NOM BLOG

Monthly Archives: April 2012

Flip-Flopper McDonald Faces Formidable Challenger in Kathleen Marchione

New Yorker's Family Research Foundation:

An upcoming Republican State Senate primary may have repercussions for one of the four Republican state senators who voted in favor of same-sex “marriage” last year.

Saratoga County Clerk Kathleen Marchione (R-Halfmoon), a Republican, is running for State Senate in New York’s 43rd Senate District. Marchione is challenging Republican Sen. Roy McDonald(R-Wilton), who joined Republican Sens. Stephen Saland (R-Poughkeepsie), James Alesi (R-Perinton) and Mark Grisanti (R-Buffalo) in voting to legalize same-sex “marriage” on June 24, 2011. The recently-redrawn 43rd District now includes eastern Saratoga County, the Washington County towns of Easton and Cambridge, all of Rensselaer County except the City of Rensselaer and most of the City of Troy, and all of Columbia County.

... Stephen P. Hayford of The Association of Politically Active Christians (APAC) added, “GOP voters in the 43rd District have not forgotten Sen. McDonald’s same-sex ‘marriage’ flip-flop, nor have they forgotten the crass and graceless manner in which he announced it.”

“If Kathy Marchione works with Christians and conservatives to build the type of grassroots movement that Doug Hoffman built in 2009, Sen. McDonald could well lose the Republican line and lose his seat altogether,” Rev. McGuire concluded.

Minnesota For Marriage Releases New “Man on the Street” Style Series

Minnesota for Marriage:

The “Man on the Street” video series features voices of real Minnesotans sharing why they believe marriage between one man and one woman is important and thus worth preserving.

The series showcases Minnesotans like you and me, young and old, married and single, newlyweds and families all expressing their support for the Marriage Protection Amendment. While participants may be from diverse backgrounds, they all share the belief that marriage is in the common good, that children do best when raised by their mother and father – and will be voting yes on the Minnesota Marriage Protection Amendment in November.

These are their voices. And they are asking you to vote Yes on the Minnesota Marriage Protection Amendment November 6.

New California Law Would Forbid Professionals from Helping Teens with Unwanted Same-Sex Attraction

Parents and/or teens' wishes notwithstanding:

An unusual assortment of groups are beginning to express alarm over a bill moving through the California legislature that has sweeping implications for both free speech and family rights.

Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, is not mincing words. "I can honestly say this is one of the most outrageous, speech-chilling bills we have ever seen in California-and that's saying a lot," he said.

The main purpose of the bill, SB 1172, is to limit the ability of psychologists, therapists and other counselors to assist adult or minor clients with sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE). SB 1172 flatly bans SOCE for minors-regardless of the parents' or minors' wishes-and requires a new consent form for adults containing statements about sexual orientation that many counselors would dispute. The bill then creates significant liability for professionals who proceed with SOCE. -- Pacific Justice Institute press release

Will Methodists Endorse Same-Sex Marriages?

Mark Tooley predicts, "no":

Nearly 1,000 delegates representing 12 million church members are on hand in Tampa for [the] start of the 11-day 2012 United Methodist General Conference, where homosexuality is the top issue of controversy.

The General Conference, the only body that officially speaks for the denomination, meets every four years to determine the denomination's future direction. Mark Tooley of The Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD) is there, and he says the potential ordination of actively homosexual clergy and the issue of same-sex "marriage" are major concerns.

"Currently, the church's official stances are biblical and require clergy to be monogamous in traditional marriage, or celibate, if single, and also [prohibit] any celebration of same-sex unions in Methodist churches," he reports. "Obviously, the liberal side of the church very much wants to change that and will be pushing very hard and knows that time is running out for its cause."

One of the reasons for those advocates' concern, he explains, is the growth of the church in Africa.

"The U.S. church, where all the liberals are located, is declining and losing representation, while the Africans, who are very conservative, will probably become a majority within the denomination within ten years or less," Tooley predicts. "So, this year, 2012, may be the last opportunity for the liberal side to win on sexual issues." -- OneNewsNow

"Black Churchgoers Break with Leading Democrats on Marriage Amendment"

The Charlotte Observer:

Bishop Phillip Davis had not planned to talk about marriage and politics, but five minutes into his sermon at Nations Ford Community Church in Charlotte he changed his mind.

Not only should the 6,000 members of the overwhelmingly African-American congregation pray with one voice, he said, come May 8 they should vote with one, too.

... Thirty-one states – in 31 tries – have approved amendments to block gay unions. Based on the polls, North Carolina is a good bet to extend the streak May 8, due in part to African-American congregations like Nations Ford.

A March 23 survey by Public Policy Polling of Raleigh showed that black voters statewide support the measure 61 percent to 30 percent. Whites: 58-38 percent in favor.

More than 80 percent of the state’s African-Americans voters are Democrats. Their support for the amendment represents a rare break with the party’s leaders and civil rights groups.

President Barack Obama, who in 2008 received more than 90 percent of the North Carolina black vote, took the unusual step this year of wading into the amendment debate, calling it discriminatory.

Gov. Bev Perdue, all three major Democratic candidates for governor and many other party leaders have also spoken out against it.

The state NAACP has led the fight to defeat the amendment, which would make traditional marriage the only legal union in the state.

... As such, the marriage amendment has hammered a wedge between two enduring traits of African-American believers – a tradition of political and social activism, and a streak of moral conservatism, especially when it comes to gays and lesbians.

Knights of Columbus Helping Gather Signatures in Washington

KVEW TV:

Members of the Knights of Columbus at St. Joseph's Catholic Church are gathering signatures for Referendum 74 to try and repeal the same sex marriage law.

Governor Chris Gregoire signed the same sex marriage bill into law in February, shortly after the signing people against gay marriage started Referendum 74 to give voters the chance to vote on the issue.

Larry Devlin, Knights of Columbus, helped setup tables at St. Joe's to place the petitions, he said it's about protecting families.

"The Knights of Columbus is very family focused and we see this issue being very divisive not only in terms of morality but also socially." Devlin said.

The group has collected more than 2,000 signatures in the last few weeks and they are hoping to help reach the goal of more than 121,000 signatures by the deadline on June 6th.

The Crisis We Face, Together, NOM Marriage News

NOM National Newsletter

Dear Marriage Supporter,

You know me. You know I'm a happy warrior.

Even as we speak, voting has begun in North Carolina over the Marriage Amendment.

The vote may well be close, but only for one reason: Gay-marriage advocates in North Carolina have abandoned the idea that they can win a vote on gay marriage.

Instead, in North Carolina they've conceded defeat on the main question—should marriage be a union of husband and wife?—and are blanketing the airwaves with lies to scare voters into thinking the amendment will somehow strip women of protection from domestic violence.

We've seen this before, by the way, as the Marriage Law Foundation's president Bill Duncan points out:

"[A] majority of state marriage amendments also prohibit legal statuses that are just marriage by another name so what North Carolina is doing is hardly unprecedented. Some of these amendments have been on the books for eight years with none of the outcomes North Carolina gay-marriage advocates have predicted. On the other hand, to understand why the proposed amendment's drafters felt it necessary to include a prohibition of civil unions, one need only remember that a Ninth Circuit panel cited the fact that California had a marriage amendment and a civil-union statute simultaneously as a reason for invalidating California's Proposition 8 just months ago."

(A group of law professors at Campbell have carefully refuted these ludicrous claims in this PDF.)

Thirty-one states have marriage amendments, some with wording quite similar to North Carolina's. In none of them have women been deprived of domestic violence protection because they are not married to their abusers.

The good news is that gay-marriage advocates in North Carolina have conceded that gay marriage is a losing issue with voters. And they're not the only ones.

Washington Post blogger Jonathan Bernstein notes a strange disconnect between the triumphalist rhetoric on gay marriage in the mainstream media, and the way Democrats are treating the issue:

Greg has been reporting recently on a fascinating issue: how Democrats will handle same-sex marriage in their 2012 party platform. The general sense has been that Barack Obama is lagging behind his party on this issue, and that it'll be hard for him to block a marriage equality plank without angering core Dem voters.

That may be true. But if so, he may have company: Dem candidates for the U. S. Senate also are generally avoiding or downplaying the issue, at least if their campaign web sites are any guide.

For the first time, some polls show majority support for gay marriage. But if this is any guide, Democrats are still being extraordinarily reluctant about an issue they seem to think can still backfire on them.

(Maybe they are watching the carnage in New York state among Democrats who came out for gay marriage in conservative districts!)

On the incredible scandal and potential politicization of the IRS I have a bit of good news to report: We spoke with the Inspector General of the IRS, who has assured us that the IRS takes the misuse of taxpayers' private data very seriously and will conduct a serious investigation.

We are glad. But the IRS will only prosecute a crime if the crime was committed internally by an IRS agent. The other possibilities—that the IRS database was hacked into by an outsider, or that an individual criminally impersonated a NOM staffer to obtain this data—must be pursued by the Department of Justice.

The Human Rights Campaign scrubbed its website of any mention of NOM's stolen 990s, after our lawyers demanded they do so. The Huffington Post remains in violation of federal laws that forbid "knowingly" retailing illegally-obtained IRS data.

Thanks to Red State's Erick Erickson, the Weekly Standard, and GOPUSA for covering the story.

But thanks especially to Alliance Defense Fund's Brian Raum for his column, "In Defense of the National Organization for Marriage":

"The unfounded attacks and insults lodged against the National Organization for Marriage have increased recently by an ever ravenous opposition. The Human Rights Campaign has shamelessly published NOM's confidential IRS records, and last month a federal judge unsealed some of NOM's constitutionally protected internal reports.

"Not surprisingly, those who seek to redefine marriage immediately seized upon the opportunity to attack NOM based on these documents with salacious accusations and vilifications," writes Raum.

He goes on to ask this important question, "So why are HRC, The New York Times, and others attempting demonize NOM simply because they have sought to marshal the black and Hispanic communities to speak out for marriage...?

"The reason why NOM's opponents are so enraged is because NOM is effective."
I think he's right about that. It's not because we speak hatefully or intemperately. You and I have always bent over backwards to remind our opponents that we believe gay people are human beings like us with legitimate rights that need to be respected. But none of us have the right to redefine marriage.

Let me pause to say thank you for all the good together you’ve allowed us to accomplish. We are drawing fire because we are effective, thank God!

This week we released a new video: Is gay marriage a civil right? Listen to these African-American and Latino leaders explaining in their own words why they oppose same-sex marriage:

 

I defy anyone to say that leaders like these are speaking because NOM is manipulating them. That's a racist idea. Clearly these brave men and women are, like other Americans, standing up for what they believe is right for America!

The crisis we face, together, is that fewer Americans are willing to speak for marriage; when you hear of a loss in the polls, it stems from the communications breakdown in the mainstream media.

At NOM we are fighting this in multiple ways, including by bringing you news you will not hear anywhere else:

NOM's Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance now has a new spokesman, Damian Goddard.

You may remember Damian Goddard as the Toronto sportscaster who was fired one day after tweeting that he believes in the "true and authentic" meaning of marriage.

This week he introduces Daniel Glowacki, a 14-year-old Michigan boy, who was persecuted by a teacher and kicked out of his classroom for raising his hand and saying the "homosexual lifestyle" was against "my Catholic religion." Daniel was told he did not belong in a public school by this public-school teacher, according to eyewitness accounts.

When the school disciplined this out-of-control teacher, the teacher went to the press and was lionized for standing up to homophobia. The school district backed down. Daniel and his mom were left hanging.

 

Please watch this video. And do as Damian asks: Send a word of encouragement to Daniel and his mother. The Thomas More Law Center is defending their rights legally. But we need to send a message to Daniel: You are not alone. Together we will fight against the injustice descending on our great country.

To see the future we must fight against, all we have to do is look at our sister democracies.

In Great Britain, it's just now been ruled illegal for counselors to help clients fight unwanted same-sex attractions. If you want help controlling your sexual impulses so you can lead the life you believe is right—you have to go it alone.

As the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord George Carey, just warned the European Court of Human Rights, "In a country where Christians can be sacked for manifesting their faith, are vilified by State bodies, are in fear of reprisal or even arrest for expressing their views on sexual ethics, something is very wrong."

Yes, something is very wrong. Our core faith traditions are under sustained attack. But just as importantly, we are losing marriage as a social institution, under the twin pressures of the sexual revolution and the gay-marriage juggernaut.

Young people are being told repeatedly, by authoritative voices, that marriage has nothing to do with its deep, cross-cultural purpose of bringing together mothers and fathers for children. "Marriage is a right!" "Marriage is about soulmates!" "Marriage is—well, what exactly is the point of marriage?"

The young are responding by eschewing marriage in record-breaking numbers: ABC News is reporting the demographic decline under the headline, "The End of Marriage?" For the first time the Census Bureau is reporting that fewer than half of all households consist of a married couple. The numbers are from 2010—down from 52 percent in 2000 and 78 percent in 1950.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of babies born to unmarried cohabiting couples skyrocketed, from 14 percent in 2002 to 23 percent in 2006-2010.

In the Weekly Standard, Jonathan Last reports on another aspect of this crisis, in "Demography Is Destiny": an unwillingness to give ourselves to children at all.

Israel is the only developed country in the world where women have enough children to sustain the current population.

A new report shows a huge rise in middle-aged Americans entering old age alone:

The proportion of adults ages 46-64 who are not married climbed from 22 percent in 1980 to 34 percent in 2009. In 1980 45 percent of those were divorced, 33 percent widowed, and 22 percent never married. Today 58 percent are divorced, 32 percent never married and only ten percent widowed.

These are all practical problems for a society. Much suffering has already ensued and more is on the way. But the root of this crisis surrounding generativity is a spiritual crisis. At the heart of this crisis is our inability or unwillingness to commit to marriage and all it represents.

Marriage binds us together, but only on the condition that we surrender the grandiose idea that we can make up what marriage means. To put the self at the center of marriage is to surrender what marriage is and what marriage alone can do.

The untold crisis of what used to be called Western Civilization is that we have not yet found a way to revive our commitment to marriage. Not to marriage as a romantic fantasy, or marriage as a civil-rights cause, but marriage as a symbol of the great truths embedded in Genesis: We are born male and female, and ordinarily called to come together in love to make and raise the next generation.

Some truths are too precious to abandon, too foundational to surrender.

Thank you for being a leader for marriage. For being one of those Americans who understands what is at stake and who will show the Daniel Glowacki's of the world: You are not alone.

You are our future.

Vote FOR Marriage NC Launches New TV Ad Refuting False Claims About Amendment

From the Vote FOR Marriage NC campaign website:

RALEIGH, NC – Today, Vote FOR Marriage NC launched a statewide TV advertisement (click play on the image above to view) that rebukes the falsehoods being propagated by those in opposition to the Marriage Protection Amendment.

“Advocates for homosexual marriage are desperate to avoid any discussion about the proper definition of marriage in North Carolina, so they have launched a desperate attempt to mislead people that the marriage amendment would damage unmarried people, especially women and children,” said Tami Fitzgerald, Chairwoman of Vote FOR Marriage NC. “Our new TV ad cites the report from independent legal experts at Campbell University Law School, proving that this Amendment does not disrupt protection for all qualified citizens under our domestic violence laws, and nobody will lose health insurance benefits.”

Red State on Using the IRS to Attack Conservatives (Such as NOM)

Erick Erickson, CNN political analyst and founder of RedState writes:

Someone within the Internal Revenue Service leaked to the gay-rights organization Human Rights Campaign the private Form 990 of the National Organization of Marriage. The form contains a list of major donors to the National Organization for Marriage. The IRS Form 990 is available for public inspection on request, but the law is very clear that donors are to have their information redacted.

... The Landmark Legal Foundation’s Mark Levin, also a popular radio show host, recently highlighted troubling IRS activities against tea party groups. Many tea party groups in the country claim the IRS is attempting to undermine their 501(c)(3) tax status. The IRS attempts go beyond normal tax challenges demanding specific information into family members, outside groups, affiliates, and deep background on individuals involved as officers of the tea party groups.

The use of the IRS as a political tool to intimidate opponents of the government is positively Nixonian, but only because the income tax and IRS were barely out of the fetal stage for Woodrow Wilson.

Unmasked: How Gay Marriage Activists View the North Carolina Campaign

Our appreciation to the Vote4MarriageNC's official twitter account for bringing this to our attention -- a gay marriage activist reveals what was discussed on a conference call with Celinda Lake where she lays out her strategy to attempt to defeat the Marriage Protection Amendment in North Carolina.

What we find most revealing is how Lake concedes that same-sex marriage is a losing issue for them and they can only hope to win in North Carolina by obscuring the real debate over marriage:

"The issue here is that we’ve got to completely change the issue terrain – and that takes money [...] Our problem is that people – if they just go into the ballot box without being exposed to our campaign are going to think: “Marriage is between a man and a woman. And I believe in that.”

"Sadly, North Carolinians – including these primary voters – are very, very strong on that value. It’s a very old, very religious primary electorate. They really firmly believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and it should stay that way. We might all wish it were different but over three quarters of all of our groups believe that strongly."

You heard it confirmed by their side: 3/4 of North Carolinians believe marriage is between a man and a woman. Everything else is a distraction!

Where Are the 12 Million Millennial Americans Who Believe in Marriage?

The Public Religion Research Institute/Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown recently released a report showing that among Millennials (Aged 18-24), 37% of them oppose same-sex marriage. 59% said they favored same-sex marriage and 4% did not answer.

If we take these percentages at face value, they still mean that almost 12 million young Americans believe in marriage as the union of husband and wife.

So where are they?

I've met them. But many Americans obviously have not, judging by what I've seen on college campuses and witnessed in mainstream entertainment. And what is more surprising to consider is how many of these young pro-marriage Americans are currently enrolled in college or graduate school programs where free speech and academic freedom are supposedly essential values.

Is there truly a place for pro-marriage Millennial voices in our culture? It's not at all clear to me that there is right now. But it is equally clear to me that there should be such a place.

When it comes to the question of marriage and the views of the next generation, I'm a "glass is half full" sort of guy. Even if it's less than half full right now. For one thing, young people's attitudes change over time, and it's no surprise to me that people's views about what it takes to be married and raise a family change the closer one gets to actually having to live these choices.

It's also amazing and inspiring to witness how stubbornly young people continue to be for marriage despite all of the pressure that is brought against them for valuing it. Daniel Glowacki's story is just one such example. How many other Daniel Glowacki's are there out there who simply avoid taking that first step of speaking up and choose to remain silent instead?

Moreover, how much will this debate over marriage change when young pro-marriage people begin speaking out in more numbers and with more conviction?

I'm excited to find that out. So stay tuned!

Campaign Against NC Marriage Amendment Not Yet Gathering Much Steam

Democrat-leaning Public Policy Polling -- which is based in North Carolina -- is doing its best to claim momentum is shifting against the Marriage Amendment.

Their most recent poll has voters favoring the amendment 54-40-6 while last month they found support at 58-38-4.

Getting into the weeds of the most recent poll, it appears to oversampled female, Democratic and young voters (compared to who is actually voting so far).

Our experience time and time again is that marriage under-performs when polled compared to how people actually vote when granted the privacy of a voting booth.

As we wrote in our fundraising email this week, final victory in North Carolina, like every victory for marriage, will be dependent on how many resources (human and financial) we are able to gather for communicating our message to voters and encouraging them to vote!

Video: What About the Children of Gays and Lesbians?

Kalley Yanta of the Minnesota Marriage Minute explains why marriage should not be redefined because some same-sex couples are raising children:

"Very few same-sex couples are raising children. According to the Williams Institute, only 22% of same-sex couples are raising children. Many if not most of those couples involve children from a previous heterosexual relationship. The census bureau shows only 0.55% of all U.S. households are households of same-sex couples. Only 0.12% of U.S. households are same-sex couples raising children."

William Duncan on the "Ludicrous" Claims that NC Amendment Will Take Away Rights

Legal scholar William C. Duncan over at NRO's The Corner blog:

The [Washington] Post story also relays some of the ludicrous claims that the North Carolina amendment would have unintended effects on all unmarried couples. A group of law professors at Campbell University have very effectively refuted such claims in a carefully-documented white paper. I’ve written about similar claims made against other amendments a few years ago in the Florida Coastal Law Review. It’s worth emphasizing that a majority of state marriage amendments also prohibit legal statuses that are just marriage by another name so what North Carolina is doing is hardly unprecedented. Some of these amendments have been on the books for eight years with none of the outcomes North Carolina gay-marriage advocates have predicted.

On the other hand, to understand why the proposed amendment’s drafters felt it necessary to include a prohibition of civil unions, one need only remember that a Ninth Circuit panel cited the fact that California had a marriage amendment and a civil-union statute simultaneously as a reason for invalidating California’s Proposition 8 just months ago.

Newt Gingrich Says Vote Yes on the North Carolina Marriage Amendment

Newt Gingrich says vote "yes" on North Carolina's Marriage Amendment. Obama says vote "no."  Will Mitt speak?