Written by Carol Kuruvilla, New York Daily News

The Pope sent a clear message to gay rights activists who are celebrating gains made this year – the Vatican still thinks same-sex marriage is a ‘manipulation of nature.’ 

Pope Benedict XVI, right, made it clear during his Christmas speech that the Vatican believes marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Pope Benedict used his annual Christmas message to denounce gay marriage, saying that it destroyed the “essence of the human creature.” 

In one of his most important speeches of the year, the Pope stressed that a person’s gender identity is God-given and unchangeable. As a result, he sees gay marriage as a “manipulation of nature.” 

“People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being,” he said at the Vatican on Friday. “They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.” 

The Pope has said that gay marriage, like abortion and euthanasia, is a threat to world peace. 

In response, LGBT activists staged a protest at St. Peter’s Square. Equally Blessed, a coalition of Catholic organizations in the U.S. that supports gay marriage, repudiated the Pope’s claims. In a joint press release, the groups said that Benedict’s “rigid and outmoded” view of gender identity contrasted sharply with the reality they were witnessing in America – same-sex couples creating happy homes for their kids and transgender people living “healthy, mature, and generous lives.” 

“Catholics, following their own well-formed consciences, are voting to support equal rights for LGBT people because in their churches and communities they see a far healthier, godly and realistic vision of the human family than the one offered by the pope,” said the joint statement from Call to Action, DignityUSA, Fortunate Families and New Ways Ministry. 

As Pope, Benedict sets both tone and theology for the Catholic Church. Officially, the church still considers homosexuality an “intrinsically disordered” act. 

However, 59 percent of Catholics in America favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, according to a poll released this year by the Public Religion Research Institute. 

That’s exactly what is worrying the Pope. He fears the opinions people form in their own consciences will lead them away from the doctrines set forth by the church. 

“When freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God,” Benedict said. 

The Pope’s Christmas message comes during a time when advocates for same-sex marriage are gaining ground in the U.S. and Europe. American voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington endorsed gay marriage at the ballot box in November. A total of nine states now allow marriage between two men or two women. Three additional states officially recognize marriages that were performed outside of state lines, according to the Religion News Service. 

Efforts to legalize gay marriage, though controversial, are also being pushed by politicians in several European countries. The Constitutional Court in Spain, where a majority of citizens are Catholic, upheld a law that legalized same-sex marriage last month. The British government will introduce a legalization bill next year. French President Francois Hollande has said that he will enact his “marriage for everyone” plan within a year of taking office last May. 

This week, thousands marched in Paris in support of the Socialist government’s plan to legalize same-sex marriage. However, the French LGBT rights movement still faces strong opposition from religious leaders like Gilles Bernheim, France’s chief rabbi. 

On Friday, Pope Benedict quoted Bernheim, saying that the movement to grant rights to lesbian or gay couples to marry and adopt children was an “attack” on the traditional family unit. 

For Pope Benedict, the image of traditional family has not and will not mean anything more than a man, a woman and their children.

Multiple media sources are cheerfully reporting that supporters of marriage-redefinition may try to pass their same-sex “marriage” bill during the lame duck session of the General Assembly next month (January 3-9).

State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago), who identifies as homosexual and is the chief sponsor of this anti-family legislation, used the lame duck session in 2010 to ram through a same-sex “civil unions” bill.  It passed by razor-thin margins in part because many proponents of civil unions dishonestly promised lawmakers that the legalization of “civil unions” was all they wanted. 

The ethically-challenged ACLU lobbied heavily for civil unions in 2010, but then in 2012 filed a lawsuit in Cook County on behalf of homosexual activists, complaining that the very civil union law they lobbied to create is unconstitutional.

The liberal activists who pushed for civil unions, including Representative Harris and State Senator David Koehler (D-Peoria), also promised their colleagues that religious liberty and freedom of conscience would not be affected by the passage of “civil unions.”  We have seen how empty those promises were. 

One month after the act was signed into law, homosexual activists went after the Christian owner of a bed and breakfast in Paxton, Illinois.  The owner, Jim Walder, wanted to operate his business for the glory of the Lord.  Not wanting to violate his conscience, Mr. Walder refused to rent his bed and breakfast to a homosexual couple for their civil union ceremony and reception.  (Read more HERE.)

Then in July of 2011, because Catholic Charities would not violate its religious convictions by placing needy children in the homes of homosexual “civil union” partners, the state of Illinois forced Catholic Charities out of adoption and foster care work, thereby affecting the lives of 2,500 innocent children.

The promises of homosexual activists turned out to be utter deceits, as were the religious liberty “guarantees” that were built into the civil union bill, ironically titled “The Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act.” 

Perhaps thinking Illinoisans can be duped again, Representative Harris has named his marriage-redefinition bill the “Religious Freedom and Marriage Act.”

Take ACTION: Click HERE to email your state lawmakers today, urging them to uphold natural marriage and to support a state constitutional amendment by allowing Illinois voters to permanently define this foundational societal institution.  Be assured, your calls and emails are important!  Legislators take very seriously the letters and the numbers of calls they receive — particularly letters that are written by their constituents (as opposed to pre-written form letters.)

We can stop this destructive policy from moving forward, but we must take up the fight again and be willing to make our voices heard.  And this time, we need every conservative in Illinois to make his and her voice heard. We need you to respond to every action alert we send out as the Left moves forward with this and other pernicious legislation.

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In an overt act of religious discrimination, a Kentucky T-shirt manufacturer has been found guilty of “sexual orientation” discrimination for refusing to print T-shirts for a community  homosexual festival. 

Organizers of the Lexington, Kentucky “gay pride” event had filed the complaint against Hands On Originals, a Christian outfitter.  The company declined to print T-shirts promoting the 5th annual “Lexington Pride Festival,” citing a conflict with their religious beliefs. 

The Lexington-Fayette Human Rights Commission has found that Hands On Originals violated the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance.  Attorneys for the company plan to appeal the decision to an independent hearing examiner, and if necessary to a court of law. 

“Hands On Originals declined this order because it did not want to communicate the message of the requested shirt–that people should be ‘proud’ about engaging in homosexual behavior–nor did they want to promote the ideology of the Pride Festival,” says Jim Campbell, staff counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom.   

“The Constitution prohibits the government from forcing business owners to promote messages they disagree with,” Campbell adds.  “This kind of bullying may be practiced in a dictatorship, but violations of conscience have no place in the United States.” 

Blaine Adamson, the owners of Hands on Originals, says the company treats its customers fairly.  “We don’t have a sign on the door that says ‘No Gays Allowed.’  We’ll work with anybody.  But if there’s a specific message that conflicts with my convictions, then I can’t promote that.” 

You can watch a video providing more information about this controversy by clicking HERE.

Sunday was a depressing news day. Here’s what purported “conservatives” George Will, Mary Matalin, and Matthew Dowd had to say about same-sex marriage: 

George Will: “This decision by the Supreme Court came 31 days after an Election Day in which three states for the first time endorsed same-sex marriage at the ballot box — never happened before — Maine, Maryland, and the state of Washington….they could say it’s now safe to look at this because there is something like an emerging consensus. Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people….marriage law is traditionally the prerogative of the states, but let’s put a human face on this. One of the two cases concerns a New York woman who married in Canada her female partner. They lived together 44 years. The partner dies. As because the partner wasn’t a man, the woman is hit with a $363,000 tax bill from the federal government. There are a thousand or more federal laws or programs that are at stake here. And the more the welfare state envelops us in regulations and benefits, the more the equal protection argument weighs in, and maybe decisively.” 

Matalin: “[The fact that increasing numbers of Americans are supporting same-sex marriage demonstrates that] Americans have common sense. There are important constitutional, biological, theological, ontological questions relative to homosexual marriage, but people who live in the real world say the greatest threat to civil order is heterosexuals who don’t get married and are making babies. That’s an epidemic in crisis proportions. That is irrefutably more problematic for our culture than homosexuals getting married. So I find this an important dancing on the head of a pin argument.” 

Dowd: “To me, this — the consensus has already emerged on this issue. It’s just a question of who’s going to — is the Supreme Court going to catch up and follow that wind of the pack…or get ahead of it or put a block in the path of it. I mean, if you take a look at this, there is still a division in this country over this issue, but there is no division in this country among people under 35 or 30 years old on this issue. There is no division. Now, I have a perfect example. My son went in the Army…..10 years before, they’d ask everybody to raise that hands, 300 guys raise their hand, who’s for gay — who’s for gays in the military? Eighty percent of the troops said we’re opposed to gays in the military. When he got in, five or six years later, 80 percent said they were for gays in the military. It had changed that much and that quick. To me, we still — you still have to know there’s a huge group of folks in this country that believe this issue is not ready to be settled nationally, and they’re over 35, they go to church regularly, they still view marriage as traditional and all that, but in the end, this issue, five years from now is even going to be more settled, 10 years from now is going to be more settled. 

To George Will: Why would our youth oppose the legalization of “same-sex marriage” when they’ve never been exposed to the substantive reasons to do so? 

To Mary Matalin: She has implicitly posited a false dichotomy between opposing out of wedlock births and opposing “same-sex marriage.” One can and should do both. Matalin reveals her own ignorance if she really believes discussions of the legalization of “same-sex marriage” constitute airy debates on inconsequential philosophical minutia. 

To Matthew Dowd: The fact that ten years ago 240 out of 3oo young soldiers opposed homosexuals serving in the military, while now only 60 out of 300 oppose homosexuals serving in the military may have something to do with the demagogic propaganda about homosexuality to which they’ve been exposed in their schools and entertainment industry virtually from birth. Dowd is right: the culture will devolve further into moral and intellectual ignorance if academia continues to expose students only to the work of Leftists; if churches refuse to find ways to help Christians recognize the fallacious arguments used to normalize homosexuality; and if Hollywood continues to manipulate the emotions of Americans, particularly our vulnerable youth.

In case no one has noticed, journalists never ask Democrats the hard questions regarding homosexuality—and I mean never.  Perhaps our news show hosts should ask their guests and panelists these questions: 

1. Many compare same-sex marriage to interracial marriage. In what specific ways is homosexuality like race?
    
2. If the institution of marriage has nothing inherently to do with sexual complementarity and procreative potential, then why should it be limited to two people or to people who are not close blood relatives?
    
3. If marriage is—as the Left claims it is–solely the institutional recognition of deeply felt, intense loving feelings between people, why should the government prohibit two brothers who are in love from marrying? If people should be allowed to marry whomever they love—as the Left claims they should be–then why shouldn’t two brothers and their mutual boyfriend be permitted to marry?
    
4. Does marriage have an inherent nature that government merely recognizes, or does society create it out of whole cloth?
    
5. Are rights granted to couples or to individuals?
    
6. Are rights accorded to people based on their objective characteristics or on their subjective feelings and volitional acts? 

If any journalists have the integrity to ask these hard questions, they shouldn’t let our mollycoddled liberals off the hook when they respond with ignorant, evasive non-answers. 

It would also be refreshing if our talk shows would invite Princeton University Law Professor Robert George to discuss the issue of marriage with “conservatives” like George Will, Mary Matalin, and Matthew Dowd—or would that be considered “bullying”?

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Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with his finger ever on the pulse of “progressives”—I mean, Chicagoans—has discerned that two of the top three problems facing the city are the absence of casinos and legalized “same-sex marriage.”

The city’s failing schools, gang activity, murder rate, debt, unemployment, poverty, family breakdown, child abuse, and drug use pale in significance when compared to the absence of casinos. Perhaps Mayor Emanuel sees casinos as the solution to all those problems.

One of his top priorities is bringing casinos to the city, casinos that will disproportionately harm those of lesser incomes because they have less financial padding to sustain the ineluctable losses on which predatory casinos rely.

Judging from his letter to the Chicago Sun Times, his de facto top priority is same-sex marriage, which will further erode the institution of marriage, the erosion of which has already disproportionately harmed the black community.

But why should these inconvenient truths bother Emanuel when he’s got fat cat casino-backers and wealthy homosexuals in his corner.

Emanuel in a display of “progressive” ignorance and uncharacteristic mushiness claimed that “gays and lesbians are still denied one essential freedom: the right to make a lifelong commitment to the person they love.” Say what?

Every unmarried person of major age is free to marry as long as he or she is seeking to marry one person of the opposite sex who is not closely related by blood. Homosexuals are not denied the right to marry. They choose not to participate in this sexually complementary institution.

Homosexuals are simply not permitted to unilaterally jettison the central defining feature of legally sanctioned marriage: sexual complementarity.

Similarly, polyamorists may not unilaterally jettison the requirement regarding numbers of partners, and those in love with their siblings or parents may not unilaterally jettison the requirement pertaining to close blood kinship.

Moreover, homosexuals are not denied the right to make a lifelong commitment. Homosexuals may, indeed, love, have sex with, set up households with, and commit for life to any person they wish.

Mayor Emanuel seems to have adopted the view that marriage is an institution centrally or solely concerned with the loving feelings of those involved. But if that’s the case, if marriage is solely about love and has no intrinsic connection to procreation, then why does the government limit it to two people? And if marriage is solely about love, why not permit two loving brothers to marry?

If marriage were centrally or solely about the recognition of love, there would be no reason for the government to be involved. The government has no vested interest in “recognizing” subjective feelings. The government has a vested interest in the objective connection of sexually complementary coupling to procreation.

The government is in the marriage business because a two-person, sexually complementary union is how children are produced, and the government has a vested interest in recognizing, regulating, and promoting the type of relationship that can produce children—whether or not any particular couple has children.

In describing Chicago’s diversity, Mayor Emanuel paired race and “sexual orientation” revealing that he’s also bought into the intellectually vacuous comparison of race to homosexuality, which is the flawed analogy upon which the entire homosexuality-affirming house of cards is built. Whereas race is 100 percent heritable, in all cases immutable, and has no behavioral implications whatsoever, homosexuality is constituted by subjective feelings, volitional sexual acts that are legitimate objects of moral assessment, and is not 100 percent heritable.

Despite exploiting the language of the civil rights movement by trumpeting his defense of “equality,” Emanuel is not advocating for equality. He’s advocating for the unilateral redefinition of marriage by homosexuals to serve their desires.

Emanuel, envisioning himself as the Martin Luther King Jr. of the homosexual movement, proclaims “Marriage equality is the next step in our nation’s march forward. Illinois must lead the way.” Emanuel would do well to remember these words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law….An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”

Illinois has certainly proved itself capable of leading the way, leading the way to fiscal insolvency, educational malpractice, and incomprehensible murder rates. Why not lead the way to the destruction of real marriage by pretend marriage.

I had other plans for today until I read the Chicago Tribune editorial that ebulliently celebrates the rejection in four states of the central defining feature of marriage—sexual complementarity.

In a display of astonishing hubris, the Trib editorial board has prognosticated—without evidence, I might add—that “letting same-sex couples marry does no harm to the civil institution of marriage, but promotes family stability, rewards loving commitment, and safeguards the interest of children” (Apparently in the Trib’s view, the interests of children don’t include having a mother and a father).

Further, the Trib asserts that the “public understands” all this. The Tribune editorial board arrogantly and paternalistically claims to know that the entire American public believes what the editorial board believes about “same-sex marriage.”

And how do they know what the “public understands”? They claim to know that the entire American public agrees with them on the nature and impact of “same-sex marriage” based on the narrow passage of “same-sex marriage” initiatives in four solidly Democratic states.

A larger lens may provide a corrective to the Trib’s perspective. Maine passed the same-sex marriage initiative by 53 percent and Maryland and Washington by 52  percent. In Minnesota, 51  percent of the voters opposed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman. What is interesting is that more voters voted against same-sex marriage than voted for Mitt Romney.

While 41  percent of Maine voters voted for Romney, 48  percent voted against same-sex marriage. In Maryland only 37  percent of voters voted for Romney, while 48  percent voted against same-sex marriage. In Washington 43  percent voted for Romney, while 48  percent voted against same-sex marriage. And in Minnesota, 45  percent voted for Romney, while 48  percent voted against same-sex marriage.

Two recent articles detail the strategies and stratagems used successfully by homosexual activists in Maine  and Minnesota:

• They secured much more funding than opponents of “same-sex marriage” did.
• They had a passionate and tenacious army of foot soldiers.
• They had significantly more support from young people.
• They have switched from intellectual arguments about “equality” and “discrimination” to demagogic appeals to emotion. They focus on feelings and “narrative,” which work in an increasingly non-rational culture (read Neil Postman’s influential book, Amusing Ourselves to Death).

In these four deep blue states, “same-sex marriage” won by slim margins, but the greater support for real marriage than for Romney raises two questions: Is the decision by many Republicans to avoid the social issues a winning strategy? And are there Republicans who simply didn’t vote because they rightly perceived that Romney is not a reliable and committed supporter of the entire Republican platform? During post-election coverage, Stephen Hayes, senior writer for the Weekly Standard, suggested that perhaps Romney’s loss indicates that he didn’t offer a sufficiently different choice to Republican voters.

This is the larger election context, but there’s a larger cultural context still, and that bodes ill for real marriage.

“Progressives” like to promote the deceit that the increasing support for “same-sex marriage” represents the natural, organic evolutionary progress of society from a state of ignorant bias to a state of enlightenment. In so doing, they fail to discuss the fact that academia, the entertainment industry, and the mainstream media have been held fast in the iron ideological grip of intolerant “progressives” for almost half a century. Combine that with the deafening silence of most conservative churches on the issue of homosexuality and surprise, surprise, Americans, particularly young Americans, are adopting “progressive” views on all things homosexual. I would argue that even many conservative adults don’t know how to respond to the specious secular arguments used to normalize homosexuality. And they’re evidently not sufficiently motivated to become informed or involved.

The truth is that the Left cares far more deeply about the destruction of marriage than the Right does about preserving it. We tolerate the intolerable with unjustifiable equanimity. We tolerate censorship in public schools. We tolerate the presentation of false and evil ideas as objective truths to little children in the schools we subsidize. And we tolerate the destruction of marriage.

Democrats and “moderate” Republicans are eager to say that social conservatives are to blame for the election losses. They may be right that conservatives are the proximate cause, in that conservatives didn’t vote in sufficient numbers to elect Republicans (or preserve marriage in four blue states). But perhaps the ultimate reasons for Republican losses were either that the candidates didn’t espouse conservative values (like Robert Dold), or that those candidates who espoused conservative values were flawed in other ways (like Joe Walsh, who is intemperate and often uncivil).

Conservatives cannot be naïve about political strategy, but we must not sacrifice truth on essential issues like marriage and life to the protean theories of political expediency pronounced with certainty by the strategist ‘o’ the day. We must “major in the majors.” Marriage and life are among the non-negotiables that must be defended with confidence, conviction, and intelligence.

There’s much talk about the soul-searching that the Republican Party will be doing in the upcoming months. If it’s going to search for its soul, I would suggest looking for it where they lost it: on the road paved with capitulation leading to the altar of political victory at any cost. 

Written By Denny Burk

Christy McFerren shares her gut-wrenching testimony in a recent post at the online Prodigal Magazine. The story is gut-wrenching because she has experienced powerful attractions to other women throughout her life, yet she has never given in to a homosexual identity. In fact, her whole testimony is aimed to communicate that it’s okay to fight if you’re a homosexual. It took her years to come to this conclusion, but that is where she ended up. For me the most powerful part of her testimony is in the following lines. Pay special attention to the underlined portion:

Sometimes I agreed with God about my sexuality because He is Lord, and love is a choice, and that is all. My emotions were left out of the equation so many times because I had to believe either my feelings were lying to me or God was. I purposed in my heart to honor God’s design no matter how it felt, for a very, very long time. I could feel in the waiting that Life was at work in me. Hope was at work in me.

There was never a pinnacle moment when I knew, “I’m not gay anymore. I feel different.” My liberation was unceremonious. Freedom matured in me through a process, from the seeds of truth that God planted and people watered along the way. It wasn’t one decision I made not to be gay, there were many. Like Proverbs 4:18 says, “… the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day.”…

—but its brightening from morning to noon happens in indiscernible progression. Yet noon is undeniably brighter than the dawn. In the same way I can say with confidence today that I am free.

I am a testimony that homosexuality can be a choice. It was a fight, but it was worth every tear I cried and every drop of blood Jesus shed. We won this thing together. It was a fight for honor. For dignity. For agreement. Out of that agreement comes the power that overtakes the impossible, and if you’re struggling with this, I’m here to tell you…

It’s OK to fight.

I don’t know anything about Ms. McFerren except what I’ve read in this article and on her website. But what I see here is glorious. I hope and pray that some of you who struggle with this issue will be strengthened by McFerren’s testimony to believe God that it’s okay to fight against a homosexual orientation (Rev. 12:11). It’s not a fait accompli that you have to give in to. You don’t have to give in to voices that are telling you otherwise. Read the whole thing, and see that God can do the impossible (Matt. 19:25-26).

 The Associated Press reported this week on a new study from a homosexual demands group trumpeting the “highest-ever number of gay and bisexual characters on scripted broadcast network” television.  They note that the number of homosexual characters on cable television is also growing.  In their 17^th annual “Where We Are on TV” report the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) found that overall homosexuals represent nearly 5 percent of TV characters, up from 2.9 percent in 2011.   ABC has the highest amount at 5.2 percent of their regular characters portrayed as homosexual.  CBS was saluted as having the largest increase from 0.7 percent in 2011 to 2.8 percent in 2012.
 
These may not sound like very significant or influential numbers, but remember that in the real world homosexuals make up only between 2 and 3 percent of the population.  So, television viewers are seeing homosexuality portrayed at a rate that is twice as high as it occurs in real life, and you can bet that none of homosexuality’s individual harms are ever revealed on TV. GLAAD makes sure that the portrayal of homosexuality on TV is always positive.  
 
Imagine the impact TV might have on society if real world demographic numbers were applied to characters.  When is the last time you saw even one positive portrayal of a Christian on a TV sitcom or drama?  A 2008 study found that 34 percent of Americans describe themselves not simply as Christian, but as “born-again” Christians.  If the rate for Christians was the same as homosexual portrayals, nearly 7 out of 10 TV characters would be positive displays of Christianity.   Imagine the impact that would have on viewers and our culture.
 
Ironically, GLAAD President Herndon Graddick said of their report “More and more Americans have come to accept their LGBT family members, friends, co-workers and peers, and as audiences tune into their favorite programs, they expect to see the same diversity of people they encounter in their daily lives.”   Apparently, this “same diversity of people” only applies to one’s bedroom behavioral choices.
 
As I mentioned, Christian characters are virtually non-existent on network TV. The number of Hispanic characters is actually on the decline from 2011, and massively underrepresented by 75 percent. African-Americans are also underrepresented on TV, compared to their actual population numbers. Those two genetic traits of skin color cannot be hidden on camera.  In that sense, one has to give groups like GLAAD their due, they have made sure what a small few choose to do in the bedroom is significantly over-glorified and over-represented as a character lifestyle on TV.

We conservatives have criticized the practice of homosexuality for a variety of reasons, a primary one being its abusive nature.  In recent years, defenders of the practice have attempted to rebut our attacks saying that what they do to each other is not abuse, and even if it were, they are consenting adults.  I am not sure that they really wish to get into a discussion regarding the abusive nature of their conduct, but are you familiar with S&M or “bondage?” 

If you doubt the tawdry nature of their conduct, just go to one of their parades.  On second thought, don’t.  Just take my word for it that the conduct of parade participants turns the stomach of any normal person.  And if what they do in public is offensive, one can only imagine the abuse that goes on in secret.  Of course you don’t have to just imagine, you can go to their web sites or read their own literature to discover for yourselves its sordid reality.

What we as conservatives find ourselves asking is why anyone would want to live in such abusive relationships?  Interestingly, many practicing homosexuals have defended their lifestyles with that precise question saying that if it were a choice, they would NEVER choose it!  They are bound by their “nature” they say,  and cannot escape!  Yet, activists for the lifestyle adamantly and repeatedly claim their conduct is not destructive.  However, the vast majority, by their own admission, endure treatment at the hands of other men that to us is abusive.   What they are saying is that there is no objective definition for abuse. 

I wish to make it perfectly clear that we do not nor will we ever condone sexual or physical abuse of one person by another.  Therefore, you will never find us approving of the conduct common among homosexuals.  If their behavior was all loving and beneficent, it would not be kept under wraps.  It could be discussed openly.

Accepting homosexual behavior categorically as normal forces us to accept abuse as normal.  At the same time we are, as a society, making an important effort to inform the public that abuse of women is NOT acceptable!  Is not the homosexual lobby undermining this important effort?  If we accept this new status quo, that men abusing men is acceptable so long as it is consensual, we are in the difficult spot of accepting a significantly different treatment of men and women.  It is acceptable for men to abuse men if they both so choose, but it is not acceptable for men to abuse women, even if they both so choose.

If you are at all familiar with abused women’s issues, you know the $64,000 question.  Why do women remain in abusive relationships?  If anyone could actually answer that and provide an antidote, many women would be saved.  No one really understands why people stay where life is often miserable or even dangerous.  But they do.  They clearly get something that they deem worth the price they pay.   The homosexuals’ spokesmen just sidestep the question and reply that they’re adults and they  want to remain in their relationships, whether we view them as abusive or not.   

So, we find ourselves with a real dilemma.  We accept men abusing one another because they choose to remain in those relationships and they can define for themselves what abuse is, but we do not accept men abusing women, even though many women choose to remain in those relationships, and often say that their abusers “love them.” 

Therefore, by declaring homosexuality to be normal, we must accept that men are “mature” enough to choose for themselves to remain where, by society’s standards, they are abused, at the same time saying  women are not “mature” enough and must be protected.  Or else we will accept women’s abuse at the hands of men is not abuse after all. 

On which side of that one do you wish to land?

I, for one, will accept neither.

Wednesday morning at the offices of the Family Research Council (FRC) in Washington D.C., a man entered the building and made remarks about “not liking FRC’s politics.” An FRC security guard, Leo Johnson, took interest in the man’s intentions for being in the building, at which point the man retrieved a pistol from his backpack and shot several rounds at the guard. Johnson was wounded in the arm but subdued the suspect and wrestled away his gun, and another guard held him until police arrived.

Leo Johnson underwent surgery on his arm, and FRC’s President, Tony Perkins, reports Johnson’s surgery went well.

According to the FBI’s report, the alleged gunman, Floyd Corkins II of Herndon, VA, was carrying a backpack with an additional 50 rounds of ammunition, and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. Other media reports claim that Corkins is a volunteer at a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender clinic.

Family Research Council issued an early statement praising Leo Johnson for his quick actions and bravery, stating that his recovery was the organization’s highest concern, and thanking people around the world for their encouragement and prayers.

Please continue your prayers to God for Leo Johnson, the employees and families of FRC, and the Corkins family, and offer up praise for the response of FRC’s security team and the DC police force.

It is sadly true that when abnormal is called “normal,” normal becomes abnormal.  If it is determined that having three fingers is “normal,” then those of us with five will be “abnormal.”  So, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Joe Moreno have broadcast to the world that the age tested and proven family value of intact one man-one woman families is not normal and not a Chicago value.  That which was declared by God to be His creation, and has been accepted as normal for as long as the human race has existed is no longer normal in Chicago. 

What is normal in Chicago and apparently what our good Mayor would call “Chicago values,” are homosexual “marriages,” broken homes, violent streets, and a murder rate near the highest in the nation, possibly the world.  These “values” are being put in place here, not because of sound, logical and cogent argument, but because their proponents bully and even terrorize the public into silent submission.  Witness the vicious name-calling by the Mayor,  Moreno, and other liberals.  How many private citizens are up to facing THAT onslaught?

To his credit, Dan Cathy, President of Chic-fil-A,  doesn’t support these “Chicago values.”   For that reason, the Mayor and Alderman Moreno are doing all they can to “protect” the city from Mr. Cathy’s demonstrably successful family values.  It is pretty clear, by their strident and hateful attacks on Mr. Cathy, what Chicago values are to the these men and their political buddies:  Undermine intact families and subsequently destroy community integrity, perpetuate violence and consequently the slaughter of innocent children.  That  is what Chicago values have become under Daley, Rahm, Moreno, and friends. 

Sure, no one would say that that is what they set out to do, but the policies they, and the liberal establishment have implemented over the last 50 years set the stage for such things.  A drunk, driving 80 down the street probably has no intention of killing anyone either, but that is what happens when you drive 80 miles an hour down city streets, regardless of your intentions.   Mr. Emmanuel and the Democratic Party don’t support the values of Mr. Cathy because traditional families take care of themselves and don’t need Democrats or Mr. Emmanuel.  We discipline our children, teach them to work, don’t let them join gangs or become dependent upon the state.  Of course the Mayor and Alderman loathe our family values! Our values don’t help them or their Party stay in power!  They apparently forget, of course, that it is our tax dollars that pay their salaries, support their welfare state, and their dependent voters.  The fact is that if Chicago were to adopt Mr. Cathy’s family values, the repeated slaughter of innocents would no longer be daily headlines.

Mayor Emmanuel and Alderman Moreno clearly have no qualms in opposing the values and principles that God has unequivocally defined in the Bible.  The Second Psalm addresses such men       “. . . the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and His Anointed saying, ‘let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us.'”  God’s reaction is predictable: “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall hold them in derision.  Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure.”

So, it is not at all surprising that the consequences God declares will come to those who reject Him plague this city.  Paul wrote in the Book of Galatians that God is characterized by “love, joy, peace,” etc.  Thus, with its leadership ejecting God, Chicago finds itself overwhelmed by hate, tragedy and violence.  “Whatsoever a man (nation) soweth, that shall (they) also reap.”

I don’t know, but are you okay with the thousands of shootings and hundreds of killings here each year?  Just wondering.

Maybe our good  Mayor and his friends can find an island somewhere where they can all live out their “family values” and suffer the consequences of their own bad choices, but I for one, am weary of witnessing  the suffering their failed leadership has brought the innocent of this city!

It is really, really time for change!

Lambda Legal in cahoots with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois are suing the Cook County Clerk for purportedly violating the Constitution of Illinois when Cook County refused to issue marriage licenses to men who sought to marry men and women who sought to marry women. To make matters worse, these ethically challenged Illinois leaders have all expressed support for the lawsuit: Governor Patrick Quinn, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, and Cook County Clerk David Orr.

Lambda Legal is a homosexual legal organization hell-bent on using the judicial system to bypass the will of the people in order to impose its subversive sexuality theories on the entire country. This is the organization that shoved same-sex marriage down the throats of Iowans, which, not incidentally, brought the electoral defeat of those judges who threw their lots in with Lambda Legal.

Like the Iowa judges, Lisa Madigan and Anita Alvarez have crossed over to the dark side by abandoning all ethical and professional commitments to uphold and defend Illinois laws. Illinois’ Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act defines marriage as a legal relationship between one man and one woman. It was amended in 1996 to prohibit marriage between two people of the same sex. Even Lambda Legal attorney Camilla Taylor expressed shock over Anita Alvarez’ refusal to defend a duly enacted law, saying, “’I’ve never encountered this before.’”

Why should homosexuals be permitted to redefine marriage while other groups may not?

Lambda Legal and the ACLU hold the bizarre belief that there is a constitutional right for homosexuals to demand that the most fundamental constitutive element of marriage — sexual complementarity — be jettisoned.  It is, however, no more unethically discriminatory for the government to retain sexual complementarity in its legal definition of marriage than it is to limit marriage to two people, which effectively prohibits polyamorists from accessing marriage. I wonder if Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Illinois believe that laws limiting marriage to two people are unconstitutional because such laws will prevent three loving people in a polyamorous union from marrying.  And do they believe that laws prohibiting close blood relatives from marrying are unconstitutional because such laws will prevent a brother from marrying a male sibling with whom he is in love and hopes to raise children?  

Do governments construct marriage?

The government does not construct marriage out of whole cloth. Marriage has an inherent nature and purpose that societies and their governments merely recognize. Our government recognizes, regulates, and promotes a type of relationship that exists and best serves the needs of children.

Marriage is a particular type of relationship that has existed for the entire history of mankind and across all cultures. Men and women come together to form a union that is not merely emotional, but sexual and biological, which means it has a natural biological end (i.e., it is a procreative type of union, whether or not children result). Recognizing, regulating, and promoting this particular type of union is a legitimate interest of government. The government has no vested interest in “affirming love” through law. If marriage were centrally or solely about love and sexual desire and had no connection to either gender or procreation, there would be no reason for the government to be involved and no reason to prohibit incestuous or plural marriages.

Are laws banning same-sex “marriage” analogous to laws banning interracial marriage?

According to the Chicago Tribune, David Orr said that “he believes the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is akin to laws that once banned mixed-race couples from marrying.” But that assertion requires evidence that homosexuality is by nature akin to race, something that David Orr was apparently not asked to provide.

Here are some critical differences between race and homosexuality: Race is 100 percent heritable, in all cases immutable, and has no behavioral implications that are legitimate objects of moral assessment. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is not 100 percent heritable, is in some cases mutable, and is constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts that are legitimate objects of moral assessment.

There are other reasons that laws banning same-sex marriage are utterly different from laws banning interracial marriage, including the following:

• Race is irrelevant to the inherent nature and purpose of marriage and to the government’s sole interest in marriage: procreative potential.
• Anti-miscegenation laws were based on a flawed understanding of human nature. As Dennis Prager explains, anti-miscegenation laws were based on the false notion that people of different races had different natures: “There are enormous differences between men and women, but there are no differences between people of different races. Men and women are inherently different, but blacks and whites (and yellows and browns) are inherently the same. Therefore, any imposed separation by race can never be moral or even rational; on the other hand, separation by sex can be both morally desirable and rational.”  Marriage laws that recognize that marriage is a sexually complementary union are based on the true belief that men and women are by nature different.
• Finally, anti-miscegenation laws were based on who the person is, whereas laws prohibiting marriages between people of the same sex are based on actions.  Thomas Sowell, who happens to be black, explains, “The argument that current marriage laws ‘discriminate’ against homosexuals confuses discrimination against people with making distinctions among different kinds of behavior. All laws distinguish among different kinds of behavior.” A black man who wants to marry a white woman is seeking to do the same action that a white man who wants to marry a white woman seeks to do. A law that prohibits an interracial marriage is wrong because it is based on who the person is, not on what he seeks to do. But, if a man wants to marry a man, he is seeking to do an entirely different action from that which a man who wants to marry a woman seeks to do. A law that prohibits homosexual marriage is legitimate because it is based not on who the person is but rather on what he seeks to do. Any man may engage in the act of marrying a woman (if she is of age and not closely related by blood).

Conclusion

Homosexual men claim they are attracted only to men. Homosexual women claim they are attracted only to women. Both sets of claims point to the truth that men and women are by nature different. If men and women are by nature substantively different, then unions composed of two people of the same sex must necessarily be substantively different from sexually complementary unions. It is perfectly legitimate for the government to treat different things differently.

Men and women who choose to make their unchosen same-sex attraction central to their identity are not prohibited from participating in the institution of marriage. They choose not to participate in it.  The starting point for homosexual activists in their analysis of the issue of redefining marriage is not the Constitution, the law, or deep thinking about the sources of morality. No, their analysis starts with their own sexual feelings. From there, like the Sophists of old, they concoct specious “reasons’ to persuade the public that gender and procreative potential are irrelevant to marriage.

The ignorance of homosexuality-affirming activists like Lambda Legal attorney Camilla Taylor is exceeded only by their hubris. We hope and pray that the efforts of the Thomas More Society and the Illinois Family Institute, which have stepped in to do what Madigan and Alvarez should be doing, will prevail over ignorance and self-righteous hubris.

By Ryan T. Anderson, Robert P. George & Sherif Girgis at National Review Online

At least President Obama is not dissembling anymore about his views on marriage. And even though we consider his support of redefining marriage a deep error, he has done the nation a favor by revealing the truth about his position. So did the vice president, days earlier, when he opined about “the simple proposition” that “this is all about” — “what all marriages, at their root, are about.” That is, the administration has created a long-awaited and much-needed platform for a national discussion of the core issue in the debate: What is marriage?

Consider two competing views:

THE HISTORIC VIEW
Marriage as a comprehensive union: Joining spouses in body as well as mind, it is begun by commitment and sealed by sexual intercourse. So completed in the acts by which new life is made, it is specially apt for and deepened by procreation, and calls for that broad sharing of domestic life uniquely fit for family life. Uniting spouses in these all-encompassing ways, it also calls for all-encompassing commitment: permanent and exclusive. Comprehensive union is valuable in itself, but its link to children’s welfare makes marriage a public good that the state should recognize, support, and in certain ways regulate. Call this the conjugal view of marriage.

THE REVISIONIST VIEW 
Marriage as the union of two people who commit to romantic partnership and domestic life: essentially an emotional union, merely enhanced by whatever sexual activity partners find agreeable. Such committed romantic unions are seen as valuable while emotion lasts. The state recognizes them because it has an interest in their stability, and in the needs of spouses and any children they choose to rear. Call this the revisionist view of marriage.

President Obama has made it clear that he favors the second view. He hasn’t offered any arguments for it, merely pointing to his feelings and those of his children.

In our forthcoming book, What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, we argue that the conjugal conception of marriage is not only the one long embodied in Western law and culture; it is also, by a sizable margin, rationally more defensible. President Obama and his allies can now join this discussion by backing their intuitions with arguments — if they can.

Now that the president has disclosed his view, he — like all revisionists — must confront some tough questions. And he, like they, will run into a problem. Something must set marriages as a class apart from other bonds. But on every point where most agree that marriage is different, the conjugal view has a coherent explanation — and the revisionist has none.

President Obama, like most, surely thinks that marriage is inherently a sexual union. But why must it be, if sex contributes to marriage only by fostering and expressing emotional intimacy? Non-sexual bonding activities can do that. Why can’t the tender platonic bond of two sisters be a deep emotional union, and therefore a marriage? Or, if marriage is primarily about the concrete legal benefits — of hospital visitation, or inheritance rights — should these benefits be denied two cohabiting sisters just because their bond can’t legally be sexual? To all this, the conjugal view has an answer.

Again, if marriage is essentially about emotions and shared domestic experience, why should it be limited to two people? Newsweek says the U.S. has half a million polyamorous households — where emotions and experiences are shared with multiple partners. Surely three people can be emotionally united, and some say that the variety of polyamory fulfills them as the consistency of monogamy can’t. So if marriage is about emotional fulfillment, why stop at two? The conjugal view has an answer.

Finally, if marriage is distinguished just by being a person’s deepest bond, her number one relationship, why should the state get involved at all in what basically amounts to the legal regulation of tenderness? The conjugal view has an answer. The revisionist has none.

Indeed, our recently candid president should note that the more candid, and consistent, revisionists have long accepted these points. Years ago, 300 prominent scholars and activists signed a statement arguing that we should recognize polyamorous and multiple-household sexual relationships. These activists agree that making sexual complementarity optional would make all its other norms arbitrary — and therefore unjust to leave intact. We only disagree on whether this top-to-bottom dismantling of the institution of marriage would be a good or a bad thing.

The president has now created a platform for this very discussion; and it is a discussion we look forward to having. For as Obama himself implied, this is not a dispute featuring “bigots” on one side, any more than it has “perverts” on the other. It is a debate of reasonable people of goodwill who disagree about the nature of the most basic unit of society. In saying that he supports letting states decide the definition of marriage for themselves, Obama indicated that this issue shouldn’t be settled by judicial fiat. On this, we agree. Our national conversation shouldn’t be brought to an undemocratically abrupt end. But as it continues, advocates on all sides must contend with, and answer, the central question in this debate, without which we can’t know thewhat or the why of legal recognition, much less what justice demands: What is marriage?

— Ryan T. Anderson is editor of Public Discourse: Ethics, Law, and the Common Good, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, N.J. Robert P. George is McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. Sherif Girgis, a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Princeton University and a law student at Yale, is a research scholar at the Witherspoon Institute.

Written by Ryan T. Anderson and Thomas Messner (Heritage.org)

On Wednesday afternoon, President Obama announced that he supports same-sex marriage. This was not exactly a surprise.

Sure, when running for Senate in 2004, Obama said that “marriage is between a man and a woman.” And when campaigning for the presidency in 2008, he restated that view and also claimed he did “not support gay marriage.”

The truth, however, is that President Obama has repeatedly done and said things that directly undermine marriage as one man and one woman.

President Obama has openly opposed state marriage amendments, such as Proposition 8 in California and the hugely successful amendment adopted by voters in North Carolina earlier this week. These amendments would protect marriage from judicial activism in state courts and let voters decide the question through democratic processes. But Obama views such measures as “divisive” and “discriminatory.”

President Obama also supports repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman for purposes of federal law. And President Obama’s Justice Department has taken extraordinary steps to undermine DOMA in the courts, first by offering a soft defense and then by offering no defense at all.

These seeming inconsistencies led many to conclude that the President wasn’t really against gay marriage but was saying so for political reasons. Now, the President has finally owned up to what many people already suspected: that he supports same-sex marriage.

It is good that President Obama has decided to be more straightforward about what he really believes about marriage. The American public deserves at least that much.

But the President’s so-called “evolution” on the timeless institution of marriage marks an unfortunate turn. Society has a civilizational interest in promoting marital childbearing and the faithfulness of husbands and wives to each other and their children. Marriage is a vital social institution that promotes that interest.

The reason the state is in the marriage business in the first place is because sex makes babies and babies need mothers and fathers. As one source has put it, “but for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex.” That “institution” is marriage, and it brings together men and women as husbands and wives to become fathers and mothers to any children their unions bring forth.

This binding together doesn’t happen by accident. Binding fathers to mothers and their children requires strong cultural and legal norms to channel adult sexual desire and behavior into an institution where childbearing leads to responsible childrearing.

Furthermore, undoubtedly one reason voters in 32 states have voted to protect marriage is the belief that, for children, the ideal situation is to have both a mother and a father. This belief is supported by social science, which demonstrates that children do best when reared by their married biological mothers and fathers. Mothering and fathering are not interchangeable phenomena. The ideal for children is love and attention from both a father and mother, as well as the role modeling that each can provide of masculinity and femininity.

By embracing same-sex marriage, President Obama has invited everyone in the nation to consider this basic issue: What is marriage? The President has sided with those who would redefine marriage by declaring that mothers and fathers are expendable and sexual complementarity does not matter. Under this view, marriage is whatever two consenting adults want it to be.

But once the President accepts these ideas, can he explain why marriage should involve only two people? Can he explain why, under his conception, childrearing would continue to have any meaningful relationship to marriage? Can he explain why commitments of permanence and sexual exclusivity should be the norm for marriage? Throw away the core meaning of marriage and these cherished norms logically go with it.

There is a truth about marriage, and most people intuitively grasp that it has something to with mothers and fathers, the offspring they bear through sexual union, and the mutual cooperation required to effectively rear offspring throughout many years of dependency. The marriage debate is about whether our laws will recognize and promote this truth or, rather, label it a falsehood and force society to fall in line.

President Obama has made clear where he stands on this issue. In the coming months, voting members of the American public will have the opportunity to do the same.

By The Editors at National Review Online

President Barack 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. 

All people, whatever their sexual orientation, have equal dignity, worth, and basic rights, by virtue of being human beings. We have previously explained why we believe that this premise does not entail the conclusion that the marriage laws should be changed (anddefended our views from critics). For now, we will merely repeat one point: The only good reason to have marriage laws in the first place — to have the state recognize a class of relationships called “marriage” out of all the possible strong bonds that adults can form — is to link erotic desire to the upbringing of the children it can produce.

We have already gone too far, in both law and culture, in weakening the link between marriage and procreation. To break it altogether would make the institution of marriage unintelligible. What possible governmental interest is there in encouraging long-term commitments with a sexual element, just as such? What reason is there to exclude from recognition caring long-term relationships without such an element? (In one of the editorials mentioned above we mention the case of two brothers who raise a child together following a family tragedy; other hypotheticals are easy to devise.)

Many people who support same-sex marriage sincerely believe that they are merely expanding an institution to a class of people who have been excluded from it rather than redefining it. But this view is simply mistaken. We will not make our society more civilized by detaching one of our central institutions from its civilizing task.