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.

Written by Kevin DeYoung, The Gospel Coalition

On Wednesday afternoon, to no one’s surprise, President Obama revealed in an interview that after some “evolution” he has “concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” This after the Vice-President came out last Sunday strongly in favor of gay marriage. Not coincidentally, the New York Times ran an article on Tuesday (an election day with a marriage amendment on one ballot) about how popular and not controversial gay television characters have become. In other words, everyone else has grown up so why don’t you? It can seem like the whole world is having a gay old time, with conservative Christians the only ones refusing to party.

The temptation, then, is for Christians go silent and give up the marriage fight: “It’s no use staying in this battle,” we think to ourselves. “We don’t have to change our personal position. We’ll keep speaking the truth and upholding the Bible in our churches, but getting worked up over gay marriage in the public square is counter productive. It’s a waste of time. It makes us look bad. It ruins our witness. And we’ve already lost. Time to throw in the towel.” I understand that temptation. It is an easier way. But I do not think it is the right way, the God glorifying way, or the way of love.

Here are five reasons Christians should continue to publicly and winsomely oppose bestowing the term and institution of marriage upon same-sex couples:

1. Every time the issue of gay marriage has been put to a vote by the people, the people have voted to uphold traditional marriage. Even in California. In fact, the amendment passed in North Carolina on Tuesday by a wider margin (61-39) than a similar measure passed six years ago in Virginia (57-42). The amendment passed in North Carolina, a swing state Obama carried in 2008, by 22 percentage points. We should not think that gay marriage in all the land is a foregone conclusion. To date 30 states have constitutionally defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

2. The promotion and legal recognition of homosexual unions is not in the interest of the common good. That may sound benighted, if not bigoted. But we must say it in love: codifying the indistinguishability of gender will not make for the “peace of the city.” It rubs against the grain of the universe, and when you rub against the grain of divine design you’re bound to get splinters. Or worse. The society which says sex is up to your own definition and the family unit is utterly fungible is not a society that serves its children, its women, or its own long term well being.

3. Marriage is not simply the term we use to describe those relationships most precious to us. The word means something and has meant something throughout history. Marriage is more than a union of hearts and minds. It involves a union of bodies–and not bodies in any old way we please, as if giving your cousin a wet willy in the ear makes you married. Marriage, to quote one set of scholars, is a” comprehensive union of two sexually complementary persons who seal (consummate or complete) their relationship by the generative act—by the kind of activity that is by its nature fulfilled by the conception of a child. So marriage itself is oriented to and fulfilled by the bearing, rearing, and education of children.” This conjugal view of marriage states in complex language what would have been a truism until a couple generations ago. Marriage is what children (can) come from. Where that element is not present (at the level of sheer design and function, even if not always in fulfillment), marriage is not a reality. We should not concede that “gay marriage” is really marriage. What’s more, as Christians we understand that the great mystery of marriage can never be captured between a relationship of Christ and Christ or church and church.

4. Allowing for the legalization of gay marriage further normalizes what was until very recently, and still should be, considered deviant behavior. While it’s true that politics is downstream from culture, it’s also true that law is one of the tributaries contributing to culture. In our age of hyper-tolerance we try to avoid stigmas, but stigmas can be an expression of common grace. Who knows how many stupid sinful things I’ve been kept from doing because I knew my peers and my community would deem it shameful. Our cultural elites may never consider homosexuality shameful, but amendments that define marriage as one man and one woman serve a noble end by defining what is as what ought to be. We do not help each other in the fight for holiness when we allow for righteousness to look increasingly strange and sin to look increasingly normal.

5. We are naive if we think a laissez faire compromise would be enjoyed by all if only the conservative Christians would stop being so dogmatic. The next step after giving up the marriage fight is not a happy millennium of everyone everywhere doing marriage in his own way. The step after surrender is conquest. I’m not suggesting heterosexuals would no longer be able to get married. What I am suggesting is that the cultural pressure will not stop with allowing for some “marriages” to be homosexual. It will keep mounting until allaccept and finally celebrate that homosexuality is one of Diversity’s great gifts. The goal is not for different expressions of marriage, but for the elimination of definitions altogether. Capitulating on gay marriage may feel like giving up an inch in bad law to gain a mile in good will. But the reality will be far different. For as in all of the devil’s bargains, the good will doesn’t last nearly so long as the law.

Liberal lawmakers in cahoots with homosexual activists and the Obama Administration will not rest until they’ve perverted every significant cultural institution in ways that will hasten America’s decline.

Pro-homosexual “agents of change” masquerading as “educators” have usurped government schools through curricula and deceitful anti-bullying programs. Pro-homosexual activists have set in motion radical changes in the military through the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And now pro-homosexual activists are going after marriage through the oxymoronically titled “Respect for Marriage Act” (ROMA), which, if passed, would overturn the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA).

ROMA embodies absolute ignorance of and disrespect for marriage, and lawmakers who support it expose their own ignorance of and disrespect for marriage.

On November 10th, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance ROMA (S. 598) to the full Senate. Illinois’ senior U.S. Senator, Dick Durbin, is a co-sponsor of this anti-marriage legislation. In the U.S. Senate, however, Democrats are expected to have a more difficult task mustering the votes to overcome an expected Republican filibuster.  Illinois’ junior U.S. Senator, Mark Kirk, will be a critical vote in maintaining a filibuster. Serious questions about Kirk’s commitment to conservative values continue to abound. The ROMA vote will be a key opportunity for Kirk to reassure Illinois conservatives that he stands squarely for natural marriage.

The assault on marriage is virtually relentless. Currently, there are no fewer than 11 challenges to the federal marriage law in the U.S. court system, and now liberals in the U.S. Senate are seeking the repeal of DOMA in order to compel the federal government to recognize same-sex “marriage.”

Furthermore, if DOMA is repealed, all 50 states would have to recognize homosexual “marriages” from other states, essentially making this counterfeit form of marriage the law of the land.

Despite what homosexual activists and foolish legislators claim, marriage is not solely a private institution concerned with the subjective feelings of those seeking to marry. Marriage — as a government-recognized institution — is a public institution that affects the public good. Government does not create marriage. It merely recognizes a type of relationship that exists and serves the public good. That type of relationship is a sexually complementary relationship between one man and one woman that may result in children. It would be no more legitimate for the government to jettison the criterion of sexual complementarity than it would be for the government to jettison the criterion of numbers of partners by legalizing plural marriage.

The cowardice and ignorance of conservative Americans, including our lawmakers, on virtually every issue related to homosexuality have facilitated the usurpation of public education and the military for the pernicious purpose of normalizing homosexuality. And these successes have emboldened an already arrogant homosexual movement that has turned its anarchic efforts toward radically redefining marriage. With a Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate, their chances for success are better than they’ve ever been.

Let’s hope and pray that there are enough conservatives with wisdom and spines of steel to prevent homosexual activists and their ideological allies from winning another corrosive victory, this time in the U.S. Senate.

Take ACTION:  Contact Senator Kirk’s office to urge him to to support DOMA and oppose any effort to repeal it.  You can also call his D.C. office at:  (202) 224-2854.

In the past few months, we have seen the LGBTQ lobby working overtime. With the passage of the “civil unions” bill and the consequent assault on the religious liberties of child welfare organizations here in Illinois and the recent legalization of homosexual so-called “marriage” in New York, their agenda is quickly moving to the forefront of the political landscape nationwide.

Yesterday, President Barack Obama issued his support for The Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law that defines natural marriage as the union of one man and one woman. White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Obama “is proud” to support this federal legislation (S. 598 and H.R. 1116)

The bill is co-sponsored by Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and 26 other senators. In the U.S. House, it currently has 119 co-sponsors, including U.S. Representatives Danny Davis (D-Chicago), Louis Gutierrez(D-Chicago), Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Chicago), Mike Quigley (D-Chicago) and openly gay U.S. Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Barney Frank (D-MA) and Jared Polis (D-CO).

This is a monumental show of support for a radical anti-family political agenda by a sitting president that has far reaching consequences. IFI’sLaurie Higgins points out:

Homosexuals are fighting tenaciously to repeal DOMA because they do not want conservative Americans anywhere in the country to have a voice in what types of relationships are recognized by the government as marital relationships. Homosexuals and their ideological allies want to impose their non-factual ontological and moral assumptions on every state regardless of the will of the majority of citizens.

Sponsorship and support for the repeal of DOMA represents either profound ignorance about the nature and morality of homosexuality; the nature of marriage; and the public purposes of marriage, or indefensible cowardice.

Take ACTION: Contact President Obama and to Congress to urge them to defend DOMA, natural marriage and family from the attacks of the far left.

Background
This morning, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held the first congressional hearing on proposals to repeal DOMA. In response to this hearing, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made the following comments:

The Defense of Marriage Act reflects recognition of the uniquely important role that marriage between a man and a woman plays for society, in encouraging the reproduction of the human race and the joint nurture of children by the mother and father who produce them.

DOMA has stood the test of time, being upheld as constitutional by several courts and successfully ensuring that federal law reflects our national consensus on marriage and that states will not have a radical redefinition of marriage forced upon them by other states.

In every one of the thirty-one states in which the definition of marriage has appeared on the ballot, voters have upheld the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. A national survey released last May showed that 62 percent of Americans agree that ‘marriage should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman.’ All of these facts show that there remains a strong national consensus in favor of defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

For more information on the Defense of Marriage Act, read Family Research Council’s pamphlet on the law HERE.

Mainstream media reports would have you believe that America is trending more in favor of same-sex “marriage.” Homosexual activists and their allies in the media and in Hollywood have been working overtime to promote their social agenda, leading many to believe that homosexual so-called “marriage” is inevitable.

But new, comprehensive, scientific polling coupled with analyses of marriage amendment voting patterns show that a vast majority of Americans still believe in the traditional definition of marriage.

The survey found that 62 percent of Americans believe marriage is only between one man and one woman, with 53 percent strongly agreeing with that statement.

“These numbers are not surprising,” said Public Opinion Strategies partner, and the survey’s director, Gene Ulm. “More than 63 million Americans in 31 state elections have voted on constitutional marriage amendments. Forty million Americans in all — 63 percent of total voters — have voted to affirm marriage as a union between a man and a woman.”

Sixty-three percent of voters in the nation have already voted in favor of traditional marriage. And if you add in the fact that the voters of Maine repealed a homosexual “marriage” law passed by its state legislature in 2009, the number of Americans that reject the redefinition of marriage increases. Regardless of what the gay-friendly media wants you to believe, those voters have made their decision — and it recognizes the truth of God’s institution of marriage!

The survey was sponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund and completed by the nationally known public opinion research firm Public Opinion Strategies between May 16th and May 19th of this year. Public Opinion Strategies is a nationwide firm that has provided polling for Fortune 100 companies, 80 representatives, 19 senators, six governors, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR.

According to ADF, the poll’s sponsor, “The survey was part of a broad and comprehensive effort examining American attitudes toward marriage. In addition to the national survey, the effort included 14 focus groups completed across the country.”

IFI’s school issues director, Laurie Higgins, says that,

Public opposition to both civil unions and the oxymoronically named “same-sex marriage’ would be even greater if Americans had not been exposed to relentless homosexuality-normalizing messages through our entertainment media and public schools for decades. Fallacious analogies (e.g. that homosexuality is equivalent to race or skin color), ad hominem epithets, and sentimental emotional appeals from homosexual activists and their accomplices have supplanted sound reasoning. A public increasingly uninterested in intellectual discourse and complacent about censorship in public schools are succumbing to propaganda.

Same-sex “marriage” advocates and their allies in the national media and government are not going to give up their relentless assault on marriage. Here in Illinois a lame duck session of the Illinois General Assembly passed “civil unions” — a counterfeit version of marriage. Homosexual advocates continue to push their radical political agenda through non-discrimination policies in state government, policies that are unnecessary, violate the Constitutional principle of equal protection of the law, and threaten religious liberty.

This report should be a bit of a shot in the arm for all of us and remind us that we cannot be deceived by media reports that led some to believe that the marriage issue is lost. Indeed, we are the majority on this important, society-defining issue.

David E. Smith, Executive Director of the Illinois Family Institute, denounces the enactment of “civil unions” by a lame duck session of the Illinois General Assembly which is already affecting the civil rights of others, specifically people of faith opposed to homosexuality. 

For the first time in Illinois’ history, on June 1, 2011, 2 men or 2 women will be able to unite in a “civil union” and be officially recognized by the State of Illinois. “Civil Unions” are, in reality, same-sex marriages. Thirty or more homosexual couples will converge on Grant Park in celebration on June 2nd. 

“What is happening here in Illinois is a tragic attempt by radical forces to advance a political agenda by using the authority of the government to validate wrong and unhealthy relationships,” said Smith. “Unfortunately, this social experiment will have a ripple effect on our culture that will touch every American and, most tragically, our children:

• Homosexuality will be taught as normal behavior to children in schools; 
• Political lawsuits and administrative actions will be used to intimidate, silence, and coerce individuals and organizations that object to special legislation for those who self-identify as homosexuality; 
• Disrespect for real marriage will grow as politicians embrace the “civil unions” compromise, and straight couples will exploit these laws as a substitute for marriage.

At a time when our state government and nation should be upholding natural marriage as the ideal and healthiest environment for raising children, it is a travesty that our elected officials chose instead to create a marriage-like institution that legally redefines the very meanings of “spouse” and “family.” 

“The government has no reason to provide affirmation or benefits to relationships that do not serve the public good; and relationships based on same-sex attraction and volitional homosexual acts do not per se serve the public good. Lawmakers should be looking at ways to strengthen the natural family, not undermine it.

“The state of Illinois has a compelling interest to recognize, protect and promote the God-ordained institution of marriage through legal benefits, as it is the best environment to raise the next generation,” said Smith. “The state has no compelling interest in legally recognizing homosexual relationships.” 

For more information, contact Illinois Family Institute at 708-781-9328

A week ago, the Chicago Tribune celebrated — again — the passage of the civil union bill as well as Obama’s decision to order the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

On Feb. 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that President Barack Obama has divined that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional and has ordered the Justice Department (DOJ) to cease defending it. President Obama ordered the DOJ to stop defending DOMA in court even though the DOJ is specifically charged with the responsibility of defending federal laws.

However did DOMA’s unconstitutionality escape the notice of the 85 senators and 342 representatives who voted for it in 1996? And however did its unconstitutionality escape the notice of the man who signed it into law: President Bill Clinton, attorney and Rhodes Scholar?

The intellectual vacuity of the Tribune’s position is best illustrated in the claim that “the sky didn’t fall” following the passage of the civil union bill. What they mean is that Illinois has seen no cultural cataclysm since the bill was signed into law. The Tribune? wins this sophistical skirmish: I will concede that the bill that was signed into law six weeks ago and doesn’t take effect until June has not resulted in climatic catastrophe.

It has, however, darkened the sky for Jim Walder, a bed and breakfast owner in Paxton, Illinois who is being sued by a homosexual couple for not renting his facility to them for their civil union and reception. (Read more about this HERE.) And it seriously threatens the religious liberty of Christian organizations that seek to live out the tenets of their faith. (Read more about this HERE.)

But most of the cultural damage will not be seen for years to come. Any thinking person understands that cultural change rarely happens instantaneously. For example, Stanley Kurtz has documented the destructive impact same-sex “marriage” has had on heterosexual marriage in Scandinavia — changes that did not appear in a period of weeks or even months.

The Tribune editorial board continues its assault on marriage without ever feeling the need to address the fundamental and fundamentally flawed analogy upon which the entire homosexuality-affirming movement, including the effort to radically transform marriage and family, is built. The entire house of cards is built on a specious comparison of race to homosexuality, and yet, I cannot recall reading a single editorial defending with evidence the ways in which race and homosexuality are ontologically analogous or equivalent.

I also can’t recall the Tribune editorial board wrestling intellectually with the fundamental question that Princeton Law Professor Robert George recently debated with homosexual journalist Kenji Yoshino, which is: What is marriage?

As you may already know, President Barack Obama has directed the U.S. Department of Justice to no longer defend one of the most important laws of our nation — the federal Defense of Marriage Act (known as DOMA). This decision changes the legal climate significantly in the ongoing efforts to defend natural marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

More than 40 states, including Illinois, have passed their own state DOMAs! And a majority of voters in 31 states have voted to protect the definition of natural marriage at the ballot box. So why won’t the President and the Department of Justice uphold the law and the will of the people?

Take ACTION:  Contact your U.S. Representative. Encourage him/her to use the Congressional tools at their disposal to intervene in defending the longstanding Defense of Marriage Act.

Please also contact U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) directly, at 202-225-6205 to urge him to quickly appoint internal counsel to defend DOMA in these federal lawsuits.

Currently there are several lawsuits challenging DOMA. Three of those cases (in NY, CT, CA) have deadlines coming early next month. If there is no one from the government who will defend DOMA, it makes it much easier for those who want to redefine God’s institution of marriage to have free rein in those lawsuits.

Background

Passed in 1996 by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, DOMA defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman in federal law. The law also protects states — like Illinois — from being required to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

While President Obama has the legal authority to make a decision to not defend laws he regards as unconstitutional, this decision is unconscionable and indefensible. Since President Obama took office, his Department of Justice has only halfheartedly offered a defense of DOMA and marriage in the courts, setting aside proven legal arguments for weaker, often nonsensical points.

Fortunately, the U.S. Congress can intervene in the federal DOMA cases. That means the ball is now in Speaker of the House John Boehner’s court. Speaker Boehner could instruct the House of Representative’s legal counsel to defend DOMA, or the members of the House can vote to defend it.

Now is the time for the newly elected Congress to reinforce their commitment to foundational principles like marriage. The 2010 election was all about having a more responsive and accountable government to the people. The great majority of American citizens do not want marriage redefined.

Take time now to let your U.S. Representative know you want Congress to defend DOMA, even if President Obama will not. They need to hear from you right away that protecting marriage matters.

Read more…

Obama Abandons DOMA (IFI PSA)

If marriage is lost, we lose everything (Don Feder in WorldNetDaily)

Senate Dem to Introduce Repeal of “Defense of Marriage Act” (Fox News Blog)

No more defense (World Magazine)

Chicago Tribune reporter Rex Huppke recently wrote an article titled “Marriage benefits costly for gay couples” in which he addresses the economic costs for gay partners to legally protect their relationships. The article failed to address the underlying issue in this debate: the public purpose of marriage.

Marriage is not a relationship that society created in order to give some people benefits and deny them to others. Marriage is the institution that societies worldwide have recognized and encouraged because this unique relationship between a man and a woman provides particular benefits to society, chief among them, the procreation and nurturing of the next generation.

If marriage were centrally or solely about affirming love between individuals, the government would have no reason to be involved in the business of sanctioning marriage. Government sanctions the type of relationship into which children may be born and raised because the government recognizes that that institution which best serves the needs and rights of children is the institution that best serves a healthy society.

Of all the criteria that define marriage — number of partners, blood kinship, minimum age, and sexual complementarity — the one that has been historically and cross-culturally the most fixed is sexual complementarity.

The social science is clear and irrefutable: children do best in stable, healthy homes with both a mom and dad. The government acts in the interest of children and society when it protects the institution of marriage through legal benefits.