Tag Archives: Topic: Marriage

John G. Crandall at Public Discourse: Proposition 8 does not, contrary to Judge Vaughan Walker’s claims, treat equals unequally.

Times of London: Police fought running battles with protesters in central Paris last night after the French parliament approved legislation authorising same-sex couples to marry and to adopt children.

AlbertMohler.com: The key question we now face is this: Does recognition of civil rights for all people require the normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage?

Christian Institute: Same-sex marriage has been legalised in France, under the most unpopular president since the 1950s according to a new poll. Yesterday the socialist-majority National Assembly voted 331-225 in favour of gay marriage and adoption, despite massive public unrest about the issue.

Providence Journal: The state Senate voted 26 to 12 Wednesday to allow same-sex couples to marry in Rhode Island as early as August 1.

Washington Blade: The Colombian Senate on Wednesday rejected a bill that would have extended marriage rights to same-sex couples couples in the South American country. Senators opposed the proposal by an 51-17 vote margin a day after they debated it.

WGMD 92.7: Testimony went on for just under 2 hours in the state House from witnesses on both sides of the marriage equality issue. There was testimony from Jordan Lawrence, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom and Mark Pupura, of Equality Delaware and Nicole Theis of the Delaware Family Policy Council.

Delaware Online: The minority’s featured witness was Jordan Lorence, an attorney with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly the Alliance Defense Fund. Language in the bill to protect churches and clergy from being compelled to solemnify marriages they oppose is not adequate, he said. “It’s the business owners that deal with weddings. It’s licensed professionals having their licenses threatened because they believe the wrong things about marriage,” Lorence said, citing discrimination cases in other states where businesses have been sued for denying services to same-sex couples. “Those are the places where we are having religious liberty conflicts around the country,” he added.

Beaumont Enterprise (AP): “If there’s an exemption for right of conscience, I don’t see it,” said Jordan Lorence an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious liberties group.

NBC News: “If there’s an exemption for right of conscience, I don’t see it,” said Jordan Lorence an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious liberties group.

Boston Globe: The Rhode Island Senate is poised to hold a landmark vote Wednesday on gay marriage legislation, the culmination of years of efforts by supporters who want to see the state join the rest of New England in allowing gays and lesbians to wed.

Las Vegas Sun: Following more than an hour of riveting and personal floor speeches — during which one state senator publicly announced for the first time he is gay — the Nevada Senate voted 12-9 to begin the process of repealing the gay marriage ban from the state constitution. Only one Republican, Sen. Ben Kieckhefer, joined with Democrats to vote in favor of Senate Joint Resolution 13 . . .

Pink News: A court ruling in Rio de Janeiro means that the state is the 11th in Brazil to recognise same-sex marriages, although there are conflicting reports about the way that the judgement will be applied.

AP: Tuesday’s 331-225 vote came in the Socialist majority National Assembly.

Nicole Theis of DE Family Policy Council at Delaware Online: Marriage is based on the truth that men and women are complementary, the fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the reality that children need a mother and a father. Redefining marriage rejects these truths. This is the position many of us hold, including the Delaware Family Policy Council. But this week, an advocate for same-sex marriage accused us of being a “hate” group and called for an investigation simply for believing in the definition of marriage that predates government and is true across cultures, faiths and time.

AP: The five Republicans in the Rhode Island Senate are backing gay marriage as a legislative committee prepares for a pivotal vote on the issue.

CBS: The Nevada State Senate is scheduled to vote today on a resolution that allows gay marriage in Nevada. SJR13 . . .

MyDesert.com: A lesbian couple facing immigration troubles has the standing to challenge the federal Defense of Marriage Act because it violates the constitutional rights of immigrants in same-sex marriages, a federal judge has ruled. | Aranas v. Napalitono, Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motions to Dismiss | Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law Case Information Page

Providence Journal: The Providence Chamber of Commerce’s board chairman and two other business leaders said Monday legalizing same-sex marriage would remove one hurdle that makes it hard for R.I. businesses to compete.

Telegraph: Not so in France, where it’s turned incredibly French. It’s surprising to discover that, in a country with a proud tradition of secularism and political liberalism, only a slight majority of Frenchmen support the bill to legalise gay marriage that faces the National Assembly on Tuesday – and opinion is evenly split on a parallel bill to let gay people adopt children. More remarkable still has been the scale of the opposition’s street protests: the largest drew 340,000 to Paris in a demonstration of popular will normally associated with the Left. This has received very limited coverage in the European and American mainstream media, where there also seems to be a veritable blackout about the state’s violent response.

Business Insider: These trends create an even higher demand for education among women. Education is insurance against divorce risk, but it also creates more unstable marriages, which in turn increases demand for more education. And since the marriage market is filled with more educated women, it’s more difficult for uneducated women to find a mate — making the marriage market more competitive.

Os Hillman at Christian Post: The battle for the family is heating up with one of the most important issues that could cause a huge tipping point in culture-the redefining of marriage by the Supreme Court. This is part 3 of a 4 part series on the topic of gay marriage. In this segment we look at how the failure of Christian marriages and how it has contributed to the issue of the rising gay community and the agenda of the gay community.
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/is-gay-marriage-a-moral-issue-or-a-civil-liberties-issue-pt-3-94431/#sfwrzD6dg26Almep.99

The Hill: Forty-one percent of Republicans polled said they think less favorably of Portman following his shift, and the percentage of respondents reporting an unfavorable view of the senator saw a sharp increase in the new poll, up to 21 percent from 8 percent in late February. His approval among Republicans has dropped six percentage points since the last poll.

Reuters: Chanting “We don’t want your law, Hollande!”, some 50,000 protesters massed behind a banner reading: “All born of a Mum and a Dad” and said it was undemocratic to bring about such a fundamental social change without holding a …

Deseret News: Now think about that for a minute. This is the most famous newspaper in the world, the New York Times, in its popular and highly read Style section, not condemning Partilla and Riddell for deserting their families and children but featuring them positively because, instead of “denying their feelings and living dishonestly,” they had the courage to be “brave enough to hold hands and jump.”

Peter Sprigg at LifeSiteNews: In a country where 41 out of 50 states still define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and voters in a majority, 30 have placed that definition in their state constitutions; it can only be wishful thinking for the advocates of marriage redefinition to claim that it is imminent or inevitable. I suspect that some in the mainstream media are hoping that their prophecy will be a self-fulfilling one.

LifeSiteNews: 77 people changed the institution of marriage in New Zealand from a conjugal union with the potential for generating children and providing them with the nurture of their own mother and father into “a union of 2 people regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity” with the potential for systematically depriving children of their mother or father, or both. All in the name of “love”. Starting in August.

Independent: Scuffles broke out in the French parliament in the early hours of as right-wing opposition to a gay marriage law becomes increasingly strident and ill-tempered.

Newsmax: Gay marriage will be highlighted in Virginia this year during the state’s gubernatorial campaign, which features candidates in decidedly opposite camps on the issue. In fact, the race will feature the first Democratic candidate for governor in southern political history who endorses same-sex marriage, according to Politico.

Christian Institute: A motion supporting same-sex marriage will be debated in the Northern Ireland Assembly later this month – despite MLAs rejecting a similar move in October last year.

Rod Dreher at The American Conservative: It seems that when people decide that historically normative Christianity is wrong about sex, they typically don’t find a church that endorses their liberal views. They quit going to church altogether. This raises a critically important question: is sex the linchpin of Christian cultural order? Is it really the case that to cast off Christian teaching on sex and sexuality is to remove the factor that gives—or gave—Christianity its power as a social force? . . . Our post-Christian culture, then, is an “anti-culture.” We are compelled by the logic of modernity and the myth of individual freedom to continue tearing away the last vestiges of the old order, convinced that true happiness and harmony will be ours once all limits have been nullified.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Christian Institute: People feel forced to say they agree with gay marriage because campaigners have created a society where disagreement is “abnormal” according to an atheist commentator.

LifeSiteNews: Since last Friday, public demonstrations against same-sex “marriage” and adoption in France have been escalating, not only in Paris but also in remote provincial towns and even abroad among French expatriates. The Senate’s approval of the gay marriage bill (known as the “loi Taubira,” after the Justice Minister that proposed the text to the legislature) has sparked off a wave of anger, and groups of determined young people all over the country have decided to make their presence felt.

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.

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.

CitizenLink is proud to work with the Michigan Family Forum and other organizations across the country to stand for marriage, life and religious freedom. Summary: A woman’s marital status at the time of her pregnancy is a significant factor in putting her child at risk. Nearly two-thirds of out-of-wedlock births and many of the subsequent health problems are paid for with public funds. Furthermore, unmarried mothers are more likely to depend on public assistance years after the child is born. While most out-of-wedlock pregnancies are unintended and to young women, a surprising number are intentionally conceived.

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.”

Philip Cohen at The Atlantic: For a few decades, women’s rising share of the workforce probably led to fewer women getting married. But that’s not the case anymore.

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.

Kevin Swanson at Vision Forum Ministries: What do you do with a society where the young 30-year-old men are playing computer games, and the 65-year-old men are playing golf? What happens to a society where there are far more retirees than Generation Y’s in the work force, especially if the social security system is nearing bankruptcy? This is where we are today, and the economic situation is dire. Unless we change the way we educate, the way we do our economics, and the way we integrate our families, I tremble to think of what will happen in the upcoming decades. Now is the time to redefine a biblical economy based upon the re-integration of the family.

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.

Boston Globe: Gay marriage could be the first big debate after the General Assembly reconvenes April 23. The session began with a bang in January, with the House easily passing legislation that would allow gay couples to wed. A Senate vote is expected within a few weeks.

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.

Baptist Press also posted at Townhall: Now that the future of marriage is center stage, Kellie Fiedorek hopes that the Supreme Court does not offer a radical ruling that cuts short the debate. A lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, Fiedorek, 29, sat in the courtroom as the justices heard the arguments. She’s been to seven states this year testifying before legislatures about the ways redefining marriage would interfere with religious freedom. She’s learned that many citizens have never had to think about the meaning of marriage and why it matters. Now that people are alert, social conservatives have the opportunity to make their case to a young generation that has both rallied for life and dealt with the aftereffects of divorce. “I think that, as more young people engage in the issue, we will see more of them eager to defend marriage, recognizing how important it is to parents and children,” Fiedorek said.

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.

NBC: By a 49 percent to 43 percent margin, Latinos say they are in favor of allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. That’s the widest margin for Hispanics in the NBC/WSJ poll’s history, but it lags behind other traditionally Democratic-voting pillars.

Asbury Park Press: But there’s also a more strictly economic case. In a paper for Third Way, a liberal think tank, economists David Autor and Melanie Wasserman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology attribute the decline of marriage — which, like Murray, they say is concentrated among the poorly educated — to the eroding economic heft of men compared with women

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.

Chicago Tribune: Illinois Republican Chairman Pat Brady survived a move Saturday to immediately oust him as party chairman over his support for same-sex marriage, but top state GOP leaders approved a succession strategy that could find him replaced within the next six weeks.

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.

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?

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

AZ Central: The Bisbee City Council has backed down in the face of legal pressure from Arizona’s attorney general and will rewrite its controversial ordinance granting civil unions.

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.

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.