We're having a tough time keeping up with all the news outlets who have picked up our interview with SupreBowl legend David Tryree!
Don't forget to join Tyree and take action to protect marriage in New York!
Here's just a sample (bigger outlets in bold):
The outpouring of support to protect marriage in the Empire State is having an impact -- still no decision in Albany:
Senate Republicans emerged from a brief session with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Thursday morning and said they had still not decided whether to allow a vote on same-sex marriage. --New York Times' City Blog
More from the AP:
State Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos says there's still no decision on the bill to legalize gay marriage in New York that passed the Assembly on Wednesday.He spoke as he emerged from another private GOP meeting on the issue, this time with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Republican Sen. Martin Golden of Brooklyn says the collapse of a deal to extend New York City rent control regulations late Wednesday night has complicated the gay marriage issue.
Golden says Thursday he still expects the marriage bill to get to the Senate floor for a vote, but that may not happen this week and could be Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.
Bloomberg, a major financial backer of the Senate Republicans, declined immediate comment after meeting with the senators for an hour.
John Hayward over at Human Events has noticed that you don't need to defend David Tyree, just watch the video:
Two former New York Giants players have recently made public statements about gay marriage. Retired defensive end Michael Strahan supports it, and shot a video for the New Yorkers for Marriage Equality campaign. A few days later, wide receiver David Tyree announced he was against same-sex marriage, and made his own video for the National Organization for Marriage.
Guess which one the media tackled?
Yahoo News sneered that Tyree “managed to put his foot in his mouth in the minds of many people.” A NewsCore report headlined “Gay Marriage Will Lead To Anarchy,” which is not what Tyree said, went out of its way to smear the National Organization for Marriage as an “anti-gay group,” which is also what Yahoo News calls them. Read their mission statement and decide for yourself if that’s a fair characterization.
This is more of the vapid “this or that” false-choice rhetoric of people who can’t win an argument unless opposition to their viewpoints is pre-emptively defined as insane. You’re either in favor of gay marriage, or you’re an anti-gay bigot! There are no other choices, so stop arguing and submit!
Tyree did make a strong statement. Here is the video he made for the National Organization for Marriage. Warning: if you’re easily offended by humble, heartfelt statements of faith: he says stuff like “marriage is the only relationship that actually mirrors a relationship with God.”
Just days after former New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan appeared in a video supporting marriage equality in New York, Super Bowl XLII hero David Tyree came out and argued why he opposes same-sex marriage.
Tyree, the former Giants wide receiver and special teams standout, says same-sex marriage could lead to "anarchy" in a video for the National Organization for Marriage.
"What I know will happen if this does come forth is this will be the beginning of our country sliding toward, it is a strong word, but anarchy," Tyree said in the video. "The moment we have, if you trace back even to other cultures, other countries, that will be the moment where our society in itself loses its grip with what's right."
"It's about what's right," Tyree added. "It's about how can marriage be marriage for thousands of years and now all of the sudden, because a minority, an influential minority, has a push or an agenda and totally reshapes something that was not founded in our country, not founded by man, it is something that is holy and sacred. I think there is nothing more honorable, worth fighting for, especially if we really care about our future generations."
... "I'm not political, I approach more from an angle of prayer," Tyree continued. "As much as people are going to voice their opinions and make those pushes in a negative direction, I feel like athletes, believers or people who are very strong toward marriage, especially in places of position need to really take this opportunity to voice it."
"Marriage is one of those things that is the backbone of society," Tyree added. "So if you redefine it, it changes the way we educate our children, it changes the perception of what is good, what is right, what is just."
Kathryn Lopez at NRO's The Corner:
New York State senators are using new religious protections in Andrew Cuomo’s Marriage Equality Act as cover, but the legislation leaves out the “most important” protections, according to Robin Wilson, law professor at Washington and Lee University, an expert on religious liberty and public policy.
In a letter to state senator Greg Ball, Wilson writes: “The real protection missing from the proposed Marriage Equality Act is express protection from penalty at the hands of the government. Such risks are not speculative.” This is not a mere academic exercise. Wilson spells out in the latter: “The city of San Francisco stripped $3.5 million in social services contracts from the Salvation Army when it refused, for religious reasons, to provide benefits to its employees’ same sex-partners. In light of such risks, Connecticut, Vermont and even the District of Columbia saw fit to expressly protect religious organizations from being ‘penalize[d]’ by the government for such refusals.”
... In [the bill's] current form, she says, Governor Cuomo “has walked,” leaving the most important religious-liberty questions unclear at best.
The bill passed the Empire State senate yesterday and may be voted on in the senate as early as today or tomorrow. It is currently one vote short.
Glenn Stanton is the director for Family Formation at Focus on the Family and author of Secure Daughters, Confident Sons. He explains at NRO why it is false to compare Loving V. Virginia to laws defining marriage as between one man and one woman:
Folks like Joan Walsh at Salon and Jonathan Capehart at the Washington Post have taken the 44th anniversary (June 12) of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case which struck down state prohibitions against blacks marrying whites, to puff a new video by the “dynamic duo” of Ted Olson and David Boies (co-councils in California’s Prop 8 case) lecturing us all on how that truly nasty injustice then is the precise injustice gay and lesbian couples face today. This is a very persuasive argument, not because of its logic, but solely for the emotionalism it stirs. The two have nearly nothing in common.
Segregation was a profound social evil. Full stop. Marriage as an exclusive heterosexual union is a necessary social good. It is why all cultures since earliest days, regardless of religion, law, or culture, have marriage as only between men and women.
Great news!
I spoke a few minutes ago with Dan Macentee, spokesman for state Sen. Betty Little. He described an unprecedented barrage of emails and phone calls on the issue of same-sex marriage.
...According to Macentee, Sen. Little "is a No vote" on the issue.
Sen. Little has been described at times as a possible swing vote on gay marriage, but her voting record is pretty consistent at this point and appears to be heartfelt rather than political. --North County Public Radio
This vote in the NY Assembly was intended to place more pressure on the NY Senate - where the final fight to protect marriage is taking place:
The state Assembly just passed a gay marriage bill by an 80-63 tally.
The margin is the lowest of the four votes since 2007. Seventy six votes were needed for passage.
All eyes now are on the Senate, where Republicans are wrestling with whether to bring the bill to the floor for a vote before the end of the legislative session.
Currently, 31 senators, including two Republicans, have publicly supported the bill. Thirty-two are needed to pass a bill in the chamber. -- NY Daily News
Over at Public Discourse, "Scott Yenor presents the conclusion of his argument on the family, on recovering the language of self-giving":
Marital love implies dependence on another instead of autonomy, and it shows that certain goods (sex and procreation, love and marriage, marriage and parenthood) are connected. We must recover the language of self-giving. The second in a two-part series.
We have seen how the logic of contract and the movement to conquer nature have resulted in a triumph of autonomy and the demise of family. The family thus stands in need of a defense. Defense of the family means defense of an institution, and that defense requires some defense of the nature that these institutions react to and reflect. This is where contemporary advocates have focused their attention. Both the modern principles--the principle of contract and the move to conquer nature--are partial truths, and it is best to understand how they each fit into a proper understanding of married life.
We can see the partial truth of these principles by seeing how today's defenders of marriage and family life appeal to anatomy, on the one hand, and love, on the other hand. The defense of marriage and family life in the name of love must ultimately supplement the defense in the name of anatomy.
Dr. Peter Saunders argues that "dictionaries need a new word to describe disagreement with some of the key precepts of the gay lobby":
For many people “homophobia” is actually about “having a fear of being accused of being bigoted, prejudiced or discriminating against homosexual people”. This fear, which is increasingly common, causes people to take a defensive posture in order to avoid attracting disapproval or adverse publicity. This may take the form of changing ones public position, pretending to adopt views in accordance with the prevailing liberal consensus, actively denying ones real beliefs or simply abstaining from expressing an opinion when the matter is discussed.
This kind of “homophobia” is becoming increasingly common amongst those who belong to religious faiths which teach that sex outside marriage is wrong (ie. most world faiths) and it is not difficult to come up with examples of (often) prominent people in whom the condition is well advanced.
For people who don’t hate, dislike or fear gay people, but simply believe that sex between people who are not married (including all sex between those of the same sex) is morally wrong, we need a new term. I’d like to propose the term “homoskeptic” - a term that is not yet in common use and hence arguably open to (re)definition.
So far the only answers he have given are short and Obama-like. How would he protect marriage, or the state's right to protect marriage, in the face of a federal court decision ordering gay marriage? He has to do better than that or Michelle Bachman is going to blow right past him in Iowa.
Watch the exchange:
Transcript:
John King: Are you in favor of a constitutional amendment or is it a states' decision?
Herman Cain: State's Decision.
NOM Chairman Maggie Gallagher's latest column (watch NOM's exclusive interview with Tyree here):
Former New York Giants wide receiver David Tyree is a giant of a man.
Tyree is most famous for making arguably the greatest catch in NFL history in 2008's Super Bowl XLII -- leaping up and pinning the ball against his helmet -- during the Giants' last-minute drive to the touchdown that beat the previously undefeated New England Patriots.
Just a few weeks after Canadian sportscaster Damian Goddard lost his job tweeting to his personal Twitter list of 175 people that he supports marriage as the union of husband and wife, Tyree turned up on the steps of New York's City Hall, joining more than 125 pastors (plus some rabbis) -- black, white, Hispanic -- who came to rebut Mayor Bloomberg's call for the New York State Senate to pass a gay marriage bill before its current session ends.
Continue reading at Yahoo! News.
New York's law is designed to make sure legislators and the public have a chance--at least 72 hours--to review bills before they are voted on:
2006 New York Code - Manner of passing bills; message of necessity for immediate vote.
§ 14. No bill shall be passed or become a law unless it shall have been printed and upon the desks of the members, in its final form, at least three calendar legislative days prior to its final passage, unless the governor, or the acting governor, shall have certified, under his or her hand and the seal of the state, the facts which in his or her opinion necessitate an immediate vote thereon, in which case it must nevertheless be upon the desks of the members in final form, not necessarily printed, before its final passage; nor shall any bill be passed or become a law, except by the assent of a majority of the members elected to each branch of the legislature; and upon the last reading of a bill, no amendment thereof shall be allowed, and the question upon its final passage shall be taken immediately thereafter, and the ayes and nays entered on the journal.
Gov. Cuomo could have presented a bill days ago, to be reviewed and debated. But he didn't. So now faced with problems in the Senate, he's trying to stampede a quick vote in the Assembly by waiving the ordinary notice requirement.
What exactly is the urgent necessity that justified amending the code, declaring marriage a fundamental right, adding conscience language that nobody is sure what exactly it does, and failing to protect parental rights?
The media as always is supine before Albany's latest shenanigans, bending the rules to push gay marriage.
What's the crisis, the urgent necessity?
“The continued delay of the passage of this bill would deny over 50,000 same-sex couples in New York critical protections currently afforded to different-sex couples including hospital visitations, inheritance and pension benefits.” -- Capital Tonight
If it was that important couldn't you have gotten a bill to the Assembly 3 days earlier?
Via Capitol Confidential:
Robin Wilson, a law professor at Washington & Lee in Virginia, drafted a letter to Sen. Greg Ball, a Putnam County Republican who is concerned about religious organizations being forced into recognizing, comparing New York’s pending same-sex marriage bill with laws enacted in other states.
Here it is: SSM Bill Analysis
Gay marriage in New York is *not* a done deal!
From Gay City News:
The New York State Senate Republican majority conference emerged from a closed-door meeting today having failed to reach agreement on whether to allow a floor debate and vote on Governor Andrew Cuomo's marriage equality bill.
"We have reached no conclusion," Dean Skelos, the Long Island Republican who is the majority leader, told reporters as he came out of the meeting. "Members have asked me to keep these discussions in confidence, and we will conference again on it tomorrow."
Greg Ball, the Putnam County Republican who has for weeks raised concerns about the need for religious exemptions, continued talking about that issue as he left the room.
Earlier in the day, Ball released a letter spelling out requirements for language he would need to see in the bill in order to support it. One of those requirements is that religious organizations be exempt from providing services to which they object on religious grounds -- a demand that would seem to go well beyond the carve-outs already existing in New York law that Cuomo incorporated into his marriage equality program bill.
