Dear Marriage Supporter,

It's time for action!

The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee will be holding a hearing on the same-sex marriage bill (SB116) next Tuesday afternoon, starting at 1:00pm. The hearing will be held in Room 2 in the East Wing of the Miller Senate Office Building (11 Bladen Street) in Annapolis.

This hearing and the subsequent committee vote is our first chance to derail the same-sex marriage bill – and throwing a major wrench in the plans of activists who have virtually guaranteed that they would push same-sex marriage through in Maryland this year.

Here’s what you can do:

1.  Call your state senator – especially if he or she sits on the Judicial Proceedings committee – and urge him or her to vote no on the same-sex marriage bill. Politely, but firmly, tell them that the people of Maryland deserve the chance to be heard on this important issue. Click here to look up the phone number for your state senator.

2.  Send an email to the members of the committee and to your own state senator. In less than 3 minutes you can customize and send the sample letter that we have prepared, reaching every member of the committee with your concerns about this same-sex marriage bill. Click here to send your email right now!

3.  Tell a friend! Over the next week, same-sex marriage activists will be pressuring the committee to pass SB116. But if we make our voices heard, we can stop same-sex marriage in Maryland. Spread the word through email, Facebook, Twitter. Be sure to mention it to your friends at church this weekend, too.

4.  Attend the hearing! There is ample parking within walking distance of the Senate Office Building. The hearing will start at 1:00pm and be held in Room 2 in the East Wing of the Miller Senate Office Building. Your presence is very important. Please try to make it out for all or part of the hearing.

With your help, we have a chance to send a message to Annapolis that will not soon be forgotten – hundreds, or even thousands, of Marylanders standing up for marriage.

Join us!

Brian Brown

Katherine Kerstein has an op-ed on the shameful frat boy antics at Yale:

Who can blame Yale guys for being confused?

Let's get this straight. Yale big wigs invite young men -- buzzed by testosterone -- to experience and celebrate the outer edges of male sexual prurience. They invite them to ogle female fellow students in garters and leather bustiers as they slink down the catwalk in the university dining hall.

But when the guys take the invitation seriously, an outraged chorus denounces them for "demeaning" and "hateful speech."
It's just another example of the blind spot so many our "best and brightest" exhibit. Too often, folks with strings of graduate degrees think they can reshape the world and human beings to their own specifications.

They act as if human beings are infinitely malleable -- as if there is no "floor to the universe." They think they can encourage young people to view sex as a sport, and are shocked when the dark side comes out.

R. J. Snell, meanwhile, writes about “sex gone wrong” and suggests how to make it right:

Sexual desire is incredibly powerful and volatile, capable of bringing great joy or enormous harm. Not only does the institution of marriage serve to regulate and order sexual dynamism into the stability of the household, but it allows for the integration of sexuality into a whole life, into a life incorporating the comprehensive union of spouses—body, mind, emotions, finances, work, religion, children, aspirations, fears, and loves. But while the institution itself brings about personal and social goods of order, there is no guarantee that the institution of marriage per se avoids sexual alienation or degradation of spouses…

… Overcoming the normalized brutalization of women requires a faithful recovery of the traditional understanding of the marital act, for that understanding forbids those acts which alienate and use the body, consciously or not, and allows only those acts in which women and men give themselves to each other in integrated and comprehensive ways. One might even say that the tradition teaches how to make love rather than merely to attain a degraded and brutalizing pleasure.

Read the full column here.

All 26 Democrats in the Iowa State Senate, every single one, in a party-line vote blocked an effort to debate and vote on a state marriage amendment, after State Sen. Ken Sorenson tried to get around Mike Gronstal's roadblock.

[Danny] Carroll added that he suspected this would not be the last time pro-marriage amendment forces would attempt to bring the issue before the Senate for a direct vote this session.

"I would assume that," he said. "The people of Iowa continue to be very disturbed. They feel like their voice is not being heard – it’s not being heard at the ballot box on a constitutional amendment and it’s not being heard in the Senate by the Senate majority party."

From the Press Release:

The Massachusetts Catholic Conference (MCC), representing the Roman Catholic Bishops in Massachusetts, has joined with seventeen other major Catholic, Jewish and Protestant groups in filing an amicus brief in support of the federal Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA … a pdf copy of the brief is available here.

The religious groups, representing a broad array of faith perspectives, informed the court that even though they differ on various theological issues, they are united on the social and legal importance of defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

The extraordinary array of groups joining the MCC on the brief included:  the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; National Association of Evangelicals; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; Brethren in Christ Church; Christian and Missionary Alliance; Conservative Congregational Christian Conference; Evangelical Free Church of America; Evangelical Presbyterian Church; International Church of the Foursquare Gospel; International Pentecostal Holiness Church; Missionary Church; Open Bible Churches [USA]; United Brethren in Christ Church; and Wesleyan Church.

This is an excellent summary of their position on the case:

…  The brief fault[s] the trial judge for characterizing DOMA as a product of bigotry:  “[W]hatever (past or present) of particular individuals within our religious communities, we are united in condemning hatred and mistreatment of homosexuals.  We believe that God calls us to love homosexual persons, even as we steadfastly defend our belief that traditional marriage is both divinely ordained and experientially best for families and society. This considered judgment is informed by our moral reasoning, our religious convictions, and our long experience counseling and ministering to adults and children. The district court’s ruling that, in enacting DOMA, Congress could only have been motivated by bigotry against homosexuals—and, hence, by implication, that our own support for DOMA and traditional marriage is so motivated—is inaccurate and unfair.”

CPAC’s decision to allow GOProud this year continues to have negative repercussions, as USA Today reports:

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who is thinking of running for president, hasn't yet responded to an invitation from the American Conservative Union to speak at CPAC, which has been held since the

Ex-Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, whose 2008 presidential bid was boosted by social conservatives, is reported to be skipping the event. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., a leading conservative and a co-founder of the Senate Tea Party Caucus, has declined to speak to CPAC.

… The American Principles Project, a conservative group, sent a letter in November to the American Conservative Union protesting GOProud's involvement and has been a leader in the boycott.

Since then, several other influential social conservative organizations -- such as the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America and American Values -- have said they'll skip the conference, which annually draws thousands of people.

Dr. J a.k.a. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of NOM's Ruth Institute comments in The Daily Caller about a new study on devaluing effect of casual sex:

“Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, a marriage advocacy group, told The DC that some young women are already confronting the challenge with pledges of chastity.

“’[The study] is quite correct that the presence of some women willing to have casual sex puts pressure on all the women to compete by having casual sex themselves,’ Morse wrote in an e-mail, adding that on college campuses some are forming chastity clubs and others are working with groups such as hers to confront the marriage issue head on.”