NOM BLOG

Monthly Archives: September 2010

Wall Street LOVES Gay Marriage

Ted Olson is mining his GOP connections to fund the assault on our Constitution that Judge Walker and Olson have initiated.  Wall Street loves gay marriage.  We depend on millions of Americans like you to help fund Chuck Cooper and the good guys. Give today if this story makes you mad.

From the NY Times:

The American Foundation for Equal Rights held a fund-raiser in New York City Wednesday night at the Mandarin Oriental hotel on Columbus Circle. The AFER is the organization that led the legal battle, led by lawyers Theodore Olson and David Boies, to challenge California’s ban on gay marriage. A trial court judge struck down the statute last month, but the case is on appeal.

… The reception was chaired by three Republicans: Ken Mehlman [former chairman of the RNC], left, of private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company; Paul Singer of hedge fund Elliott Management; and Peter Thiel of hedge fund Clarium Capital.

Read the whole story here.

So-called Catholics for Equality is nothing more than HRC-designed Astroturf

Blogger Thomas Peters (American Papist) exposes “the latest in a long string of Catholyc astroturf groups.”  Peters’ reveals that Catholic for Equality, “were intentionally created as a front group by the blatantly anti-Catholic homosexual-activist group (the largest in the nation, in fact): The Human Rights Campaign.”  Quoting an email exchange he had with a board member of this new group as proof of their manufactured nature, Peters goes on to point out that “the leadership and staff of Catholics for Equality reveals that at least three of the members have explicit ties with the Human Rights Campaign.”

The blog posting also quotes Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the military archdiocese who points out: “that according to canon law a group may call itself Catholic if it has been approved by a bishop or recognized by the Holy See in some manner. ‘It is doubtful that the group in question has such approval. Therefore, it cannot be legitimately recognized as Catholic.’”

Read more here.

NOM Launches Our Most Powerful TV Ad Yet!

We’ve just released what may very well be our most powerful ad yet . . . Focused on protecting one of our most precious civil rights – the right to vote – the ad traces today’s battle for the right to vote on marriage back to Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous stand and the civil rights movement.

In the Minnesota governor’s race, two of the three candidates want to let unelected judges force same-sex marriage on Minnesotans, with only Republican Tom Emmer standing up for the rights of Minnesota voters. Partnering with the Minnesota Family Council, this new ad campaign holds these politicians accountable, making sure that voters know where their candidates stand on marriage.

Unfortunately the problem isn’t limited to Minnesota. We’re launching ads all across the country, sending a message to out-of-touch politicians that marriage is important to their constituents and people are especially outraged when they are denied the right to vote while unelected judges force same-sex marriage on a state.

And now you have the opportunity to double our ability to fight for you!

A generous group of NOM donors have banded together to offer a $1 Million Challenge Grant, matching every dollar donated to NOM through the end of 2010, up to $1 million.

Please use this link to make a generous gift of $35, $50, $100, or even $500 or more today.

Midwest Catholics Bishops Say: Fight for Marriage

--In Iowa, Minnesota and elsewhere, Catholic bishops are taking a leading position on the question "what is marriage?'  They may get a lot of push back in the media, and among the less orthodox of their flock.  But apparently they don't care. They are going for broke for the Gospel and the Church's teachings.  Coverage at LifeSiteNews.com.

Minnesota Bishops Send DVD on Marriage to Every Catholic in Minnesota

Archbishop Nienstedt is asked about a new DVD, produced by the Knights of Columbus, which explains the Catholic Church's teaching on why marriage is and should remain the union of a man and a woman.  Local TV appears shocked!  Shocked!  Great interview with Archbishop Nienstedt here.

A Tribute to Rep. Michael Benjamin

A great story on Rep. Michael Benjamin (D-Bronx) who is stepping down from his seat in the New York Assembly after four terms, a great African-American voice for life and marriage as well as poverty and injustice.

Columnist John Horvat Sounds the Charge in the Fight Against SSM

John Horvat observes that history is replete with examples “where someone mistakenly sounds the retreat when victory was in sight. This seems to be the case against same-sex “marriage.”

Horvat establishes the unmistakable march to victory that proponents of marriage between one man and one woman has enjoyed including winning in 31 of 31 states where the question has been put to a vote of the people, including, “Even in the bluest of blue states—California…”

With 80 percent of Republicans and 40 percent of Democrats strongly supporting traditional marriage and firmly opposed to same-sex marriage, Horvat questions why, “some ‘lions’ of the right are beginning to make statement supporting civil unions or same-sex ‘marriage’…”

Click here to read the whole column and Horvat’s call to sound the charge, not the retreat.

America's One Child Policy?

Jonathan Last, over at the Weekly Standard, writes about the new baby implosion: the birth dearth has already hit Japan, Singapore and is about to hit China. What happens to a society which basically gives up on having children, preferring other alternatives?  Consider the case of Singapore, which successfully campaigned to reduce fertility—then realized it now had a shrinking population implosion on its hands, tried to reverse course with pro-natalist policies . . . and failed miserably.

What’s the point?

First, it is far easier to deconstruct the traditional norms that persuaded people to make difficult sacrifices—like say channelling sex and childbearing towards marriage, constrain divorce, or valuing children over pleasurable consumer goods—than it is to reconstruct them once they are gone.

Second, the essay makes clear that religion and willingness to have children are pretty closely related in the U.S.  If the government adopts norms that such religious communities are civil wrongdoers for continuing to value traditional ideas about sex and marriage—watch out.

Breaking News: NH Gov. Race Now a Tie

Before NOM and Cornerstone Action launched their "Lynch Lied" campaign, Gov. Lynch was considered a shoe-in for re-election, with approval ratings over 65 percent.  The latest Rasmussen poll now shows Lynch virtually tied (within the margin of error) with GOP nominee John Stephen, 48 percent to 46 percent.  If supporters of marriage can help flip both houses and elect a pro-marriage governor--New Hampshire's gay marriage law CAN be reversed, the first time the marriage movement will have done so through the legislative process.

This is an extraordinary development. Congratulations and thanks!  Keep up the good fight.

U of Texas Law Prof: Prop 8 Supporters Likely to Win at Supreme Court

Another legal expert, this one sympathetic to gay marriage, argues that Judge Walker and the Olson/Boies Dream Team will go down to defeat at the Supreme Court.

Those of us who make a living in predicting directions in the court's constitutional jurisprudence are rather dubious that the court majority will reach that far. The court has never equated the legal conditions of gays and lesbians with members of racial minority groups, a class that triggers especially close scrutiny of discriminatory laws or governmental actions...

While the absence of equal marriage rights is likely to garner sympathy among some justices on the Roberts court, few constitutional scholars predict that a majority could be assembled to invalidate on federal constitutional grounds same-sex marriage bans across the country. Indeed, it is from this fear that the current court would issue a ruling that firmly upholds these bans that various groups advocating same-sex marriage counseled against the original California lawsuit and, moreover, would breathe a sigh of relief if the Proposition 8 case ends in Northern California.

Read more.

Prop 8 Defenders Shred Walker Decision in Appeals Court Filing

The Prop 8 legal defense team just filed their opening brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case, and it is a tour de force. Authored by chief Prop 8 litigator Chuck Cooper, the 100+ page brief shreds the decision of federal district court Judge Vaughn Walker, and lays bare all the legal, logical and factual errors that Walker made in his ruling. Read it here.

Citing case after case from court after court, Cooper thoroughly and meticulously dismantles Walker’s outrageous opinion finding that voters have no right to protect marriage as one man and one woman.  As noted legal commentator Ed Whelan has noted, the alleged “Dream Team” of Olson and Boies have lost in every court they have argued this case--with the sole exception of the rogue Judge Vaughn Walker.  Judge Walker ignored mountains of evidence--from binding Supreme Court precedent, to at least 9 other state and federal court precedents, along with the conclusions of academic research and eminent scholars, and even common sense--to reach his radical conclusion.

“This is not a hard question,” Cooper writes. “Indeed, because of the distinguishing procreative characteristics of heterosexual relationships, until quite recently ‘it was accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriage only between participants of different sex.’ And marriage has existed in virtually all societies, from the ancients to the American states, because it serves a vital and universal societal purpose – a purpose, indeed, that makes marriage, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized, ‘fundamental to the very existence and survival of the [human] race.’”

More from the brief:

On the procreative purpose of marriage:

“The institution of marriage serves society’s existential interests, in the words of the California Supreme Court, by ‘channel[ing] biological drives that might otherwise become socially destructive’ into enduring marital unions and ‘ensur[ing] that care and education of children in a stable environment.’”

On the historical recognition of the connection between marriage and procreation:

“And the abiding link between marriage and its procreative and child-rearing purposes has been routinely recognized, without a hint of controversy, not only  by the California Supreme Court, as noted above, but repeatedly by state appellate courts addressing the purpose of marriage. Likewise, eminent scholars, past and present, from all relevant academic fields were agreed on the animating purpose of marriage. Blackstone put it well: the ‘relation of parent and child…is consequential to that of marriage, being its principal end and design; it is by virtue of this relations that infants are protected, maintained, and educated.’”

On the long list of appellate cases that address the validity of traditional marriage:

“In light of all this, it is hardly surprising that every appellate court decision, both state and federal, to address the validity of traditional marriage laws under the federal Constitution has upheld them as rationally related to the state’s interest in promoting and regulating procreation and child-rearing.”

On Baker v Nelson, a U.S. Supreme Court case from Minnesota where a gay couple claimed a constitutional right to same-sex marriage:

“The United States Supreme Court dismissed the couple’s appeal for want of a substantial federal question. Not a single Justice found the couple’s constitutional claims – the same ones at issue here – substantial enough even to warrant plenary review. These, too, are not hard questions.”

On Walker’s purported findings of “fact”:

“These findings are, we respectfully submit, patently false, and only by assiduously ignoring the ‘history, tradition, and practice of marriage in the United States’ and everywhere else, could the district court make them. Nowhere in his 136-page opinion does the district court even cite any of the evidence overwhelmingly acknowledging responsible procreation and child-rearing as the animating purpose of marriage. All of the evidence – the judicial authority from California and numerous other states, the works of eminent scholars from all relevant academic fields, the extensive historical evidence – is simply ignored. And the district court ignored it quite deliberately; in the court’s view, only oral testimony presented at trial constituted “evidence” of the issue (and its treatment of even this evidence was egregiously selective and one-sided.)”

On Walker’s finding that the People of California acted with animus in adopting Prop 8:

“This charge is false and unfair on its face, and leveling it against the people of California is especially unfounded, for they have enacted into law some of the Nation’s most sweeping and progressive protections of gays and lesbians, including a domestic partnership law that gives same-sex couples all of the same substantive benefits and protections as marriage. And it defames as anti-gay bigots not only the seven million California voters, but everyone else in this Country, and elsewhere, who believes that the traditional opposite-sex definition of marriage continues to meaningfully serve the legitimate interests of society – from the current President of the United States, to a large majority of legislators throughout the nation, both in statehouses and in the United States Congress, and even to most of the scores of state and federal judges who have addressed this issue.  The simple truth is that ‘there are millions of Americans’ as one of the Plaintiff’s own expert witnesses has acknowledged, ‘who believe in equal rights for gays and lesbians…but who draw the line at marriage.’”

NOM is working hard to raise money to support the outstanding legal team under Chuck Cooper’s leadership. Please help us help them.

Cooper Strikes Back! Brief at 9th Circuit Shreds Walker's decision

Read the whole thing here.

Minnesota’s Catholics Bishops Urge Flock to Protect Marriage in November Elections

It what is being characterized as a first “glimpse” of the Minnesota Catholic Bishops plan to fully and properly form the conscience of Catholic voters before the November general elections, Bishop James Quinn of the Diocese of Winona, MN has reached out to his flock through the diocesan newspaper, The Courier, and via a mailer containing a DVD.
According to the Catholic News Agency, Bishop Quinn correctly declares, “From the beginning, the church has taught that marriage is a lifetime relationship between one man and one woman…Any other kind of relationship simply is not a marriage.”The DVD provides detailed information on the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of marriage and outlines the ill effects society would suffer should Minnesotans vote to accept same-sex “marriage."
What wonderful courage from one of Minnesota’s shepherds—remember to keep him in your prayers.

Mike Castle's Hissy Fit

Have you noticed a pattern? An establishment, “moderate” Republican loses an election…and what do they do? Congratulate their primary opponent? Close ranks to fight for the Party’s principles? Ah…no.

In NY’s 23rd, Dede Scozzafava endorsed her Democrat opponent rather than support the conservative.  In Florida, Gov. Crist tried to shed the GOP label in opposition to GOP nominee Marco Rubio and win.  He's now splitting the anti-GOP vote in Florida with the Dem nominee Wayne Meeks, helping elect Marco Rubio.

Now we have Delaware Rep. Mike Castle who is simply throwing a hissy fit.  He's refused to call, refused to endorse, even in a pro-forma or nominal way, the new GOP nominee Chrstine O'Donnell.   We don't have to agree that O'Donnell is the ideal nominee.  All we have to agree is: elections have consequences. If you lose, you are supposed to: wish the winner well and support your party's nominee.  Unless you are a “moderate” GOP establishment republican, like Crist or Castle, who “has picked up his marbles and gone home.”

As The American Spectator accurately states in its article, Castle Refuses to Back O’Donnell: “Castle's instant refusal to back O'Donnell, is not only what the Ruling Class might call poor sportsmanship, it symbolizes the utter arrogance these people have as they pursue precisely the only agenda they have ever had: wielding power for itself. That's it, that's all. The Alpha and the Omega of the Ruling Class. They rule because they are supposed to. They will say what they have to say, and do what they have to do—to win. And if they lose?”

Good question.  Apparently if your Mike Castle and you lose, you do this: throw a hissy fit.  And hope the voters don't notice.

Read more here.

Editors of National Review make “The Case for Marriage”

The National Review’s cover story make the case for marriage: true, honest, principled, right.

Read the whole article here.