In the face of the continued national push to legalize same-sex marriage, individuals who believe in the longstanding social institution comprising only of one man and one woman are urged to join a recently launched campaign to support traditional marriage.
The new campaign, "God's Marriage Bow," was created by the Salt & Light Council, who is backing a new movement. They want supporters of traditional marriage to wear white bows in symbolic reference to the unity and purity of traditional marriage.
"The white color stands in contrast to the rainbow colors that advocate same-sex marriage," Dran Reese, President of the Salt & Light Council, said in a statement.
... The campaign began on March 26 to coincide with the first day of Supreme Court oral arguments concerning the future of marriage in America.
We recently reported Slate author Jillian Keenan's opinion that "the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize polygamy, too."
Well, just in case anyone should think this is idle speculation and thought experiment, consider news coming out of Canada today:
A Canadian court is assembling an unprecedented set of testimonies and legal briefs about the pros and cons of polygamy. The goal is to answer the question of whether Canada’s anti-polygamy law is constitutional.
But, as the story reveals, there is still cause for hope. The case to legalize polygamous unions faces an uphill battle, against some formidable forces -- for example, the scholarship of Professor Joseph Henrich from the University of British Columbia.
Henrich has written of monogamy that it is "one of the foundations of Western civilization, and may explain why democratic ideals and notions of human rights first emerged as a Western phenomenon."
This much, at least, is not news to us. Let's hope that the Court recognizes this fact enshrined in the tradition of marriage, too.
The Los Angeles Times is obviously no fan of the Boy Scouts of America's policy -- but they are even less a fan of punitive laws meant to single out one organization for views that politicians dislike:
"The Boy Scouts' long-standing refusal to admit gay members is deplorable and offensive. But it's also legal. Just because we — or California legislators — might disagree with the discriminatory path the Boy Scouts has taken doesn't mean the organization should be singled out from other nonprofits to lose its tax-exempt status.
... If legislators can go after the Scouts for engaging in legal (though offensive) behavior, what group will they go after next?"
Kellie Fiedorek is litigation counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom. She writes in the Washington Examiner against the claim made by gay marriage advocates that they are "politically powerless" and therefore need the courts to strike down laws protecting marriage:
In their recently filed brief before the U.S. Supreme Court, advocates for redefining marriage argued that "gay men and lesbians are a suspect class" and thus need special judicial protection of the "politically powerless."
But making claims to be a minority in need of special judicial protection while simultaneously enjoying the patronage of some of our country's most powerful people, corporations and political entities is disingenuous.
...Unlike African-Americans, who struggled for full recognition and participation in society, homosexual activists and their goals are lionized by practically every powerful cultural institution and center of wealth in America today.
Their political and social war chest -- which includes the backing of Fortune 500 companies and other well-known businesses, politicians and celebrities -- is a far cry from the batons, fire hoses and tear gas that black Americans faced.
Rusty Reno, editor of First Things, makes the conservative case against the false libertarian notion that redefining marriage will serve to "limit government" -- in fact, it will vastly expand government, he argues:
"...As marriage gets redefined we’ll see an expansion of government. That’s because gay marriage won’t just happen if government “gets out of the way.” It requires creating a new possibility that will not come to pass if traditional institutions and moral traditions are left alone. Government must intervene. Our moral traditions must be subjected to what activists think of as corrective surgery. With gay marriage we’re sure to get legislation redefining what it means to be a parent, and what it means to be a child, as is already the case in California. In the way of these redefinitions will come programs to “reeducate” John Q. Public to the “new realities.”
Here as elsewhere the progressive project is always political. It sees a problem: The pre-political institutions and traditions of society are violating rights and creating inequalities. Then it reaches for the ready tool for redress and correction, which is almost always the power of government—coercive force.
... Tyranny isn’t just a situation in which the government is telling you what to do at every moment. It’s also a society in which government says that, if necessary, it can. In this respect gay marriage reflects a dramatic enlargement of government. If legislatures and courts can redefine marriage, what can’t it intervene to reshape and re-purpose?
The Blaze reports on the media bias against those who hold traditional views of marriage -- as we know all too well:
During an interview Sunday, Rep. Matt Salmon's (R-Ariz.) gay sontold KPNX-TV that CNN and MSNBC cancelled interviews with him after he told them he would not bash his father for his stance againstgay marriage.
Matt R. Salmon told KPNX-TV that he is disappointed that his father has not changed his position on gay marriage, however, he still enjoys a good relationship with him and supports him. He also said his father is not a "bigot."
"People want controversy," Salmon said.
Accused of canceling the interviews are MSNBC's "The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell" and CNN's "Piers Morgan Live."
The younger Salmon said MSNBC cancelled his scheduled interview because "they had intended to be critical of him and" he was unwilling to do so. Additionally, he claimed CNN was "very gung ho" about doing an interview but then became disinterested when he reiterated he wouldn't attack his dad.
Ross Douthat in the New York Times on conservatives accurately predicting what changing marriage will do:
"...the conservative view [of what would happen if we redefine marriage] has actually had decent predictive power. As the cause of gay marriage has pressed forward, the social link between marriage and childbearing has indeed weakened faster than before. As the public’s shift on the issue has accelerated, so has marriage’s overall decline.
Since Frum warned that gay marriage could advance only at traditional wedlock’s expense, the marriage rate has been falling faster, the out-of-wedlock birthrate has been rising faster, and the substitution of cohabitation for marriage has markedly increased. Underlying these trends is a steady shift in values: Americans are less likely to see children as important to marriage and less likely to see marriage as important to childbearing (the generation gap on gay marriage shows up on unwed parenting as well) than even in the very recent past."
... But there is also a certain willed naïveté to the idea that the advance of gay marriage is unrelated to any other marital trend. For 10 years, America’s only major public debate about marriage and family has featured one side — judges and journalists, celebrities and now finally politicians — pressing the case that modern marriage has nothing to do with the way human beings reproduce themselves, that the procreative understanding of the institution was founded entirely on prejudice, and that the shift away from a male-female marital ideal is analogous to the end of segregation.
A new survey of African Americans shows that most disagree with the claim that the effort to promote gay rights is comparable to the historic movement for racial equality.
About 55 percent of respondents to a Zogby Analytics survey said that equal rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons are not the same as equal rights for African Americans. Only 28 percent agreed, while 17 percent said they are not sure.
The online survey of 1,002 adults used respondents recruited through partners or random telephone samples. It was commissioned by Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, and was conducted Feb. 14 through Feb. 20.
Over the weekend our Communications Director Thomas Peters went on MSNBC to stand up for the rights of pro-marriage people to have their votes and voice respected by the Supreme Court:
On whether gays and lesbians are "politically powerless" he said:
"I think what John Roberts was asking was a really fascinating question because currently gay marriage activists are claiming that they are politically powerless and that's why we have to strike down laws defending marriage like the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8. Whereas what the Chief Justice is saying is that actually gays and lesbians are very politically powerful -- the President supports them, the Democratic party platform supports them -- and so the idea that we need to strike down laws protecting marriage is absurd. What we need to uphold is that people have the ultimate right to decide marriage laws. The states, the democratic process is working, and we hope the Supreme Court will acknowledge the votes of over 45 million Americans who have voted to protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman."
On the question of whether Americans who are pro-marriage are akin to those who opposed interracial marriage he said:
"Laws against interracial marriage were meant to keep the races separate so they wouldn't have children together and they were wrong, marriage is meant to bring men and women together so they have children which is right. You cannot compare these two things at all and furthermore, I think it's really important what she brought up, the 45 million Americans who have voted to protect marriage are not motivated by animus towards gay people, they're motivated out of love for the institution, and [crosstalk] if the Supreme Court were to rule that laws defining marriage are akin to bigotry, then every person in this country who believes that children have a right to a mother and father will be treated as bigots under the law, that's why Steve and others might agree with me that the Supreme Court's not going to go there. We can work this out through the political process. The debate can continue. Questions as central as marriage should not be decided by the Supreme Court they should be decided by the people."
In an interview aired over the weekend, Rep. Matt J. Salmon (R-Ariz.) told a local news station that his son’s homosexuality has not led him to change his position on gay marriage.
“I don’t support the gay marriage,” the congressman said. But Salmon emphasized that he loved and respected his son and did not consider homosexuality a choice.
“My son is by far one of the most important people in my life. I love him more than I can say,” an emotional Salmon told 3TV. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t have respect, it doesn’t mean that I don’t sympathize with some of the issues. It just means I haven’t evolved to that stage.”
... “We respect each others’ opinions and we just know that on certain issues we have to agree to disagree,” the congressman’s son, Matt R. Salmon, told The Post. “I love my father and realize that he can have the opinions that he has, and they might differ from mine, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about him.”
... Salmon also expressed disappointment in those who have reacted to the interview by leaving “hate speech” on his father’s Facebook page. “If he’s going to change his mind it’s going to come from a place of love,” Salmon said. “All they’re doing is fighting intolerance with intolerance.”
NOM's Communications Director Thomas Peters shares in the Daily Caller his conviction that the pro-life and pro-marriage movements must unite to become one united voice for justice to children:
How can you be pro-life unless you are also pro-marriage? I’ve been thinking about that question ever since I moved over from pro-life activism to pro-marriage activism. Since that transition, my conviction that the movements are essentially one has only been reinforced.
Pro-life is in my blood. My parents met at an event to welcome pro-life activists who had been recently bailed out of jail for conducting a peaceful sit-in at an abortion clinic. When I moved to Washington, D.C., five years ago, I knew I would be a pro-life activist, and so I was.
But as my activism matured, so did my conviction that the pro-life movement must become explicitly pro-marriage or risk its future. The Guttmacher Institute tells us that 85% of women who opt for abortion are unmarried. The community most afflicted by abortion, African-Americans, is also the community that suffers the lowest marriage rate.
He concludes with a call for pro-life activists to join the March for Marriage:
"...as an ardent pro-life activist, I’m calling on my fellow pro-life warriors to formally join in the pro-marriage cause. One concrete action we can take in the next months is to show up for the March for Marriage (www.MarriageMarch.org) on March 26 in Washington, D.C, the same day the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Proposition 8 case.
Pro-lifers once needed a scientific instrument — the ultrasound — to renew their cause. Today I believe they only need a bit of encouragement to acknowledge the deeper truth embedded in the biology of the human beings they defend — the truth that unborn children are conceived by men and women. The cultural question which every civilized society before us, and our nation throughout most of its history, has resolved is that this new life deserves to be born and raised by its parents who are united in marriage.
NOM's Communications Director Thomas Peters engaged in a spirited debate on a wide range of issues surrounding marriage, corporate fairness, and the Supreme Court on CNN this weekend:
CNN has posted a transcript -- including this part about the so-called economic argument for redefining marriage:
[CNN HOST] KEILAR: But the point that I'm getting at is that when we talk about this as a business imperative, let's take a look at what this filing says. It says, recognizing the rights of same-sex couples to marry is more than a constitutional issue. It is a business imperative. So what do you think about that? Do you agree with that? Do you disagree with that? Is it about more than that? Is that not enough?
PETERS: I strongly disagree with it, because, first of all, the top 10 states for growth right now in this country, nine of them have marriage protection amendments. And so, you know, where this argument comes from is the left wing, UCLA Williams Institute, which has been peddling this argument for years, that gay marriage is an economic stimulus. The very states that are currently trying to [...] legalize gay marriage, like New York and California, are not exactly in an economic picture of well-being. So, look, strong states like Indiana are moving towards marriage protection amendments. North Carolina recently passed its marriage protection amendment by 61 percent. The fact of the matter is that protecting marriage protects children and it helps businesses.
KEILAR: But, Thomas, let me ask you this. Because you have businesses now that are saying, it's costing us money. They say and this obviously gets a little complicated, but they say, same-sex couples are required to pay a Federal income tax on health benefits provided to a spouse through an employer-sponsored health insurance plan. Some employers reimburse employees for the extra tax paid. That requires extra time and money. They say it's costing them money. Do you disagree with that?
PETERS: Well, let's look at -- you used the adjective complicated and you're right, it is complicated. But here's one complicating factor that I think is being ignored in this broader debate. You know, the president is arguing in the Supreme Court that gays and lesbians are politically powerless class. And now you've been telling me time and time again that all these corporations support redefining marriage.
So I would actually ask Brian [of the Human Rights Campaign], which is it? Are gays and lesbians actually a politically powerless class or do all these corporations, the vast majority of people support redefining marriage because you can't have it both ways -- I believe the majority of Americans believe in protecting marriage and I believe that gays and lesbians are an incredibly powerful political class that are trying to redefine marriage for all of us.
A special shout-out to ConservativeHQ for coming to the defense of Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game, who has come under fire for his pro-marriage views:
Orson Scott Card, a talented science fiction writer, is part of a team of writers and artists assembled by DC Comics to create an “Adventures of Superman” comic series ahead of the release of the summer Superman film Man of Steel.* Card is also a believer in the Biblical definition of marriage who has the courage to say so.
Orson Scott Card’s views, such as “the left is at war with the family,” and opposition to same sex marriage are reflective of his Christian faith and hardly “out of the mainstream,” but they have now earned him and DC comics a call from homosexual activists for a boycott.
National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown told Fox News he was simply stunned that homosexual activists are trying to destroy a man’s career.
“This is completely un-American and it needs to be stopped,” Brown said. “Simply because we stand up for traditional marriage, some people feel like it is okay to target us for intimidation and punishment.”
Brown called the attacks on Card frightening and said it’s another example of radical homosexual activists trying to punish those who believe marriage should be a union between a man and woman.
“Marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” Brown said. “That is not hateful. That is not bigoted.”