans of Huckabee, the winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, might be familiar with Ahlersmeyer, an Indiana Republican who did Iowa work for HuckPAC. -- Des Moines Register blog

Study: The Parental Happiness Curve Leans Towards Big Families

Mecatornet:

In their 2011 State of Our Unions report (When Baby Makes Three: How Parenthood Makes Life Meaningful, and How Marriage Makes Parenthood Bearable) W. Bradford Wilcox and Elizabeth Marquardt found, like other researchers, that parenthood is typically associated with lower levels of marital happiness among contemporary couples. But that is not the whole picture by any means, as they explain in the following excerpt from the report, subtitled, "Family Size, Faith, and the Meaning of Parenthood".

Given the negative association between marital happiness and parenthood, one might expect that the least happy husbands and wives would be parents of large families. Not so.

In a striking finding, it turns out that the relationship between family size and marital happiness is not linear, but curvilinear (see Figure A1). In other words, according to the Survey of Marital Generosity, the happiest husbands and wives among today’s young couples are those with no children and those with four or more children.

WaPo/ABC Poll Finds Voters Trust Romney, Gingrich Most on Social Issues

From a Washington Post/ABC News Poll:

14. (ASKED OF LEANED REPUBLICANS) Regardless of who you may support, which of the Republican candidates do you trust most to handle "social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage"

Mitt Romney: 26%
Newt Gingrich: 15%
Ron Paul: 12%
Michele Bachmann: 13%
Rick Perry: 7%
Rick Santorum: 4%

New Poll: Romney Leads, Santorum Surges Among Iowa Evangelicals

From a Rasmussen poll released yesterday:

...The new Rasmussen Reports survey of Iowa caucus participants shows Romney on top with 25% of the vote followed by Paul at 20% and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 17%. Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, both at 10%, are the only other candidates in double-digits.

... This poll reflects the highest level of support yet measured for Romney and Paul. It’s also by far the best result yet for Santorum who on Tuesday received an endorsement from Bob Vander Plaats, a major social conservative leader in Iowa. While the Evangelical Christian vote is very divided at this time, Santorum now picks up 19% of it, more than any other candidate. Romney is close behind at 18%.

Audio: Emmer Discusses Hamline Controversy On Local FOX Radio

Tom Emmer sat down with Fox News 100.3 FM radio for a roundtable discussion to talk about his experience with Hamline that is generating a great deal of attention:

Here's a partial transcript of Emmer's comments:

"...I’ve got emails from the university confirming that I was teaching and I’d been hired. But that part aside the other part that is interesting. As soon as those emails were put out in the public, all of the sudden the administration stopped talking. Which is probably good on their part because the recognize you don’t compound wrong with more wrong by going out and lying publicly that we didn’t have an agreement – we did have an agreement.

But that part aside, God bless the professors, because not only are they intolerant but they’re honest about their intolerance. They’re almost arrogant in their position. There was a gentleman who was quoted, in fact he’s the one I met at my first faculty meeting. Jim, I forget the last name [Bonilla], but Jim was quoted as saying “you’re right, the professors did object to Tom” --- by the way, [Hamline Law Professor] David Schultz, a guy who is supposedly a nonpartisan political commentator in this town. He’s the guy who was quoted in the school newspaper saying that the professors, one of their objections… [Schulz said I] should never be in that position. But he made the statement and it was quoted in writing.

Second, now you’ve got in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, I think it was later in the week you had this Jim come out and say “yeah we had two concerns. One we thought it was a bad business decision for Hamline.” Take a look at the Target example he used from the governor’s race and he said “Second, you know if you hire Tom Emmer, someone with a strident view as he has socially” – by the way, the “strident” view is, I just happen to have the opinion, my own, that marriage should be between one man and one woman. Apparently that’s very “strident” for me to believe that. He said that that has a tendency to make gays and lesbians uncomfortable. My response was this: that’s great. On the business level, perhaps the professors should start cleaning the windows in their ivory towers so they can actually see the business world that surrounds the campus because he clearly can’t. He might do a little research into Target, after that unfortunate incident during the campaign which I thought was very unfair. Target sales actually went up. More importantly, I led the other gubernatorial candidates in the age range 18-35, which professor Jim just happens to be last time I checked the target market for undergraduate students for Hamline and other universities.

So before he makes comments on business issues maybe he should research that and then I gave this, Bob, and then I’ll be done. “Hostile environment for gays and lesbians.” What about for people with my point of view? I said to the guy that asked me. I have people throwing things at me. I’m not allowed to have an opinion? I respect yours, Bob, I respect yours, Sue, but I have my own opinions and I tend to voice them. These people don’t have people throwing things at them. I’ve had people threaten me physically. You saw the email I got this week. I’ll tell you what, I also don’t see people stopping them from working. These guys went out of their way to actually cause their employer to break a contract with me, because of my political views."

NY Marriage Flip-Flopper Sen. Carl Kruger Resigns, Pleads Guilty

Finally some remedial justice applied to Albany corruption:

New York state Sen. Carl Kruger has resigned the office he has held since 1994 and then pleaded guilty to participating in bribery schemes in which he accepted nearly half a million dollars in exchange for taking official actions, according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

"With Senator Kruger's guilty plea today, yet another lawmaker-turned-lawbreaker has now been removed from an undeserved position of power in Albany," Bharara said. "Instead of serving the people who elected him, Senator Kruger monetized his public office and served himself. The people of New York expect, deserve and demand honesty and integrity from their public servants. We will not pause in our fight to hold New York's representatives accountable for violating the public's trust, no matter how difficult the challenges presented." -- FOX New York

New Study: Young Couples Shun Marriage Over Divorce Fears

A reminder that marriage (and divorce) habits of one generation pass themselves on to the next generation's attitudes about the institution:

Interviews about marriage with couples who were living together found that two-thirds were worried about the “legal, emotional and economic consequences” of splitting up later.

Many expressed concerns about the “hassle” of divorce lawyers or arranging child support payments, while others had painful memories of their parents divorcing.

However most respondents insisted they did still want to get married one day, but only once they had met “the one” and were emotionally and financially ready for such a commitment.

Experts say the findings, published in the journal Family Relations, disprove the common belief that the marriage rate is declining because young people do not respect the institution of matrimony.

The paper, by Sharon Sassler and Dela Kusi-Appouh at Cornell University and Amanda Miller and the University of Central Oklahoma, states: “More than two-third of those in our sample expressed views about divorce that were in some way connected to their sentiments regarding marriage. -- UK Telegraph

California Nonpartisan Agency Says Economic Effects of SSM "Negligible"

Gay activists often try to point to the Williams Institute's claims that redefining marriage will stimulate state economies. We recently pointed out a small business owner in Washington, DC showing how these claims turned out to be false.

Last week the Associated Press noted that California's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office and Department of Finance found that "the potential financial effect [re-legalizing same-sex marriage in California] on state and local governments would be negligible over the long run." You can see a PDF of their report here.

Interestingly enough, they said the same thing about passing Prop 8 back in 2008.

Bottom line: over the long run, legalizing same-sex marriage won't create an economic boom for states. And there's plenty of evidence that it will cause real harm. That much at least is clear.

FDA Intervenes After Man Gives Away 328 Free Sperm Donations

A snapshot into the unregulated world of sperm donation:

It's costly to give away your sperm for free -- just ask Trent Arsenault. The 36-year-old Northern California man has "fathered" 14 children since 2006, and has 4 more on the way. But they may be his last.

The FDA got wind of his one-man sperm donor operation last year and has ordered him to shut it down. Though he charges nothing for his services, the agency has labeled him a "manufacturer of human cells."

He's fighting the order, but could ultimately face a $100,000 fine if things don't work out.

Trent Arsenault connects with local couples on his website, trentdonor.org. It includes his resume, medical history, STD tests and pictures of babies born of his seed. His efforts have resulted in at least 328 donations to 46 unique recipients, according to the FDA's cease and desist letter. -- Legally Weird

Self-Described "Staunch Democrat" Writes in Support of Emmer

John Jackson writes to the Star Tribune:

Though I am a staunch Democrat, it is disappointing to see Hamline refuse to hire a conservative because of his political beliefs.

Fifty years ago, pacifist and socialist University of Minnesota Prof. Mulford Sibley drew controversy with the following statement: "Personally, I should like to see on campus one or two Communist professors, a chapter of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, a society for the promotion of free love, a League for the Overthrow of Government by Jeffersonian Violence (LOGJV), an anti-automation league, and perhaps a nudist club."

Some of these organizations were pure myth. The U did not endorse the organizations listed, but defended Sibley's belief in academic freedom and diversity of opinion. Hamline should take a lesson.

Santorum Surge? Bob Vander Plaats and Chuck Hurley Endorse

The New York Times The Caucus blog on two major endorsements of Rick Santorum by prominent Iowa social conservative leaders:

Two weeks before the Republican nominating contest opens at the Iowa caucuses, former SenatorRick Santorum of Pennsylvania has won a highly coveted endorsement from one of the state’s social conservative leaders.

Bob Vander Plaats, who has sought to put his imprint on the Republican presidential race for months, announced Tuesday that he would support Mr. Santorum. Mr. Vander Plaats and other evangelical Christians have talked openly about their struggle to unite behind one candidate, but he urged others to follow his lead.

Mr. Santorum, campaigning Tuesday in Pella, Iowa, said the endorsement demonstrates how evangelicals in the state increasingly “see this as the campaign that is going to be the conservative alternative.”

... Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, which opposes same-sex marriage, also endorsed Mr. Santorum. “I urge every undecided Iowa caucusgoer to take a close look at Rick, to study the scriptures, to pray hard,” Mr. Hurley said. “For above all, we answer to God for our vote.

NJ Family Policy Council Asks For Support of Viki Knox

A call to action from the New Jersey Family Policy Council:

I’m writing to inform you of another Union Board of Education meeting taking place tomorrow night at the Union High School library.

From information that we’ve received, there appears to be a witch hunt taking place against Viki Knox, the teacher who objected to a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History Month display in the school’s hallways.

In the latest turn of events, the Board of Education’s investigation of Mrs. Knox’s comments appears to have degenerated into a witch hunt, consisting of spurious charges and intimidating tactics towards Mrs. Knox.

We know it’s almost Christmas and are mindful of your need to prepare. But for those who are able to come out and either speak in the public comments session or just be visible, we ask you to consider lending your presence and support to assist this fellow Christian in her undeserved distress.

You can sign NOM's petition in support of Viki Knox HERE.