Trditional Marriage News

Date:
Thursday, April 11, 2013

 

by JOHN NOLTE 10 Apr 2013

It begins.

There is no question that rank-and-file gay couples of all political stripes are sincere in their desire to enjoy the benefits and status that come with marriage. There is no sinister agenda at work in the issue of same-sex marriage among the masses. But the same cannot be said of  the organized left who have always intended to use the issue of gay marriage as a vehicle to destroy the Christian Church and marginalize Christians.

Faithfulness to the Bible and the Christian faith will very soon be declared bigotry by the media and a de facto civil rights violation by the State.

What is currently happening to the Boy Scouts of America at the hands of the organized left is nothing more than a trial run for what is surely coming next against the Church. The small ball has already begun: lawsuits, harassment, and media campaigns against those who preach what the Bible says. The Big Leagues, however, don't launch until the State lights the torchfor the witch hunt, and that has already happened in the state of Washington.

Although America's most protected right is freedom of religion, that didn't stop the state attorney general from filing a suit against Baronelle Stutzman,  a florist who said it was a "violation of conscience" to service a same-sex wedding.

JD Bristol, attorney for Arlene’s, said his client has many customers and employees who are gay and the claim that she is “discriminating on the basis on sexual orientation is nonsense.”

“This is about gay marriage, it’s not about a person being gay,” Bristol said. “She has a conscientious objection to homosexual marriage, not homosexuality. It violates her conscience.”

According to the florist, in response to standing by her Christian beliefs, she has received hate mail and threats to burn down her business.

This is not an isolated incident, either. Back in February a baker who wouldn't provide a cake for a lesbian wedding not only faced protesters but  is (or was) under investigation by the Oregon Attorney General. Back in 2006, a Catholic adoption service in Boston had to shut down after the government demanded the religious entity service same-sex couples.

For those skeptical of the organized left's desire to destroy the Church; one question: is it really a leap to believe that the same government currently attempting to force the Church and other religious business-owners to pay for the abortion pill will soon use the same arguments and precedents to force same sex marriage on these institutions?

Hat tip to Dan Riehl by way of Rush Limbaugh.

Date:
Friday, March 1, 2013

 

By JOSH GERSTEIN | 

The Obama Administration filed a brief Thursday evening urging the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage.

But the brief stopped short of explicitly endorsing a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage — an unqualified endorsement some gay rights advocates had hoped the Obama administration would use the case to make.

“Proposition 8’s denial of marriage to same-sex couples, particularly where California at the same time grants same-sex partners all the substantive rights of marriage, violates equal protection,” the Justice Department brief declares. “Prejudice may not…be the basis for differential treatment under the law.”
 

This marks a remarkable turnaround for President Barack Obama, who opposed same-sex-marriage during his first run for the presidency while insisting that the issue should be up to each state to decide. By asking the Supreme Court to invalidate California’s action on the subject, he has clearly abandoned the view that states should be free to chart their own course.

 

The brief filed by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli mentions bans on same-sex marriage in seven other states that grant broad domestic partnership rights and suggests they are also unconstitutional, but the Justice Department did not directly attack same-sex marriage bans on the books in states without comprehensive rights for same-sex couples.

 

The Obama Administration appears to have calculated that the challenge to Prop. 8 stands a better chance of prevailing with an argument that doesn’t directly challenge same-sex marriage bans in all 29 states where they’re on the books.

 

The brief may also reflect a focus on winning the vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has shown an openness to gay rights but who is also a staunch defender of state sovereignty.

Still, gay rights advocates said Thursday night that the legal arguments in the brief — if adopted by the Supreme Court — would eventually result in the demise of same-sex marriage bans nationwide.

 

”If the court accepts the reasoning that the White House has put forward every state’s anti-gay-marriage amendment will fall quickly,” said Richard Socarides, an adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay and lesbian issues. “Make no mistake about it, the brief is a very bold endorsement of full equality…. This is fantastic.”

 

One of the lawyers defending Prop. 8 said he also saw the administration’s brief as a fairly robust embrace of a national same-sex marriage right, though not couched in quite those words.

”It essentially appears that president has taken the position that traditional marriage laws should be subject to extra scrutiny by the courts and that all of the justifications for Prop. 8 fail that test,” attorney Andrew Pugno of Folsom, Calif. said. “It does appear that this urges the court to federalize the redefinition of marriage. That’s the inescapable conclusion that that’s the president’s position.”

 

According to legal sources, administration lawyers portrayed their decision not to assert an overarching federal right to same sex marriage as a strategic move aimed at buttressing the administration’s view in another same-sex marriage case the court is to take up next month on the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that denies federal benefits and recognition to same-sex marriages.

 

 

“It was clever. There is definitely a logic and strategy for why they chose to go the way they did,” said one prominent gay rights advocate who asked not to be named. “The reason they did that is because of their position on DOMA. This frame is consistent with that.”

 

“Some of the commentary is missing the fact that this president and this Justice Department are very careful about what they don’t say,” said Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry. “People rush to fill in what they don’t say with their own conjecture. This brief doesn’t deny there is a fundamental freedom to marry. It does not withhold anything and it will be helpful in making the case to bring down marriage discrimination nationwide.”

 

 

The federal government was not a party to the California case and was under no obligation to file a brief. However, gay rights groups had urged the administration to use the case to publicly embrace a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

 

While the new brief doesn’t discuss such a right in those terms, it is also careful not to rule out that notion. For instance, while the brief says that California’s treatment of same-sex domestic partners “particularly undermines the justifications for Proposition 8,” that language hints that the justifications may have little merit in any event.

 

The Prop. 8 case goes before the justices on March 26. The next day the court will consider the case testing the constitutionality of DOMA, the 1996 federal law that bans same-sex spouses from received a wide array of benefits including federal employee insurance and filing of joint tax returns.

 

The Obama administration announced two years ago that it believes DOMA is unconstitutional and stopped defending the law, which is being defended at the high court by a lawyer retained by the House of Representatives. However, the constitutionality of the federal law is a different question than whether states, which have traditionally regulated marriage, should be compelled to recognize same-sex unions.

 

During the 2008 campaign, Obama said he was against same-sex marriage. However, he also opposed gay-marriage bans like Prop. 8, saying neither the states nor the federal government should use their constitutions to enshrine a ban on the practice.

 

Last year, shortly after kicking off his re-election campaign, Obama declared that he’d changed his mind on the issue. “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” he told ABC News last May.

 

Despite Obama’s personal evolution on the subject, White House officials have dodged questions for more than a year on whether Obama believed that the U.S. Constitution guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry.

 

At a briefing for reporters Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to discuss Obama’s involvement in the preparation of the brief.

 

“The president obviously has expressed an opinion in the past on this issue as a matter of policy. But when it comes to legal and constitutional issues around it, that’s a jurisdiction that resides at the Department of Justice. So I don’t have anything for you on it,” Carney said.

 

While White House officials have been cagey about the role of the president and other officials in the government’s brief on the Prop. 8 case, there is no doubt they have been under pressure from gay rights advocates to weigh in.

 

On Jan. 30, two leaders of the fight against Prop. 8, David Boies and Chad Griffin, visited the White House to meet with White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler. Boies, a prominent Democratic lawyer, was co-counsel with Republican Ted Olson in the challenge to Prop. 8. Griffin is head of the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign and is a founder of the group that bankrolled the litigation, the American Foundation for Equal Rights.

 

Lawyers on both sides of the case also met with Justice Department officials to urge them to respect Obama’s previous decisions that the issue should be left to the states.

The White House declined to comment on the lobbying effort. However, it’s a matter of record Obama has had a direct hand in the administration’s previous legal decisions on same-sex marriage.

When Attorney General Eric Holder announced two years ago that the Justice Department would no longer defend DOMA, the attorney general said he was acting at Obama’s direction.

 

California voters approved Prop. 8, 52 percent to 48 percent, in the same election that lifted Obama to the presidency. Obama won 61 percent of the vote in the Golden State that year.

 

The brief Obama’s Justice Department filed Thursday argues that the fact that voters approved California’s same-sex marriage ban should not entitle it to special deference from the courts.

 

”Promoting democratic self-governance and accountability is a laudable governmental interest, but it is not one that can justify a law that would otherwise violate the Constitution,” the brief says. “If use of a voter initiative could itself provide a sufficient justification….for a suspect classification, it would render the equal protection clause nugatory in that context.”

 

In August 2010, following a trial with live testimony held over three weeks, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker declared Prop. 8 unconstitutional. In a sweeping ruling, he said there was no rational basis to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples and he found the ban appeared to be motivated solely by “moral disapprobation” for gays and lesbians.

 

Last February, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld Walker’s ruling on somewhat different grounds. The 9th Circuit opinion, by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, found Prop. 8 unconstitutional because it stripped same-sex couples of a right to marry without adequate justification. The carefully-crafted decision did not assert a right for gay couples to marry in states where such unions were never recognized, but rejected the California ban because some same-sex marriages had already gone forward there.

 

Some analysts said Reinhardt’s ruling appeared to have been written to give the Supreme Court an opportunity to strike down Prop. 8 and restore same-sex marriage rights in California without squarely addressing the issue of whether other states had to recognize such unions.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/pro-gay-marriage-obama-brief-expected-88266_Page3.html#ixzz2MIkiAxKF

Date:
Thursday, February 28, 2013

 

By Joe Kimball | 02/27/13

While supporters rallied at the state Capitol Wednesday and prepared to introduce a bill legalizing gay marriage, opponents are making their own plans to fight the legislation.

That includes a Minnesota March for Marriage rally and lobby day at the Capitol March 7. It runs from 2 to 5 p.m., with the rally on the Capitol steps from 2:30 to 3 p.m.

It's sponsored by Minnesota for Marriage — a coalition that supports the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and supported last year's failed effort to put the current ban on gay marriage into the state Constitution.

The group says it wants the current state laws regarding marriage to stay on the books.

Scheduled speakers at the rally include Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, and Teresa Collett, a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas.

 

The group is urging its supporters to meet with their legislators that day, said Crystal Crocker, director of grassroots and messaging for Minnesota for Marriage. She's quoted in the Catholic Spirit newspaper:

“We’re gathering together and energizing ourselves for this effort, but the most important point of the day is to go in and actually meet with your legislators,” she said. “They work for us and they should be meeting with us.”

Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, part of the Minnesota for Marriage coalition, said supporters of traditional marriage need to spread the word. He told the paper:

"We’ve got to get the people of Minnesota to say, "Keep marriage the way it is,' " he said. "Our message is: Don’t mess with marriage."

Date:
Monday, February 11, 2013

 

 

BY PETER SMITH

  • February 11, 2013 (Mercatornet.com) - David Cameron’s same-sex marriage bill was voted on for the first time in the British Parliament on Tuesday. Confusingly, the debate and vote were called the “second” reading, as the first “reading” took place when the draft bill was laid before Parliament, giving members and everyone else their first opportunity to read the proposed legislation.

At 50-odd pages long, the bill amends dozens of acts of Parliament stretching back to 1533. One would have thought that, for such a complex document with profound legislative consequences and social effects, not least for the established Church of England, parliamentarians would have had plenty of time to comment on the proposals, but no: it only came out on January 25. The usual process of green paper and white paper consultations were short-circuited by a Government bent on pushing through the creation of same-sex marriage.

Why the rush?

Probably for a quick win. Cameron is guaranteed to get it through the House of Commons because most MPs are socially liberal city-dwellers who take what they see to be a Whiggish interpretation of history (the House of Lords will be a different matter). It is likely too that Cameron sees same-sex marriage as being a way of “detoxifying” or “decontaminating” the Tory brand, whereby he stares down the traditionalist Taliban of backbench social conservatives and what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, a Liberal Democrat, thinks of as petty-minded religious bigots in the Shires, in an effort to show that the Conservative Party has “really changed” to become a trendy group of chilled-out mates who are down with the Tweeting Facebook masses.

Matthew d’Ancona, an “arch-moderniser” pro-Cameron journalist, chided Tory opponents of gay marriage for failing to grasp the historic moment, and for pulling the party away from “openness, equality… and ‘the centre of gravity of social attitudes’.” And finally, Cameron – to his credit – believes in the justice of his actions, and is acting in accordance with his conscience.

I won’t quote from MPs’ speeches here, but suffice to say, the supporters of gay marriage cited equality and love whilst its opponents pointed out the meaning of marriage rooted in complementarity of the sexes and the creation and raising of children.

The Catholic Voices website has a good selection of the views of some traditional marriage supporters from across the political parties. A friend summarised the positions thus on Twitter: the pros had an adult- and wedding-centric view of marriage; the antis, a child- and family-oriented view.

Two interesting aspects of the vote stand out. First, 400 MPs voted for the measure and 175 against it. Of the opponents, 136 were Tories. In contrast, only 127 Conservatives voted for same-sex marriage. This marks a substantial split in the Conservative Party. It isn’t just about the nature of marriage, but also about the direction in which David Cameron and his faction are taking the Party. Newspapers in the weekend before the vote were full of talk of a coup against Cameron, as the economy remains in the doldrums. Cameron did not have a clear mandate for his actions either. A black MP, Adam Afriyie, the representative for well-heeled Windsor electorate, was named as a potential contender. The scuttlebutt has gone as fast as it came, but it didn’t hurt his chances for Afriyie to oppose gay marriage prominently.

With the problems over legal protections for teachers and clergy still in the air, some expect a bigger revolt at the third reading. What I will be interested to see is, by that stage, whether the voting habits of Catholic MPs from across the parties have changed. The liberal British Catholic publication, The Tablet,analysed their votes: out of the 82 Catholic MPs, 47 – almost 60 per cent – were in favour of same-sex marriage. Of these, 32 were Labour members, which indicates that they likely chose the party line over faith to some degree (Labour MPs would have delighted in Cameron’s motion being defeated by his own party). Tory Ministers Iain Duncan-Smith and Patrick McLoughlin, the Work and Pensions Secretary and Transport Secretary respectively, voted with the Government; the best they could have hoped to do was abstain, given the three-line whip imposed by the Conservative whips.

What makes this surprising is that the Catholic Church usually influences the votes of its confessional parliamentarians quite well. As the Church was the principal opponent to same-sex marriage, this should have been especially true in this case. By the third reading, expect some quite pointed words to be spoken softly into the ears of supporters of the Government plan.

Now the bill goes to a committee of MPs who will go through it, line by line, for a number of weeks. It then comes back to Parliament for its third reading in the Commons for a final set-piece battle. Then the process moves to the House of Lords. As they say in Hollywood, stay tuned, folks.

Peter Smith is a lawyer living and working in London.

Date:
Tuesday, January 22, 2013

 

'Sister Wives' lawsuit back in Utah courtroom

By By PAUL FOY, Associated Press – 4 days ago  

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal judge holding a hearing on a lawsuit by the stars of the reality show "Sister Wives" heard arguments Thursday on whether Utah can prohibit plural marriage, but issued no immediate ruling.

Kody Brown and his four wives claim the law is unconstitutional. The family fled Utah for Las Vegas last year under the threat of prosecution. They did not attend the hearing in Salt Lake City, leaving arguments to a constitutional law professor.

"The Browns wanted to show people that a plural family is not a monstrosity," said Jonathan Turley of The George Washington University. "They don't commit collateral problems."

Turley said the Browns' only sin was opening their family to the TLC hit series, which drew the attention of Utah authorities.

"The state is saying if you didn't do this TV show, you wouldn't have a problem," he said. "They have a right to free speech and are being prosecuted for it."

The hearing dealt with the legalities of due process and freedom of association.

U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups peppered a state lawyer on why he shouldn't throw out Utah's bigamy law. It's stricter than the laws in 49 other states — most of them prohibit people from having multiple marriage licenses. Utah makes it illegal to even purport to be married to multiple partners or live together.

What if Kody Brown kept separate households for each wife, or was just having affairs, the judge asked.

"That would not be polygamy," said Assistant Utah Attorney General Jerrold Jensen.

Yet Jensen argued Utah's unique history of polygamy for more than 100 years has made victims of thousands of girls forced to marry as young as 13, and caused rampant child abuse, with boys "kicked out on the street" to reduce competition for older men seeking multiple brides. He said the state has an interest in preventing social harm.

Waddoups said the Browns' 17 children are irrelevant to the case, and Turley argued that sex and child abuse was just as common in monogamous families.

Waddoups challenged Jensen on whether Utah was cracking down on a religion. Most polygamists in the state call themselves fundamentalist Mormons, although The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

"Every state in the nation has these laws — and not every state has Mormon polygamists," replied Jensen, who argued that bigamy was not merely adultery. "I'll tell you what makes it different — the harm to women and children coming out of a polygamous relationship. We have a history of it in Utah — stories in the thousands."

Turley said Utah has to prove the harm of polygamy, not assert general statements. He argued the exile of young boys was a myth and that Utah was trying to enforce morality.

"We're asking for what Justice Brandeis called the most important constitutional right, the right to be left alone," Turley said, referring to Louis Brandeis, who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939.

Date:
Saturday, December 22, 2012

Despite our grief over the slaughter of innocent children in Newtown, Connecticut, despite the re-election of the most pro-abortion administration in our country’s history, and despite the dark economic outlook, what keeps us full of hope and prevents despair is that a baby was born two-thousand years ago, and that this baby is mankind’s Savior.

From A Merry Pro-Life Christmas to You and Your Family | LifeNews.com

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