Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz canceled an appearance at one of the most prominent megachurches in the country after an online petition condemned the congregation as anti-gay _ a charge the church denies.
Schultz had been scheduled to speak Friday at The Global Leadership Summit organized by the Willow Creek Association, based in South Barrington, Ill. The annual event draws tens of thousands of viewers via satellite. Past speakers have included former President Bill Clinton, GE's Jack Welch and rock singer Bono.
A Starbucks spokeswoman confirmed Schultz would not speak as scheduled, but she declined to say more.
However, at the start of the event Thursday, the pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, Bill Hybels, said Schultz had canceled suddenly after a petition was posted on the Internet a week ago that said his participation would be unacceptable.
The petition at Change.org accused the megachurch of "anti-gay persecution" over Willow Creek's past relationship with Exodus International, a Christian ministry that offers to help gays and lesbians change their sexual orientation. Willow Creek cut ties with Exodus in 2009, church spokeswoman Susan DeLay said.
Hybels said that Willow Creek does expect its members to follow biblical ethics and reserve sex for marriage between a man and a woman, but welcomes worshipers of all backgrounds.
"... As a Catholic, a 20-year member of the Virginia General Assembly, the author of Virginia's 2006 voter-approved one-man, one-woman Constitutional Marriage Amendment, and a graduate ofMaryland public schools, I take issue with Gov. Martin O'Malley's insinuation that Baltimore's archbishop should remain silent while the governor attempts to alter marriage — nature's most fundamental relationship for mankind.
... The governor said the bishop had a right to define and administer Catholic Sacraments. I believe Governor O'Malley, who is challenging 6,000 years of Western religious and moral teaching, has an obligation to define same-sex marriage, and explain how he intends to administer same-sex legal status when this radical change impacts the rest of us.
If so-called same sex-marriage becomes a "civil right" in Maryland, the family, the building block of society, will be negatively impacted. Tax exemptions of objecting churches and private schools will eventually be revoked, as will their licenses to place children for adoption and foster care. Schools will be required to promote (not just tolerate) homosexuality, as many already do."
The campus left [at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington] keeps handing me more material to write about in my weekly column. The endless supply of column-worthy madness is fueled by the endless degree of hypocrisy in the name of campus diversity. That isn’t surprising because our campus has not just one but five diversity offices. And it really makes you wonder what these people sit around and do all day while the government is going bankrupt by over-spending your money.
In the case of our LGBTQIA Office, the answer is simple: they investigate and then endorse churches based on their stance on homosexuality. And they print lists of approved gay-friendly churches using official university letter-head. Then they circulate their approved church list on state-owned computers to other state employees who then recommend the approved churches to their students.
Michele Bachmann [at the Iowa Straw Poll] emphasized her stand against marriage for same-sex couples and her opposition to abortion.
“You showed the world when you did not retain those justices in your last election,” Bachmann said to a screaming crowd, referring to the members of the Iowa Supreme Court who were part of the unanimous 2009 decision ruling a law limiting marriage to a man and a woman was unconstitutional.
She continued: “And as president of the United States I will only appoint justices that follow the constitution and don’t legislate from the bench.”
Charles Limandri at Catholic Radio of San Diego recently interviewed GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. You can find the audio
here
.
Here's a sample of the interview back-and-forth:
Charles Limandri: When I read in your book that there’s a strong connection between having strong families and having strong economic growth in how strong families are directly tied to the whole concept of the American free enterprise system, it struck me as particularly insightful in light of what’s going on in our country now. We’re becoming increasingly secular, the family is under attack and economically we’re experiencing woes like we’ve never known in our history it seems. So what is the connection there?
Newt Gingrinch: You have to recognize that free enterprise is based on free people and […] free people are based on faith. The very basis of our belief and freedom is that we believe we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. The very source of our strength is that we believe these are truths […] and so there’s a core absolute overlap between free enterprise, freedom and freedom of faith. And if you don’t have freedom of faith in the end you’re not going to have free enterprise because there’s no moral force that defends and protects you…
NOM Chairman Maggie Gallagher will participate with many others in this SCOTUSblog symposium:
Continuing with our summer symposia, for the next two weeks SCOTUSblog will be hosting an on-line debate on the topic of same-sex marriage. Although neither the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) nor California’s Proposition 8 (now embodied in Article 1 Section 7.5 of California’s Constitution) is currently before the Court, challenges to both have been percolating in the lower courts in California, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and elsewhere and are likely to reach the Court soon, even if not this Term.
During this symposium, guest bloggers will weigh in on how the Court is likely to approach the question of same-sex marriage. Authors will consider, among other things, whether the issue of same-sex marriage is ripe for the Court’s review, what standard of review the Court should use if it does reach the merits, and how the Court’s decisions in cases such as Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas will affect its views on the constitutionality of DOMA and Proposition 8, as well as broader questions about federalism and religious liberty.
[Participants will include:]
Carlos Ball – Rutgers University School of Law
Bob Barr - Former Representative for Georgia’s Seventh Congressional District
Thomas Berg – University of St. Thomas School of Law
Dale Carpenter – University of Minnesota Law School
Erwin Chemerinsky – UC Irvine School of Law
David Cruz – USC Gould School of Law
William C. Duncan – Marriage Law Foundation
John Eastman – Chapman University School of Law
William Eskridge – Yale Law School
Maggie Gallagher – Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
Charles Fried – Harvard Law School
Andrew Koppelman – Northwestern University School of Law
Pamela Karlan – Stanford Law School
Robert Levy – Cato Institute
Laurence Tribe – Harvard Law School
Brian Raum – Alliance Defense Fund
Ruthann Robson – CUNY School of Law
Robin Wilson – Washington & Lee School of Law
Kenji Yoshino – New York University School of Law
"...the Wall Street Journal has waded once again into controversial social territory. On Saturday, Stanford law professor Ralph Richard Banks — author of the forthcoming book, Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone — urged black women to help save marriage by marrying men of other races. Black women “are the most unmarried group of people in the U.S.” and “lead by far the most segregated intimate lives of any minority group in the U.S.” According to Banks, black women are less than half as likely to marry interracially as black men and only about 1 in 20 marry across racial lines. If black women only marry black men, and if achievement gaps and high incarceration rates leave fewer eligible black men, then a marriage crisis is inevitable.
While he hasn’t hit Tiger Mother territory yet, Banks’s piece was the most-read article in theJournal over a weekend that included a debt downgrade, and he’s certainly not afraid to ask tough questions. The sociological importance of his work would be hard to overstate. By now we know that marriage is a firewall against poverty and abuse, and the decline of marriage (and not just in the black community) is a culture-shaking phenomenon. It’s also a problem that defies any easy fix, depending as it does on the deeply personal choices of millions upon millions of Americans."
An Australian Catholic bishop has decried the decision of national census officials to count some homosexual couples as “married,” despite the fact that same-sex marriages are not legally recognized in Australia.
... Marriage, the bishop argued, “is a legally defined reality that can be objectively determined.” Since marriage is defined in Australia as a union between a man and a woman, the census results will deliberately distort that objective reality, he said.
Despite an attack on its Facebook page and a cold rain, an estimated 15,000 people showed up for Chile’s first “March for Values” on July 30 in the capital of Santiago, expressing their support for the institution of the family in the face of a [gay] campaign to create civil unions and homosexual “marriage” in the country.
Marchers included a mix of Catholics and Protestants, cooperating in an “exemplary” way according to organizer Salvador Salazar.
Poway based attorney Theresa Erickson, a nationally recognized surrogacy attorney (in part from her east coast based public relations firm), was just snared in a black market baby selling practice. Babies born overseas fetched up to $100,000.00 per child.
Parents had no idea the infants were purchased.
... Erickson admitted to falsifying court documents in which San Diego Court judges were told the unborn children were the products of legitimate surrogacy arrangements. After the documents were court-approved, Erickson simply added the names of the parents who had been duped into a purchase.
Authorities also said Erickson submitted claims to the State of California's Access for Infants and Mothers program to pay for the children's delivery.
... In anticipation, Erickson pulled down her website which also featured law in areas including [Surrogacy Law and Egg Donation Law].
... Erickson did not act alone. Carla Chambers and Maryland attorney Hilary Neiman, were co-conspirators and plead guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges earlier.
WASHINGTON, DC — Today Iowa voters endorsed National Organization for Marriage (NOM) pledge supporter and marriage defender Michele Bachmann. Further three out of the four top vote-getters signed the National Organization for Marriage's Marriage Pledge.
"Today, Iowans showed the country that judges do not speak for the people and that Iowans, like the majority of the country, support marriage as the union of one man and one woman," said Brian Brown, president of NOM.
In the days before the straw poll, NOM, joined by the Susan B. Anthony List and Family Research Council, visited 22 cities across Iowa urging Iowans to go to Ames and vote for a pro-marriage candidate. Iowans responded by supporting Bachmann, Pawlenty and Santorum, all of whom signed the marriage pledge.
View Bachmann's marriage pledge here: http://www.nomblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Bachmann-Signed-Pledge.pdf
To schedule an interview with Brian Brown, president of NOM, or Maggie Gallagher, chairman of NOM, contact Elizabeth Ray (x. 130) or Mary Beth Hutchins (x.105) at 703-683-5004.
At the Fox News presidential debate in Ames, Iowa on Thursday, Byron York of the Washington Examiner asked five of the candidates (including three of the four signers of NOM's marriage pledge!) about their views on same-sex marriage, civil unions and a federal marriage amendment.
In case you missed the debate, we've put together a short 5-minute montage of each of the candidate responses. Click here to watch.
Later today, Iowa voters will vote for their favorite candidate at the Ames Straw Poll, the first real test of the candidates' momentum and organizational support in this young 2012 presidential campaign. As our Values Voter Bus pulled into Ames last evening, we wrapped up a 5-day, 23-city tour of the State of Iowa with FRC Action and the Susan B. Anthony List, energizing social conservatives and reminding all of us to get involved in support of pro-marriage candidates.
One of the key purposes of the bus tour has been to focus attention on marriage and life issues early in this presidential campaign. Iowa voters—and especially Iowa Republicans—are overwhelmingly committed to defending marriage and life, even to the point last fall of firing three justices who forced same-sex marriage on the state. Who better to test the Republican presidential candidates on marriage?
We'll see later today who passes this first test of the 2012 campaign!
Faithfully,
Brian S. Brown President National Organization for Marriage
A study by University at Buffalo sociologists has found that the portrayal of women in the popular media over the last several decades has become increasingly sexualized, even "pornified." The same is not true of the portrayal of men.
These findings may be cause for concern, the researchers say, because previous research has found sexualized images of women to have far-reaching negative consequences for both men and women.
... The study will be published in the September issue of the journal Sexuality & Culture and is available online here.
Reuters reports via The LA Times that the Sesame Workshop has closed the closet door on the recent push for long-time characters Bert & Ernie to enter into a same-sex marriage:
"The educational workshop behind the 40 year-old TV series dismissed the idea of a made-for-TV, same-sex puppet wedding in response to an online campaign and petition to have the two "Sesame Street" characters get married as a way to beat homophobia and encourage tolerance of gay people.
"...Sesame Workshop noted on Thursday that as puppets, Bert and Ernie don't have sexual preferences.
"'Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves.'
"In recent days, almost 9,000 people have signed a petition encouraging the wedding at http://www.change.org and/or become friends of a special "Bert and Ernie Get Married" Facebook page, sparking a lively debate on Twitter and other social media."
The petition makes the absurd assertion: "'We are not asking that 'Sesame Street' do anything crude or disrespectful by allowing Bert & Ernie to marry. It can be done in a tasteful way.'"
The petitioners apparently fail to realize that pushing the SSM agenda on an educational show geared to pre-schoolers is of itself tasteless.
...the fatal flaw is that the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] leaves out the most important sector of society that makes the private and public sectors able to function: the social sector.
... Further skewing the books, every time an intact family breaks up—which represents a huge loss to parents and especially to children—the GDP calculators, deeming that significant, suddenly turn on and count all the derivative activities of divorce as positive indicators of economic growth.
Believe it or not, every divorce, because it generates activity in the private and public sectors, boosts the GDP. That activity includes greater workloads for divorce lawyers as well as the divorce-court and child-support systems, heightened demand for second households, therapy for the children, as well as new or increased employment commitments for the mother outside the home. In fact, as a divorcing mother is often forced into the full-time labor force, she may spend relatively more money on clothes, commuting, daycare, and dining out. Even when eating at home, she may opt more for costlier prepared foods than cooking at home.
At the same time, the divorced father will increase both energy and water consumption in setting up a second household. He may eat even less at home and frequent bars more often.
The GDP rises in response to all these inputs, but the net effect is reduced happiness, the handicapping of the next generation, and a less promising economy down the road. So in the GDP universe, the destruction of a little civilization through divorce—which splits a strong joint home economy into two weaker ones—is considered good for the larger economy. But in this same distorted GDP universe, the success of married couples in maintaining a lasting union harms the economy at large.
