NOM BLOG

Long Island Catholic Newspaper: Grisanti "Took the Catholic" Out of Vote

LetThePeopleVote.comFrom the Long Island Catholic (the official newspaper for the Catholic diocese of Rockville Center):

New York State Senator Mark Grisanti ran as a Catholic Republican opponent of same-sex “marriage” in 2010. In June 2011, he became a key vote ensuring its passage, telling a local newspaper: “If I take the Catholic out of me, which is hard to do, then absolutely they should have these rights.”

Richard E. Barnes, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, told CNA Grisanti showed a lack of integrity as a Catholic by “ignoring” the “teachings he knows full well” on the subject of family life.

“I don’t think that a public official should ever ‘take the Catholic out’ of himself or herself, because Catholic positions are meshed perfectly with public policy positions,” said Barnes, who directs public policy advocacy efforts for the New York bishops.

“No person should say that they are a public official and need not live according to the tenets of their faith. And I find it disappointing that he felt he had to do that.”

Dan Savage, Leading Gay Sex Ethicist: "I Wish GOP Were All F-ing Dead"

Savage walked his comment back in a later blog post, but on national TV this is what he said:

Friday's "Real Time" on HBO contained some of the most vile political talk ever broadcast on national television.

In one panel segment, gay sex advice columnist Dan Savage said of Republicans, "I wish they were all f--king dead."

... Is this really the kind of discussion HBO condones? A guest saying he wants about 40 percent of the nation dead?

Exactly how does someone get away with saying something like that on national television?

60 Judges Promise to Marry Gay Couples, as Marriage Clerks Step Down Under Threat of Criminal Prosecution

LetThePeopleVote.comThe New York Law Journal reports:

Almost 60 judges in New York City have volunteered to help remove the last legal roadblock to the immediate weddings of gay and lesbian couples once they finally are recognized by the state on a Sunday in 10 days, court officials said yesterday.

...Same-sex marriage "has been a long time coming and many long time friends have waited for years," said Justice Rosalyn H. Richter, of the Appellate Division, First Department, who is one of an estimated 20 openly gay judges in the state. [...] Justice Richter plans to marry her partner, although she said that the date and other arrangements are private.

...couples who obtain a marriage licenses cannot be married for 24 hours. Those who want an on-the-spot wedding on July 24 will have to go before a Supreme Court justice or a County Court judge to obtain a waiver of the state-required waiting period. [...] So far, few communities upstate have announced plans to follow the city's example.

...Under §13-b of the Domestic Relations Law, a waiver can be granted when there is a danger of imminent death or there is some other emergency and the public interest would be promoted by an immediate wedding or in cases where a delay would cause "irreparable injury or great hardship" to the couple.

Court observers say that waivers are almost always granted when they are requested. One judge reported that he had recently waived the waiting period to accommodate a couple who wanted to make plane connections.

There are 1,250 judges in New York state.

What NY Sen. Alesi Left Out: Priest Who 'Embraced' Him for SSM Vote is Excommunicated

Via LifeSiteNews:

When New York state Senator James Alesi announced to gay “marriage” supporters recently that his priest “embraced” him at mass after he cast his vote for gay “marriage,” he failed to mention one important point – his priest and his religious community have been excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

However, the New York Times reports that Alesi belongs to Spiritus Christi Church, which broke with Rome in the 1990s “in order to support gay men and lesbians,” as well as female clergy.

Maggie Gallagher: HRC-Led Attacks Will Boost Bachmann in Iowa

Michele Bachmann is rising quickly in the Iowa polls, and NOM Chairman Maggie Gallagher argues in Politico that efforts by HRC and other gay rights groups to demonize Bachmann are going to backfire among conservative caucus-goers in Iowa:

... The third-term Minnesota congresswoman and her husband, therapist Marcus Bachmann, have a history of battling gay rights groups in Minnesota long before she stepped onto the national stage.

“Michele Bachmann is the very definition of a target-rich environment, and given her husband’s positions and things she’s said in past she’s going to have a really hard time appearing as a reasonable mainstream candidate,” said Michael Cole-Schwartz, the communications director for the group Human Rights Campaign.

... Bachmann’s allies say attacks from gay rights groups will backfire.

“The more that they attack Michele Bachmann on these grounds, the better her chances of winning the Iowa caucuses are,” said Maggie Gallagher, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, who said she’d admired Bachmann since 2004. “The Iowa base is extremely upset about same-sex marriage and I don’t think they’re going to look kindly on these attacks.”

ADF Offers Help to NY Clerks Seeking Religious Exemption Over SSM

We've been actively tracking the New York clerks who have announced their intention to resign over SSM. If you know a New York clerk responsible for issuing marriage licenses, please help us bring this to their attention:

According to a recently released Alliance Defense Fund memorandum New York Law requires employers to accommodate sincerely held religious beliefs under Executive Law § 296(10)(a). This section of the law requires employers to accommodate an employee’s religious observance or practice, “unless, after engaging in a bona fide effort, the employer demonstrates that it is unable to reasonably accommodate the employee’s or prospective employee’s sincerely held religious observance or practice…without undue hardship.”

Furthermore, a specific provision of New York’s Domestic Relations Law § 15(3) allows all of the clerk’s duties in issuing marriage licenses to be delegated to a deputy clerk or other municipal employee. It would seem reasonable to conclude that a locality could appoint a deputy clerk or another civil servant, that does not have an objection to same-sex “marriages”, to issue these licenses.

Municipal clerks should review the Alliance Defense Fund Memo and if they desire free legal counsel, contact the Alliance Defense Fund. -- New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms

NY SSM Prompts More Marriage Officers to Resign

LetThePeopleVote.comIn the Times Herald-Record (covering the Hudson Valley):

Both of Deerpark's marriage officers are resigning their posts on the heels of the change in the state's marriage laws recognizing same-sex unions.

Town Clerk Flo Santini has resigned as a marriage officer. Supervisor Karl Brabenec says he's planning on turning in his letter of resignation as a marriage officer at Monday's Town Board meeting.

Brabenec, a Republican, said his resignation was in response to the law allowing same-sex marriages in New York, which clashes with his Roman Catholic faith. "I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman," he said.

As a civil official and a marriage officer, Brabanec would be required to perform any legal marriages, so he is giving up the post.
... Marriage officiant is an unpaid, volunteer position in the town and requires officials to be available on weekends. Brabenec said at this time, the town has no plans to replace the marriage officers.

If you need any more evidence that SSM advocates believe faith in Genesis is the same as racial bigotry--and intend to act on that aggressive and radical belief--here it is:

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the town is leaving itself open to legal action if it refused to provide anybody to perform civil marriages.

"It reminds me of a school district in the South (in the 1960s) that closed rather than integrate," she said. "The time for that type of bigotry has ended."

 

Bishop Harry Jackson on Maryland Marriage Fight

Minnesota Public Radio interviews Bishop Harry Jackson on the renewed efforts to push SSM in Maryland:

Gay rights activists in Md. announced this week they'd renew their campaign to have the state recognize same sex marriages. But many religious leaders are still vocalizing opposition to same sex marriage, and to learn where their efforts stand, host Michel Martin speaks with Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., senior pastor of Hope Christian Church.

If Needed, a Referendum in Maryland Against SSM Just Got Easier

New technology is making it easier to meet Maryland's byzantine petition requirements. Power to the people!

The system is simple. Thousands of voters, egged on by a media blitz on talk radio and Web sites and through targeted e-mail, found their way tomdpetitions.com. They typed their names, birth dates, Zip codes and e-mail addresses into a basic form, just as if they were buying a sweater online. The software then tapped into voter-registration data to fill out the petition sheet in the precise format the law requires. The voters then printed out the form, signed it and mailed it to Parrott.

... “This petition drive really sets new ground rules,” he said of the use of the Web and software.

Parrott and some other Republicans are hopeful that the petition’s success could change how voters in the liberal-leaning state weigh in on the laws passed by their elected representatives. --WaPo

Video: SSM Advocates Raise Money Against MN Marriage Amendment with Video of Two Young Boys Kissing

We've had the unfortunate duty before of having to inform you about how "F*K H8" tries to propagandize young kids to become activists for gay marriage. We can't underscore how offensive this video is (and this is the "censored" version).

But videos like these are being used right now to raise money to defeat marriage in Minnesota.

We also must ask again, when will other gay groups condemn the F*K H8 campaign tactics? If they can't condemn it, do they support this sort of thing?

To help our efforts to protect marriage and the next generation visit MinnesotaForMarriage.com today to sign up and donate!

Watch, if you choose to, having been warned:

Video: Pawlenty Releases New Pro-Marriage Ad in Iowa

The race for marriage voters in Iowa intensifies!!

Orthodox Priest On Marriage, Morality, and Spiritual Warfare

Fr. Alexander W. C. Webster is a retired military chaplain and colonel in the US Army Reserve. He's also a moral theologian, parish priest and on the board of advisers for the American Orthodox Institute, and writes about the debate over marriage in the Orthodox Church:

Fr. Alexander wrote the response posted below to Fr. Alexis Vinogradov’s essay praising Fr. Arida’s advocacy of the homosexualist agenda in the Orthodox Church. A friend of mine asked me, “Why are the homosexualists bringing the culture wars into the Church?” Good question. Why are they?

Just when we begin to wonder whether some of the recent musings of OCA priests and laity on homosexuality may not be what they seem, along comes another one that raises the rhetorical ante and reminds us that we are, indeed, whether we desire it or not, engaged in spiritual warfare.

In a bizarre, presumably unintended way, Fr. Alexis Vinogradov’s latest “reflection” on the OCA”News” website is another case of the gift that keeps on giving. It affords us who cherish the moral tradition of the Church, along with all the wonderful facets of Orthodoxy as the light of the world as long as we reflect Christ the True Light, an unexpected windfall—a sobering glimpse of the way the spirit of the world (note the lower case) has captured the minds, speech, and, actions of some who would take it upon themselves to lecture and even scold us...

He has thrown down a gauntlet for all the Orthodox world to see, a public challenge to abandon ancient Christian verities under the guise of a “conversation.” I, for one, am ready—and, I hope, able—to retrieve that gauntlet, brush aside the pseudo-dialogue, and engage in spiritual combat.

Archbishop Kurtz on Marriage: "We Can Make a Difference" with "Sacrificial Love"

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz is the vice president of the US Bishops, and credits his appointment partially due to his outspoken defense of marriage and dedication to building a healthy marriage culture. Jim Graves of Catholic World Report interviews him:

What advice do you offer those who worry about the decline of marriage in our society?

Archbishop Kurtz: First, that we can make a difference. One of the first recipes for success in any venture is the commitment that somehow, by our faithful witness and work, we can help shape positive things in our lives and within the lives of others. That is empowered by the grace of Christ.

If we don’t have that conviction, then we become victims of what I call self-fulfilling prophecies of doom. There are some who throw up their hands and say that a deterioration of laws that protect marriage is inevitable. They will be inevitable if we ourselves do not have faithful witness. And that faithful witness needs to reach out in love to every human person. God has a plan for everyone. And ultimately we need to be helping everyone recognize that plan. In the case of a married couple, that plan is intimately linked with their sacrificial and generous love for each other and overflowing to their children.

... When I speak on marriage, I spend most of my time not speaking on its legal ramifications, but on the need for renewal of sacrificial love in our culture, especially within family life. In general, that’s the greatest need. Too many people place their emphasis on individual satisfaction, a turning in on oneself and one’s perceived needs. Sacrificial love, in contrast, tends to lead people to happy lives. We need more examples of marriages based on sacrificial love.

The Problem with Perry: Legal Expert Takes on Judge Walker

Thomas Clark, a former editor for the Columbia Law Review and judicial clerk on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit takes on Judge Walker's gravely flawed arguments in Perry V. Schwarzenegger. The entire article is worth reading but here are the highlights:

Walker realizes he has to engage in some clever sleight-of-hand to overcome the fact that same-sex marriage has not only never been recognized as a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution, but indeed had never even existed in the United States until 2004.

... [On the misappropriation of Loving v. Virginia to argue for SSM] Marriage as a union of man and woman for the purpose of procreation, far from being an irrelevancy to the Loving Court, was an assumption too obvious to need stating—and indeed was what rendered the ban on interracial marriage particularly invidious.

... [On the false gender equality argument] It should be obvious that this distinction between genders, and consequent difference in the ramifications of same-sex and opposite-sex unions, need imply no inequality among the genders. The regrettable past invoked by Judge Walker, including the doctrine of coverture, by which a woman’s assets and legal identity were “subsumed” under her husband’s upon marriage, indeed “is passed” and rightly so. But the correction of this past inequality means assuring equal legal standing and protections for the rights of men and women in marriage, not the legal pretense that all aspects of masculine and feminine nature are to be obliterated or ignored.

... [On Walker's irrational claim of "no rational basis" for Prop 8] "Walker is callous in his summary dismissal of proponents’ arguments. Proponents submitted briefs and testimony that Proposition 8 would at least arguably serve the purposes of (1) promoting stability and responsibility in naturally procreative relationships, (2) promoting enduring and stable family structures for the responsible raising and care of children by their biological parents, (3) increasing the probability that natural procreation will occur within stable, enduring, and supporting family structures, (4) promoting the natural and mutually beneficial bonds between parents and their biological children, (5) increasing the probability that each child will be raised by both of his or her biological parents, (6) increasing the probability that each child will be raised by both a father and a mother, and (7) increasing the probability that each child will have a legally recognized father and mother.

... [On religion and nature being the ultimate objects of Walker's attack] So what exactly is the purpose of these extensive fact findings on the doctrinal tenets of major Christian groups against homosexuality? Read together with the findings that social acceptance, and not mere legal equality, is the object of plaintiffs, it becomes increasingly clear that the ground is being laid for an assault on the perceived obstacles to full acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, which are two. First, as Walker already has quoted Segura to explain, is religion, and specifically the religious world view adopted by the above-quoted tenets that provide for a moral norm under which homosexual marriage would contravene the common good. Second, and closely aligned to it, is the natural fact that these world views interpret as counter-indicating homosexuality, namely, the sexual complementarity of man and woman.

Clark's conclusion:

Perry aims a dagger at the heart of marriage as we know it. Taking it at its word and applying principles of consistency and logic, it cannot help but result in the expansion of marriage until it encompasses bigamy, incest, wider groupings of association, and finally loses its meaning. As regrettable as this would be, it might be preferable to a regime that insisted on a sacred marriage based on sexual intimacy, but did so in a way that tried to obliterate any distinction based on gender. What would follow would inevitably be a gradual delinking of marriage and intimacy from biological procreation, and the substitution of technological means and commercialized surrogacy for traditional biological mother-and-father-based families. Ultimately, the temptation would arise for the state to take over the role of assigning children to suitable “parents,” since biological ties would no longer be recognized as dispositive. The likelihood of this progression of events can be reduced by recognizing the rationality and validity of traditional one-man-one-woman marriage and defending it. Stopping the dangerous logic of Perry in its tracks is the place to start, ideally by judicial reversal, if necessary by other constitutional means.

Join us on July 24th -- A New Chapter in a Long Fight to Reclaim Marriage in New York

LetThePeopleVote.com

I hope you will join us next Sunday, July 24th, as we join with New Yorkers from all across the state at simultaneous rallies in Manhattan, Albany, Rochester and Buffalo, calling on politicians to let the people vote on marriage.

Next Sunday is the day that New York will begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as the new legislation imposing same-sex marriage on the state takes effect. But this isn't the end of the battle for marriage in New York, not by a long shot. As I told the New York Times this week, this is just the start of a new chapter in a long fight for the future of marriage.

Politicians in Albany have had their say. Governor Cuomo has had his. Now it's time for the people of New York to have their own chance to vote on marriage.

Gay marriage advocates would like nothing better than to deceive the American people into thinking that the road to same-sex marriage is a one-way street, that the moment a state adopts same-sex marriage the debate is suddenly ended and it's time to move on.

Hardly.

Just ask the people of Maine, who watched their legislators adopt a same-sex marriage bill and promptly exercised their “People's Veto” before the law was ever implemented. Or the people of California who saw their state supreme court vote to impose gay marriage and quickly amended their state constitution to reverse the court ruling.

New Hampshire voters cleaned house last November after their legislators voted to implement same-sex marriage, electing a strong pro-marriage majority in both houses of the state legislature and setting the stage for a gay marriage repeal vote next spring. And voters in Iowa, for the first time ever, tossed three sitting Supreme Court justices out of office for their votes to force same-sex marriage on the state.

Even in Massachusetts, voters very nearly succeeded in putting a marriage amendment on the ballot, and may yet have the final say on marriage.

The inevitability of same-sex marriage is a political charade – nothing more. How can a political cause be declared inevitable even before its first victory at the ballot box? Smoke and mirrors. Lies and campaign cash. That's how same-sex marriage was passed in New York, and New York voters have had enough.

If you live in New York, will you join us next Sunday afternoon at 3pm as we stand for marriage?

Full event details are available online at www.LetThePeopleVote.com, including directions to each rally, printable signs, and a chance to let us know you'll be coming.

LTPV Locations

And for those of you living outside New York, I hope you'll tell your friends and family about this kickoff rally in our campaign to Let The People Vote!