Dear Marriage Supporter,

President Obama's announcement of support for same-sex marriage last week is already escalating the attacks on DOMA.

The day after President Obama's announcement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid immediately tagged along, announcing his newfound support for the cause du jour.

But he didn't stop there.

As Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid controls the senate calendar...and he told the press this weekend that he wants to see an up-or-down vote on the federal Defense of Marriage Act yet this year.

This could move fast, and there are a lot of Democratic Senators who haven't publicly declared their position on same-sex marriage, but are coming under increased pressure to toe the Obama line and support same-sex marriage. It's Obama's new plan to paint the Republican party as bigots, but he needs Democratic senators to fall in line.

Please take a moment to send a message
to your senators urging them to protect DOMA today!

And the Senate isn't the only place where marriage legislation is ramping up. In the House, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) spearheaded a successful effort to amend the Department of Justice appropriation bill to ensure that no DOJ funds are spent attacking DOMA or any of the state marriage amendments. The amendment passed on a 245-171 vote, with 7 Republicans betraying marriage and their party by voting no.

Congress needs to hear from you!

Click here to send a message thanking Rep. Huelskamp for his leadership in the battle to protect marriage, and to let these 7 Republicans know that voters are counting on them to defend marriage.

The 7 renegade Republicans include Representatives Richard Hanna (R-NY), Nan Hayworth (R-NY), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Steven LaTourette (R-OH), Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and Lee Terry (R-NE).

There is simply no excuse for anyone in the GOP to back away from marriage. Not only is defending marriage the right thing to do, but it's a winning political issue as well. In a swing state like North Carolina, 61% of the electorate just voted to defend marriage. Republicans can scarcely afford to back away from marriage in this critical election year.

Some are pushing the argument that this election is only about jobs and the economy. But while these are important issues, the future of marriage is no less important.

Mitt Romney and Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, understand this, and NOM applauds them for quickly and strongly responding to President Obama's announcement with a powerful affirmation of marriage. These men understand that marriage—and pro-marriage voters—are critical to the success of their party. The GOP needs pro-marriage voters to turn out in force this November, and their willingness to publicly defend marriage will make a difference in how marriage supporters invest their donations and volunteer hours this November.

This is a critical issue—and President Obama has made it a centerpiece of the 2012 election campaign. Please take a moment to send a message to your representatives in Washington by clicking this link right now.

Then use the buttons below to forward this message to your friends or share on Facebook or Twitter!

The Starbucks coffee giant says redefining marriage is one of its “core” values, and an international boycott has been launched against the company.

The boycott has been organised by American-based campaign group the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which has set up the dumpstarbucks.com website.

Director of NOM’s Corporate Fairness Project, Jonathan Baker, said Starbucks’ support for same-sex marriage goes beyond a mere statement from an executive.

“The support is not just the personal endorsement of a senior executive, but is the official corporate position of the company,” he said.

“Obviously this position does not reflect the views of all customers and employees and the NOM protest and dumpstarbucks.com is designed to enable these customers and employees to have a voice.”

... The boycott has so far attracted the support of over 36,000 people.

Since this article was posted we're now closer to 40,000! Please hop over and sign the pledge right now!

Mitt Romney has moved out to an eight-point lead over President Obama in North Carolina after the two men were virtually tied a month ago.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Tar Heel State shows the putative Republican nominee earning 51% of the vote to Obama’s 43%. Two percent (2%) like some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

That’s a big change from last month when Romney posted a narrow 46% to 44% lead over the president in Rasmussen Reports’ first survey of the race in North Carolina. Democrats have signaled North Carolina’s importance as a key swing state by deciding to hold their national convention in Charlotte this summer.

... Last week, 61% of North Carolina voters last week approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between only a man and a woman. The next night, Obama became the first U.S. president to publicly endorse gay marriage.

WWE wrestling superstar C.M. Punk strikes an aggressive pose inside the ring, but it seems he saved his hardest blows for supporters of the traditional family.

On Monday, the grappler told his Twitter followers he opposed North Carolina’s constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, which passed in a landslide on Tuesday.

One of his followers responded, “Man was meant for woman, and even the thought of homo’s make me sick.” Punk thenreplied, “Kill yourself.”

He told another supporter of the nuclear family to “drink bleach.”

... In another tweet, Punk castigated the amendment’s supporters as “So many stupid people. Bigots. Talking about what’s ‘natural.’”

Ironically, he later posted a message stating, “I am a star. I’m fighting bigots here. Zero tolerance.”

The measure, he wrote, “is ridiculous.” He added, “The human race is embarrassing. #evolve.”

The 33-year-old, born Philip Jack Brooks, is one of the most popular wrestlers in the WWE.

In his ABC interview, Obama said, "I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married." He went on to stress (in ABC's words) that this was only his "personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states deciding the issue on their own." Of course, on issues of great public moment, a president does not have merely "personal" views. This is now, more clearly than ever, a huge campaign issue for 2012. The president will now wage an all-out campaign of calling Mitt Romney an "anti-gay" bigot for opposing what he himself would not embrace until five minutes ago. But given the track record of victories for the defense of marriage in thirty-one states, and the still-tentative declaration of the president, it is clear that he knows he is running a risky strategy. What he knows, we should know too. And we should know that if we keep our heads, and don't buy into the "anti-gay" framing of the liberal establishment, we are strong enough to win the fight for the truth about marriage. -- Public Discourse

U.S. Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat and a beneficiary of the Filipino votes which overwhelmingly gave him another term of office from the 2010 electoral campaign, got what he wanted in due time, but not his fellow Democrat U.S. President Barrack Hussein Obama whose endorsement to legalize same-sex marriage has met head-on reaction from the world's No. 4 Forbes.com's most influential athlete, Manny Pacquiao, a Philippine legislator who was reported to have visited him in his Oval Office at the White House early last year.

..."God's words first ... obey God's law first before considering the laws of man," says Pacquiao, addressing Obama's pronoucement on legalizing same-sex marriage during an exclusive interview Friday night with the National Conservative Examiner in his residence at the Palazzo Complex in Los Angeles here in California.

"...One Republican pollster said support for gay marriage has been oversold because of that binary choice. The pollster asked for anonymity to candidly discuss a sensitive issue.

“For the most part, the polling out there is combining the civil union and gay marriage responses together to get their ‘majority’ supporting gay marriage,” said the pollster. “There’s a reason why the (gay marriage) ban has passed in 32 states, and there’s a reason the gay community is starting to go through the legislative process.”

... “When we give voters the easier choice [civil unions], they frequently take it. Civil unions is an easier choice,” said one Democratic pollster, who also asked for anonymity because if the issue’s sensitivity. “It’s why, for example, most pollsters don’t read people ‘undecided’ as an option when asking people a head to head. If you read people an ‘undecided’ choice, they are always more apt to take the out.”

Rhode Island’s governor on Monday declared that the state will recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, giving gay couples the same rights as heterosexual ones when it comes to health insurance and a slew of other benefits.

The order signed by Gov. Lincoln Chafee in a Statehouse ceremony directs state agencies to recognize marriages performed out of state as legal and treat same-sex married couples the same as heterosexual ones.

...A spokesman for the state chapter of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage, said in a statement that his group is deeply concerned about Chafee’s action.

“To issue an executive order recognizing same-sex marriage flies in the face of the clearly expressed actions of the legislature and the people,” said Christopher C. Plante, regional coordinator for the group.

Fierce opposition from some people last year prompted the Legislature to abandon a bill that would have legalized gay marriage and approve civil unions instead. Plante also said it appears Chafee is trying to override a 2007 high court ruling that a lesbian couple married in Massachusetts could not get divorced in Rhode Island because state law only contemplated divorce between a husband and wife.

"...some conservative Hispanics said they will use Obama's endorsement of gay marriage to try to woo more Latinos to the Republican Party.

About 25 conservatives representing 10 southern Nevada churches met last Thursday at the Casa Don Juan restaurant in downtown Las Vegas. The group of pastors, Hispanic activists and social conservatives blasted Obama's stance, fretting about the future of the family in the United States.

"He's destroying the fabric of the family," said Juan Sclafani, a Republican pastor at the First Spanish Baptist Church in Las Vegas. "His motivation is to get votes, but he doesn't realize that he is destroying our nation."

...Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles in Washington, D.C., said his group expects to use the gay marriage debate to recruit new Hispanic supporters for Romney. They plan to focus on voter registration in Nevada and then branch out to Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and New Mexico."

President Obama is getting credit, even from some critics, for finally being honest and consistent in his position on same-sex marriage now that he has announced his support for it. But he is still being neither honest nor consistent. And his dishonesty is not merely a matter of pretending that he has truly changed his mind about marriage, rather than about the politics of marriage.

His claim that he believes that states should decide marriage policy is also impossible to credit. One of the purposes of the federal Defense of Marriage Act was to block this scenario: A same-sex couple that resides in a state that does not recognize same-sex unions as marriages goes to a state that does so recognize them, gets married there, returns home, sues in federal court to make the home state recognize the “marriage,” and prevails. Obama has long favored the repeal of the act. He does not truly want states to be able to continue to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

And really, why should he, given his premises? Does anyone doubt that he believes that the marriage laws of most states are not just wrong but unjust? His spokesmen have repeatedly said as much when registering his opposition to states’ attempts to undo judicial decisions to impose same-sex marriage. If these marriage laws amount to unjust discrimination against certain persons, then it follows that states have no right to enforce them. If Obama’s appointees to the Supreme Court join a majority that requires all states to recognize same-sex marriages, does anyone think that he will do anything but applaud? There is no reason to believe that Obama’s long-advertised “evolution” on marriage is now complete.

Congressman Ben Quayle, Republican candidate for Arizona's newly drawn 6th District, today re-stated his opposition to same-sex marriage. He also said that President Barack Obama's announcement this week that he now supports same-sex marriage was "one of the most cynical and manipulative political stunts ever pulled by an American president."

"The president is wrong about the issue; marriage should remain as it has always been - between one man and one woman," said Quayle. "But his conduct has been cynical and manipulative because of the obvious calculation and political maneuvering he has demonstrated on a matter of great importance in our nation. The president is a world-class propagandist, and in this case he propagandizes even his own supporters."

President Barack Obama's endorsement of gay marriage has put a new wrinkle in the Democrats' battle to retain control of the Senate, with many of the party's candidates in conservative states keeping their distance from the president on the hot-button issue.

Sen. Jon Tester in Montana, Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri and former Gov. Tim Kaine in Virginia have declined to support same-sex marriage, even as Mr. Obama's backing has galvanized the party's liberal wing and activist ranks.

Even senators facing less-competitive races—Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Bill Nelson of Florida—have sought distance from Mr. Obama on same-sex marriage.

... Republicans need to pick up four seats to capture a majority in the Senate, now controlled by Democrats by a 53-47 margin.

The electorate will often forgive--and can even embrace--a clean conversion story, where a politician honestly changes his mind and admits to it. But on marriage, such a story should not be available for the President, who was either alarmingly befuddled for several years or merely lying.

After his big announcement on May 9, President Obama now has some serious questions to answer about his position, the first of which is simply, what is marriage? But we should not start this substantive discussion just yet. The president probably believes he can successfully present himself as a sincere new convert to marriage equality who just changed his mind. He was a reluctant bigot, his supporters could even say, but now he has sincerely seen the light (and so, he seems to imply, should we). But if we focus on the timeline of the last few years, any nice conversion story becomes patently absurd.

On Laura Ingraham’s radio show Monday, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, a former MSNBC contributor and author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” echoed the sentiment he voiced on last weekend’s “The McLaughlin Group,” about President Barack Obama’s newfound gay-marriage position. But this time he voiced his disappointment that the Republican Party isn’t using it more to its advantage.

According to Buchanan, it would be in presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s best interest to run on the issue, framing it in terms of whom he would appoint to the Supreme Court to ensure the preservation of conservative principles.

“I think this is a clear-cut winning issue for Republicans and conservatives if they will deal with it with clarity and precision and conviction,” Buchanan said. “And what is missing I think among a lot of these Republicans is, ‘Oh yeah, I’m for traditional marriage. Let’s move on to the economy.’ And I think you got to get those folks out of the way and fight this battle on that.”

“And if I were advising Gov. Romney, I would certainly have him make a strong declarative clear-cut statement of his view as to whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court because they’re going to decide this. … The states have already decide by referendum and neither party has got the votes to impose a constitutional amendment. And neither party has got the ability to impose something on the entire country except for the Supreme Court as it did with abortion."

Bristol Palin admittedly “stirred up a hornet’s nest” with her argument against gay marriage last week, drawing hate mail and death wishes that she addresses in a new blog post.

“People claim they’re just trying to protect the right of two people to love each other – a right I don’t contest, by the way – and then spew the worst words imaginable at someone they disagree with,” Palin, the eldest daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, writes. "If the agenda is love, why do you hate so intensely?”

Near the bottom of the post, Palin displays some of the worst feedback she’s received, including death wishes against her and her family.

"You all, including your son, deserve a slow, painful and miserable death," one commenter wrote. "Your backwards thinking is so sad because the world is moving forward and you will certainly be left behind. May death be upon you.”

Palin wonders why her remarks – in which she criticized President Obama for consulting his daughters about gay marriage – prompted such nasty backlash.