“Same-sex marriage” as elite fashion statement

A good examination of the strange drive among liberal elites for “same-sex marriage”, via the UK Telegraph: Gay marriage is now the issue through which the elite advertises its superiority over the redneck masses

A question rarely asked about gay marriage is how it became such a massive flashpoint issue. … The speed and ease with which gay marriage has gone from being a tiny minority concern to become the No 1 battle in the modern culture wars has been truly remarkable – and revealing.

…

The use of gay marriage as a platform from which to announce one’s superior moral sensibilities can be seen in the way that its backers, those ostensibly liberal reformers, look down with undiluted snobbery upon their critics and opponents. …

Or as one commenter at the NOM blog succinctly put it: “Supporting ssm is becoming no more than a fashion statement. Kinda like ‘going green.'”

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Hugh Hewitt: Nothing shocks when anything goes

Here is an excellent column from Hugh Hewitt at The Washington Examiner on standards of public discourse. We especially liked this part:

There is one standard for all commentary, and it ought to apply to Palin and Ms. Fluke, to President Obama and President Bush, to Justice Thomas and to Justice Kagan.

So credit nothing of a condemnation from anyone who has not first articulated his or her standard, preferably backed up with a reference to the rebukes they have handed out to themselves and their own team, and only if that standard condemns all of the profane, the vulgar and the bigoted.

and also the end:

If the country abandons the right of religious people to keep their own creeds, it can hardly complain when no creed at all exists to restrain conduct or prompt apologies when they are indeed deserved.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Illegitimacy becoming the norm in the U.S. as Democrats work to undermine marriage

Via The Daily Caller:

Now more than half of all births to American women under 30 are born out of wedlock, and the trend in marriage-less birth is becoming an accepted reality of American life.

….

A number of factors have led the the rising numbers of illegitimacy – which most researchers agree increases a child’s risk of emotional problems and falling into poverty – including, as The Times noted, economic factors that have thinned the number of available, marriageable men; a larger social safety net; and a more promiscuous society.

And liberals, Democrats, and activist liberal judges are working to undermine marriage further by redefining it, asserting that the institution is unrelated to having children – in Washington, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and California, among other places.

We as a society can either decide that marriage is connected to having children (and that creating a child ought to occur within marriage) – and support that understanding in the law, or we can abandon that understanding and redefine marriage to mean nothing more than a collection of government benefits for “Spouse A” and “Spouse B”. We can’t have it both ways. The statements “marriage has nothing to do with procreation” and “people should get married before having children” are in obvious conflict.

UPDATE: More on the effects of illegitimacy here.

The Church of Obama

Another great read from Mark Steyn today at National Review Online:

The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius, and many others believe in one-size-fits-all national government — uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment — and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away.

9th Circuit rules against marriage in California

The liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California has ruled against Proposition 8 in California, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman in the state constitution.

Right off the top, the 9th Circuit begins their ruling with a phony assertion: “Prior to November 4, 2008, the California Constitution guaranteed the right to marry to opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples alike.”

But the California Constitution says no such thing, and never did. And quite obviously, history did not begin in November 2008. Proposition 8 was offered in answer to a prior act of judicial fiat from the CA State Supreme Court overturning the definition of marriage in the form of a statute.

Reading the ruling, it’s pure value judgment, not legal reasoning. The court is simply substituting it’s values for those of millions of California voters. That is not the role of judges in a free, democratic society.

On the the Supreme Court, where hopefully this shameful judicial activism will be reversed.

From Ed Whelan at National Review Online:

In the grand scheme of things, there is nothing enduringly significant about today’s ruling. The Ninth Circuit was just a way-station on the path to the Supreme Court, and the composition of the Ninth Circuit panel meant that there was no prospect for a reversal of Walker’s ruling. What would have been most troubling would have been a ruling that Prop 8 proponents didn’t have standing on appeal, as that might have complicated the prospects for Supreme Court review. But the case now has a seemingly clear path to the Supreme Court.

From Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Brian Raum:

“No court should presume to redefine marriage. No court should undercut the democratic process by taking the power to preserve marriage out of the hands of the people. Americans overwhelmingly reject the idea of changing the definition of marriage. Sixty-three million Americans in 31 state elections have voted on marriage, and 63 percent voted to preserve marriage as the timeless, universal, unique union between husband and wife.”

“We are not surprised that this Hollywood-orchestrated attack on marriage – tried in San Francisco – turned out this way. But we are confident that the expressed will of the American people in favor of marriage will be upheld at the Supreme Court. Every pro-marriage American should be pleased that this case can finally go to the U.S. Supreme Court. The ProtectMarriage.com legal team’s arguments align with every other federal appellate and Supreme Court decision on marriage in American history.”

Marriage: Appeals court to decide fate of Prop. 8 on Tuesday

Here’s a good example of liberal bias at work in news media coverage of a controversial issue, from the Los Angeles Times:

A federal appeals court is expected to rule Tuesday on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California.

But this is loaded language. It isn’t neutral reporting, it takes a side on the issue. Proposition 8 did not “ban gay marriage”. Proposition 8 defined marriage in the California state constitution as it has always been defined in state law, as male-female, in response to an activist court decision overturning that traditional definition. It didn’t ban anyone from marrying according to that definition.

The media do this kind of thing all the time, intentionally or not, using the language of the left in their reporting of various issues. If the editors of the Los Angeles Times want to support repeal of Proposition 8, they should say so on their Editorial page, not in their supposed news coverage.

The Libertarian Case for Traditional Marriage

Here is a nice concise summary of the case for marriage from Maggie Gallagher at the National Organization for Marriage.

There’s more reasoning in those two short pages than in a majority of the Washington State legislature.

And a lengthier article on the same subject by Jennifer Roback Morse.

Marriage is a naturally occurring, pre-political institution that emerges spontaneously from society. “Marriage equality” is sometimes presented as an enlargement of personal liberty and a diminishment of the power of the state. In fact however, redefining marriage as the union of any two persons, abandons the natural view of marriage. The institution of natural marriage, one man and one woman, is more consistent with a society of free and responsible individuals, governed by a constitutionally limited state, than the alternatives.

Both via the NOM Blog.

President Obama versus religious liberty

A very strong statement on religious liberty today from Mitt Romney in the Washington Examiner:

President Obama versus religious liberty

The Obama administration is at it again. They are now using Obamacare to impose a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away.

….

My own view is clear. I stand with the Catholic Bishops and all religious organizations in their strenuous objection to this liberty- and conscience-stifling regulation. I am committed to overturning Obamacare root and branch. If I am elected President, on day one of my administration I will issue an executive order directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue a waiver from its requirements to all 50 states. And on day one I will eliminate the Obama administration rule that compels religious institutions to violate the tenets of their own faith. Such rules don’t belong in the America that I believe in.

The America I believe in is governed by the U.S. Constitution and I will not hesitate to use the powers of the presidency to protect religious liberty.

….

What the Obama administration has done is indefensible. But this is about even more than President Obama denying America’s Catholics their constitutionally protected rights. This is about the preservation of our freedom. We must come together to make sure that these egregious violations of our Constitution do not stand.

The whole article is well worth a read.

Cain on Romney and religion

Herman Cain on the latest media-generated controversy over Mitt Romney’s religious views (via NRO):

Herman Cain refused to wade into the controversy over whether it is accurate to call Mitt Romney a Christian or not.

“I’m not running for theologian in chief,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union this morning. “I’m a lifelong Christian and what that means is one of my guiding principles for the decisions I make is I start with do the right thing. I’m not getting into that controversy. He’s a Mormon. That much I know. I’m not going to do an analysis of Mormonism vs. Christianity for the sake of answering that.”

Funny, the media seem to be much more concerned with this type of question than they were in the last presidential election cycle when Racist Reverend Wright’s parishioner was running.

Cain answered the question the way it should be answered, which is not to answer it. Theological differences are as old as religion. But they have no place in a political campaign. Values are a separate issue. It matters greatly if a candidate for office accepts or rejects America’s traditional Judeo-Christian values. But people with very different theological views can and do advocate the right values. All the candidates should follow Cain’s lead and refuse to play the media’s game.

On a related note, it was unfortunate to hear some conservatives, most notably William Bennett, attribute what is a legitimate theological debate to bigotry. Perhaps he meant only that it was bigotry in the context of whether to support a political candidate. In any case, theological differences are not bigotry. Bennett should know better than to use that kind of left-wing “argumentation” style.

New York Times applies religious test to Governor Rick Perry of Texas

From The New York Times, “Rally Raises Anew Question of the Boundaries of Perry’s Faith“:

Few political figures in America have so consistently and so unabashedly intermingled their personal faith and their public persona, peppering speeches with quotations from Scripture, speaking from the pulpit at churches, regularly meeting and strategizing with evangelical Christians and even, in one recent speech, equating public office with the ministry.

This reminded us of Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day Prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

….

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

FDR – right-wing religious extremist.