NOM BLOG

Monthly Archives: June 2013

Video: Love Never Fails

Monsignor Charles Pope writes for the Catholic Archdiocese of DC blog:

"This past week six couples in my parish joined about 850 other couples in the Archdiocese of Washington at the Basilica here for the Jubilarian Mass. Couples celebrating 25, 40, 45, 50 and 60 or more years of marriage gather each year to receive gratitude and recognition from the diocese for their witness to the fact that love never fails.

...In the Basilica last Sunday some one did the math and found that there were 33,000 years of Holy Matrimony collectively among the Jubilarians in that place. Amor omnia vincit ("Love Conquers All").

Many will point to the crisis of Holy Matrimony today. I would not be so foolish to deny it and have discussed it here. But to those who say it is not reasonable or possible to expect people to get married and stay that way today, My mom and dad, my aunt and uncle, 850 other couples in the Basilica and 33,000+ years of marriage all stand in witness to the fact that God can do this, and God STILL does this.

Watch this video from last year's event:

Emergency Alert: Lawlessness Continues – Same-sex ‘Marriages’ Resume in California

National Organization for Marriage

Dear Marriage Supporter,

In a case that has been marked by judicial arrogance and, frankly, lawlessness since the beginning, three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals late Friday lifted their stay which had been in effect since a trial judge had ruled against Proposition 8.

Same-sex couples began being 'married' in California when state officials illegitimately declared Proposition 8 was no longer in force and ordered county clerks to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples immediately!

This, despite the fact that the US Supreme Court decision does not take effect for three more weeks.

It's another sad example of the utter disregard for the rule of law and judicial propriety by those who swear an oath to uphold the laws of California, and the nation.

We need your support to respond to this unparalleled act of lawlessness.

After Proposition 8 was challenged, both the governor and attorney general refused to defend it. Proposition 8 was invalidated by a homosexual judge in San Francisco who was engaged in a long-term same-sex relationship, something the judge refused to disclose during the trial.

Then the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in to declare that Prop 8 is invalid in a decision written by Senior Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a judge whose wife actually advised the attorneys challenging Prop 8. He similarly refused to recuse himself from the case despite the apparent conflict of interest.

And then a majority of the US Supreme Court rewarded them all by deciding that the only defenders of Proposition 8, the official proponents, lacked standing to appeal the trial judge's decision.

It would appear that the desire to impose same-sex marriage by some public officials trumps integrity, fairness, propriety, and even the rule of law. All Americans should be outraged!

Despite the circus that is playing out in California, we will not be deterred from our goal of preserving marriage as it was designed and intended by its Creator.

We are counting on your support to stand up for marriage and the rule of law that has made this country great.

Standing up for what is right,

Brian S. Brown

Peters Interviewed by HuffPo on the New Momentum in the Pro-Marriage Fight

Our Communications Director Thomas Peters was interviewed yesterday by Lila Shaprio of The Huffington Post about what the Supreme Court's decisions mean positively for the pro-marriage movement:

"...[Peters] wasn't expecting the huge influx of supportive calls and donations that came in to his organization, the group leading the fight throughout the United States against same-sex marriage legalization efforts.

"A not-insignificant part of our base expected us to lose it all at the Supreme Court," Peters told The Huffington Post on Thursday. "I think this does put new momentum into our fight."

On Wednesday, the court, in two separate cases, ruled that the federal government must recognize gay couples married in states where it is legal and returned same-sex marriages to California. But the justices stopped short of declaring it a constitutional right for all gay couples to marry.

..."A lot of our people are ecstatic. We've been in a waiting game since the court decided to take Proposition 8," Peters said of California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage that the court's ruling nullified. "There was always a question about whether the court would just change it all unilaterally. Now, these state-level rights really matter."

While efforts are already in the works to reintroduce a Federal Marriage Amendment, a measure NOM supports that would define marriage as between one man and one woman, Peters feels that the state fights over gay marriage are at the top of his organization's agenda."

What You Can Do Today to Help Save Marriage

National Organization for Marriage

Dear Marriage Supporter,

Yesterday the US Supreme Court ripped the legs out from under the institution of marriage. Here’s something you can do today to help save this foundational institution: SUPPORT Congressman Tim Huelskamp's Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. We applaud him, Reps. Vicky Hartzler, John Fleming and others who have stood strong to champion true marriage.

It is absolutely urgent that you write to your Senators and Representative to support the Marriage Protection Amendment. It is imperative that the nation show its displeasure with what the slim majority on the Court did yesterday, attempting to equate homosexual relationships that have no capacity for creating life with marriage as God created it, bringing men and women together in the ideal environment for the raising of children.

This will be a long fight, but the Supreme Court's destructive decisions on DOMA and Prop. 8 must be corrected by WE, The People. A constitutional amendment is the clear way to reign in an out-of-control judiciary and restore marriage throughout this country.

We must also stop the attempt to repeal section 2 of DOMA which allows states to define marriage for themselves. Already, liberal members of Congress are moving forward to repeal DOMA. They must be stopped. Please email your Senators and Representative to demand that they continue to support DOMA and pass the Marriage Protection Amendment.

We can win this fight but we need you to immediately take action demanding that Congress uphold DOMA and pass this Amendment. Please also forward this message to as many of your friends as possible and ask them to do the same!

As Justice Scalia said in his prophetic dissent,

"It takes real cheek for today's majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here — when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority's moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress's hateful moral judgment against it. I promise you this: The only thing that will "confine" the Court's holding is its sense of what it can get away with."

There you have it. The bottom line is that we cannot let them get away with destroying marriage. The fate of marriage is in our hands.

Please contact your Senators and Representative right now to urge them to support the constitutional amendment preserving marriage, and vote against attempts to repeal DOMA.

Now is the time to stand and demand that our rights and the truth about marriage are protected. The other side wants us to give up, but we never will. While yesterday’s decisions were bad, marriage is still the union of one man and one woman in 38 states. Your elected representatives must hear from you today.

Please act right away to stop politicians from taking the next step towards redefining marriage throughout our country and leaving marriage exposed to activist judges.

Brian Brown Responds to Supreme Court Rulings in the Washington Post

This op-ed by our President Brian Brown appeared online and will appear in the print edition of The Washington Post:

Brian BrownIt was outrageous for the Supreme Court to invalidate Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and allow the potential invalidation of California’s Proposition 8, a law passed with the support of more than 7 million voters. Although Wednesday was a sad day for democracy and for marriage, this is not the end of the battle.

The vast majority of states recognize marriage solely as the union of one man and one woman. Only 13 states and the District of Columbia recognize same-sex “marriage,” and nothing the Supreme Court just did changes that fact. If anything, the court’s opinion in United States v. Windsor, the DOMA case, shows that the federal government must respect the decision of states to define marriage as they choose.

The National Organization for Marriage intends to vigorously urge Congress to safeguard the remaining portion of DOMA, which protects the right of states to refuse to recognize same-sex “marriages” performed elsewhere.

Continue reading here.

Matt Lewis: Supreme Court Rulings Use Same Arguments as Polygamy

Matthew Lewis in the Daily Caller asks, with the Supreme Court's ruling on DOMA, why doesn't the government have an obligation to honor polygamous 'marriages' as well?

Polygamy

"...The arguments [for gay marriage and polygamy] are essentially the same. For example, Sen. Al Franken recently issued a statement saying, “Our country is starting to understand that it’s not about what a family looks like: it’s about their love and commitment to one
another.” Polygamists couldn’t agree more.

I mean, who are we to say that two or three or even four consenting adults — who want to make a lifelong commitment to love each other — shouldn’t be allowed to do so?

What’s magical about the number two?

In fact, you could argue that there is an even better argument for polygamy than for same sex marriage. For one thing, there’s a long tradition (just look at the heroes of the Old Testament.) It’s also intimately tied to religious practice, which means that by prohibiting polygamy, we might also be undermining the “free exercise thereof.”

Why should we impose our values on others?..."

Mother Jones Blogger Worried About Court's Prop 8 Precedent

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones -- a liberal outlet -- admits that he is unsettled by what the Supreme Court did (or rather, chose not to do) on Prop 8:

"In California, it's routine for the people to pass initiatives that neither the governor nor the legislature supports. In fact, that was the whole point of the initiative process when it was created. In cases like these, of course the governor and legislature are going to decline to defend the law in court. With today's decision, the Supreme Court is basically gutting the people's right to pass initiatives that elected officials don't like and then to defend them all the way to the highest court in the land.

To me, this has neither the flavor of justice nor of democratic governance, regardless of whether I like the outcome."

Franck on the Danger of Kennedy's Decision

Matthew Franck writes in First Things:

Justice Kennedy"... It was in the less explosive, but still volatile Windsor case that the Court reached the merits, but only after considerable wrangling here too about whether DOMA could be defended in federal court by counsel retained by the House of Representatives, after the Obama administration withdrew from a legal defense of the act in court. (What is it about the cause of same-sex marriage that prompts so many of its advocates in the political class to abdicate the most elementary responsibilities enjoined by their oaths of office?) Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas would have held that in Windsor too there was no case for the Court to decide, and were thus willing to see DOMA’s challenged Section 3, enacting a federal-law definition of marriage, fall prey to an interbranch political struggle in which the president has the upper hand over Congress.

But the Windsor majority led by Justice Kennedy—which included Justices Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan, who curiously saw a party with standing here, where they did not see one in Hollingsworth—went to the merits and overturned DOMA’s Section 3. The opinion was of a kind we are used to seeing by now from Justice Kennedy: long on windy rhetoric about “dignity” and ad hominem attacks on the basic human decency of the law’s defenders, and short on actual coherent legal reasoning from recognizable constitutional principles.

...Justice Kennedy’s Windsor opinion on the merits deserves all the scorn heaped on it by Justice Scalia’s dissent, as well as all of Justice Alito’s penetrating observations in his separate dissent that “what is marriage?” is the key question, which the people and their representatives are entitled to decide for themselves, in Congress and in the states. Kennedy’s opinion is as shabby and question-begging as they say—and then some—but the real danger lies in its contemptible contempt for the millions of Americans who disagree with a “progressive” redefinition of marriage that severs its connection to childbearing, mothering, and fathering."

George, Anderson & Girgis: The Supreme Court, You and Me, and the Future of Marriage

In the Public Discourse today, Prof. Robert George, Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis argue that "what happened yesterday at the courthouse matters, and we must keep up our witness to the truth about marriage, by word and deed, until it is safely beyond judicial overreach":

Here’s the least reported fact about yesterday’s rulings on marriage: the Supreme Court refused to give Ted Olson and David Boies, the lawyers suing to overturn Prop 8, what they wanted. The Court refused to redefine marriage for the entire nation. The Court refused to "discover" a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Citizens and their elected representatives remain free to discuss, debate, and vote about marriage policy in all fifty states. Citizens and their elected representatives still have the right to define marriage in civil law as the union of one man and one woman.

And we should continue doing so. Already, in the wake of yesterday’s ruling, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana has called on his state to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Marriage matters for children, for civil society, and for limited government. Marriage is the institution that unites a man and a woman as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children that their union produces. And that’s why the government is in the marriage business. Not because it cares about adult romance, but because it cares about the rights of children. (Public Discourse)

Politico: Chris Christie Blasts Gay Marriage Ruling

Bold words from Governor Christie:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie slammed the Supreme Court decision on DOMA as “wrong” and an example of “judicial supremacy.”

Chris ChristieChristie, a former federal prosecutor, made the remarks on his “Ask the Governor” radio show, hours after the court struck a crucial section of the Defense of Marriage Act.

“I don’t think the ruling was appropriate,” said Christie, who is running for reelection in a blue state, one in which Democrats have hailed the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage.

“I think it was wrong,” Christie continued, calling it “typical of the problem we see” in New Jersey’s own Supreme Court.

He blasted the U.S. Supremes for substituting “their own judgment for the judgment of a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. In the Republican Congress in the ‘90s and Bill Clinton. I thought that Justice Kennedy’s opinion was, in many respects, incredibly insulting to those people, 340-some members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, and Bill Clinton.” (Politico)

Justice Scalia's Blistering Dissent in Defense of the People and Civility

Key parts of Justice Scalia's dissent to the majority opinion on the Defense of Marriage Act (written by Justice Kennedy) are worth reading and pondering:

Justice Scalia

"...to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority's judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to "disparage," "injure," "degrade," "demean," and "humiliate" our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homo- sexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence— indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.

... In the majority's telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us. The truth is more complicated. It is hard to admit that one's political opponents are not monsters, especially in a struggle like this one, and the challenge in the end proves more than today's Court can handle. Too bad. A reminder that disagreement over something so fundamental as marriage can still be politically legitimate would have been a fit task for what in earlier times was called the judicial temperament. We might have covered ourselves with honor today, by promising all sides of this debate that it was theirs to settle and that we would respect their resolution. We might have let the People decide.

But that the majority will not do. Some will rejoice in today's decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many. But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat. We owed both of them better. I dissent."

Read his full opinion here as a PDF -- Justice Scalia's dissent begins on page 35.

Peters in NRO: More Than Marriage Is at Stake Now

Our Communications Director Thomas Peters writes in NRO about what else is at stake besides marriage in this debate:

Hands Clasped with Wedding BandAfter today’s rulings by the Supreme Court, every American has a larger stake in the outcome of the marriage debate. No one can afford to stay out of this issue because these decisions today constitute a huge threat to our democratic process.

The Proposition 8 ruling is the most disturbing. Though the Court chose not to rule on the merits, it did establish a terrible precedent, ruling that citizens who pass an initiative do not have the legal right or standing to defend that law when elected officials refuse to do their job and defend the duly enacted law in court.

This amounts to a pocket veto which politicians will abuse in the future, and not just on marriage. Within hours of the ruling, Governor Jerry Brown of California announced that California clerks would be forced to issue same-sex couples marriage licenses within 30 days, even though Prop 8 remains the law in California. The ruling invites abuse and will inevitably result in further bitter litigation.

... We all should care about preserving marriage. But everyone who cares about the broader principles of democracy and fair-minded public discourse should start speaking up now, and loudly, about what is at stake.

Bill Duncan on The Supreme Court's Wrong Marriage Assumptions

Bill Duncan writes in National Review:

SCOTUS"To judge from most of the media coverage, today’s Supreme Court decisions in the marriage cases were supposed to give us a final answer on whether the U.S. Constitution requires the states to redefine marriage. They did not.

...Even though we did not get a final settlement of the [marriage] debate in these decisions, there are reasons to be concerned. As I discuss in a submission to SCOTUS Blog which should go up later today, the majority opinion in the DOMA case rests on assumptions about marriage which cast it as a government vehicle for valorizing a private relationship. The court mentions children but only as potential trickle-down beneficiaries of the relationship of the adults who are raising or who have acquired them. If that notion is widely accepted it will constitute a cultural loss.

Overall a bad day at the Court, but the fight continues."

Undaunted and Resolute

National Organization for Marriage

Dear Marriage Supporter,

Today, the US Supreme Court did what many of us hoped would never happen — they have invalidated Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and refused to consider the lower court decision invalidating Proposition 8.

But make no mistake, we avoided a Roe v. Wade for marriage and for that we should be grateful!

That said, I am furious about what the Court has done. We at NOM and tens of millions of other Americans will never accept it. It's wrong, plain and simple. There's a stench to these decisions that has stained the Supreme Court.

Will you show your outrage at the Court and make a special contribution to allow NOM to coalesce Americans behind a national movement to preserve marriage? Please make an urgent, emergency financial contribution to our Win More States fund — today. The work that NOM does has never been more urgently needed than it is right now, and we are totally dependent on you, our faithful supporters, to help us continue the fight.

In my view, the worse of the two decisions is the Proposition 8 case. For six long years, NOM and our allies have fought with everything we had to preserve what God Himself created — marriage, the foundation of society itself. NOM was the largest contributor to putting Proposition 8 on the ballot. I personally uprooted my family and lived for several months in California to help campaign for its successful passage. And we've contributed several hundred thousand dollars to help preserve it through many legal challenges.

I've got a message for the Supreme Court: We're not going to take their wrong decisions sitting down. The decision refusing to hear the Proposition 8 appeal has rewarded the utter dereliction of duty by California's Governor and Attorney General, whose legal obligation was to defend initiatives adopted by the people. That leaves in place the erroneous decision of a single San Francisco federal court judge, who made an illegitimate attempt to legislate from the bench.

Will you join us in expressing your outrage? Please make an emergency contribution right now so that we can immediately launch a nationwide grassroots effort to protest the decisions, and preserve marriage in the 38 states that have laws in place defending marriage.

Back to what happened today: the Supreme Court chose to reward corrupt public officials and judges and disrespect the right of the people of California to define marriage in the way that marriage has actually existed throughout human history — the union of one man and one woman.

First off, over 7 million Californians voted in favor of Proposition 8. It was the second time that California voters had decided to preserve the institution of marriage as between one man and one woman.

Not content to let voters have their say, gay marriage activists from Hollywood and New York hired celebrity lawyers Ted Olsen and David Boies to sue and the case now known as Hollingsworth v. Perry began. Frankly, I've never seen such corruption in the judicial system as I have seen in this case. First, a homosexual judge in a long-term gay relationship was assigned the case, and refused to disclose his relationship before declaring that marriage is unconstitutional. Then we had to turn to the most liberal appeals court in the nation, the Ninth Circuit, whose senior judge — Stephen Reinhardt — agreed that marriage must be redefined. Reinhardt wrote the appeals court opinion invalidating Proposition 8, despite the fact that his own wife advised the lawyers challenging the initiative. Incredibly, Reinhardt, like the corrupt trial judge, refused to remove himself over his conflict of interest.

To make matters worse, the elected officials responsible for defending the vote of the people and who swore an oath to do so — Arnold Schwarzenegger, then — Attorney General (now Governor) Jerry Brown, and current Attorney General Kamala Harris — abandoned their duty and left marriage defenseless. And all the evidence suggests they will continue in this vein unless we fight back.

The Supreme Court then rewarded this cronyism and corruption by effectively giving negligent public officials a pocket veto over ballot measures they don't like. All they have to do now thanks to the Supreme Court is refuse to defend a law passed by the people, and it will crash and burn in the courts.

It's an outrage. But I am not going to sit by and take it without fighting back.

Will you join with me now to continue to fight for marriage? Let's organize millions of American who believe in the truth of marriage as given us by the Creator, and go make sure that no other state loses its protections for marriage. It's wrong that California voters lost their right to defend true marriage (for now), but it has to stop with this decision.

The US Supreme Court has taken pains to limit the impact of their decision to California by basing their ruling on a narrow legal issue. It does not apply to anyone else except the two same-sex couples named in the lawsuit — at least for now.

In that regard, we owe a big debt of gratitude to those defending Proposition 8, especially Chuck Cooper and his firm, along with the attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Andy Pugno of the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund. They succeeded in convincing the Court NOT to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, as celebrity lawyers David Boies and Ted Olsen had been urging throughout the case and promised to do. For that, we are grateful.

But you can bet that gay marriage activists and their rapacious lawyers won't let it rest at that. And that brings me to the DOMA ruling.

In a separate case the Court invalidated Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The ruling will force the federal government to recognize same-sex relationships as "marriages" in the few deep-blue states that have bought into the lie and rejected thousands of years of history and common sense. And it will create chaos as same-sex couples move to other states that have held true, and demand the same recognition from and in those states. The Supreme Court clearly got that case wrong, but the ruling is not nearly as important as the Prop 8 ruling for the future of our cause.

Still, it will further burden taxpayers by forcing them to subsidize gay couples whose relationships do not meet the historic understanding of marriages or provide the benefits to society that flow from the traditional understanding of marriage. That said, the impact is limited only to certain federal benefits and does not require any state to accept gay 'marriages' performed elsewhere. That section of DOMA was not challenged and remains fully in effect — for now. You can count on the powerful gay marriage lobby to mount a full frontal assault in Congress to try to repeal every element of DOMA. We will need your financial help to make sure that Congress continues to protect the right of states to reject having to recognize faux marriage.

We will have more on the Supreme Court rulings in the coming days. Our extraordinary chairman, Prof. John Eastman, will shortly be writing a series of articles to break down the Supreme Court decisions. A former Supreme Court clerk, law school dean and one of the nation's foremost constitutional scholars, Prof. Eastman will provide valuable insights and commentary on what the various justices had to say, and what it portends for the future. We will be sure that you are among the first to receive his insights.

This much we already know: marriage is hanging by a thread in America. It suffered a setback today at the Supreme Court, and those responsible for these attacks will be coming after every remaining state that refuses to abandon the truth of marriage. We must have their back. We must go on offense.

Our opponents are going to be more determined than ever after today. We need to match their determination, and resolve to never again let this type of thing happen to any other state or jurisdiction in our beloved country.

If you believe in the truth of marriage, now is the time to stand up. The survival of true marriage depends on us.

For my part, I am undaunted and resolute.

Video: Ryan Anderson on FOX News Reacts to Court Rulings

Ryan Anderson did a great job explaining the decisions that were handed down today and defending marriage: