Town Hall columnist Mike Adams pens an open letter to Bank of America's CEO:
I want to bring to your attention a recent decision made by your HR team that I think does not reflect your leadership of Bank of America. Dr. Frank Turek was fired as a vendor for his political and religious views, even though those views were never mentioned or expressed during his work at Bank of America.
... Dr. Turek was abruptly fired by an HR representative. Why? She explained that someone Googled his name and discovered that he had written Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone. Marriage was not the topic of his presentation, nor has it ever been in all his years of working with the bank. Moreover, as his book reveals (although no one at the Bank is likely to have read it), Dr. Turek treats all people with respect, whether he agrees with them politically or not. Nevertheless, in the name of “inclusion” and “diversity,” he was immediately excluded for his political and religious viewpoint.
Mr. Moynihan, please answer this question: Do you have to have certain political or religious views to work at Bank of America?
... I ask you to consider this: What action would have been taken by your bank had Dr. Turek written a book in favor of same-sex marriage but a conservative employee had complained? Got a bit of a double standard? Or is that somehow “different”?
“It’s an opportunity to make the ultimate sacrifice. Lay your life down for someone else.” This is how one of many young people interviewed for a powerful new video about love and marriage produced by the Ruth Institute describes the purpose of marriage.
Through a variety of interviews, the video, a project of The Emerging Leaders program, highlights the intense desire that people in the youngest generations have for self-sacrificial, unconditional and lifelong love – and the hope that they have that they will be able to find it.
... The video concludes with the youth each committing themselves “to lifelong married love.”
“I love this video,” Ruth Institute President Jennifer Roback Morse told LifeSiteNews.com, explaining that at the heart of the “I Commit” video are “hope, commitment, and a fresh start for the institution of marriage in American society and beyond.”
Frank Turek is an award-winning author or coauthor of three books who also hosts a weekly TV show. He writes in TownHall:
"...the standard arguments for homosexuality and same-sex marriage don’t work. That’s why some homosexual activists will continue to smear conservatives as “bigots” in order to bully them out of the debate and even out of their jobs. In America today, it’s much easier to win with demagoguery than evidence. If you convince the majority that your opponents are “bigots,” then you automatically win even if you’re the bully actually practicing bigotry...
Will they get away with their bigotry and bullying? Not if Americans start thinking. Thinking people realize that equating homosexuality with race, though presently fashionable, is just as fallacious as calling marriage based in biology a form of bigotry. As G. K. Chesterton pointed out, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
As we reported last week, Public Policy Polling released an announcement at the end of July that a majority of New Jerseyans support legalizing same-sex “marriage.” But a reporter at Politicker NJ did a little homework on the statistics and discovered that PPP’s judgment was too hasty—or perhaps loaded from the start.
The polling organization asked two questions: should same-sex marriage be legal or illegal, and should legal recognition take the form of marriage or of civil unions. 47% of respondents said same-sex unions should be recognized—only five percent more than the 42% who said they should not. But on the second question, “if the choice was between gay marriage, civil unions and no recognition at all, the public evenly splits between gay marriage (41%) and civil unions (40%).”
The way to read these results is not that the two opinions are neck and neck, with same-sex “marriage” proponents having a slight edge. If you add the 40% who prefer civil unions to the 17% who want no legal recognition at all, the picture changes. The poll reflects a clear 57% majority opposed to same-sex marriage!
The government could save literally billions simply by taking modest steps to fight rampant divorce, according to prominent divorce-reform advocates.
Divorce “places real burdens on children, adults, and the state,” points out W. Bradford Wilcox, the University of Virginia National Marriage Project director.
“On the latter point, libertarians and conservatives need to realize that when marriage breaks down, court costs go up, children are more likely to fail in school and later in the marketplace, more police are needed to handle delinquent boys and young men, etc. So the breakdown of marriage causes the size and scope of state authority to expand.”
The costs of divorce, and efforts to reform divorce law, were the subject of a recent Washington Times article, where it was reported that on average a divorce costs a couple $2,500, up front. But that doesn’t take into account the costs of government support for single-parent families, which the Times reports can cost anywhere from $20-30,000/year. Multiply that figure by the number of divorced and single-parent families, and you’re looking at figures well into the many billions of dollars.
The cost of family failure continues to be a huge charge on the public purse. The Relationships Foundation’s annual index of the cost of family failure shows that the overall cost remains very high – at £41.74 billion (=$60 billion dollars). This means failed relationships cost each current UK taxpayer £1,364 ($1,964) a year.
David Weprin is facing huge backlash in the Orthodox Jewish community for his vote to legalize same-sex marriage. He does his best to get out of his predicament when faced with tough questions about it:
A New Jersey school district has apologized to parents after requiring high school students to read books that include graphic depictions of lesbian sex and a homosexual orgy.
... The books were on a required summer reading list for middle school and high school students. The district decided to pull the book off the list, with the start of school just days away.
... “I don’t think [the subject matter is] relevant for any teenager,” parent Robin Myers told the newspaper. Her daughter was assigned to read the book. “I was just kind of in shock,” she said.
... the school district’s summer reading list was prepared by a committee made up of teachers, librarians and school administrators. The board of education ultimately approved the list.
“They read the books,” said [Chuck Earling, superintendent of Monroe Township Schools in Williamstown, N.J]. “They didn’t feel it was inappropriate based on the language that’s used, common language used on the street.”
The Minnesota State Fair always features a buffet of politics, and this year fairgoers have a new issue to chew on: a constitutional vote on marriage.
... "Good morning, would you like some information on Minnesota for Marriage?" ask volunteers from Minnesotans for Marriage.
There were no long debates, as people mostly politely accepted or declined the information on their way into the fair.
Organizers on both sides hope to run their own booths inside the fair next year, just a few months before Minnesotans cast their votes on the marriage amendment.
WASHINGTON – The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) released the following statement today announcing that Gov. Rick Perry has signed their marriage pledge:
"Kudos to Gov. Rick Perry for making it clear: he's a marriage champion!," said Brian Brown, president of NOM. "The purpose of NOM's Marriage Pledge is to move from vague values statements to concrete actions to protect marriage. Gov. Perry joins Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum as a signer of NOM Marriage Pledge. By doing so, Perry makes crystal clear that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, gay marriage is going to be a bigger issue in 2012 than it was in 2008, because the difference between the GOP nominee and Pres. Obama is going to be large and clear. We look forward to demonstrating that being for marriage is a winning position for a presidential candidate."
To schedule an interview with Brian Brown, President of the National Organization for Marriage, please contact Mary Beth Hutchins (x105), [email protected], or Elizabeth Ray (x130), [email protected], at 703-683-5004.
For the first time in 20 years, the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Center for Health Statistics has released a detailed, state-by-state look at marriage rates nationwide.
... The statistics reflected regional differences. For instance, divorce rates are higher than the national average in the Southeast (10.2 per 1,000 men and 11.1 per 1,000 women) because marriage rates are higher there, and lower in the Northeast (7.2 for men and 7.5 for women) because people there tend to marry at older ages and less often.
CNN anchor Don Lemon is openly gay, and writes about the "new marriage dilemma" posed by the legalization of gay marriage in New York -- gays who don't want to get married:
Though it wasn't celebrated by larger society, it used to be that gay men once enjoyed that same freedom to play the field. But thanks to our freedom-fighting brethren, not anymore.
... as same-sex marriage is becoming legalized in places like New York and beyond, many of us suddenly have to face the reality and the question that many of our straight friends have always faced: "When are you going to settle down and get married?"
More and more these days, I hear gay couples lamenting over it in restaurants, at work and at dinner parties. My friends call me with their own similar accounts.
"...Far from encouraging illegal activity, [Florida teacher Jerry Buell] was expressing an opinion that's reflected in the laws of 41 states, including Florida, which have either a constitutional prohibition against same-sex marriage or a law against it.
What he appears to have violated is a demand for some sort of political orthodoxy placed upon him by his employers.
Had he used the same blunt language — or even cited scripture — to defend gay marriage, we very much doubt he would have been suspended or disciplined.
The way we see it, he deserves immediate reinstatement. While employers aren't without prerogatives in regulating the "off hours" activities of their employees, such rules of conduct need to be laid down in advance and not imposed after the fact and at the whim of whatever viewpoint holds a majority on the school board at a given time.
As an American, Jerry Buell is guaranteed the freedom to practice his religion. Just because the Bible's admonitions against homosexuality strike some people as incorrect thinking doesn't mean they don't exist or that many Christians don't recognize them as the word of God.
He's also guaranteed freedom of speech, which either works for everyone or no one at all."
Mr. Buell has since been reinstated by the school board.
FOXNews
WASHINGTON – The National Organization for Marriage (
