Tag Archives: Topic: Culture

The Guardian: Unless the federal government or supreme court act, southern states will most likely oppose gay marriage for the foreseeable future . . . Indeed, demographic models indicate that if put up for a vote, same-sex marriage would become legal in all but six states by 2020! Even Mississippi is projected to be up to near 40% support on the issue, gaining a little over 1.5pt per year. So the whole thing should be over soon, right? Not likely.

Alliance Defending Freedom has delivered a petition to the Boy Scouts of America signed by 18,724 Americans–including 11,795 who are members of current or former Scouting families or are former Scouts themselves. The petition urges BSA to “uphold the values that have defined the organization for over 100 years” and to reject any efforts to change its membership policy.

AP: Senior members of the Church of Scotland voted Monday to let some congregations choose ministers who are in same-sex relationships – an important compromise that must still pass further hurdles before it can become church law.

Gallup: Their acceptance of gay and lesbian relations has increased the most, up 19 percentage points in the past 12 years — to a record high of 59% today. Americans’ tolerance toward having a baby outside of marriage is also now much greater, up 15 points since 2001, to the current 60%.

John B. Londegran at Public Discourse: It is neither the impossibility of writing clear laws nor our inability to witness abortion that stops us from making it illegal. Instead it is the will to kill for convenience that drives some people to sustain the fiction that human life begins at birth.

The Independent: report published by the Office for National Statistics revealed that the percentage of people following a Christian faith dropped from 71.7 per cent in 2001 to 59.3 per cent in 2011. More than one in 10 under 25s in the UK now describe themselves as Muslim.

AP: The survey, released on the International Day against Homophobia, is important, she said, because “for the first time, we see how much fear there is still around.”

National Catholic Register: Almost 20% of Americans say TV has shifted their opinion in favor of the redefinition of marriage.

Reuters: In France, the path to radical Islam often begins with a minor offence that throws a young man into an overcrowded, violent jail and produces a hardened convert ready for jihad

Chicago Weekly: Ginsburg’s decades-long struggle for women’s rights is likely to prove one of the most persistent endeavors in modern American legal history, but she expressed sadness that the prevailing attitude toward such efforts to advance gender equality remains lukewarm at best: “In some places, the word ‘feminism’ is the ‘F’ word.”

National Review Bench Memos: The National Catholic Committee on Scouting has issued a statement that, if properly applied, ought to require faithful Catholic scout leaders to vote against the Boy Scouts of America’s proposed resolution to allow openly gay youth members. The NCCS statement reads in part (emphasis added) . . .

CNSNews: Over 86 years, the Ku Klux Klan lynched 3,446 blacks – a figure matched in less than four days if tallying the number of black babies who are aborted.

Catholic World Report: A couple years ago my parents finally obtained the financial means to visit Ireland. They were able to spend three weeks in the homeland of our ancestors. They travelled the country and visited all the places associated with our ancestry—which, of course, included several pubs. They met wonderful and friendly people who were either distant relatives or knew the local histories associated with the people from whom we came.

John Zmirak at Aleteia: Marriage is under assault, and in just the last month, we have seen some surprising, depressing concessions: Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi opined to the press that Christians could accept “civil unions” of same-sex couples. Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan told a town hall meeting in Wisconsin that while he still opposed homosexual “marriage,” he supported the “right” of same-sex couples to adopt children. Evangelical Christian pastors, afraid of alienating younger members of their churches, have begun to back away from this issue. Even Catholic and Evangelical leaders whose views are orthodox have become reluctant to “pick this hill to die on.” A gifted writer and Catholic priest confessed to me, “I have held off on commenting on the marriage issue. I’m just too frightened of the backlash.”

The article by Steve Petrow at the NY Times is here.

Talking Points Memo: Far more Arizonans support same-sex marriage than oppose it, according to the latest Rocky Mountain Poll released Tuesday. The poll showed that 55 percent of Arizona voters favor the idea.

Ed Whelan at NRO: What this demonstrates is that the BSA’s top leaders aren’t serious about finding some middle ground. Instead, they’re trying to snooker and bamboozle local scout leaders and parents to embrace a proposal that isn’t sustainable and that will lead in short order to a wholesale abandonment of the existing policy against openly gay adult leaders.

KFOXTV.com: When you combine the results from polling firms like Gallup, Pew the General Social Survey there were 12 things 90% of American’s say they believed in.

Gallup: Fifty-three percent of Americans say the law should recognize same-sex marriages, the third consecutive reading of 50% or above in Gallup polling over the past year. The 53% in favor ties the high to this point, also measured last November and in May 2011.

The Hill: “That was my concern, that the court had given opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly,” she said Saturday. “My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum that was on the side of change.”

Christian Institute: The Government thinks supporters of traditional marriage are just “dinosaurs” who should be “frogmarched” towards a new concept of wedlock, Lord Carey says.

CBS Sports: “Yes. Again, I have such great respect for our players,” Goodell said. “I don’t think it will just be tolerated, I think it will be accepted. These are individuals who play in our league. We’re all different in some fashion, and we’re accepting of our differences. That’s what this is all about.

LifeNews: Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 2-7, find 58 percent of Americans want either all or almost all abortions illegal — with 20% saying it should be illegal in all circumstances and 38% favoring it in only in a few circumstances.

Catherine Rampell at NY Times: The share of births to unmarried mothers is up, according to a new report from the Census Bureau.

Christopher O. Tollefsen at Public Discourse: The Gosnell case shows us that a society’s laws teach, and if they teach a lesson of injustice they will corrupt its people over time. Indeed, contemporary abortion jurisprudence undermines the very notion of natural rights and constitutional government.

Miami Herald: With more Native Americans making similar demands, the Suquamish tribe is one of three that have signed off on marriage by same-sex couples, laws that apply only on their land. Legal analysts predict that more tribes will follow, giving new rights to what many Native Americans call “two-spirit” individuals, who carry both a feminine and masculine spirit. Still, the issue is far from settled in Indian country.

Lyle Denniston at Constitution Daily: If the Constitution takes at least part of its meaning from the way elected officials react to a high-profile public policy issue, the supporters of same-sex marriage have reason to be optimistic right now. In the space of less than a week, Rhode Island and then Delaware became the 10th and 11th states to allow gay marriage (along with Washington, D.C.). But is that a trend that the Supreme Court is ready to advance—or will choose to leave alone to see how it goes?

Samuel Gregg at Public Discourse: Conservatives need to stop shying away from principled, as opposed to merely utilitarian, defenses of economic freedom and its associated institutions.

The Barna Group: One common thread in every survey has been the significant number of Millennials among these “Nones.” The initial Pew survey found that nearly one-in-three members of the Millennial generation (32%) has no religious affiliation. But, who are these faithless twentysomethings? Where did they come from? Did they ever claim faith? And what is it about religion that has left them cold?

Norbert Blum at WorldCrunch: In a society designed around individual liberty, has marriage become little more than a temporary link-up of working people choosing to spend some free time together? And the kids?

LiveScience: “This is because traditional economic models of marriage have argued that men who have high earning potential are more likely to marry at an older age so that they can ‘reveal’ their high potential,” explained Hani Mansour, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver. [I Don't: 5 Myths About Marriage]

CNSNews: Bishop Thomas Tobin, head of the Catholic diocese of Providence, said the “gay marriage” bill signed into law in Rhode Island by its governor, Lincoln Chafee, constituted a “new challenge of the post-Christian era into which, clearly, we have now entered.”

The Hill: If you want to know how effective Cecile Richards is, just ask her opponents.
As the president of Planned Parenthood — both its clinical operations and its political advocacy arm — Richards, who recently sat down for an interview with The Hill, is no stranger to controversy.

David Cortman on the Sam Malone Show to discuss the upcoming Boy Scouts vote. | MP3 audio 5:37 mins | BSA Executive Committee’s Decision On Resolution Caves Under The Guise Of Compromise

Ashley McGuire at Public Discourse: How appropriate that Justice Alito brought up cellphones in the recent Supreme Court hearings on the marriage cases. Because these days it seems like it is easier to get out of a marriage than it is to get out of a cellphone contract.

CNSNews: The results of a Boy Scouts of America (BSA) survey shows that a majority of members support keeping in place the policy that prohibits homosexuals from joining or leading the organization.

Christian Institute: A man’s sex change has been affirmed in a Church of England service, said to be the first of its kind. The transsexual man who is known as Susan Musgrove, 60, underwent surgery last year and has now been publicly blessed as a woman at St Andrew’s Church in Northumberland. The curate of his Church designed an affirmation liturgy for the service after they got the go-ahead from the Bishop of Newcastle.

Huffington Post: The NFL is not going as far as the National Hockey League, which announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with You Can Play to combat homophobia in sports. The initiative will include training and counseling on gay issues, along with participation in public service announcements, putting the NHL on the forefront of LGBT rights in men’s professional sports.

National Review: They say that ‘homosexuality’ or ‘homosexual’ is used and hurled at people who are gay as a slur,” Kornheiser explained, saying he was unaware of the issue but will use the network’s preferred word. ESPN has also singled out the term “sexual preference,” saying it wants employees to use “sexual orientation” instead.

Dennis Prager at NRO: In our dialogue, we agreed that her book’s subtitle was accurate, but we disagreed as to the cause. Freitas, who holds a Ph.D. in religious studies, blamed it on peer pressure, the sex-drenched social media of young people, and the ubiquity of pornography. I blamed three other culprits: feminism, careerism, and secularism.

Patheos: In the report, Sliding v. Deciding, Dr. Scott Stanley argues that there are significant differences in the process by which cohabiting and non-cohabiting couples enter into marriage. And this process, itself, plays a significant factor in determining the stability of the future marriage. Non-cohabiting couples tend to proceed toward marriage in a conscious way.

Benjamin L. Smith at First Things: Unfortunately the sentimentality surrounding this phrase can obscure the plain facts of the matter. New generations must replace old generations. There must be a never-ending supply of farmers, entrepreneurs, soldiers, voters, statesmen, taxpayers, intellectuals, and others for society to provide essential goods and services. Furthermore, there is overwhelming evidence of the sociological and economic benefits of traditional, heterosexual marriage. For all of these reasons the promulgation of heterosexual marriage contracts is justified by grave public necessity; the legal establishment of heterosexual marriage is justified by the common good.

Robert Zaretsky at the NY Times: Tocqueville and Gay Marriage

But why does Catholicism wield such influence in a country where scarcely 5 percent of the population attends church? In their new book, “Le Mystère français,” Emmanuel Todd and Hervé Le Bras map out the persistence of a Catholic mentality in large parts of France despite the withering of religious practice. This “zombie Catholicism,” they observe, reveals itself in professional and domestic differences between husbands and wives, community and family activities, and the vitality of “free schools” (Catholic private schools).

Elahe Izadi at National J. via Yahoo: Polling on gay marriage among blacks has been mixed. A March 2013 Pew Center study – which compiled results from four surveys conducted over more than a year — found 40 percent of African-Americans support gay marriage, with 48 percent opposing. The same study found 49 percent of whites and 61 percent of Democrats support gay marriage.

Washington Times: The University of Colorado hired a visiting conservative professor this year, but conservatives don’t want to stop there. Republicans on the University of Colorado Board of Regents pushed Tuesday for greater intellectual diversity on campus, starting with the hiring of professors and instructors in the humanities who hold right-of-center views.

LifeSiteNews: Catholics in Pennsylvania and around the country are outraged after learning that a college student dressed as the pope from the waist up – and nude from the waist down – handed out condoms in an event organized by Carnegie Mellon University’s art department.

Tulsa World: In this case, a middle-school principal issued a dress code for the eighth grade’s spring dance. No strapless dresses. So teenage girls will have to go to the dance this year with their shoulders burdened by dainty spaghetti straps.

The Journal: More than 15 Musselman Middle School students were given in-school suspension this week due to alleged dress code violations, according to parents and students.

CBS: Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III took to Twitter on Tuesday to complain about the “tyranny of political correctness” he believes is holding American culture “hostage.”

CNSNews: Miami’s Catholic archbishop, Thomas Wenski, said establishing “gay marriage” would corrupt the natural setting for rearing children by a mother and a father, and further spread “moral relativism,” one of the signs that democracy is “on its way to totalitarianism.”

NY Times: The vote reflected not only the rapidly shifting tides of public opinion on same-sex marriage, but also the influence of a new Republican advocacy group called the American Unity Fund, which spent weeks helping the state’s gay rights organization cultivate Republican senators.

Washington Post: This comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is out with a poll Tuesday morning looking at how much Americans know about the health-care overhaul—before a deluge of public outreach, set to begin this summer, kicks off.

Austin Ruse at Crisis Magazine: There’s deception going on in the front office of the Boy Scouts. It includes deliberate misrepresentation of polling data, and threats to pack an upcoming meeting with anonymous and unqualified voters so that the Boy Scout policy on homosexuality gets forced on the majority of Scouts and parents who don’t want it.

Anglican Ink: The Anglican bishops of the West Indies have urged their governments to hold fast and resist pressure from Britain and the United States to legalize gay rights and gay marriage.

The Rebel Yell: The Browns are like any average American family. If every family consisted of four wives and 17 children. The Browns are polygamists living in Las Vegas, trying to paint a modern picture of plural marriage. In an attempt to denounce the negative stereotypes of polygamy, from sexual abuse to forced marriage, the Browns have put their every move on camera.

Reihan Salam at NRO: As more couples plan and pay for the occasion, its central meaning is shifting from uniting two families to celebrating the bride and groom themselves.

Raw Story: Two LGBT rights groups, the Human Rights Campaign and OutServe-SLDN, have launched a campaign to get Laurie removed as the headline speaker for the Pentagon’s Day of Prayer event on May 2. In a press release, the HRC noted that Laurie had a history of disparaging LGBT people and their relationships.

MyFoxNy.com: The NFL distributed a document to its teams Monday reiterating its anti-discrimination policy on sexual orientation.

Sports Illustrated: I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay. I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.

AP: Wirathu has become the figurehead of a virulent strain of religious nationalism being spread by some of the most venerated members of Burmese society: Buddhist monks. Their core message is that Buddhists must unite against a growing Muslim threat.

HurriyetDailyNews: “If Atatürk did not establish this republic, would you occupy your position? What country’s citizen would you be? What number would you be among the wives of a sheik?” Genç told Şahin from his ranks April 25, Anatolia news agency reported.

ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania sent a letter today on behalf of a male transgender student who was denied the chance to run for prom king when his principal placed his female birth name in the column for “prom queen” despite repeated requests to be listed under his correct gender identity . . . copy of the letter can be seen here.

Patrick Buchanan at The American Conservative: What benefit do we derive as a people to justify the risks we take by opening up America to mass migration from a world aflame with hatred and hostility over race, ethnicity, culture, history and faith? Why are we bringing all of the world’s quarrelsome minorities, and all the world’s quarrels with them, into our home? What we saw in Boston was the dark side of diversity.

Christian Post: More than half of evangelical Christians (52 percent) view Islam as “essentially a violent religion,” a new report from Barna Group reveals, though only about a quarter (26 percent) of all American adults feel the same way.

Alan Sears at Townhall: The Play’s the Thing
Whatever you do, be cool,” the kids tell themselves, and each other—just as we told ourselves, and our peers, at that age. You can’t be cool if you stand out from the crowd. Rule No. 1 for being cool is: blend in. Makes it hard to teach showmanship. Or courage, for that matter.

NBC: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has given tacit approval to the Boy Scouts’ proposal to allow gay youth to join, saying they “appreciate the positive things” included in the plan to end the organization’s controversial ban on gay boys.

David Lapp at Family Scholars: In “Promises I Can Keep,” Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas find that among the poor single mothers they interviewed, “Nearly everyone has a morality tale to tell of two fools who rushed into marriage only to divorce.” And, “The harshest condemnation is reserved for those who marry because of pregnancy. Such marriages, they believe, are almost certain to end in divorce, and thus benefit neither the couple nor the child.”

Mark Steyn at NRO: One of the most ingenious and effective strategies of the Left on any number of topics is to frame the debate and co-opt the language so effectively that it becomes all but impossible even to discuss the subject honestly.

Washington Times: He’s referring to what You Can Play Project co-founder Patrick Burke calls “casual homophobia,” the kind of language he hopes to get rid of as part of an initiative with the NHL and NHL Players’ Association.

The Christian Civic League has posted this article by John Stemberg that outlines the situation.

God Discussion: Howard Philips, who co-founded the so-called “Moral Majority” and is considered an architect of the modern Christian Right has died at 72 on Saturday. He had been suffering from dementia before his death according to Salon. L. Brent …

Mary Eberstadt’s new book is now available on Amazon.

Washington Times: “This is no compromise; it is capitulation, plain and simple,” said David Cortman, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, which supports the BSA’s current membership policy that bans “open or avowed homosexuals” from Scouting.

David Bohon at the New American: Referring to the BSA’s century-plus tradition of moral excellence, David Cortman of Alliance Defending Freedom warned that the proposal represented “the beginning of a sea change, as those promoting this agenda won’t rest until there is complete acceptance of any sexual preference for both leaders and members.” Cortman counseled the Boy Scouts to recall “that the Constitution protects — and the Supreme Court has affirmed — their freedom to promote and practice the values that have served to shape our nation’s boys into leaders for well over 100 years.”

Christian Institute: report for the Church of Scotland on same-sex relationships has suggested an order of service for a civil partnership blessing. The liturgy contains ideas for scripture readings, including passages about David and Jonathan, and Ruth and Naomi.