Tag Archives: Topic: Media

Cal Thomas at Fox News: What advocates for same-sex marriage should be asked is whether they consider any other human relationship worthy of similar constitutional protection and based on what standard? The Constitution doesn’t guarantee the right to marry. States, …

LifeSiteNews: Critics are asking why a new Quinnipiac poll is claimimg that the majority of America Catholics suport same-sex “marriage” when suppressed data reveals the numbers are almost exactly reversed for the faithful.

Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy: Over the weekend, the NYT published a highly misleading story about Republican filibusters of President Obama’s judicial nominees. Consider the very first sentence of the article: “A fresh feud over federal judgeships has again begun to agitate the Senate, with Republicans so far blocking President Obama from filling any of the four vacancies on the nation’s most prestigious and important appeals court.

S. Adam Seagrave at Public Discourse: When intellectual arguments against abortion fail to persuade, recourse must be had to images and strategies that awake what David Hume considered our “moral sense.” . . . The pro-life movement currently finds itself in the same place as the abolition movement at the time of Frederick Douglass’s great speech. If we are to experience similar success, we would do well to follow Douglass’s advice and focus our energies on awakening the moral sense of our fellow citizens. It would help to have another Douglass for our cause, but at least we still have his words: “The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”

ABC: A majority of Catholics, 54 percent, now support gay marriage, compared to 47 percent of all Americans, according to a new Quinnipiac Universitypoll.

Bill Clinton at the Washington Post: When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that “enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination.” Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned.

Todd Starnes at Townhall: Gay rights activists are demanding Tim Tebow back out of a speaking engagement at Liberty University just two weeks after pressuring the New York Jets quarterback to cancel a speaking engagement at the First Baptist Church of Dallas.

John Flynn at Zenit: “Marriage is in crisis because it has become nothing more than an adult centric institution, no longer the foundation of the family, in the minds of an increasing number of people,” he commented.

Christian Institute: The BBC will broadcast an Easter programme saying the way Britain treats gay people is like the crucifixion of Jesus. Critics say the BBC has sunk “to a new low” by using the crucifixion to push a gay rights message. The programme will be broadcast on Radio 4 as part of a series of lectures in the run up to Easter.

AP: A new TV commercial features a good-looking young woman on a beach vacation lounging next to a good-looking young man. He bemoans the glare on his iPad and she fills him in on the Kindle Paperwhite’s sun-friendly screen

Turtle Bay and Beyond: As the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women begins today, two news stories are already disingenuously implying that the Holy See, the Russian Federation, and Iran are effectively enablers of violence committed against women. These and several other UN member states oppose the inclusion of language that could be used to support a right to abortion – a topic that is always controversial within the UN system.

CBC.ca: A comic book shop franchise in Ottawa is taking a stand for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights by pulling the work of a writer who publicly opposes gay marriage off its shelves.

Christian Post: According to National Right to Life (NRL), among the 1,502 people who answered the Pew Research Center’s January poll questions about Roe. v. Wade: “Only 62 percent knew it dealt with abortion.”

Delaware Online (includes video): At least half of Delaware’s voters would support legislation granting marriage rights to same-sex couples and two-thirds say such a law would have no real impact on them personally, according to a poll done for Equality Delaware, the advocacy group that worked to pass the state’s civil unions bill two years ago

Edward Mechmann at Archdiocese of NY: For a long time, apologists and advocates for legal abortion liked to say that they believed that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”. Well, we know that they’ve given up on “rare”. And they certainly are unconditionally committed to “legal”. But it’s astonishing that they now seem to have given up on “safe”.

Mike Florio at NBC Sports: The fact that the NFL isn’t ready for openly gay players continues to be proven by the words and actions of men who currently occupy, who previously inhabited NFL, and who will be joining NFL locker rooms.

Politico: Along with more than 80 prominent Republicans, the “Dirty Harry” star has signed an amicus brief in opposition to California’s Proposition 8, Breitbart News firstreported.

First Things: The Knights of Columbus should be commended for commissioning this Marist survey. The mainstream media enjoys reporting on polls that purportedly show strong public sentiment in favor of legal abortion. However, by asking people what they thought about abortion in specific circumstances, Marist is able to present a more nuanced and a more accurate view of public attitudes toward abortion.

New York CBS: The controversial pastor of a megachurch in Dallas spoke to his congregation on Sunday about “a wild week,” which centered around a scheduled appearance by Jets backup quarterback Tim Tebow.

Christian Post: A pro-life group has launched a nationwide campaign seeking to revoke the medical license of infamous abortion practitioner Dr. Leroy Carhart in response to the death of a New York kindergarten teacher.

Gay Star News: When asked if he agreed with former Utah governor Jon Huntsman that it was time for the GOP to push for marriage rights for gay couples and families, Jindal replied no.

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal: That’s a lesson one might draw from yesterday’s extraordinary column by Patrick Pexton, the veteran journalist who, according to the Post’s website, “represents readers who have concerns or complaints” about “accuracy, fairness, ethics and the newsgathering process.” One such reader wrote to both Pexton and a Post reporter to complain that the paper’s coverage of same-sex marriage gives “short shrift” to “the conservative, pro-family side of the argument.”

LifeSiteNews: News giant Thomson Reuters has waded into the arena of culture wars with an announcement on February 20 that it is throwing its support behind the same-sex “marriage” bill currently before the British Parliament.

Christian Concern: On Thursday (28 February) the High Court will hear claims that Boris Johnson, Chair of Transport for London denied a Christian group the freedom to express its views on the legitimacy of therapy for those dealing with unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction.

Baptist Press: What has happened in America? It seems that political correctness has become a religion — an idol — in America. Everyone who does not embrace all beliefs — including sexual and religious — as equal is to be vilified and shamed. And if a person does not repent of their intolerance, he or she is to be shunned and ostracized. By canceling his appearance at First Dallas, Tim Tebow has, for now, appeased the priests and priestesses of political correctness. It seems one movement’s “tolerance” is just an excuse to exercise its own intolerance.

Christian Post:Those upset with the article disagree that it remained completely unbiased, arguing that the paper was attempting to “glorify” same-sex marriage through its portrayal of the wedding.

Florida Baptist Witness: The day after New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow cancelled a scheduled appearance at First Baptist Church in Dallas, his pastor has called for prayer for him and those “hated by the world” because of the stands they have taken.

PBS: However, even as Christian evangelicals continue to organize in this beautiful corner of Colorado to fulfill their vision of America, some within these groups are starting to reassess their activism. They wonder just how deeply they should be involved in American politics and whether they should start building bridges to people who don’t agree with them.

Kimberly Winston at the Washington Post: A conference at Georgetown University in Washington this week focused on cleaning up what many Americans consider a dirty word — secularism . . . “(Secularism) is a guarantee of two things: freedom of religion and freedom from religion,” said Jacques Berlinerblau, a Georgetown professor, conference organizer, and author of “How to be Secular.”

Damon Linker at The Week: Two-thirds of Americans want to uphold Roe v. Wade. But only 13 percent believe abortion is morally acceptable.

Christian Post: A new advertisement launched by the Respect for Marriage Coalition on Wednesday shows U.S. President Barack Obama, former first lady Laura Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney, and former secretary of state Colin Powell, all speaking out on their support for same-sex marriage in the U.S.

Politico: The AP came under fire earlier this month over an internal memo advising staff to use “couples” or “partners” when referring to civil unions and same-sex marriages, rather than “husband” and “wife.

Seattle Times: More than half of Americans now support same-sex marriage. The supporters began outnumbering the opposition in the middle of 2010. In 2011, the two sides tied and supporters are pulling ahead again, according to a Gallup poll.

Christianity Today: Associated Baptist Press reports that FBC was “once known as the flagship church of the Southern Baptist Convention,” but Jeffress’ reputation has grown increasingly negative outside the Bible Belt. He gained “notoriety for his statements about the gay community,” . . .

ABC: The former first lady’s office told the Dallas Morning News that Bush had not given her consent to be part of the ad, and had asked that she be removed from it.

Religion Clause Blog: Last week the Virginia state legislature gave final approval to HB 1617 which provides . . . In an editorial yesterday, the Virginia Pilot called for the governor to veto the bill, saying: “The real reason for the bill is to allow certain religious or political groups to reject gay or lesbian students with the commonwealth’s blessing.”

Doug Napier at Townhall: Today, homosexual activists have tried to co-opt the allusion to slavery to advance their demand to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. Nice try, but if Lincoln were chiming in, he would undoubtedly bring up Euclid. A union of two men or two women is not the same as the union of one man and one woman, and all the rhetorical sleights of hand can’t change that biological and social reality. It’s one of those “self-evident truths” Lincoln referenced.

Pink News: The updated AP memo states “husband” or “wife” can be used if those involved regularly used those terms.

Engage Family Minute: “Do you believe homosexual behavior is a sin?” That’s the question a Lifeway research team recently asked Americans as part of their ongoing polling of American’s and their position on homosexuality. The answers from 2011 and then again in 2012 are reflected in the graphic embedded in this article.

LifeSiteNews: A drama has been unfolding in Germany over the last month that has seen the leading conservative prelate in the country, Cologne’s Cardinal Joachim Meisner, seem to suggest that it is permissible in Catholic hospitals to administer the morning-after pill (MAP) to rape victims. The Bishops of Germany will be discussing the matter further at their next plenary meeting later this month.

LifeNews: The NAACP has threatened to sue LifeNews.com and black pro-life leader Ryan Bomberger, a LifeNews blogger, for a recent column that took the civil rights organization to task over its abortion position . . . Alliance Defending Freedom allied attorney Charles M. Allen with the Glen Allen, Va. firm Goodman, Allen & Filetti PLLC filed Friday in U.S. District Court in The Radiance Foundation v. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for the Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division.

LifeSiteNews: A pro-abortion doctor is insisting there are strict protocols in place to avoid the awkward problem of having “to deal with a live, aborted infant.” In a letter printed in Tuesday’s National Post, Dr. Christiane Dauphinais seems to be trying to quell public concern after the mainstream media reported on StatsCan data suggesting hundreds of babies were left to die after being born alive following failed abortions between 2000 and 2009. But something tells me this isn’t going to help her cause.

AP: A gunman tried to shoot a Danish writer and prominent critic of Islam on Tuesday, but missed and fled after a scuffle with his intended victim, police and the writer said.

Rasmussen Reports: New recruiting commercials present the U.S. Navy as “a global force for good,” a description that aggravates some policy analysts. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that it doesn’t do too well in the court of public opinion either.

Robert Weiss at the Huffington Post: Internet-driven, pervasive porn use among boys and young men is an issue of concern on several levels (unrelated to traditional morality or religion). Among these issues is the effect that consistent porn use can have on a young person’s evolving ability to develop and maintain sexual and emotional focus on any single individual, as this is not the stuff of most online porn

Washington Examiner: A new scholarly analysis suggests that the more straight guys, especially those who are less educated, watch pornographic videos, the more they warm to same-sex marriage. The reason: Porn opens their mind up to accepting non-traditional sexual situations, like gay sex. “Our study suggests that the more heterosexual men, especially less educated heterosexual men, watch pornography, the more supportive they become of same-sex marriage,” Indiana University Assistant Professor Paul Wright told Secrets. | Paul Wright Bio and Publications list | Paul J. Wright and Ashley K. Randall, Pornography Consumption, Education, and Support for Same-Sex Marriage Among Adult U.S. Males, Communications Research (Jan. 13, 2013) http://crx.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/01/09/0093650212471558.abstract

John Hayward at Human Events: This is an interesting study even if the hot-button issue of gay marriage is set aside. If the research holds up, it’s a very clear illustration of the way culture influences political attitudes. Here you have a rather decidedly un-political, agenda-free form of (ahem) entertainment, made by people who probably aren’t taking the trouble to fill their script with ideological sucker punches or subtle themes. However, it seems to profoundly impact the attitude of its consumer on the very politicized issue of same-sex marriage.

Michael Brown at Townhall: Chris Culliver, the San Francisco 49ers player who badmouthed gays last week, will soon begin LGBT sensitivity training. When do the public figures who badmouth conservative Christians begin their sensitivity training?

LA Times: Chris Culliver, the San Francisco 49ers cornerback who made headlines with anti-gay remarks, will take sensitivity training and education classes after the Super Bowl. Culliver will eventually become a volunteer with the Trevor Project, which provides crisis and suicide intervention for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth.

USA Today: This would be a grave mistake. Every American who believes in freedom of thought and religious liberty should be alarmed by the attacks upon the Boy Scouts, who have had core convictions about morality for 100 years. Every Scout takes an oath to keep himself “morally straight.”

Christian Post: Shane L. Windmeyer, a prominent LGBT activist and leader, “nervously” revealed to the public that he developed a friendship with Dan Cathy, the president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A, despite their strongly opposing views on same-sex marriage.

AL.com: Irondale, Ala.,-based EWTN Global Catholic Network, which filed a lawsuit last year challenging the HHS mandate, issued the following response . . .

San Francisco Chronicle: In the interview, Cordileone also warned against using the phrase “gay marriage” because saying the phrase might fool people into thinking it’s a legitimate pursuit that is simply lacking the government’s approval.

Matthew Kaal at Family Scholars: I appreciate David B., Barbara D. Whitehead, and Jonathan Rauch’s view that we can have fruitful policy discussions about the decline of marriage as a positive normative cultural institution, what is causing its decline, whether or not that decline is cause for grave concern, and if so, how to reverse it.

Kathleen Parker at the Washington Post: On Tuesday, Blankenhorn and more than 70 diverse signatories released a letter urging Americans to end the war over gay marriage and change the question from “Should gays marry?” to “How can we save marriage?”

Reuters: Marriott International Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. are among at least 13 companies throwing their support behind an effort to repeal a U.S. law that defines marriage as solely between one man and one woman.

Sacramento Bee: Hanon McKendry is an integrated marketing communications firm that helps build brands that matter. Whether working with nonprofit organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom, Salvation Army, Focus on the Family and World Vision, or corporations like Rayovac Batteries, Furniture Row Shopping Centers, Wilsonart and Zondervan (a division of Harper/Collins), Hanon McKendry helps clients grow their impact and resources so they can do more good. Hanon McKendry is a Gravity Six Alliance partner.

Breitbart (video) carries the CBS segment: From Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman: I’ve got a simple idea: Let’s give up on the Constitution. I know, it sounds radical, but it’s really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie. For example, most of our greatest Presidents — Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and both Roosevelts — had doubts about the Constitution, and many of them disobeyed it when it got in their way.

Jordan Lorence at Speak Up Movement: It was inevitable that Americans would accept legalized abortion imposed by the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. That’s what I constantly heard during my three years at the University of Minnesota Law School in the late 1970′s.

LifeNews: In the past 10 years, 91 percent of ABC, NBC, and CBS anchor reports on the March for Life and Roe v. Wade failed to mention the word, “life.” In 22 reports, “life” was used just twice.

Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review: The biggest political problems for pro-lifers remain what they have been for many years: They are in coalition with economic conservatives who have not found a way to translate their principles into a popular program, and they have not found a way to form a coalition with blacks and Hispanics who agree with them. Solving or mitigating those problems will require a massive effort not limited to the pro-life movement alone. In the meantime, pro-life politicians cannot afford to make avoidable mistakes.

Baltimore Sun: According to New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, just hours after Baltimore’s AFC championship win, Ayanbadejo directed an e-mail to marriage equality advocates asking how he could utilize the increased Super Bowl media to help support same-sex marriage.

AP: he filmmakers acknowledge that even those who favor abortion rights often don’t support or understand the procedure, and they hope their film humanizes the doctors and offers a sense of “the wide-ranging circumstances” that motivate women to choose third-trimester abortions.

LifeNews: On the 40^th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the supporters of abortion in the mainstream media are working overtime to push their dishonest message to the public. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing alleged public support for Roe v. Wade – the headline screams “Majority, for first time, want abortion to be legal” – is a prime example of how the mainstream media often manipulates facts, data, and people.

Daily Mail: Only four doctors in the U.S. offer third-trimester abortions, knowing they risk their own lives every day to carry out such controversial procedures.These doctors are the subject of a documentary screened at the Sundance film festival last weekend, forty years after the legalization of abortion in the U.S. and four years after Dr Tiller.

Washington Post: When President Obama said Monday that “our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” he made history by becoming the first president to advocate for gay rights in an inaugural address.

Russian Legal Information Agency: A Californian court has announced the verdict in a custody case involving a Russian child adopted by an American same-sex couple, the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI/rapsinews.com) reports on Monday, citing a copy of the court order.

Marine Corps Times: Sgt. Karen Alexander fought for her country in Iraq, but back home she often feels the Army is fighting against her. Married to another female soldier with a 4-year-old son, Alexander is denied the same housing allowance and other family-friendly benefits she would be entitled to if married to a man. As far as Uncle Sam is concerned, she’s still single.

NY Times: Gay marriage is now legal in nine states and in Washington, D.C. But because same-sex marriages are not recognized under federal law, the spouses of gay service members are barred from receiving medical and dental insurance and surviving spouse benefits and are not allowed to receive treatment in military medical facilities.

Ryan T. Anderson at Witherspoon Institute: Witness to the truth matters for its own sake, but persistent, winsome witness also tends to bear good fruit, even if it takes 40 years and counting.

The 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade will draw thousands to the nation’s capital, including activists, lawyers, and journalists. The Law of Life Summit “3,” hosted by the Ave Maria School of Law, will be “Calling Out the Media!” on Thursday, January 24, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Washington DC’s Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill.

Telegraph: One of Britain’s most prominent evangelical Christian leaders has broken ranks on the issue of homosexuality describing the traditional Church teaching on he issue as dangerous and unchristian.

LifeSiteNews: A Christian academy in South Africa has come under attack in the media for offering to help homosexual students leave the gay lifestyle.

LifeSiteNews: Coalition leaders, including the Rev. Walter Hoye, met last week in Washington to discuss their strategy for the coming year. Rev. Hoye told LifeSiteNews that conventional pro-life tactics aimed at white voters were “developed for the courtroom, not the culture” and don’t work well with the black community.

NPR (includes audio): One-fifth of Americans are religiously unaffiliated — higher than at any time in recent U.S. history — and those younger than 30 especially seem to be drifting from organized religion. A third of young Americans say they don’t belong to any religion. NPR Morning Edition co-host David Greene wanted to understand why, so he gathered a roundtable of young people . . .