Alabama pastor Aaron Fruh last week appeared on Crane Durham’s show on the American Family Association’s radio network, where Fruh explained that marriage equality for gays and lesbians is actually “heterophobic” because it discriminates against heterosexuals and “against the unborn children who will never see the light of day if you revise the historical, moral and legal view of traditional marriage.” Fruh appears to believe that by allowing gays and lesbians to marry, heterosexuals will somehow lose their right to marry, have children and oppose same-sex marriag. He called marriage equality the “height of bigotry” and said gays and lesbians are “hateful and malicious” towards married heterosexuals.
I don’t consider myself homophobic and I’d like to reframe this argument on my terms, and I’m insulted for even being called homophobic and insulted that I’m called a bigot because I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. My question is, to the gay community, how did you come into the world in the first place? There’s only one way, through the physical union of a man and a woman and in most cases a married man and a woman, your father and mother. So I want to say to the gay community, why are you so heterophobic? Why are you discriminating against the unborn children who will never see the light of day if you revise the historical, moral and legal view of traditional marriage. Why are you so condemning of me because I’m a married man to a woman of the opposite sex and to me that’s the height of bigotry. So I say to the gay community, you’re being quite malicious towards me, a married heterosexual man who believes in traditional marriage values, and you’re prejudiced and hateful towards my right to be committed to the principle of family and marriage.
Today on the 700 Club a woman asked Pat Robertson whether it was appropriate for her to serve as a bridesmaid or even attend her lesbian sister’s wedding to another woman. Robertson, afierceopponentofgayrights, demanded the woman take no party in the ceremony. He cited Romans 1, without giving its cultural and historical context, to argue that God gave gays and lesbians up to do “evil things with their own bodies.” “If she doesn’t like it, if that breaks the union between you,” Robertson said, “that’s tough luck.”
Meeuwsen: This is from Kathryn who says: ‘I’ve been asked to be a bridesmaid in my sister’s wedding. There is only one problem. My sister is gay and she’s marrying her partner. I don’t know what to do. If I don’t agree, our relationship will be ruined. I don’t even know if I should attend the wedding, much less be a part of it.’
Robertson: That is a very hard decision but you can’t add you’re—if you go what you’re doing is saying ‘I bless this union and I agree that what you’re doing is right.’ You know the Bible is so clear about homosexuality and when you read in what Paul said, he said, ‘Wherefore God gave them up,’ and having given them up they did evil things with their own bodies, men for men and women with women, defaming their bodies. Read Romans, read the Book of Romans, this isn’t something I came up with, read it in Romans. You say, ‘should I go to my sister’s wedding, should I participate,’ the answer is to tell your sister, ‘I love you but I cannot participate a ceremony that is contrary to God’s word, period.’ If she doesn’t like it, if that breaks the union between you, that’s tough luck.
Reacting to an attempt to put marriage equality for gays and lesbians in the Democratic Party platform at the nominating convention in September, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins told the Christian Post that not only do most Americans oppose legalizing same-sex marriage but so do the “majority” of Democrats:
Tony Perkins, who heads up the Family Research Council, meanwhile, says Democrats are only trying to distract the voters and that traditional marriage still has plenty of support, even among many moderate to conservative Democrats.
"The media will do what it can to persuade people that conservatives are losing momentum. Don't believe it," Perkins wrote in an article that he sent to The Christian Post.
"Some legislators can be bought, but the American people cannot. The majority of the country [Democrats, Republicans and Independents] are still firmly planted in the camp of man-woman marriage. As the old proverb says, 'The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.' Keep your foot on the accelerator and meet the perceptions with persistence."
His claim contradicts a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released this month finding that just 40 percent of Americans oppose marriage equality. Perkins’ statement also flies in the face of polls that examine differences in political parties.
A CNN poll from April of last year found that a whopping 64 percent of Democrats favor legalizing same-sex marriage, a number that has surely grown as support for marriage equality accelerates. In fact, 55 percent of independents also back marriage equality. While only a minority of Republicans favors marriage equality, a Public Policy Polling survey found that “only 48% believe there should be no legal rights for gay couples at all” and the majority favor either legalizing same-sex marriage or civil unions.
With these sorts of numbers, it looks like Perkins will only be able to cite the much-mocked poll from the right-wing Alliance Defense Fund finding that 62% of Americans oppose marriage equality.
Mission America president Linda Harvey today addressed a potential constitutional amendment in her native state of Ohio that would legalize same-sex marriage and overturn a 2004 constitutional ban, warning that if it passes it would represent a “rebellion against nature, against civil order and against the beautiful design of God” and that it is a “pro-life issue” because it would turn children into “a problem.” Harvey also argued that marriage equality will lead to “pro-homosexual” education in schools, which she says makes children feel “anxious, stressed out and feel they have nothing to believe in sometimes.” “The deception that results is a dark cloud hanging over our educational environment and our culture,” Harvey said, “and it harms these precious, developing minds and hearts the most.”
Well it’s official, there is now going to be an effort by organized homosexuals and their allies in Ohio to undermine our constitutional amendment on marriage. A group called Freedom to Marry Ohio is launching a referendum drive to get the signatures to put the issue of same-sex marriage on the ballot, possibly this November. This group has filed the first step with Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office with their proposed ballot language, if it makes the Ohio ballot, it would read that marriage is “a union of two consenting adults regardless of gender” and also that “no religious institution shall be required to perform or recognize a marriage.”
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People of this state already have the right to marry, adults in Ohio have the freedom to marry someone of the opposite sex because that’s what marriage is. Marriage law is simply a legal confirmation of what we see in nature, that a male and a female fit together anatomically, that this is how children and families are creation, that children and new humans are valuable, not a problem, so this is really a pro-life issue at its heart.
The fact that a few people have deviant desires and want to overturn marriage law for everyone is not an issue of equality, it’s an issue of morality. It’s rebellion against nature, against civil order and against the beautiful design of God. We need to tell the people and this effort a resounding ‘No.’
The question is sometimes asked, how would same-sex marriage harm your marriage? There are several simple answers. One, it changes what is considered normal and legal throughout our culture and therefore what is taught and modeled to our children and grandchildren. Do we want little Morgan in second grade to learn that when she grows up she might marry a boy or might marry a girl and either one is perfectly fine and she won’t know until she’s older which she prefers, but that’s OK. Do you think Morgan will develop with a secure and stable idea about her identity as a girl and woman with this shaky and morally irrational guidance? No wonder our kids are anxious, stressed out and feel they have nothing to believe in sometimes, they are being told what they can see themselves is foolishness and being told to swallow these lies and stay quiet if you don’t agree.
This nonsense is already being taught in some schools and in those states where same-sex marriage is legal it has exploded. Many schools now routinely shut off all debate about homosexuality, there is only one viewpoint and it is pro-homosexual. The deception that results is a dark cloud hanging over our educational environment and our culture and it harms these precious, developing minds and hearts the most. I urge you friends to stand against same-sex marriage.
While using the exact same arguments of opponents of legalizing interracial marriage, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah is joining with Bryan Fischer in asserting that gays and lesbians already have full marriage equality because they can simply marry members of the opposite sex. Farah claims that since gays and lesbians actually don’t face any legal discrimination, they only want to legalize same-sex marriage in order to “destroy” marriage…in the same way the terrorist group Hamas wants to destroy Israel!
Anyone in the United States can participate in the institution of marriage – if they choose to do so.
Homosexuals don’t usually choose to do so because they usually don’t want to be married to members of the opposite sex. But it’s their choice.
So why do homosexual activists make this claim? And how do they get away with making a patently false charge against a 6,000-year-old religious institution and the civil laws that it inspired? Same-sex marriage advocates no more care about the legality of same-sex marriage than Hamas cares about the creation of a Palestinian state.
Neither is interested in creating something new – something that has never been before. Instead, what same-sex marriage advocates and the terrorists of the Gaza Strip have in common is their desire to destroy something they find repulsive. In Gaza, it’s the Jewish state of Israel. Among homosexual activists, it’s the institution of marriage.
By making the bogus claim that marriage, as it has been known through the eons, is inherently unfair because some people don’t want to participate in it as it has always been defined, homosexual activists are able to establish for themselves what appears to be the political high ground of the victim. In exactly the same way, Arab terrorists are able to portray themselves as the victim by claiming they have been denied a state.
But scratch beneath the surface of these two movements and you will soon learn that their objectives go far beyond same-sex marriage and a Palestinian state.
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It is amazing how quickly the same-sex marriage advocates have been able to rally support from the media, the cultural establishment, the government elite and the judiciary for a radical social experiment that challenges the fundamental building block of human civilization – the family.
They’ve done this by inaccurately portraying themselves as victims of discrimination. They are no more victims of discrimination than any other radicals who believe forcibly remaking society in their own image is their inalienable right.
Today on a conference call with the Gingrich Faith Leaders Coalition that included guest speakers Jim Garlow and J.C. Watts, Newt Gingrich claimed that he will push for not only a federal marriage amendment to outlaw marriage equality but also a federal law to prohibit states from legalizing same-sex marriage. He claimed that states with marriage equality are contributing to legal “chaos” and said that “if we are going to defend marriage in the end it will probably require a federal law.” After a questioner asked whether same-sex marriage would lead to people seeking to marry dogs and cows, Gingrich, who on an earlier conference call described same-sex marriage as “paganism,” didn’t push back against the offensive comparison to bestiality but instead blamed the country’s teachers for why people are more accepting of such beliefs.
Question: I have a question regarding all the laws that people are trying to make for gay rights, I heard what you said about marriage being between a man and a woman and I agree, that’s what God said in the very beginning in the Book of Genesis, but the laws of our land are seeing more and more states allowing gay marriage. How can we stop this? It is so profoundly wrong.
Gingrich: I think ultimately we’re going to have to have a federal amendment because at the rate we’re going, you might be able to pass a federal law, but at the rate we’re going it’s going to be just chaos, you’re going to have some states that say it’s all right and other states that say it’s not all right, how are people going to travel, what are their legal rights, it is a mess. I think if we are going to defend marriage in the end it will probably require a federal law.
Question: What’s the difference, what they’re saying between a woman wants to be with a woman, when is it going to be ‘I want to marry a dog’ or ‘I want to marry a cow,’ that makes as much sense, what they are saying is doing something stupid like that.
Gingrich: I think that you have some people—remember we have now had a whole two generations of teachers who explained to us ‘you shouldn’t render moral judgment, after all it’s all situation ethics, who are we to decide,’ and that’s been a major problem.
Gingrich also maintained that he is “deeply offended” by President Obama’s apology over the burning of Qurans in Afghanistan while “he is attacking the Catholic Church,” and said that Obama’s statement is a clear definition of the “anti-Christian, anti-Jewish” ideology of the “modern secular left”:
Gingrich: I can’t tell you how deeply offended I am by Barack Obama who apologizes to Islam while he is attacking the Catholic Church, you couldn’t ask for a clearer definition of the modern secular left, which I think is anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, but always willing to be sympathetic to any organization which isn’t Christian or Jewish. I really think that is going to be a major theme of the campaign this Fall and it’s a debate I’m looking forward to because I don’t think Obama can defend himself.
He responded to the US Senate’s vote to table the Blunt Amendment and in doing so ensure that women have contraception coverage in their insurance plans by saying that the vote shows “how sick we’ve become” as a country and that the Democratic Party is “anti-religious” and “consolidating in its hostility to religion.” Gingrich accused Obama of trying to “wage war on every right to life organization in America” and intensify “how sick the country’s become.”
Garlow: Where is America, in our journey right now, in terms of radical secularism coming up, where are we as a nation right now? Where does it stand? And what can we do to turn this around?
Gingrich: You saw how sick we’ve become in a vote today in the U.S. Senate where on a party line vote 51 Democrats voted against allowing any exemptions for religious reasons for a government imposed-mandate on contraception and abortion. You couldn’t have a clearer statement. You now got this secular, anti-religious, leftwing party and it’s consolidating in its hostility to religion.
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Gingrich: Now to have got a president who is pro-infanticide wage war on every right to life organization in America whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox Jew, Greek Orthodox, you name it, just tells you how sick the country’s become. I think this is the most important election of our lifetime. I think if we get four more years of Obama, four more years of him picking Supreme Court justices, four more years of these kind of radical rules, we won’t be the country we were in 2008 in terms of our core values.
After failing in his campaign to overturn marriage equality in Washington D.C., Bishop Harry Jackson is now leading an effort to repeal a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Maryland that will be signed into law tomorrow. We last saw Jackson raising money for the Maryland Marriage Alliance at “A Gathering of Eagles,” where he led the congregation in spiritual warfare against the demonic Queen of Heaven, who he said was responsible for gay rights and “perversion.”
In an interview with the Christian Post yesterday, Jackson baselessly claimed that Washington D.C. public schools are teaching “children – young children – to explore and examine the differences in heterosexuality, homosexuality and transgender lifestyles,” lamenting, “To say that it's okay for Heather to have two mommies is not biblical.” He also said that activists trying to repeal marriage equality are “not trying to impose our views on others” but said gay rights advocates “are trying to impose their agenda on us.”
“It is an oxy-moron,” Jackson said about same-sex marriage, “Two people of the same sex who marry and try to indoctrinate children into that lifestyle does nothing to strengthen marriage or families.” He also predicted victory in a potential referendum on marriage equality, maintaining that marriage equality supporters “are overplaying their hands and only harming our culture.”
CP: I want to start out by asking in light of Maryland's recent debate and upcoming legalization of same-sex marriage, tell me why you are willing to take such a pronounced and visible stand to defend marriage?
Jackson: First, we as people of faith are not trying to impose our views on others. We are simply using God's Word, given to us by the scriptures, to stand up for what is right. Instead, those who are advocating for what they call "marriage" that does not involve a man and a woman, are trying to impose their agenda on us.
The reality is, if you change the definition of marriage, you change the definition of the family, then you change what is taught in schools – that it's okay for Heather to have two mommies – and exploring your "sexual awareness" as a young child is acceptable; and it's not.
CP: Can you expand on how families will be impacted when same-sex marriages are legalized?
Jackson: Yes, let's use Washington, D.C. as an example. It's encouraged in public schools to teach children – young children – to explore and examine the differences in heterosexuality, homosexuality and transgender lifestyles. Now you and I both know that children should not be encouraged to examine these types of issues, especially in public schools. To say that it's okay for Heather to have two mommies is not biblical.
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CP: Supporters of same-sex marriage say one of their primary goals is to educate the public that gay marriage does in fact strengthen families. How do you respond to that comment?
Jackson: It is an oxy-moron. Two people of the same sex who marry and try to indoctrinate children into that lifestyle does nothing to strengthen marriage or families. Again, it only attempts to redefine what marriage is and what a family should be. A mother and a father best raise children. There are factors in our society that interrupt that process and that is unfortunate, but gay marriage will not strengthen marriage.
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CP: Do you believe the efforts to repeal same-sex marriage in Maryland will be successful?
Jackson: Yes, I do. To use a phrase from Muhammad Ali, "We float like a butterfly, but sting like a bee." But I must say that the opposing side has waged a brilliant public relations campaign. They want the public to believe the debate about gay marriage is only a religious battle, but it's not.
We are 31 for 31 on gay marriage when it's been put before the voters of different states. They are trying to press the issue in different states hoping to advance their cause with the Supreme Court. Still, when people examine what marriage is and should be, they tend to vote overwhelming against gay marriage.
But let me say this to conclude. I feel our opponents have become so aggressive on this issue, that they are overplaying their hands and only harming our culture. Yes, they may win a battle or two here and there but our side will prevail in the long run.
On Meet the Press yesterday, David Gregory questioned GOP presidential frontrunner Rick Santorum about the social issues – opposition to reproductive choice and gay rights – on which he has built his career. Stunningly, Santorum denied that he has focused on social issues and claimed, “There’s no evidence at all that I, that I want to impose those values on anybody else.”
FMR. SEN. SANTORUM: It's so funny. I get the question all the time. Why are you talking so much about these social issues, as they, as, as people ask about me about the social issues. MR. GREGORY: Senator, no, wait a minute.
FMR. SEN. SANTORUM: Look, the... MR. GREGORY: You talk about this stuff every week. And by the way, it's not just in this campaign. FMR. SEN. SANTORUM: No, I talk about, I talk... MR. GREGORY: Sir, in this campaign you talk about it. And I've gone back years when you've been in public life and you have made this a centerpiece of your public life. So the notion that these are not deeply held views worthy of question and scrutiny, it's not just about the press. FMR. SEN. SANTORUM: Yeah, they, they are deeply held views, but they're not what I dominantly talk about, David. You're taking things that over a course of a 20-year career and pulling out quotes from difference speeches on, on issues that are fairly tangential, not what people care about mostly in America, and saying, "Oh, he wants to impose those values." Look at my record. I've never wanted to impose any of the things that you've just talked about. These are, these are my personal held religious beliefs, and in many forums that I, that, that are, in fact, religious, because I do speak in front of church groups and I do speak in these areas, I do talk about them. But there's no evidence at all that I, that I want to impose those values on anybody else.
This is, of course, a bunch of baloney. While Santorum has spent a lot of time in his presidential campaign talking up regressive tax policies, irresponsible deregulation and anti-environmentalism, the core of his brand has always been social conservatism. His campaign has consistently and explicitly distinguished his anti-choice, anti-gay record with Mitt Romney’s in order to successfully appeal to culture-warring voters.
Santorum has also never shied away from wanting to “impose” his far-right values on the rest of the country. In a 2005 interview with NPR, for instance, he railed against the libertarian wing of the Republican party, saying, “They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do. Government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulation low and that we shouldn't get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn't get involved in cultural issues, you know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world.”
The former senator has said that states should be allowed to outlaw birth control and gay relationships, but supports the federal law banning recognition of legal same-sex marriages. He supports so-called “personhood” laws, which would not only outlaw all abortions regardless of circumstances, but would jeopardize legal access to contraception. He says that as president, he would reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, putting the careers of openly gay members of the military at risk. Yet he says he doesn’t want to “impose” his far-right values on the rest of us.
Santorum’s interview on Meet the Press is far from the first time he’s claimed that he’s not overly interested in social issues. PFAW’s Right Wing Watch found a speech he gave in 2008 in which he claimed that it’s liberals who have made sex an issue on the campaign trail. For liberals, he said, politics “comes down to sex” and that the Democratic Party has become “the party of Woodstock.”:
And it’s just insidious. And it’s most of the time focused on the sexual issues. If you’re a hard-core free-market guy, they’re not going to call you “zealous”. They’re not going to call you “ultra-conservative”. They’re not going to do that to you.
It comes down to sex. That’s what it’s all about. It comes down to freedom, and it comes down to sex. If you have anything to with any of the sexual issues, and if you are on the wrong side of being able to do all of the sexual freedoms you want, you are a bad guy. And you’re dangerous because you are going to limit my freedom in an area that’s the most central to me. And that’s the way it’s looked at.
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Woodstock is the great American orgy. This is who the Democratic Party has become. They have become the party of Woodstock. The prey upon our most basic primal lusts, and that’s sex. And the whole abortion culture, it’s not about life. It’s about sexual freedom. That’s what it’s about. Homosexuality. It’s about sexual freedom.
All of the things are about sexual freedom, and they hate to be called on them. They try to somehow or other tie this to the Founding Father’s vision of liberty, which is bizarre. It’s ridiculous.
Last night the Maryland State Senate approved legislation ending the prohibition against marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. Governor Martin O’Malley has promised to sign the bill into law.
Joseph Backholm, the Executive Director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington and the leader of the Preserve Marriage Washington campaign to repeal Washington’s marriage equality law, appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday where he likened same-sex marriage to the medical practice of bloodletting. Just as bloodletting was once a common practice until it was abandoned for not working, Backholm claimed, so too marriage equality for gays and lesbians will eventually be rejected even in states where it is legal. He went on to argue that the movement for equal rights for gays and lesbians is not comparable to the civil rights movement because, according to Backholm, “today’s argument about the redefinition of marriage would be like the civil rights movement if the civil rights movement was an attempt to have black people be referred to as white people.”
Backholm: Redefining marriage in this way, saying that there is no difference between men and women, that it’s not important for children to have both a mother and a father, that’s not just bad policy, it’s wrong in the eternal sense. So because it’s untrue, it will ultimately be proven as untrue and we will come around to recognize the error of our ways. We used to believe in bloodletting as good medical practice, culture has embraced a lot of things temporarily until they realized it’s based on things that are not true. This is one of those, it has to be temporary, not just because I want it to be temporary, but because it’s untrue in the eternal sense.
Mefferd: That’s a good way of saying it. They have through their propaganda and the means by which they talk about this issue in the media all the time, won a lot of people over to the cause who aren’t thinking very deeply about it, part of the way they’ve done this is talking about equality and civil rights, trying to equate it with the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. The problem is back in the 1960s when we’re talking about the mistreatment of African Americans, that was something that was wrong to do, in this case we’re talking about legitimizing immoral behavior and calling it marriage. I don’t know how you get around the immorality angle of it unless you just say it straight out, this is immoral behavior, we are not going to legitimize this as a nation.
Backholm: Sure, it’s a very fair argument and there are a lot of people within the church who are moved by that. But when we talk about the civil rights issue, the reason these are different, today’s argument about the redefinition of marriage would be like the civil rights movement if the civil rights movement was an attempt to have black people be referred to as white people.
Family Research Council senior fellow Robert Morrison yesterday chided former Vice President Dick Cheney for his support of marriage equality, particularly his role in garnering Republican support for the bill in Maryland. Morrison bragged that he didn’t respond to media inquiries at the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia to goad him into criticize Cheney, even though FRC president Tony Perkins attacked the Cheney family after Mary had a child with her partner. He also said that just because Cheney has an openly gay daughter, that is no reason he should support equal rights for gays and lesbians. He even called on Cheney to follow in the footsteps of Ben Franklin, who supported the American Revolution even though his son was a prominent loyalist who fled to Great Britain after the war. “In this great cultural clash,” Morrison lamented, “Dick Cheney has enlisted with the forces of dissolution”:
Consider this thought experiment. Twin brothers announced on a TV talk show that they were gay. Under the laws proposed, can they marry? If not, why not? They’ve certainly had a “committed relationship” since before they were born. What constitutional principle could you invoke to say these twins cannot marry each other? And if these twin brothers may marry, why not a twin brother and sister?
Dick Cheney probably never met Mae West. For younger readers unfamiliar with one of Hollywood’s original blond bombshells, I’ll simply say: sailors in World War II called their large life jackets Mae Wests. (This is a family blog, after all.)
Mae West famously said: “Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution.” How strange that Mae West had a better understanding of civil marriage than a former Vice President of the United States, a man who was twice elected to national office by pro-family voters.
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In 2000, Dick Cheney might have considered Philadelphia’s most famous son, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s own son was the royal Governor of New Jersey. It was a patronage job Ben had secured for him. When his son remained loyal to the Crown, Benjamin Franklin did not refuse to sign the Declaration of Independence citing a “personal situation.” That’s one of the many reasons why we remember Ben Franklin with admiration and respect.
Dick Cheney is said to be worth hundreds of millions. His family may not suffer the devastation that comes from the breakdown of marriage. But in his recent book, Coming Apart, Charles Murray shows how the loss of marriage for the white working class in America has already had catastrophic consequences. If we seek the reason behind the great disparities in wealth that the Occupy crowd is howling about, we need look no further than the collapse of marriage. In this great cultural clash, Dick Cheney has enlisted with the forces of dissolution.
Pastor Steven Andrew of USA Christian Ministries is leading a boycott of companies which endorsed a marriage equality bill in Washington state, including Google, Starbucks and Amazon, charging them with “working against Jesus and leading people to sin and to possibly go to hell.” Andrew, who previously claimed that “Starbucks hates God” over the company’s backing of gay rights, told the Christian Post that any company that favors marriage equality is “anti-God” and is “doing the devil's work.”
Andrew is currently involved in a boycott against Starbucks after the coffee company began supporting a gay marriage bill proposed in Washington State. He recently added a few others to the list as well, including Nike, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, asking Christians to no longer provide business to those corporations, which he claimed promoted homosexual sin.
For Andrew, his nonviolent protests did have a "biblical warrant." "Boycotting anti-God companies is one way a Christian lives out the First Commandment," the author of Making a Strong Christian Nation, told The Christian Post. "If you love Jesus, you won't give your money to those working against Jesus, our Savior."
He believed that if the stores in Sodom and Gomorrah that openly mocked God were boycotted, they could have possibly been saved. "God calls Christians and churches to not share in the sins of others. To love God is to flee sexual immorality. If we help the wicked, then God's Word says God judges us (2 Chronicles 19:2). God calls Christians to 100 percent love Him and to 100 percent oppose sin."
God also called the United States to have the fear of God as a nation, but complacency with sin did not indicate fear of God, Andrew asserted.
"Ungodly politicians, Starbucks, Nike, Amazon and others are doing the devil's work ... trying to 'change' our Christian laws into non-Christian laws ... Every Christian and church should boycott companies making light of Jesus Christ. It is unwise for a Christian to give their money to those working against Jesus and leading people to sin and to possibly go to hell."
While speaking at Oral Roberts University earlier this month, Rick Santorum argued that the left is bringing about “the death of reason.” Santorum used the example of the Ninth Circuit Court’s recent decision that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional because, like in Romer v. Evans, the referendum’s only practical effect was to “single out a certain class of citizens for disfavored legal status.” But Santorum said that the court found that “the only reason you could possibly have to believe marriage should only be between men and women is because you are a bigot and you are a hater,” saying that people on the left “won’t sit and reason” and only want to “discard” their opponents. “They won’t reason,” Santorum said, “The left is really about the death of reason.”
Santorum: The Ninth Circuit this week ruled that there is no rational basis, no rational basis for anyone to believe that marriage should just be between a man and a woman, there is no rational basis. Do you understand what that means? That means you are completely irrational if you think that marriage should be between, you have no reason, this is what they said, the only reason you could possibly have to believe marriage should only be between men and women is because you are a bigot and you are a hater, that’s what they said, read the case, and by the way they’re not the first ones to have said it. So again, where is the tolerance? Where’s the tolerance that says if you have a different point of view you can be rational, no, they can’t allow you because if you’re rational then they have to deal with you so they discard you, they just say ‘well it’s beyond the realm of reason, you’re obviously just haters and we’re not even going to talk to you.’ This is the way the left operates; they won’t sit and reason, they can’t listen to all of the reasons marriage has been between a man and a woman for centuries and why it has an intrinsic good to society, they dismiss those arguments as purely puff to hide your bigotry, that’s what they believe. They won’t reason. The left is really about the death of reason. They always say it’s about reason but it’s not, it’s about the death of reason.
Family Research Council vice president Rob Schwarzwalder yesterday called for a boycott of Starbucks and warned that the company may be endangering the country’s economic health by supporting marriage equality in Washington. “By supporting a movement that would further vitiate the already weakened family unit,” Schwarzwalder writes, “[Starbucks CEO Howard] Schultz is tacitly but actively advocating the continued erosion of the institution – the two-parent, heterosexual, traditional and complementary family unit – without which no economy or society generally can thrive.”
It’s difficult to see how ensuring that gays and lesbians have the right to marry would “vitiate the already weakened family unit” and consequently damage the economy, as studies show that marriage equality is actually aboontotheeconomy. Researchers have also found the legalizing same-sex marriage doesnotimpact the divorce rate of married opposite-sex couples. But according to Schwarzwalder, marriage equality has “dangerous implications for individuals, families, and culture.”
My home state of Washington has produced some of America’s leading corporations and entrepreneurs: Microsoft and Bill Gates; the Nordstrom, Boeing and Weyerhaeuser families and their eponymously named companies; the Eddie Bauer sporting goods empire; and the nearly omnipresent Starbucks (almost 11,000 stores worldwide). Starbucks emerged in the 1970s at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. One of my sisters bought me a bag of cocoa powder from this location more than three decades ago; if I still had it, it likely would fetch a nice collector’s price.
For many years, I’ve enjoyed going to Starbucks, becoming acquainted with any number of “baristas” and drinking enough of its variously flavored beverages that “grande” characterizes my waistline as much as the size of a given drink. Even when traveling in the Middle East, the taste of a frappuccino has been a welcome reminder that one can go home again. And I’ve always been glad to go into a place that, in some ways, still reminds me of home (there’s a reason Starbucks’ interiors usually are muted; it’s a Pacific Northwest thing).
With Microsoft and several other major firms, Starbucks last month endorsed the effort of some of the Evergreen State’s leading politicians to enact homosexual “marriage.” Although this initiative passed in the state legislature and was signed into law by departing Gov. Christine Gregoire, it likely will be on the state ballot in November.
What is a bit maddening, given Starbucks’ strident advocacy for the redefinition of marriage, is CEO Howard Schultz’s claim that he is non-political. As he said just a few days ago, ”I have no interest in public office … I have only one interest, and that is I want the country to be on the right track.”
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To Schultz’s credit, he authored a pledge, now signed by a fairly large group of CEOs, in which they promise, “I join my fellow concerned Americans in pledging to withhold any further campaign contributions to elected members of Congress and the President until a fair, bipartisan deal is reached that sets our nation on stronger long-term fiscal footing.”
This is admirable, and no doubt motivated by a patriotic desire to see the U.S. once again become the engine of economic growth that, for so many decades, it has been. Yet the key to a strong economy is a strong family – a family composed of a father, a mother, and children. The hard data prove it. By supporting a movement that would further vitiate the already weakened family unit, Schultz is tacitly but actively advocating the continued erosion of the institution – the two-parent, heterosexual, traditional and complementary family unit – without which no economy or society generally can thrive.
Additionally, Schultz’s decrying of divisiveness rings a bit hollow when he plunges his company feet-first into the culture wars. The effort to redefine marriage to include same-sex partners is a radical social innovation, one fraught with dangerous implications for individuals, families, and culture. Claiming to be post-political and then allowing one’s chief corporate spokesperson to say that same-sex “marriage” is “is core to who we are and what we value as a company” are assertions that don’t quite add up.
When the right wing's distorted and evil portrayal of LGBT people comes up against the reality of our lives, it's hard for the lie to stay alive.
Just ask Maryland Del. Wade Kach, a Republican who has supported a bill to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, and who even voted against the pending marriage equality bill in committee two days ago. But this morning, he announced a change of heart. The Baltimore Sun quotes from Del. Kach's statement:
My constituents sent me to Annapolis to represent them and use my best judgment. They did not send me to sit in judgment of the lives of others.
As a proud member of the party of Lincoln, I believe that we as legislators should be more concerned with relieving the tax burden of families than telling them how to behave in their own homes.
Like so many others, my thoughts on the issue of civil marriage have evolved over the course of recent months as a result of much reflection and listening to good people on both sides of this issue. Instrumental to my decision are the enhanced protections for churches, clergy, and faith leaders in my community and in communities around the state.
While no one event or conversation prompted me to come to this decision, I was significantly moved by the testimony of families -- who are raising children in a loving environment and deserve every right to enjoy the same protections and responsibilities that our laws provide for others.
The marriage equality bill is scheduled to be debated on the House floor this evening, with a vote possibly as early as tomorrow.
When the right wing's distorted and evil portrayal of LGBT people comes up against the reality of our lives, it's hard for the lie to stay alive.
Just ask Maryland Del. Wade Kach, a Republican who has supported a bill to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, and who even voted against the pending marriage equality bill in committee two days ago. But this morning, he announced a change of heart. The Baltimore Sun quotes from Del. Kach's statement:
My constituents sent me to Annapolis to represent them and use my best judgment. They did not send me to sit in judgment of the lives of others.
As a proud member of the party of Lincoln, I believe that we as legislators should be more concerned with relieving the tax burden of families than telling them how to behave in their own homes.
Like so many others, my thoughts on the issue of civil marriage have evolved over the course of recent months as a result of much reflection and listening to good people on both sides of this issue. Instrumental to my decision are the enhanced protections for churches, clergy, and faith leaders in my community and in communities around the state.
While no one event or conversation prompted me to come to this decision, I was significantly moved by the testimony of families -- who are raising children in a loving environment and deserve every right to enjoy the same protections and responsibilities that our laws provide for others.
The marriage equality bill is scheduled to be debated on the House floor this evening, with a vote possibly as early as tomorrow.
Focus on the Family’s Glenn Stanton joined John Rabe of Truth in Action Ministries on Truth that Transforms yesterday to discuss same-sex parenting. The two claimed that supporters of marriage equality are “unscientific” when it comes to family stability and have “completely ignored” evidence showing that same-sex parenting harms children.
Rabe: Glenn, it’s always very interesting to me because we Christians are portrayed as being often anti-science and anti-progress and so forth yet when you talk about the issue of marriage and family it’s interesting how the other side very quickly becomes the sentimentalists in the group, suddenly all the empirical data, all the scientific stuff, is completely ignored and you hear statements about ‘people who just love each other should be able to marry and define that for themselves.’ From an empirical perspective there’s not even any argument about how beneficial a traditional man-woman marriage and family is as opposed to other models, is there?
Stanton: You said it exactly right. It’s remarkable how those folks on the other side being the ‘reasonable ones,’ the ones who unlike us don’t believe in sentimentality and myth and things like that, they become very, very unscientific.
The claim that there is no “empirical data” or “scientific stuff” confirming the idea that same-sex parents can raise healthy and well-balanced children is false. In fact, it is anti-gay activists who are ignoring the research about same-sex parenting.
The American Psychological Association’s review of mainstream scientific literature has debunked claims that children of same-sex couples would have more mental and emotional problems. In addition, studies consistently find that children raised by same-sex parents are just as well-adjusted those raised in households with opposite-sex parents.
A University of Amsterdam study [pdf] on the “quality of life (QoL) of adolescents in planned lesbian families” found that their quality of life is no different from their peers:
In conclusion, the reported QoL for adolescent offspring in planned lesbian families is similar to that reported by the matched adolescents in heterosexual-parent families. This finding supports earlier evidence that adolescents reared by lesbian mothers from birth do not manifest more adjustment difficulties (e.g., depression, anxiety, and disruptive behaviors) than those reared by heterosexual parents.
Researchers from the University of Virginia similarly found that “adolescents with same-sex parents did not differ significantly from a matched group of adolescents living with opposite-sex parents”:
The results of the present study, which is the first based on a large national sample of adolescents living with same-sex couples, revealed that on nearly all of a large array of variables related to school and personal adjustment, adolescents with same-sex parents did not differ significantly from a matched group of adolescents living with opposite-sex parents. Regardless of family type, adolescents were more likely to show favorable adjustment when they perceived more caring from adults and when parents described close relationships with them. Thus, as has been reported in studies of children with lesbian mothers (e.g., Chan et al., 1998), it was the qualities of adolescent – parent relationships rather than the structural features of families (e.g., same- vs. opposite-sex parents) that were significantly associated with adolescent adjustment (Golombok, 1999; Patterson, 2000).
A Stanford University sociologist also sees no major differences among children in terms of educational achievement:
To the extent that normal progress through primary school is a useful and valid measure of child development, the results confirm that children of same-sex couples appear to have no inherent developmental disadvantage. Heterosexual married couples are the most economically prosperous, the most likely to be white, and the most legally advantaged type of parents; their children have the lowest rates of grade retention. Parental [Socio-Economic Status] accounts for more than one-half of the relatively small gap in grade retention between children of heterosexual married couples and children of same-sex couples. When one controls for parental SES and characteristics of the students, children of same-sex couples cannot be distinguished with statistical certainty from children of heterosexual married couples.
But groups like Focus on the Family and Truth in Action Ministries try to damage to the health and welfare of families led by same-sex parents with their consistent promotion of anti-gay laws and social stigmas.
The Senate is currently tied up by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who has blocked action on a major transportation bill and the confirmation of an urgent judicial nomination. While it’s stalled, the Senate has the perfect opportunity to take up a Valentine’s Day-appropriate bill: the Respect for Marriage Act.
The Respect For Marriage Act, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, would repeal the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,” which requires the federal government to discriminate against same-sex married couples. DOMA makes a lot of things harder for gay and lesbian married couples – including the denial of military spousal benefits to married gay and lesbian members of the armed forces and the denial of Social Security benefits to the same-sex spouse of a deceased person.
DOMA also tears married couples apart. U.S. citizens married to someone of the same sex can’t sponsor their spouses for citizenship – leading to heartbreaking separations. The Huffington Post interviewed one such couple, U.S. citizen Kelli Ryan and her wife Lucy Truman, a British citizen, who are publicly petitioning the government for a green card for Truman:
"We really simply want to be treated fairly and equally," Ryan, who was born in the United States, said on a call with reporters Thursday. "I feel as an American citizen that I should be able to have the same rights as all other American citizens and I should not be forced to choose between my country and my family."
GLAD has stories of married couples torn apart by DOMA [pdf], and United by Love, Divided by Law has photos of binational couples whose futures are uncertain because of DOMA.
Last week on Truth in Action Ministries’ flagship radio program Truth that Transforms, hosts Carmen Pate and John Rabe hosted David Kupelian, the managing editor of WorldNetDaily and author of The Marketing of Evil to discuss how “worldly distractions destroy the heart and mind.” Pate, a former president of Concerned Women for America, asked Kupelian how “the homosexual rights agenda” try to use people’s emotions to win support for legalizing same-sex marriage, and Kupelian called it part of their strategy of “seduction and intimidation.” Kupelian falsely maintained that “everybody who looks at this legally will admit” that marriage equality for gays and lesbians will lead to polygamy and even allow “five men and a wastebasket” to be married. He added that legalizing same-sex marriage “will literally define marriage out of existence so marriage will not exist anymore.”
Pate: Look at the homosexual rights agenda when they are really pointing to the emotional heartbeat of individual lives. I think of the Rosie O’Donnell tours that they do with the homosexual families where they go on these tours and they point out how normal these families are and you can end up just crying at the end of the story because they’ve really touched your heart, that these are just people like you and I, there’s no difference and we need to make sure that their rights are really celebrated.
Kupelian: The gay rights issue is a perfect forum for explaining two of the biggest ways we are manipulated, and they are seduction and intimidation. The seduction is what you just described, ‘oh these two people just want to be married, how does their love and their being married hurt you’? Your darn right it hurts, if you go and redefine out of existence the prime institution of civilization since the beginning of man—marriage—and everybody who looks at this legally will admit that once you say that two men can be married and two women can be married you have to say that three men can be married or three women can be married or five men and a wastebasket can be married. Once marriage has changed from a man and a woman and it just becomes consenting adults who want to call themselves married, you will literally define marriage out of existence so marriage will not exist anymore.
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