Tag Archives: Topic: Homosexual Agenda

Houston Chronicle (AP): The Senate Criminal Justice Committee voted on Wednesday to repeal the state’s anti-gay sodomy law, a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.

Idaho State Journal: Mayor Brian Blad cast the deciding vote Thursday night to defeat a proposed new ordinance designed to protect the LGBT community from discrimination when it comes to housing, employment or public accommodations.

Washington Post: Under the proposal, no new civil unions would be performed after July 1, and couples in civil unions could convert to marriages before July 2014 by applying for a marriage license. On July 1, 2014, all remaining civil unions not subject to dissolution, annulment or legal separation would automatically convert to marriages.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: As a lawyer in the same-sex marriage litigation at the Supreme Court who has spent a couple years working through all the implications of declaring a constitutional right to gay marriage, it became clear that such a declaration would also mean there is a right to polygamy.

Washington Times: A draft resolution for a proposed membership policy, to be released by BSA officials publicly by Monday, will be voted on by some 1,400 delegates of the BSA National Council at a three-day meeting in Grapevine, Texas, starting May 22.

AP: The Scouts announced Friday that it would submit this proposal to the roughly 1,400 voting members of its National Council at a meeting in Texas the week of May 20.

The Proposed Resolution is here.

Telegraph: Churches are facing a rebellion in the pews over gay marriage, a wide-ranging study of religious attitudes on the issue suggests.

Christian Post: The openly gay son of a conservative Republican Congressman has stated that he benefitted from undergoing the controversial practice of reparative therapy as a teenager.

Jeremy Dys at Engage Family Minute: According to Harper Polling, 57% of residents of states still holding to the pre-political definition of marriage still favor leaving the institution alone. Only 34% are inclined to redefine it. But, there’s more.

Washington Post: The Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for the Episcopal Church in a bitter, multimillion-dollar property dispute with a conservative congregation that had left the denomination over the Bible’s view of homosexuality and other issues.

Christian Concern: A Science teacher who was barred from teaching after expressing his beliefs on sexual ethics in the classroom has lost his case in the High Court.

The Columbus Dispatch: An anonymous parent had written to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus, appalled that Hale had listed her female partner’s name in an obituary. Within weeks, Hale said, she was fired because she is in a gay relationship.

Boston Globe: Harvard will give an extra $1,500 per year to its employees who extend health care benefits to their same-sex spouses, to help offset the federal taxes that homosexual couples are required to pay under federal law, the university announced earlier this week.

Brown Daily Herald: The House approved a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in January that is slated for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee next week.

AP on Pioneer Press: Gay marriage activists and their allies are gathering at Minnesota’s Capitol for an annual rally that’s likely to be dominated this year by the effort to legalize gay marriage in the state.

WorldNetDaily: The decision from the Supremes was that the Alien Tort Statute cannot be used to challenge foreign conduct in courts inside the United States. The ruling came down in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, but attorneys for Pastor Scott Lively say it means a claim brought against him by an organization called Sexual Minorities Uganda should be dismissed.

AP: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock will sign into law a bill that decriminalizes gay sex, 16 years after the state supreme court ruled the law unconstitutional.

KEPRTV.com: The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against a Richland florist based on the florist’s denial of flowers for a gay wedding.  The lawsuit was filed in Benton County and can be found here.

Orlando Sentinel: But a little-noticed tweak in a sweeping education bill expected to become law muddles which grades are protected by a federal law prohibiting discrimination against school clubs. The American Civil Liberties Union says that Lake County schools are obligated to allow the Gay-Straight Alliance club to form because the middle school has other non-academic clubs.

ACLU: “Passing the Student Non-Discrimination Act is the single most important step that Congress could take to improve the lives of LGBT students in our nation’s public schools,” said Ian Thompson, ACLU legislative representative.

David Cortman at Townhall: Why can’t the Boy Scouts of America hold to the same moral code and resulting lifestyle principles they’ve held to since their formation? Has the moral code changed? No. What’s changed is the brazenness of those who oppose both the code and those who stand by it.

Bloomberg: The case, pending before the New Mexico Supreme Court, is about discrimination and has nothing to do with gay marriage, Gill said. Opponents of same-sex marriage, though, see the case as a warning about how legalized gay marriage could impact religious freedom, citing it in at least three amicus briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court cases, said Jim Campbell, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a Scottsdale, Arizona- based Christian legal group representing the photographer in the New Mexico case and Proposition 8 proponents in the Supreme Court case . . . “People are paying attention to it because it illustrates some of the religious liberty concerns with same-sex marriage,” Campbell said. “If a case like that can arise in a state that doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, it would be far more likely and far more difficult to defend against in a state that recognizes gay marriage.”

Desert Dispatch: My source is the Alliance Defending Freedom, but ADF is far from the first organization to call attention to these outrages. The incidents recounted here are harbingers of the wholesale restructuring of our lives and the loss of our freedoms. Nothing is to be gained by simply acquiescing in this revolution. We must fight it.

How Appealing links to the audio and several reports.

The Heritage Foundation: A Washington state florist is facing a lawsuit by the state’s attorney general because she desires to conduct her business in accord with the principles of her faith.

Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture: During the 1960s the American understanding of marriage was radically altered by the public acceptance of divorce and contraception. Once divorce became socially acceptable, it was no longer possible to assume that any given marriage involved a permanent bond. Once contraception became the norm, it was no longer possible to assume that a marriage was likely to produce children. Permanence and fecundity are the two legs on which the institution of marriage stood; now they were gone. Today a typical American union is a 3-step process.

Alan Sears at Alliance Defending Freedom: This week’s deadline for filing your 2012 U.S. income taxes is a good reminder that many organizations you care about depend on Alliance Defending Freedom to defend their tax credits and tax-exempt status. Just this month, we’ve intervened in two cases to protect your religious freedom from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, who once again are proving that their idea of liberty does not include parents deciding where their children are educated.

NY Daily News: Former First Lady Nancy Reagan supports same-sex marriage, her daughter Patti Davis claims. “She does,” Davis said when asked if her mother supported marriage equality.

Christian Institute: Plans to redefine marriage have “thrown up so many unforeseen difficulties and inequalities” that they should be dropped by David Cameron, Ann Widdecombe has said.

Times of Zambia: Home Affairs Deputy Minister Steven Kampyongo said in an interview yesterday that the Government and Church mother bodies recently held a meeting and it was resolved that the country will not recognise any practice that abrogates the biblical, cultural and social norms of society. “We have just had a detailed consultative meeting with the church and top on the agenda was the issue of gay rights.

LifeSiteNews: Phone calls made by LifeSiteNews to Mrs. Young’s business line were not immediately returned. But Jim Hochberg, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom who represented Mrs. Young in the case, said the ruling was a violation of his client’s freedom of speech and religion under the First Amendment. “The public needs to be aware of this decision because it has far-reaching consequences,” he told reporters Monday.

Gay Star News: The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has promised to lead a global campaign for LGBT rights. And he has told governments around the world that they have a ‘legal duty’ to protect gay and trans people and that ‘culture, tradition or religion’ could not be used as an excuse for failing to do so.

AP: Hundreds of jubilant gay-rights advocates celebrated at New Zealand’s Parliament on Wednesday as the country became the 13th in the world and the first in the Asia-Pacific region to legalize same-sex marriage.

AP: A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering two legal challenges to the ban on “sexual orientation change efforts” that was passed by the California Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown last fall. | Liberty Counsel Press Release

Robert P.George at First Things: The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out thirty years ago.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: That’s the headline of a new article at Slate.

The Huffington Post: The Texas Aggie Conservatives and Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit in June 2012 over which student groups on campus are funded, alleging bias against right-wing clubs.

Daily Herald: After I said these things at the Capitol, the protestors wrote about me on Facebook. They said that I was being taught to be a “hater” and was “narrow-minded.” But when people only consider adults’ rights and not the rights of children, who is being narrow-minded? As I said at the Capitol, something is very wrong when we favor the wants of consenting adults over the needs of children who cannot consent. Since children are defenseless they should be the focus of this debate. It’s not a perfect world, but we should always strive for this natural ideal: “it takes a mom and a dad to create a child, so it takes a mom and a dad to raise one.”

Reuters on Yahoo News: Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois told a meeting of French bishops the planned marriage reform, which the government has speeded up amid mounting pressure from opponents, was a sign that society had lost its capacity to integrate different views.

NC Register: Since being sued for declining to use her flower-arranging talents to adorn a same-sex “wedding,” Barronelle Stutzman has seen her flower-shop business blossom.

Union Bulletin: Vietnam should legalize same-sex marriage immediately, the deputy minister of health was quoted as saying today by local media . . . The National Assembly is scheduled to discuss allowing same-sex marriage when the law is reviewed in May.

One News Now: “Do you take kindly to the very recent remarks from [Priebus] calling Christian Republicans ‘Old Testament heretics’ for not supporting same-sex marriage in America?” he writes. “[And for telling] the GOP to modernize the party if they expect win future national elections?”

Pat Buchanan at CNSNews: For traditional Christianity’s view that homosexual acts are immoral and same-sex marriage an absurdity cannot be reconciled with the view that homosexuality is natural and normal and gay marriage a human right. The issue is pulling the Republican Party apart. It is pulling Christian communities apart. It is pulling the nation apart. Like abortion, it is an issue on which both sides cannot be right. Yet it is an issue of paramount importance both to devout Christians and to the homosexual rights move ment.

LifeSiteNews: Nearly two years after sportscaster Damian Goddard was fired by Rogers Communications, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed his complaint in which he alleged that he was fired because he had publicly voiced support for the traditional definition of marriage.

NDTV.com: New Zealand is poised to become the first Asia-Pacific nation to legalise same-sex marriage in a parliamentary vote that gay rights advocates on Tuesday hailed as a milestone for equality.

A Hawaii Circuit Court judge yesterday held that a bed-and-breakfast violated Hawaii’s public accommodation civil rights law when its owner, apparently for reasons of religious belief, refused to provide lodging to a lesbian couple.

Robert R. Reilly at MercatorNet: Since how we perceive reality is at stake in this struggle, the question inevitably rises: what is the nature of this reality? Is it good for us as human beings? Is it according to our Nature? Each side in the debate claims that what they are defending or advancing is according to Nature. Opponents of same-sex marriage say that it is against Nature; proponents say that it is natural and that, therefore, they have a “right” to it. Yet the realities to which each side points are not just different but opposed: each negates the other. What does the word Nature really mean in this context? The words may be the same, but their meanings are directly contradictory, depending on the context. Therefore, it is vitally important to understand the broader contexts in which they are used and the larger views of reality of which they are a part since the status and meaning of Nature will be decisive in the outcome.

One News Now: Nicole Theis of the Delaware Family Policy Council (DFPC) points out that in a state where the governor’s mansion is occupied by Democrat Jack Markell — the same party as a majority of both houses of the legislature — defeating the measure is a matter of public involvement in the process.

Charisma: “Gay pride” necessitates anti-Christian hate. It must. “Gay marriage” and other sexual orientation–based laws do violence to freedom and truth. They are the hammer with which the postmodern left intends to bludgeon bloody religious liberty and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic.

The Advocate: A transgender woman in Hong Kong is asking the city’s highest court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that she cannot marry her boyfriend because she was assigned male at birth.

The New Civil Rights Movement: In 2010, Thailand was elected to a seat on the powerful United Nations Human Rights Council. Thailand had a history of abstaining from voting in favor of UN resolutions on sexual orientation and gender identity, …

Jeremy Dys at Engage Family Minute: And, just because it seems inevitable, maybe its not. Maybe we need to explain to our kids how formerly ‘inevitable’ ideas like Beta, VHS tapes, and the bag phone ultimately lost their novelty too.

f the Supreme Court were to hold that Prop 8 proponents lack standing to defend Prop 8, the two rulings against Prop 8 below—Judge Reinhardt’s ruling for the Ninth Circuit and then-Judge Vaughn Walker’s district-court ruling—should both be vacated. So explains law professor (and former Blackmun clerk) Vikram David Amar, cogently elaborating the position that he has previously taken (and that I have also raised).

Ed Whelan at NRO: The only minor flaw that I see in the “slippery slope” argument is that polyamory may well be upslope of same-sex marriage. By contrast to the novelty of same-sex marriage, polyamory—or at least its polygamous version (one husband, more than one wife)—has a long history

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The constitutional convention backs the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples, the Irish Times reports. With this decision, Ireland seems set to join the fold of countries that want to destroy the institution of marriage by re-defining it beyond recognisability. But it could still be prevented, as a popular referendum will be needed.

Christian Institute: A former Ecuadorian presidential candidate has been banned from politics and fined more than £2,000 for disagreeing with homosexual practice. Nelson Zavala, who is a preacher, was ordered to pay $3,180 (£2,075) and has been barred from political activity for a year.

Providence Journal: As the debate over same-sex marriage moves closer to a vote in the Rhode Island Senate, lawmakers are wrestling with a key question: If legislators approve same-sex marriage, how will the rights of same-sex couples interact with the rights of people who oppose it?

Bloomberg: An anti-gay-marriage protest in Paris yesterday turned into a lightning rod for anger over President Francois Hollande’s economic policies.

AFP: France’s National Assembly decided Monday to bring forward the final vote on France’s gay marriage bill to April 23, raising the prospect of more mass demonstrations by opponents in the coming days.

NY Daily News: Brett Shaad, 33, of West Hollywood, Calif., who fell ill from bacterial meningitis earlier this week has been declared brain dead amid warnings to sexually active gay men about the deadly strain of illness, officials said.

William Baude at Slate: In the wake of the Supreme Court arguments about same-sex marriage, there has been widespread agreement that the justices aren’t likely to create a right to gay marriage throughout the land—thereby invalidating the ban in 41 states that don’t perform it. And there has also been lots of confusion about what, practically speaking, a ruling that stopped short of legalizing gay marriage in 50 states would mean. If the Supreme Court leaves the laws of most states intact, but strikes down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, will it create “legal chaos” as the federal government tries to figure out which marriages to recognize where? Or is it relatively obvious which couples will receive federal benefits?

Reuters: President Barack Obama may have made a slow start on gay rights issues, but by the end of his first term his record was such that a news magazine dubbed him the nation’s “first gay president.” Now activists want more.

Jeremy Tedesco of Alliance Defending Freedom and John O’Connor of Equality California on Due Diligence Voice of Russia Radio to discuss this: Should Calif. punish Boy Scouts with loss of tax-exempt status? | MP3 audio 16:58 mins

The HIll: The Republican National Committee has reaffirmed its opposition to gay marriage with a slate of resolutions passed unanimously at its spring meeting.

Alliance Defending Freedom at Christian Post: California Senator Ricardo Lara is the latest in a series of people and entities to bully young boys. This phrase is intended to be as shocking as it sounds, only because the advocacy he is engaging in is equally so.

Doug Mainwaring at Public Discourse: Our recent juridical and legislative history is rife with assaults on the rights and needs of children, always trumped in favor of selfish adults. No more. I am confident that the naked overreach of the media and progressive activists on this issue will invite a voter backlash that will either meet or exceed the same-sex marriage movement’s achievements, leading to a thorough rethinking of Roe v. Wade, no-fault divorce, and our debilitating, anti-family, anti-father welfare state.

Washington Times: After South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson’s embrace of gay marriage last week, activists who have made the issue a litmus test for Democratic Party officeholders are cranking up the heat on the three remaining holdouts among Democrats in the Senate.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: Stutzman’s lawyer is J.D. Bristoll, an attorney allied with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the national law firm representing California’s Prop 8 before the U.S. Supreme Court. Bristoll explains this is not about homosexuality, since the shop serves gay customers all the time. It is instead specifically objecting to homosexual marriage on religious grounds and declining to take part in one.
This case goes to the absolute core of religious liberty, asking whether the government can compel a sincere Christian believer to violate her religious conscience, and it could make new law.

Jena McGregor at Washington Post: It’s also not leadership. The abrupt surge of officials trying to follow political winds is the opposite of the sort of courageous, principled way most of us hope our officials will lead. Rather than speak out about their true beliefs — it’s impossible to believe at least some of these 14 senators didn’t privately support gay marriage before — they waited until they had the political air cover of Hillary Clinton, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party.

Ruth Institute: Truth is, African American pastors have been engaged in the real civil rights battle for decades, fighting to end violence and respect human dignity in their communities, while largely ignored by the media. Now that their voices are speaking out on the hot button issue of marriage law, they’re getting attention. But some media seemed not to have noticed that the day they gave the story prominence was the anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Oh, the irony.

Alliance Defending Freedom: Senator Lara and Equality California should issue a formal apology for trying to bully BSA into changing its values. And, if UPS or Intel has the courage to stand up to the bullies and defend Scouts’ honor, they should publically reward Boy Scouts of America’s excellent service with true charitable gifts—the kind that come with no strings attached.

NBC Chicago: The African-American Clergy Coalition, a group founded to fight the same-sex marriage bill in the General Assembly, has spent only $11,250 on radio ads, but so far, it’s been enough to keep the bill bottled up in the state House.

Out.com has published the list here. Many conservatives will be surprised to see that Matt Drudge is identified as number 21.

Washington Post: The Republican National Committee passed resolutions Friday reaffirming its commitment to defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and calling on the Supreme Court to “uphold the sanctity of marriage” as it weighs rulings on two landmark cases involving gay marriage.

The Age: Larousse, the authoritative French dictionary, has infuriated right-wing MPs after it altered its definition of marriage to a union of “two persons” rather than “between man and woman”.