"...We tend to forget that marriage predates government. Throughout history, diverse cultures and faiths have upheld marriage as the ideal. It is the fundamental building block of all human civilization. Marriage has public purposes that transcend its private purposes.
Marriage is society’s best way to ensure the well-being of children (as I’ve argued at length in this space). State recognition of marriage protects children by encouraging men and women to commit to each other — and to take responsibility for their children.
So it is with good reason that 38 states – not to mention over 90 percent of the countries represented at the United Nations — affirm marriage as the union of a man and a woman, just as diverse cultures and faiths have throughout history.
But whatever any individual American thinks about marriage, the courts shouldn’t be redefining it. Marriage policy should be worked out through the democratic process, not dictated by unelected judges in an activist decision that has no grounding in the text or logic of our Constitution."
John Jessup of CBN News produced a special report for the 700 Club on NOM's decision to sue the IRS:
"...Dr. Eastman's group believes someone in the IRS illegally gave its private donors' list to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group that supports same-sex marriage.
HRC posted the donor information on line during the 2012 election campaign. CBN News contacted the HRC for comment, but it did not respond."
Our Chairman John Eastman told Rep. Blumenauer during his testimony before Congress that the congressman's claim was "preposterous" that groups such as NOM should not be considered a social welfare group. Politifact Oregon agrees with our Chairman and rated Rep. Bluemenauer's claim false:
"Blumenauer said that "the statute a hundred years ago said that they were prohibited." There was no prohibition in the 1913 Act. The 1913 Act was silent on political activity, for whatever reasons. We rate his statement False."
Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus on the revelations made by NOM's Chairman John Eastman:
"...The IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, it seems, may go beyond just harassing those groups applying for 501(c)4 tax-exempt status — the letters, the ridiculous demands, the intrusive questions. They may also have been leaking (illegally) private tax information about certain groups as well.
That was the charge from National Organization for Marriage Chairman John Eastman. A list of the organization’s donors and other confidential information appeared on another political group’s website last year. Eastman says there’s no way they could have gotten that information without someone at the IRS providing it.
If that’s true, it’s an insidious violation of the First Amendment, which should bother Americans of all political stripes — especially if the IRS takes no action in response to it.
...Surely the self-proclaimed “most transparent administration in history” isn’t comfortable with that happening on their watch. So why do they refuse to get to the bottom of it?
On Sunday, Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was interviewed about the IRS scandal and said that “the case is solved.” It’s understandable that President Obama’s allies would like to sweep this all under the rug. But the case won’t be “solved” until the questions have been answered." (NewsMax)
The audience at a congressional hearing isn't supposed to give applause, but they did when they heard what our Chairman John Eastman had to say.
Let me explain why his testimony has gained the admiration of tea party and conservative activists and the renewed attention of politicians and the media across the country.
Yesterday Eastman was invited by Congress to testify about the illegal disclosure of NOM's confidential tax documents, along with five other heads of conservative organizations that were targeted by the IRS.
What made Eastman's testimony different — and explosive — was the fact that NOM's case is far more egregious, because our private donors were exposed to intimidation and harassment when President Obama's political allies were given our confidential information.
See how Eastman responded to the "scurrilous" attacks made against NOM, conservatives and marriage supporters by some of the members on the committee — completely shutting them down and leaving them speechless:
Here's the line of Eastman's that everyone is quoting, when he responds to an attack by Rep. Earl Blumenaur claiming marriage supporters shouldn't be allowed to participate in the public square:
"Representative Blumenauer, it's your kind of statements that have empowered IRS agents to make determinations about which organizations qualify for the public good and which do not. The notion that defending traditional marriage doesn't qualify as a defense of the public good is beyond preposterous."
Wow!
Of course it's always disappointing to see some representatives like Bluemenauer attempt to make marriage partisan when it is not. We proudly collaborate with many democrats who support marriage. In fact, during the same hearing Rep. Rangel (D-NY) proposed working together with Eastman to help make sure the mess at the IRS is cleaned up.
But back to Eastman's testimony: I'm sure now you can understand why applause erupted inside the hearing room as Eastman delivered his bold reprimand, and why his comments have received so much attention and support in the aftermath.
Neil Cavuto of Fox Business called Eastman "the man in the center of the storm who put up quite a storm" and told Eastman he was "on fire" during his testimony. NOM's story (and Eastman's explosive testimony) is now going viral across the internet.
Facebook and Twitter lit up yesterday with praise for Eastman and thanksgiving for his passionate articulation of why what the IRS did is unacceptable and how liberal politicians have emboldened bureaucrats to harass and abuse those they perceive to be their political opponents.
Eastman's testimony is our best chance yet to get to the bottom of what happened inside the IRS — and to find out who may have known about it outside the IRS and was an accomplice to the crime.
One of the facts that Eastman shared during his testimony is how much NOM has been forced to spend to defend and shield its donors in the aftermath of the IRS's illegal disclosure of our tax documents — hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Please contribute to NOM right away to help us recoup these losses and help us pursue a just remedy — including seeking financial damages — for what has happened. Your gift of $35, $100 or $500 will help us expose the truth and stand up for the constitutional rights of all Americans to participate in democracy without fear of harassment or retribution.
Thank you for being generous.
Together, we will find answers and see that justice is done.
Watch with us (via FoxNews.com here) as the House Oversight Committee asks questions to key IRS officials about the IRS targeting conservative groups (including NOM).
NOM's Chairman John Eastman has published a column in USAToday which we urge you to read and share!
"...For the IRS to leak any organization's tax return to its political opponents is an outrageous breach of ethics and, if proven, constitutes a felony. Every organization — liberal and conservative — should shudder at the idea of the IRS playing politics with its confidential tax return information. But the situation here is even more egregious because the head of the HRC was at the time serving as a national co-chair of President Obama's re-election campaign.
The release of NOM's confidential tax return to the Human Rights Campaign is the canary in the coal mine of IRS corruption. Contrary to assertions that the targeting of Tea Party groups was an error in judgment by low-level IRS bureaucrats, the release of NOM's confidential data to a group headed by an Obama campaign co-chair suggests the possibility of complicity at the highest levels of politics and government. This wasn't a low-level error in judgment; it was a conscious act to reward a prominent Obama supporter while punishing an opponent.
That's the reason the IRS has not been very interested in getting to the bottom of what happened. Federal investigators have interviewed NOM officials about the matter, but our efforts to find out what has become of the investigation have been stonewalled at every turn."
One of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign co-chairmen used a leaked document from the IRS to attack GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney during the 2012 election, according to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
NOM, a pro-traditional marriage organization, claims the IRS leaked their 2008 confidential financial documents to the rival Human Rights Campaign. Those NOM documents were published on the Huffington Post on March 30, 2012. At that time, Joe Solmonese, a left-wing activist and Huffington Post contributor, was the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Solmonese was also a 2012 Obama campaign co-chairman.
... “Not only has Romney signed NOM’s radical marriage pledge, now we know he’s one of the donors that NOM has been so desperate to keep secret all these years,” Solmonese added.
Solmonese resigned his position at HRC the next day and took up a position as an Obama campaign co-chair.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal lists our case as a possible example of the IRS targeting groups for ideological reasons:
• In March 2012, the Puffington Host published a confidential form that the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage, had filed with the IRS. The website obtained the document from the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-same-sex-marriage outfit. In a press release issued today, NOM says its analysis of the images "has determined that the documents came directly from the Internal Revenue Service."
Matt K. Lewis of The Daily Caller points out that most reporters have neglected to report that the IRS is guilty not only of targeting conservative groups, but also of leaking NOM's private tax documents -- clearly a broader investigation is needed:
A little over a year ago, I reported that, ”It is likely that someone at the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked confidential donor information showing a contribution from Mitt Romney’s political action committee to the National Organization for Marriage, says the group.”
“There is little question that one or more employees at the IRS stole our confidential tax return and leaked it to our political enemies, in violation of federal law,” said NOM’s president Brian Brow, in a prepared statement. “The only questions are who did it, and whether there was any knowledge or coordination between people in the White House, the Obama reelection campaign and the Human Rights Campaign. We and the American people deserve answers.”
Our press release today on the growing IRS scandal and its connection to what happened to our private tax return is gaining attention -- including on capitol hill and Politico:
The National Organization for Marriage hopes revelations about the IRS unfairly targeting conservative groups can revitalize an investigation into who leaked its donor information last year.
“This is what happens in the Soviet Union,” NOM President Brian Brown told POLITICO on Monday. “This is not what happens in the United States of America.”
In April 2012, the Huffington Post and the Human Rights Campaign posted documents showing GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney donated $10,000 to NOM in 2008. The anti-gay marriage group immediately cried foul and called for the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — the same investigators who are set to release a report on the IRS targeting later this week — to investigate, accusing IRS employees of leaking the documents.
... Brown said the group wants a congressional hearing to look into the document release, since the group’s attempts to use the Freedom of Information Act to stay updated on the case have been unsuccessful.
“Without a congressional hearing and Congress’ subpoena power, where are we?” Brown asked. “All we’re getting is what [the IRS] wants to say.”
A former rural Iowa court official pleaded guilty Monday to forgery for filing false documents to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple from central Florida, in the first case of its kind in Iowa.
... The resolution drew criticism from Joab Penney of Williston, Fla., who says Van Nice's actions duped him out of $150 and gave him an unending legal headache. Penney said he was outraged when court officials advised him Monday he should hire an attorney to petition to void his marriage license - which he said should have never been issued in the first place.
...The Florida men discovered the fraud months later, when Penney contacted an attorney to seek a divorce. The attorney was suspicious because the men had never been to Iowa and Van Nice mailed the application materials from her home, not the courthouse. The attorney contacted authorities asking for an investigation.Penney said he now wants to marry a woman in Florida, but officials there say that he's legally married to Parker and needs to obtain a divorce first.
...Penney said he has been frustrated by the lack of answers from officials in Iowa and the legal limbo he's in.
"I want to get married here to a woman, and I can't," he said. "It's a major headache. I've changed my lifestyle because of all of this. It has offended me that much."
This week, Wesley Smith of the Weekly Standard reported that California would be considering AB 460, a bill that would mandate group insurance coverage for so-called gay and lesbian "infertility." What in the world does that bizarre phrase mean? It doesn't mean situations in which two members of a lesbian couple are both infertile and incapable of conception using some third party's sperm. It doesn't mean situations in which two gay men are both infertile and incapable of impregnating a surrogate mother. It means situations in which gay or lesbian couples can't make a baby by having sex with each other.
In other words, every single gay and lesbian couple on the planet.
The way the law works, gay and lesbian couples would simply have to testify that they have been having sex for a year without producing a child to be considered "infertile," which is idiotic, since baby-making requires necessary components missing in homosexual activity. But nature is irrelevant here. Even though both men and women were, to borrow Lady Gaga's phrase, "born this way," political correctness trumps nature.
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?"
"...We tend to forget that marriage predates government. Throughout history, diverse cultures and faiths have upheld marriage as the ideal. It is the fundamental building block of all human civilization. Marriage has public purposes that transcend its private purposes.
"...The IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, it seems, may go beyond just harassing those groups applying for 501(c)4 tax-exempt status — the letters, the ridiculous demands, the intrusive questions. They may also have been leaking (illegally) private tax information about certain groups as well.
A little over a year ago, 
This week, Wesley Smith of the Weekly Standard reported that California would be considering AB 460, a bill that would mandate group insurance coverage for so-called gay and lesbian "infertility." What in the world does that bizarre phrase mean? It doesn't mean situations in which two members of a lesbian couple are both infertile and incapable of conception using some third party's sperm. It doesn't mean situations in which two gay men are both infertile and incapable of impregnating a surrogate mother. It means situations in which gay or lesbian couples can't make a baby by having sex with each other.
