Tag Archives: Category: Marriage and Family

The Republic: Gay Marriage supporters in Maine have surpassed their goal for petitions to be used if they decide to press forward with another referendum next year.

Bay Windows: The executive director of the driving force behind New Hampshire’s same-sex marriage law announced Wednesday, Nov. 2 she is resigning due to insufficient funding drawn partly through the group’s national organization.

WMAL 105.9 FM/AM 630s: Maryland’s governor is racheting up his efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. Democrat Martin O’ Malley has joined a newly-launched bipartisan effort to appeal to moderate and independent voters in the fight for same-sex marriage rights.

LifeSiteNews.com: “No Catholic facility or property, including but not limited to parishes, missions, chapels, meeting halls, Catholic educational, health, or charitable institutions or benevolent orders, or any place dedicated, consecrated, or used for Catholic worship may be used for the solemnization or consecration of same-sex marriages,” the decree states.

WSJ.com: Biyan Zhou wanted to major in engineering. Her mother and her academic adviser also wanted her to major in it, given the apparent career opportunities for engineers in a tough job market. But during her sophomore year at Carnegie Mellon University, Ms. Zhou switched her major from electrical and computer engineering to a double major in psychology and policy management.

KSTU (includes video and link to ACLU documents): The ACLU sent out a letter to Utah school superintendants after a report of a high school girl who was allegedly told to leave after bringing a female date.

Education News » Deflating the Higher Education Bubble: Most of this debt is the result of skyrocketing education costs. Since 1985, the CPI (Consumer Price Index) has increased by 115%, while the college education inflation rate is 498%.

Rose Marie Belforti has won re-election as town clerk in the Finger Lakes community of Ledyard, a result which drew praise from traditional marriage advocates.

Republicans had hoped for a 25-25 tie and the potential to move forward on now-gridlocked priorities, such as a move to begin the process to ban same-sex marriage in Iowa.

The Charlotte Observer: N.C. Baptists meeting today in Greensboro elected Charlotte pastor Mark Harris to be their new president and endorsed a proposed state constitutional amendment that would reinforce North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Utah Pulse: Numbers from the Pew Research Center shows that 46% of Americans oppose gay marriage, while 45% support legalization. However, 85% of “staunch conservatives” and 72% of “Main Street Republicans” oppose gay marriage, while Democratic groups are all over the map.

Jason Adkins StarTribune.com: It is not surprising to see the Star Tribune continue to beat the drum in opposition to the marriage protection amendment that will appear on the November 2012 ballot (“On gay marriage, state is out of step,” Oct. 1). What is troubling is the paper’s attack on the Catholic Church’s participation in the public debate

Fox News: The popular Fox comedy “Glee” is set to air an episode Tuesday featuring two couples – the heterosexual Finn and Rachel and the homosexual Kurt and Blaine – losing their virginity. And even before it’s even hit the airwaves, the episode has sparked controversy.

OneNewsNow.com: Wisconsin lawmakers are processing a bill that would expand charter schools in the state by creating an independent charter school program.

“When you single out who is and who is not protected from bullies, that misses the point,” Dys said on Tuesday’s MetroNews Talkline. “Laws and school rules like this should govern objective action and not subjective characteristics of the victim.”

GLAD reports on the IRS “action on decision” in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, 134 T.C. 34 (2010) (
T.C. Docket No. 6402-0)

Chuck Norris at Townhall: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 110 children have autism spectrum disorders, which is strikingly more than just two decades ago. (ASDs are a group of developmental disabilities that can cause communication, behavioral and social challenges.) The National Autism Association calls the 644 percent increase of ASDs among U.S. children since the early 1990s “a tragic epidemic of autism.”

Christian Post: Belforti reached out to the Alliance Defense Fund, a religious freedom advocacy organization, for help. An ADF lawyer, Jordan L[o]rence, commented on the case: “We need to protect religious liberty and the right of conscience. And legalizing same-sex marriage creates these kinds of conflicts.” “[Protecting] these town clerks,” L[o]rence says, is akin to protecting religious freedom.

Pacific Justice Institute: Opening legal briefs have been filed in the California Court of Appeal, arguing that San José school officials broke the law by refusing to even consider a parent’s request to change a controversial pro-gay celebration at her child’s middle school.

NYTimes.com: The pastoral mood in the hills of Tennessee offered a stark contrast to the storm raging around the country over the Pearls’ teachings on child discipline, which advocate systematic use of “the rod” to teach toddlers to submit to authority. The methods, seen as common sense by some grateful parents and as horrific by others, are modeled, Mr. Pearl is fond of saying, on “the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules.”

Philly Magazine: The 11th grader – Kasey Landrum, 16 – was handed a suspension by his Lexington High School for supposedly violating the school’s dress code, which loosely says teachers can use discretion about questions of wardrobe appropriateness

Chesterton Tribune: Students from 182 of Indiana’s public school districts have moved to private schools under the state’s new education voucher program, although only seven districts lost more than 100 kids. In all, 3,919 students . . .

Rebecca Burgoyne at Cal. Family Policy Council: Transgender activism is crossing all social lines with the argument that gender is flexible – merely a hindering social construct – and youth are being heavily influenced by the idea.

A judge will hear oral arguments today in the case of two mothers who sued the state to list both names on their child’s birth certificate.

Eastern Iowa Government: Based on PPP’s survey of 878 likely voters from Nov, 4-6, Mathis leads Golding 52 percent to 46 percent. The margin of error for the survey is +/-3.3 percent.

A special election on Tuesday for an Iowa State Senate seat could change the balance of power there and encourage Republicans to try to overturn the state’s approval of same sex marriage.

Eastern Iowa Government: At a rally with the Family Research Council Action’s Values Voters Bus Tour and the National Organization for Marriage, a day ahead of an election to fill a vacancy in Iowa Senate 18, Republican Cindy Golding told supporters not to accept media attempts to make the race about any one issue, especially same-sex marriage.

BabyCenter: According to the article, an increasing number of grandparents are challenging state visitation laws, which they believe are overly restrictive, yet, at the same time, inconsistent from state to state.

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: A recent survey of the religious affiliations of students at Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut shows that more students identified as atheist or agnostic than any other group, edging out those who identified with any Christian group by a nose.

Seventy employers are represented in the brief, including Microsoft, Starbucks, Google, NIKE, Levi Strauss and Co., CBS, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mass., Time Warner Cable, Xerox, Zipcar, and Stonyfield Farm. The cities of New York, Boston, and Cambridge are also represented.

CBN.com: “We need to protect religious liberty and the right of conscience. And legalizing same-sex marriage creates these kinds of conflicts,” ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence said. “And it would be better and more in line with our American constitutional tradition, protecting religious liberty and right of conscience, to protect these town clerks,” Lorence said.

Ryan T. Anderson at Public Discourse: Conservatives shouldn’t ignore or attack social justice, but must articulate sound principles of social justice.

The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led 130 fellow Democrats in filing a friend-of-the-court brief Thursday challenging the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, arguing that Republicans defending the law, which denies all federal benefits to married same-sex couples, do not represent the full House.

Courthouse News Service: A class action alleging that the U.S. government gave a fraction of the severance pay due to an Air Force staff sergeant honorably discharged under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy will play out in the Court of Federal Claims.

A Superior Court judge let a lawsuit seeking marriage for same-sex couples in New Jersey proceed, but she sharply pared down the number of allegations in the case against the state.

Federation for Children: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker today signed legislation that reaffirms Wisconsin’s commitment to providing quality educational options to low-income students by enacting legislation that clarifies school choice language included in the state’s 2011-13 budget and increases accountability in the Milwaukee and Racine Parental Choice Programs.

Andrew Haines at Public Discourse: Bryan Caplan’s latest book argues that we don’t need to over-invest time and money on our kids, because our lasting influence on their characters is negligible, while their contribution to our material well-being is significant.

KTUL.com: The gay Catholics group DignityUSA says the column was outrageous and inflicted “tremendous damage on the souls” of gay people.

America Magazine: A policy adviser to the U.S. bishops has resigned following a controversy over an opinion piece he wrote suggesting that same-sex attraction could be the work of the devil. | Text of the Avila article in question here.

Federal prosecutors have worked out a deal with an American missionary in Nicaragua that may help them find a woman who fled the country in a custody dispute with her former lesbian partner, court documents show.

San Francisco Chronicle: A California lawmaker from the Central Valley has revealed that she is gay, making her one of eight openly gay members of the Legislature. Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani . . .

Federation for Children: The Indiana Department of Education (DOE) announced that the state’s new voucher program approved nearly 4,000 students for participation in 2011-12, making the Choice Scholarship Program the biggest first-year voucher program ever.

Arizona News from USA Today: Five students, all born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents, sued the state last month for denying them in-state tuition rates even though they’d lived in Florida, graduated from state high schools and were entering state colleges and universities.

StarTribune.com: Members of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota, which held its annual convention over the weekend in Minneapolis, passed a resolution opposing the marriage amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage.

Delmarvanow.com: “We recognize those marriages as we do any heterosexual marriage,” said Gansler, whose office drafted the opinion leading to that decision. “The opinion we drafted has a lot less to do with same-sex marriage and a lot more to do with the full faith and credit clause.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, agreed to the delay, and suggested that the bill to repeal the 15-year-old Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) be brought up again Nov. 10.

Huffington Post (includes video): Although newlyweds Rachel and Charlotte Lambert-Jolley say they were told they would be able to change their names in Florida with the appropriate documentation, authorities at a Pinellas County DMV ultimately rejected their request after an hour-long wait, Saint Petersburg 10 News is reporting.

The Daily Athenaeum – West Virginia University: West Virginia University Student Government Association Governor Ben Seebaugh proposed an office of social justice be established for gender-variant minority students at Wednesday night’s SGA meeting.

Politico (Victim of recession? Bachelor pads): Almost one in five men between the ages of 25 to 34 are living with their parents, according to a Census Bureau report released Thursday. About 14 percent of men lived with their parents in 2005, a figure that crept up to 19 percent . . . Married couples with children made up 20 percent of all American households, versus 40 percent in 1970.

San Francisco Chronicle: House Republicans defending the federal ban on marital benefits for same-sex couples in a San Francisco court have cited findings by a pro-gay-rights psychologist to support their view that gays and lesbians are not entitled to strong judicial protection from discrimination.

Tulsa Beacon: “I respect the views of those who argue that no-fault divorce creates less havoc than the alternatives, but I question that orthodoxy,” McCullough said. “There is very little in the divorce process that is even remotely connected to the interest of the children.”

OneNewsNow.com: But as Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) points out, such incidences are happening in schools all across the country. “They’re just bypassing parents, especially on some of the most controversial stuff that students are exposed to — sex education, the battle regarding the homosexual agenda,” he laments. “The school districts are starting just to say, ‘Well, we know what’s better for your kids. We’re not even gonna tell you what we’re doing.’”

WorldNetDaily: hat word had come from officials with the Home School Legal Defense Association, which along with the Alliance Defense Fund already has elevated the dispute involving Christer and Annie Johannson and their son, Domenic, of Sweden to the European Court of Human Rights.

Mario Diaz of Concerned Women for American at the Washington Times: The most comprehensive scientific national survey to date, commissioned by the Alliance Defense Fund and completed by Public Opinion Strategies in May, reveals that 62 percent of Americans believe “marriage should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman.” Fifty-three percent strongly agreed.

WSJ: Nearly 15% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in August, as the number of recipients hit 45.8 million.

CNSnews.com: The federal government’s debt increased by $203,368,715,583.63 in the month of October, according to the U.S. Treasury.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday for the second time ruled that the Federal Communications Commission improperly fined CBS Corp. for airing singer Janet Jackson’s infamous Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004.

Eugene Volokh reports on the ruling at The Volokh Conspiracy.

Boston.com (AP): The executive director of the driving force behind New Hampshire’s gay marriage law announced Wednesday she is resigning due to insufficient funding drawn partly through the group’s national organization.

The Associated Press: A New York group calling itself the first Parent-Teacher Association unit in the country dedicated to the needs of gay and lesbian youths is under fire from the president of the state PTA, who says permission was never granted to use the trademarked organization’s moniker.

ADF Attorney Brian Raum comments at SCOTUSblog.

Heritage Fundation: Austin Nimocks, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, explained at the hearing that “children are the product of sexual relationships between men and women” and that “men and women each bring something important and unique to the table of parenting.” Therefore, Nimocks argued, “this government maintains a compelling interest in protecting and preserving the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

Details and video here.

The Legal Intelligencer: A federal judge overseeing a dispute over death benefits between the parents and wife of a deceased Cozen O’Connor partner has requested the parties brief the constitutional question of same-sex marriage, increasing the potential for a determination of whether the Defense of Marriage Act and a similar Pennsylvania statute are valid.

WZTV FOX 17 (ADF attorneys Byron Babione and Jim Campbell in the video) Sky Arnold: Attorneys who are fighting a controversial new state law want to see e-mails and documents of those who supported it . . .

NYTimes.com: In its infancy the H.R.C. effort, called Americans for Marriage Equality, has showcased three prominent black Americans in a row. That’s no accident.

NYTimes.com: With open enrollment season in full swing, several big companies have said that they would begin to reimburse gay employees for the extra taxes they pay on health insurance for their significant others. Now, two more technology giants, Microsoft and Yahoo, have decided to join in, starting Jan. 1.

NJ.com: The latest lawsuit that seeks to force New Jersey to recognize gay marriage will soon be going before a judge for the first time.

NCPA Policy Digest: “By providing aid and subsidized loans, the government is trying to protect students, but the effect is perverse,” said Jane Shaw, president of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. “They increase demand and enable colleges to hike tuitions virtually without restraint.”

Phyllis Schlafly atTownhall: Does Rick Perry want to undermine traditional marriage? This question leaps out from his new 20 percent flat-tax plan, which would eliminate all tax advantages for married couples where one spouse is the primary breadwinner.

Dennis Prager at Townhall: The first was the feminist message to young women to have sex just like men do . . . The second awful legacy of feminism has been the belief among women that they can and should postpone marriage until they develop their careers — and that only then should they seriously consider looking for a husband . . . The third sad feminist legacy: So many women — and men — have bought into the notion that women should work outside the home that for the first time in American history, and perhaps world history, vast numbers of children are not primarily raised by their mothers or even by an extended family member . . . And the fourth awful legacy of feminism has been the de-masculinization of men.

Baptist Press: The Alliance Defense Fund reports that in all the state votes on same-sex marriage over the last decade, 63 percent of all active voters have voted to affirm natural marriage. The record that counts — the one at the ballot box — show that those who report supporting same-sex marriage are not as likely to show up to vote their convictions.

Matthew J. Franck at Public Discourse: But the tenure system makes the faculty themselves the gatekeepers of intellectual life, without much serious constraint on their decisions to hire, tenure, and promote their junior colleagues other than their own sense of what is right and fitting. This is a recipe for power without responsibility, anywhere self-interest conquers ethics, as it all too commonly does. The price is paid by junior faculty, adjuncts, graduate students being trained to be the next generation of professors . . .

Idaho Statesman: The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based firm that presses faith-based cases in court, issued a statement Monday saying the district was “duped” by gay rights activists into ditching the proposed parental consent policy. “School districts do not need to give in to activist demands that parents be left ignorant about what their children are exposed to,” said Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, in a statement.