The results of a new national poll won’t likely appear in your local newspaper or mainstream media outlets.   Even though the Associated Press conducted the poll, their results don’t fit the media’s narrative and celebration of the U.S. Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage.

The new poll finds that support for same-sex marriage has dropped nine points since April to 34 percent, while opposition is up four points to 34 percent.  America is split right down the middle on this matter. More Americans oppose the Supreme Court’s ruling than support it (41 percent – 39 percent).

Just as important are the results finding that Americans do not think “gay rights” should overrule religious liberty.  Only 39 percent believe that businesses should be forced to provide wedding services despite religious objections.  By a wide 20-point margin, 59 percent of Americans believe that wedding related businesses should be allowed to say “no” to requests from homosexual couples.

Here’s one that Hoosier politicians should take note of as well. When such conflicts arise, 56 percent of Americans believe that the government should protect religious liberty rights over the desires of homosexuals.  So much for the RFRA “fix” rushed through the Indiana legislature and signed by the Governor implying just the opposite!

Written by Dr. Frank Newport

The two major decisions recently handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court have very direct relationships to public opinion. One of the decisions fits well with majority public opinion. The other, in a broad sense, does not. The first corresponds to public opinion that has shifted significantly over the past several years, while the second relates to public opinion that has been more fixed. One of these is an issue that has very much been tethered to or anchored by Americans’ underlying religious beliefs; the other is a purely secular issue unrelated to the usual concerns based on religion. But it is the religiously tethered attitude that has seen the biggest change and that ends up more in line with the U.S. Supreme Court decision, while the secular attitude has remained unchanged and is more out of sync with the court’s ruling.

The first of these two major SCOTUS decisions, of course, is the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that in essence legalized same-sex marriage across the country. The second — albeit basically a ruling on a technicality — is the King v. Burwell decision that validated the continuation of the Affordable Care Act.

Obergefell falls in line with majority public opinion in the U.S. Americans’ attitudes toward legalizing same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically in recent years, as has been well-documented, with six in 10 in our latest Gallup reading (before the decision) in favor.

This dramatic change in attitudes has occurred despite the fact that the issue of same-sex marriage is one of a cluster of family and reproduction issues that traditionally are strongly connected to religious doctrine, and highly correlated with an individual’s religiosity. Given that religious beliefs are tethered to fundamental beliefs in a Supreme Being and in overall worldviews, one would thus hypothesize that religiously connected attitudes have a very fundamental anchor that would be resistant to change.

But that hasn’t been the case. In fact, attitudes concerning a list of moral behaviors and values traditionally linked to religious doctrines — including same-sex marriage — have shifted quite substantially in recent years, all toward acceptance of what may previously have been more negatively sanctioned behaviors. There are still marked religious differences in tolerance for these types of behaviors, but the shifts have occurred among segments that are both highly religious and not so religious. In short, attitudes connected to the type of family and reproduction issues most highly related to most religions’ normative structures have been the most labile.

We’ve seen relatively little change in terms of attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act, albeit over its fairly short existence and the brief period in which we have measured it. Less than half of Americans said that they approved of the Affordable Care Act in our latest measure, before the SCOTUS decision (we are updating this measure now). And there has been no rapid or significant change in those attitudes in recent years as the provisions of the healthcare law have become operational.

These attitudes about Obamacare are thus the ones that appear to be connected to an underlying anchor or foundation, certainly more so than is the case with same-sex marriage. (While attitudes about the Affordable Care Act are correlated with religiosity, I think that’s more of an artifact of the relationship between religion and politics than it is a representation of religiously driven attitudes.)

If it’s not religion, what is that anchor? One answer to that question is Americans’ fundamental attitudes toward government. It’s quite likely that the healthcare law has become symbolic of the role of government in people’s lives, and that in turn appears to be a very strong and apparently stable base issue in Americans’ minds.

Check out this trend on a core Gallup question asking Americans about their views of the role of government in Americans’ lives:

This trend graph does not show the same type of progressive change seen in moral attitudes since the mid-1990s. The one strong shift in the period immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks quickly dissipated, as attitudes fell back into the accustomed pattern shortly thereafter. If Obamacare is bound up with these fundamental underlying attitudes that are relatively stable and fixed, even though secular in nature, that could help explain why views toward Obamacare are not moving a lot. Government and its role in society, in other words, may be the type of bedrock or fundamental underlying attitude we traditionally associate with religion, while moral issues appear much more likely to be built on “shifting sand.”

There has been a good deal of discussion as to how the presidential candidates — particularly Republican candidates — will handle a changing environment in which their positions on moral issues and values are less mainstream than they were even just a few years ago. Many of the candidates will no doubt back off from a heavy focus on these issues, taking account of public opinion, unless they assume that the quickness with which attitudes changed in one direction means they could change back in the other just as fast — an unlikely possibility.

But a campaign focus on the Affordable Care Act is another matter. Unlike same-sex marriage, the healthcare law does not enjoy majority public opinion (unless that changes in new, post-decision measures). And the lack of a major shift in attitudes toward Obamacare or toward the underlying issue of the role of government in Americans’ lives suggests that these attitudes are strongly held.

Some commentators have assumed that expansion of the role of government is the simple and logical next step in the evolution of American society. Others still view government expansion as a strong evil. But if conservatives have the equivalent of a religious underpinning to their opposition to big government — and if liberals have just as strong an underpinning to their support for big government — then the debate has the potential to become a powerfully important fulcrum on which the election could turn.

If candidates on the left are going to focus on their conviction that the role of government needs to be expanded — say, in terms of intervening in the economic system to reduce inequality or create jobs by increased focus on infrastructure — they are going to have to try to understand why this provokes such a strong reaction from those who are more in the center or on the right. Similarly, if Republican candidates are going to focus on a call for reducing the role of government in Americans’ lives, they are going to have to try to understand why this is so strongly unacceptable to those more in the center or on the left.

I’ve pointed out before how these attitudes about government are two-pronged, involving both philosophic and practical concerns. Candidates are going to have to deal with both. The role of government — along with the usual suspects of the economy and international relations — could be the major playing field on which the coming election is played out. Moral issues and values may be less so.

Frank Newport, Ph.D., is Gallup’s Editor-in-Chief. He is the author of Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People and God Is Alive and Well.

This article was originally posted at the Gallup.com website.

One day after the [Obergerfell v. Hodges] ruling, I received a press release from Pro-Polygamy.com  one of the largest Polygamy groups east of the Mississippi, located in Maine.  Their slogan is “Polygamy: The Next Civil Rights Battle.”   Last Sunday they followed up with another release of an editorial.   Both items complain, “all that Kennedy declared about the importance of marriage to those who choose same sex marriage (SSM) equally applies to others who choose unrelated consenting adult polygamy (UCAP).”

Mark Henkle of Pro-Polygamy states, “for UCAPs, only one obstacle to freedom remains to be overcome – the outstanding bigotry of big government still unconstitutionally mandating an arbitrary determinant of “two-person unions” for the definition of marriage. After that, polygamy will be included.”

Numerous commentators, and even Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, have also noted that the SCOTUS ruling contains no logical basis for prohibiting polygamy or practically any other limit on marriage. This supports the comment in my media statement that, “if marriage can mean anything, it ultimately means nothing. When marriage loses its meaning, society and children suffer.  When children suffer, government expands. When government expands, liberty contracts.”

By the way, homosexuals, bisexuals, polygamists, the polyamorous, are not the only ones looking for societal approval based upon sexual orientation.  This article on the blog of former U.S. Congressman Allen West referencing a more detailed and disturbing article from the Northern Colorado Gazette says there is a quietly growing group of “experts” claiming that pedophilia is a sexual orientation worthy of special rights and recognition.

One such group is the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. The IASHS lists, on its website, a list of “basic sexual rights” that includes “the right to engage in sexual acts or activities of any kind whatsoever, providing they do not involve nonconsensual acts, violence, constraint, coercion or fraud.” Another right is to, “be free of persecution, condemnation, discrimination, or societal intervention in private sexual behavior” and “the freedom of any sexual thought, fantasy or desire.” The organization also says that no one should be “disadvantaged because of age.”

For all practical purposes, the tax-funded sex education/abortion giant, Planned Parenthood, has made similar statements in defense of their school programs for years.

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The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will soon issue a ruling on same-sex “marriage.” In the video below, Princeton University Professor Robert P. George tells IFI that  Christians should be in prayer about the Justices’ decision:

“Prayer is the most powerful weapon we have.”

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to visit The Defend Marriage Pledge website. Add your name to send a clear message to the justices of the SCOTUS, asking them to uphold God’s biblical plan for marriage and to uphold the choice of the American people.

It is vital for people of faith to let the justices know that millions of American voters stand united in defense of biblical marriage: one man and one woman.  We cannot remain silent when our government officials mandate policies that conflict with God’s design of marriage.

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A conservative legal organization is calling for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse herself from deciding the marriage case now before the court.

“A judge should avoid the appearance of impropriety as much as possible,” says Roger Gannam, senior counsel with Liberty Counsel.

Ginsburg, a far-left justice, had conducted five same-sex marriage ceremonies before the high court heard the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges in April. A ruling is coming in June.

More recently, Ginsburg presided over the so-called marriage of two men in Washington, D.C., reportedly emphasizing the word “Constitution” in the ceremony to the delight of  ttendees.

Gannam complains that Ginsburg is an “activist” for same-sex marriage rather than an impartial justice while the Supreme Court, he points out, is weighing the future legal definition of marriage in the United States.

He also points to statements Ginsburg made last February to the press on the subject.

“She basically said she thinks America is ready for same-sex marriage,” says the attorney, “and what she doesn’t seem to understand, or at least respect, is that it’s not the job – it’s not the role of the U.S. Supreme Court – to decide what America is ready for.”

OneNewsNow reported last September that Ginsburg praised the “genius of the Constitution” for allowing her to preside over her first homosexual ceremony in 2013.

That praise apparently only goes so far. A year before that ceremony, Ginsburg told Egyptian legal scholars that they should pattern that country’s constitution on others around the world, not the one in the United States she would later describe as “genius.”

When an influential political leader states that, when it comes to abortion, our “Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed”; when a New York Times columnist tells us we need to remove homosexual practice from our “sin list”; when the Solicitor General tells the U.S. Supreme Court that, potentially, religious schools could lose their tax exemption if they refuse to redefine marriage – when statements like this are being made on a regular basis, don’t tell me I’m overreacting when I sound the alarm.

Recently, after I posted yet another “wake up” call online, a woman accused me of “fear mongering” and called me “Chicken Little” on my Twitter feed.

Ironically, she claimed to be a truth-based realist in her bio, yet it seems that her personal, anti-Christian biases had robbed her of her ability to think clearly, since it is anything but fear mongering to tell American believers that we had better come to grips with the most aggressive assault on our faith in our nation’s history.

I’ve often pointed out that, 10 years ago, when I began to say that, whereas gay activists came out of the closet in the late 1960s, they now want to put us in the closet, I was greeted with mockery and derision. “No one wants to put you in the closet!”

A few years ago, I noticed a change in sentiment, with people now saying, “Bigots like you belong in the closet!”

Now, with the U.S. Supreme Court potentially poised to make same-sex “marriage” the law of the land (this is not a foregone conclusion but could well happen), believers are still saying, “What’s the big deal? How does this affect me?”

How can so many of us be so self-centered and blind?

Cultural commentators like John Zmirak have recently posted articles with provocative titles like, “Gay Totalitarianism and the Coming Persecution of Christians,” with subtitles declaring, “Hatred of the Gospel is boiling over into the vilification of Christians. State violence won’t be far behind, history teaches.”

Another Zmirak article proclaims, “If the Supreme Court Imposes Same Sex Marriage, You Could Lose Your Church,” noting that “Obama’s Solicitor General admits that the feds will treat orthodox Christians like racists.”

A few weeks ago, I posed the question, “Could Biblical Preaching Be Outlawed in America?” Not a few of those responding to the article answered, “Yes!”

After all, if our religious liberties could be eroded so dramatically in a matter of years, who can predict what’s coming next – unless we wake up and start doing what is right today.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote that, “The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”

What kind of world are we leaving to our children?

When our kids or grandchildren ask us one day, “What were you doing when they changed America?”, how we will respond?

Thankfully, there is still time for us to turn the cultural tide, and there are many leaders and individual believers who have refused to capitulate or throw in the towel.

But there are many more who are still slumbering blissfully in the midst of the storm, content with their cozy, non-offensive gospel churches and their meaningless, “Who am I to judge?” mantras.

That’s why I raise my voice as often as possible, seeking to arouse my fellow Americans from their slumber, urging them to see that an anti-Christian tsunami is already flooding the country.

The good news is that, sooner or later, they will recognize I (and others) have been telling the truth without exaggerating or overreacting. The bad news is that by then it could be too late.

This article was originally posted at the Townhall.com website.

This is a collection of random thoughts on the U.S. Supreme Court’s hearings on whether to deconstruct marriage and refashion it in accordance with the desires of homosexuals.

Some of my thoughts are in response to comments made by U.S. Supreme Court Justices, some are in response to comments made by the attorneys arguing for the deconstruction of marriage, and some are in response to commentary floating about the Internet. Following my random thoughts is a short list of questions that I wish SCOTUS had asked.

Thoughts

The Left says two men or two women who are raising children should be able to marry. Such a claim suggests that it is the presence of children that renders the relationship between their caretakers a marriage. Clearly, however, there are many adults who are raising children whose relationships do not constitute a marital-type of relationship. Few people are currently arguing, for example, that two brothers who love each other, express that love erotically, and are raising children together should be able to legally marry.

Law professor Ilya Somin writing for the Volokh Conspiracy blog  dismisses the ontological differences between men and women that homosexuals themselves affirm:

In addition to discriminating on their face, laws banning same-sex marriage are also in part based on sweeping (and often empirically dubious) generalizations about the abilities and social roles of men and women….

When homosexual men and women assert that they are erotically and romantically attracted only to members of their own sex, they are acknowledging that men and women are substantively and significantly different and that those differences are not merely anatomical. Is it so irrational then to argue that these substantive differences inform parenting?

Chief Justice John Roberts asked a pointed question that reflects the “sex discrimination theory” endorsed by Professor Somin:

[I]f Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue can marry him and Tom can’t. And the difference is based upon their different sex. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?

This theory errs in that it presumes what it has not proved, which is that the sex of marriage partners is irrelevant to marriage. It simply presumes that sexual complementarity is not an essential constituent feature of marriage. It would be like saying, “12-year-old Sue loves 30-year-old Joe, and 27-year-old Ann loves 30-year-old Joe. Ann can marry Joe, and Sue can’t. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of age discrimination?”

It isn’t a straightforward question of age discrimination because in the case of the unique institution of marriage, the age of partners is integral.

Similarly, in the case of the unique institution of marriage, sexual differentiation is integral. Without it, a union ceases to be, in reality, marital.

Somin and many other marriage deconstruction advocates appeal to laws banning interracial marriages as apt analogies. But laws banning interracial marriages were wrong for the same reason laws permitting same-sex “marriages” are wrong: Both depend on wrong assumptions about the intrinsic nature of marriage. If marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation, then marriage laws that recognize that ontological nature do not reflect invidious discrimination.

Moreover, anti-miscegenation laws, like marriage-deconstruction laws, embodied other serious ontological errors. Laws banning interracial marriage wrongly assumed that blacks and whites have different natures, while laws permitting same-sex “marriage” wrongly assume that men and women have identical natures.

Meanwhile a twittering tweeter over on SCOTUSblog.com seemed inordinately impressed with this statement from Mary Bonauto, one of the attorney’s arguing for marriage deconstruction:

In terms of the question of who decides, it’s not about the court versus the states. It’s about the individual making the choice to marry and with whom to marry, or the government.

Seriously, an attorney is arguing that every individual should be able to decide what the government should recognize as a marriage. If that’s the case, then current marriage criteria regarding blood kinship and numbers of partners need to be jettisoned as well.

Justice Anthony Kennedy oddly views the role of both the legislative and judicial branches of government as dignity-dispensing. Here’s yet another remarkable Kennedy statement:

I thought [dignity-bestowing] was the whole purpose of marriage.  It bestows dignity on both man and woman in a traditional marriage.  It’s dignity-bestowing, and these parties say they want to have that, that same ennoblement.

The whole purpose of marriage is to bestow dignity on sexually differentiated marital unions? Many Americans thought the inclusion of sexual differentiation in the legal definition of marriage was a recognition of the intrinsic nature of marriage and served to tie mothers and fathers to each other and to any children that may result from their sexual union, which in turn serves to protect the inherent needs and rights of children, which in turn serves the public good. The bestowal of dignity is decidedly not the “whole purpose of” the legal recognition of what marriage is, though it may be a beneficial consequence. In Kennedy’s alternate universe, which other relationship configurations merit the bestowal of dignity through access to legal marriage?  Incestuous unions? Incestuous homosexual unions? Polyamorous unions?

Even “dignity-bestowing” is largely a thing of the past. Large swaths of the population think no more of legal marriage than they do of co-habitation. But even prior to the “sexual revolution” that is responsible in large measure for the low regard with which the public holds marriage, the whole purpose of marriage never was solely or centrally to “bestow dignity” and “ennoblement” on man-woman unions.

Kennedy waxed foolish again:

Same-sex couples say…We know we can’t procreate, but we want the other attributes of it in order to show that we, too, have a dignity that can be fulfilled.

First, the government is involved in marriage precisely because the sexual union of one man and one woman is the type of union that naturally produces children. This is not to say that the government has any interest in ascertaining fertility or compelling procreation. But it is to say that if humans did not procreate through heterosexual intercourse, the government would have zero interest in recognizing and regulating marriage. If humans reproduced asexually, there would be no more reason for the government to be involved with marriage than there is for the government to be involved with recognizing and regulating platonic friendships.

Second, Kennedy inadvertently gets to the heart of the mission of homosexuals to reinvent marriage in their own image when he says that they want “the other attributes of marriage” in the hope that the dignity imputed to marriage will be imputed to their unions. But the dignity that inheres marriage derives from its nature—not the word “marriage” or the license. Nonetheless,  homosexuals seek to obliterate in law and the public consciousness all ontological distinctions between heterosexual marriage and homoerotic non-marriage.

Questions I wish the Supreme Court had asked:

What is marriage?

Does marriage have a nature that the government merely recognizes and regulates, or is it wholly a social construction with no intrinsic features?

If it has a nature, what are its essential, intrinsic features without which marriage ceases to be marriage?

Why should the criterion regarding sexual differentiation be jettisoned from the legal definition but the criterion regarding numbers of partners be retained?

What is the government’s interest in marriage?

Why does the government not recognize or regulate the union of those in platonic friendships as marriages?

What constitutes homosexuality?

Should those who experience other conditions similarly constituted be allowed to redefine marriage in accordance with their desires?

Let’s pray that wisdom informs SCOTUS’ ultimate decision in June.

The Illinois Family Institute is completely dependent on the voluntary contributions of individuals just like you.  Without you, we would be unable to fight the radical agenda being pushed by the godless Left.

To make a credit card donation over the phone, call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.

Much metaphorical ink has been spilt over the un-American assault on the religious liberty of elderly Washington florist Barronelle Stutzman, who has withstood withering personal attacks and repressive government action with grace, courage, and steadfastness.

I’m reluctant to beat dead horses, but this ain’t a horse and it ain’t dead. It’s a donkey and it’s alive and kicking. Or maybe it’s a Dolos—the mythical Greek spirit of deception. Either way, it’s kicking the heck out of Barronelle Stutzman.

Despite what the mainstream press and homosexual activists claim, Ms. Stutzman did not refuse to serve homosexuals. In fact, she serves not only homosexuals in general but the specific homosexual man who sought her services for his faux-wedding.

Further, Ms. Stutzman serves all manner of sinners and serves only sinners because there exists no other kind of humans.

Ms. Stutzman refused to use her gifts and labor to produce a product that she has never produced before and which would be used for a celebration of that which Jesus says does not exist and which God condemns.

A homosexual union is ontologically different from a heterosexual marriage. A homosexual union is as different from a heterosexual union as men are from women. A homosexual union is, in reality, the anti-thesis of a marriage between a man and a woman.

Marriage has a nature—an ontology—which neither society nor the government that represents it creates. As the Left likes to point out, throughout history, marriage conventions and legal regulations have changed. But what the Left doesn’t like to point out is that throughout these tinkerings, one constant has remained: Marriage was recognized as a sexually differentiated union.

If marriage is something, if it has a nature that predates government, then government can jettison only so many constituent features from the legal definition of marriage before it becomes a meaningless, nonsensical, or empty legal definition with no relation to reality.

Virtually everyone, including liberals, believes marriage has a nature. Liberals would reject the fanciful notion that lawmakers create marriage out of whole cloth. For example, liberals argue that marriage is the union of two unrelated people who experience erotic/romantic (concept) love. They would disagree if someone were to argue that marriage is the union of three brothers who experience “storge” love or five friends who experience “philia” love. Liberals believe that the type of love family members or five good buddies feel for each other is not marital love.

In other words, liberals argue that marriage has a nature central to which is romantic/erotic love (as opposed to agape, philia, or storge love) and without which a union is not a marriage. Therefore, liberals implicitly argue that marriage has a nature which government recognizes and regulates but does not create.

Similarly, conservatives argue that marriage has a nature that governments don’t create. Conservatives believe that the central constituent feature of marriage is sexual differentiation, without which a union is not in reality a marriage.

It is no more hateful to argue that marriage is by nature a sexually differentiated union than it is to argue that marriage is by nature a union constituted by romantic/erotic love rather than storge love. And it is no more hateful to define marriage as a biologically complementary union than it is to define it as binary, which necessarily excludes polyamorists.

Barronelle Stutzman was not asked by a homosexual couple to create and sell a product to them that she creates and sells to other couples. She was asked to create and sell something she had never created or sold to anyone: an anti-wedding floral arrangement.

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The Family Research Council released a new WPA Opinion Research poll showing that 61 percent of Americans agree that “states and citizens should remain free to uphold marriage as the union of a man and a woman and the U.S. Supreme Court should not force all 50 states to redefine marriage.” The survey also found that 53 percent of Americans agree that marriage should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman.

An overwhelming majority (81 percent) of Americans agree that government should “leave people free to follow their beliefs about marriage as they live their daily lives at work and in the way they run their businesses.” The survey was released only days after Aaron and Melissa Klein, former owners of Sweet Cakes in Gresham, Oregon, were told by the state of Oregon that they face fines of up to $150,000 for declining to bake a same-sex “wedding” cake. In Washington state, Barronelle Stutzman, who is a florist, is being threatened with the loss of her home, her family business, and her life savings at the hands of the state because she declined to participate in a same-sex “wedding” ceremony.  (Read more HERE.)

Written by Bill Bumpas

An author and philosopher says CNN host Chris Cuomo needs a remedial lesson in American history after suggesting that America’s laws come from man, not from a Creator.

Cuomo made the comment February 12 during a testy interview with Roy Moore, the Alabama Supreme Court justice who is defying a federal judge’s order that is allowing homosexual “marriage” to be recognized in the state.

Dr. Jay Richards, a writer, speaker and Catholic University of America research professor, suggests that Justice Moore (pictured at right) made a good counter-point during the interview by bringing up the Dred Scott case, which ruled in 1857 that slaves were not U.S. citizens.

“Which everyone now recognizes was an injustice,” Richards notes. “But how can you say a law determined by the Supreme Court was unjust unless you had a standard that transcended the laws of the land?”

That was Moore’s legal point to Cuomo, Richards explains, which is that laws, although written by men, “have to be founded ultimately on the laws of God – on the natural law that God has put into the created order.”

According to the CNN transcript, Moore asked Cuomo if he would have honored the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision or defied it on the grounds it was unconstitutional.

Cuomo refused to answer even after the justice pointed out he was dodging the question.

The interview included Cuomo suggesting that Moore, who is a Christian, is making legal decisions based on religion without allowing different views that disagree.

“Is that a fair suggestion?” Cuomo asked.

“No, that’s not a fair suggestion,” Moore replied. He then described a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Murphy v. Ramsey, in which the justices ruled that marriage and family are based on the marriage of one man and one woman in a state of matrimony. Other state courts have also agreed with that opinion, he said.

“Naturally it existed hundreds and even thousands of years before the United States even came into existence,” Moore, speaking of natural marriage, told the CNN anchor.

“Right,” Cuomo replied,” but we are a nation of laws and not just God’s law.”

Moore went on to quote the Declaration of Independence and its reference to “unalienable rights,” which are freedoms not given by man – and therefore can’t be taken away – but are entrusted to the government to defend.

“They’re unalienable because they can’t be taken away and they can’t be mandated on the state in this instance,” Moore told Cuomo.

“That’s what Christians think. That’s what the American Founders think,” Richards tells OneNewsNow. “To argue for things like human rights and human equality, you need something that stands outside of the laws of men and judges them just or unjust.”

Cuomo also suggested that “times have changed” after Alabama voters approved a constitutional amendment to ensure legal marriage is defined by the normal definition.

Moore pointed out that 81 percent of Alabama voters approved the ballot measure in 2006.

“They haven’t changed their opinion,” he replied. “The only thing that’s changed is that one federal judge has come in and tried to force upon this state something which she cannot do. Her opinion is not law.”

Originally Published at OneNewsNow.com

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay paving the way for Alabama probate judges to issue same-sex “marriage” licenses and perform the ceremonies. Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver tells OneNewsNow that Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore issued a memo to the judges instructing them not to do so because a federal court lacks jurisdiction to force them to do it.

“We fully support that,” Staver emphasizes. “We’re ready to defend any Alabama probate judge who refuses to participate – and we’re actually willing also to come against those who violate now the administrative order of the chief justice.”

Liberty Counsel is representing Nick Williams and other probate judges in Alabama who refuse to participate in same-sex marriages. “And we fully support not only the letter and the memorandum and now most recently the administrative order from the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore,” Staver adds.

Some of the probate judges are issuing the licenses, but Staver says Judge Moore is on target with his instruction forbidding them to do it – an argument the chief justice himself has made.

“This is to be applauded,” states the Liberty Counsel founder. “This may set up a clash between the federal and state system, a clash that is far overdue – because these federal judges have gone way beyond their authority assuming that they can order the rest of state authorities and officials to participate in an immoral act such as same-sex marriage.”

Staver points out that the Alabama code doesn’t require a judge of probate to perform marriage for anyone – so they can refuse if they choose. A federal judge has no jurisdiction over them.

Read Judge Moore’s order to Alabama probate judges

Many of us have wondered how long it would be before a prominent official proclaimed that rogue federal judges, like the proverbial emperor, have no clothes and thus no authority to make up laws.

That’s what Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore did this past week in a letter to Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, in which he began by asserting that “the recent ruling of Judge Callie Granade … has raised serious, legitimate concerns about the propriety of federal court jurisdiction over the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment.”

In 2006, Alabama voters approved the marriage measure by 81 percent to 19 percent. On January 23, Judge Granade, a George W. Bush appointee at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, became the latest federal judge to join the lemming brigade and leap off the Cliffs of Insanity to find a previously unknown constitutional “right” to marriages lacking a bride or a groom.

She ruled that Alabama’s clear and timeless definition violated the 14thAmendment’s guarantee of equal protection and due process. Then she issued a two-week stay of her ruling, perhaps so that Alabamans can ponder their loss of meaningful citizenship in a self-governing republic.

When the 14th Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868 to afford the nation’s freed slaves the protection of the law found in the Fifth Amendment, one can only imagine a typical discussion on the assembly floor of various statehouses, including Alabama’s:

“Tell me again why Rhett can’t marry Barney? I know that’s where the Founders were really going when they ratified the Bill of Rights in 1791. I say, it was quite clever of them to foresee using freed slaves someday as a pretext.”

In his letter, Judge Moore reminded the governor that, “As you know, nothing in the United States Constitution grants the federal government the authority to redefine the institution of marriage.”

After citing Alabama’s Constitution and court cases, Judge Moore quoted from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Murphy v. Ramsey (1885) that required Utah to prohibit legalized polygamy in order to join the union. He wrote:

“Even the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that the basic foundation of marriage and family upon which our Country rests is ‘the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.’”

Noting that “44 federal courts have imposed by judicial fiat same-sex marriages in 21 states of the Union, overturning the express will of the people in those states,” Moore went on to praise the Alabama Probate Judges Association, “which has advised probate judges to follow Alabama law in refusing to license marriages between two members of the same sex.”

Judge Moore knows a little about bucking the system. In 1995, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued to remove a wooden Ten Commandments plaque that he kept on his courtroom wall. They lost. In 2001, as Alabama’s Chief Justice, he had a large Ten Commandments monument installed in the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery. After he refused to enforce an order by a federal judge to remove the monument, he himself was removed from office in November 2003 by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. He unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006 and 2010, but was re-elected as Alabama Chief Justice in 2012.

If only for the purpose of confounding the media, which love to portray Alabama and the rest of the South as a hotbed of drooling, racist homophobes out of the film Deliverance, it would have been nice to see this kind of forthright courage coming out of a northern or western state.

After all, scenes of Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor’s men using fire hoses and nightsticks on peaceful demonstrators back in 1963 are as vivid as the latest civil rights documentary. And the movie Selma is a fresh reminder of the epic struggle to overcome resistance to integration.

Judge Moore risks being equated with Bull Connor, because that’s part of the left’s game plan of intimidation. But he’s a principled jurist who swore an oath to defend the Constitution, not to genuflect to lawless federal judges who are raining legal havoc on the nation. For all the moral-laden language they use, these emperors without clothes are hell-bent on casting aside the moral restraints that allow society to flourish.

Speaking of restraints, is anyone in authority going to suggest that Associate Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, both of whom have actually officiated at same-sex ceremonies, recuse themselves from the monumental marriage case that the Court will hear this spring?

They’ve abandoned any pretext of objectivity and are practically daring someone to call them on it.

Congressional leaders? Presidential candidates? Chief Justice John Roberts? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

This article was originally posted at the TownHall.com website.

Finally, some common sense from appellate court judges.  In a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that state laws in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman do not violate the Constitution.

What is the government’s interest in marriage?

Homosexuals assert that marriage is constituted solely by love and has no inherent connection to sexual differentiation or the children who may result from conjugal coupling. Further, homosexuals believe that it is the presence of love that not only makes a union a marriage but that justifies government involvement in it.

But is that true? Has the government ever been involved in marriage because of marriage’s inconsistent connection to love? Has the government ever had a vested interest in the subjective feelings of those who seek to marry?

Judge Jeffrey Sutton writing for the majority in the Sixth Circuit Court’s decision states that “One starts from the premise that governments got into the business of defining marriage, and remain in the business of defining marriage, not to regulate love but to regulate sex, most especially the intended and unintended effects of male-female intercourse.”

If marriage were constituted solely by love and the government were in the odd business of recognizing and affirming love, then why not recognize and affirm all forms of love by granting marriage licenses even to those in loving non-erotic relationships? What possible relevance to the government is inherently sterile erotic activity? What is the relevance of private, subjective, romantic feelings and inherently sterile erotic activity to any public purposes of marriage and therefore to the government’s involvement with marriage?

When “progressives” argue that marriage is constituted solely by love and commitment and that it has no inherent connection to procreation, then they have to explain why two brothers should not be permitted to marry. Why shouldn’t five people of assorted genders (or no gender) who love each other be permitted to marry? Why shouldn’t the non-erotic relationship between BFF’s be considered a “marriage”?

Dissenting judge liberal Martha Craig Daughtrey argued that in the nineteen states where homoerotic unions are now recognized as marriages “‘it doesn’t look like the sky is falling in.’” So, that’s her legal rationale? As long as legal change doesn’t result in a rapid, dramatic atmospheric calamity, it’s hunky dory? One wonders if Daughtrey thinks the sky would fall in if plural or incestuous unions were to be legalized.

Liberals can’t appeal to history, tradition, or children in their defense of marriage as inherently binary, or non-consanguineous, or related to erotic activity, because they have already shredded the notions that history, tradition, or procreation have any relevance to marriage.

But if reproductive-type sexual activity (i.e., coitus) is irrelevant to government interest in marriage then surely non-reproductive-types of erotic activity are equally irrelevant. And if all sexual/erotic activity is irrelevant to the government’s interest in marriage, then logically those in relationships constituted by any and all forms of love must be permitted to “marry.”

As homosexuals continually and rightly assert, men and women are objectively and substantively different, and those differences are anatomical, biological, emotional, and psychological. A homoerotic union is as different from a heterosexual union as men are from women. A heterosexual union is different from a homoerotic union in objective ways pertaining to the procreation, needs, and rights of any children that may result from the type of sex act in which only men and women can engage. This type of union matters to government.

When conservatives argue that the government is involved in marriage because of the connection between male-female coitus and procreation, the Left says, “Aha, but infertile couples and those who intend to remain childless are allowed to marry.” What they’re saying is that the government neither compels procreation nor attempts to ascertain fertility. This liberals see as a flaw in conservative arguments. They believe that the government’s establishment of general objective marital criteria as opposed to intrusive government involvement in individual relationships is a weakness as opposed to a strength.

But what about the Left’s revisionist view of marriage as being constituted only by love? Are liberals similarly troubled by the fact that the government will never demand proof of the presence of love or attempt to compel couples to love one another? Will the unwillingness of the government to demand proof of love suggest a flaw in liberal arguments for redefining marriage?

Do governments create marriage?

According to the homosexual newspaper the Washington Blade, “When state attorneys made the arguments that bans on same-sex marriage had a rational basis because the purpose of marriage was procreation, Daughtrey took them to task, repeatedly asking them why excluding same-sex couples from the institution was necessary when opposite-sex couples can procreate with or without marriage.”

Daughtrey reveals both her ignorance and her liberal view that government creates reality.

A man and woman who engage in reproductive-type sexual activity (i.e., coitus) and conceive a child are in reality married because the central defining features of marriage are sexual differentiation and coitus. Marriage has a nature that predates the existence of formal legal institutions. Opposite-sex couples aren’t married because the government issues them a license. The government issues them a license to formalize marriage, which becomes actualized through conjugal unions—not through inherently sterile mutual masturbatory activity. Couples who engage in conjugal activity prior to acquiring a marriage license are in reality married. It isn’t the government that creates marriage. Government merely recognizes and regulates a type of union that in reality exists. We call that type of union marriage.

Since government does not create marriage, it cannot un-create it or recreate it. Thus, legally allowing two people of the same-sex to “marry” does not mean they’re married in anything other than a legal (de jure) sense. They are not married in reality because in reality marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation, and without which a union is not marital.

If some silly government officials decided to issue dog licenses to cats because both dogs and cats have fur and four legs, some citizens—it is hoped—would recognize that dogs are in reality not cats because cats have natures that don’t change because the government issues a license.

Harm to children

The Left claims that children are “harmed” by not having their same-sex parents married. Since the Left worships at the woefully unstable altar of social science research, have liberal judges asked attorneys for homosexual couples to provide conclusive, incontrovertible sociological research demonstrating the ways these children are measurably harmed. Are children being raised by unmarried homosexual parents scoring lower on standardized tests? Are they abusing drugs and alcohol at higher rates than are children whose homosexual parents are married? What are the statistics on mental illness? Are their peer relationships more unstable?

If there is research demonstrating that these children suffer, have researchers controlled for all the factors that may contribute to their suffering? Is it the legal marital status of their parents that causes the harm or might it be the absence of either a mother or a father? Even President Barack Obama has publicly stated that both mothers and fathers are critical to children’s lives, and all children have both a mother and a father—even though some children are being deprived of relationships with them through the purchase of their DNA. Does it make sense that the marital status of homosexual parents would cause harm but being denied either a mother or father would not?

Some homosexual couples appeal to the self-consciousness their children feel about their parents not being legally married as evidence that same-sex “marriage” should be legalized. What does it mean then when children being raised by homosexuals feel self-conscious about not having a mother or a father?

Ironically, while the Left has been effective in selling the redefinition of marriage by asserting that marriage has nothing to do with procreation, William Harbison, attorney for the Tennessee same-sex couples in the Sixth Circuit Court case, complained that traditional marriage laws exclude “same-sex couples from anything related to procreation.” So, procreation matters in marriage law but only in so far as it satisfies the procreative desires of those who choose to be in inherently non-procreative relationships. While arguing that marriage is solely constituted by love and has nothing to do with procreation, “progressives” then use children’s needs, desires, and rights as a justification for changing the legal definition of marriage.

Let’s follow the logic of this revised revisionist view of marriage. If it’s love, commitment, and the presence of children (though not the begetting of children) that constitute “marriage,” then plural unions, incestuous unions, or any relational contexts in which children are being raised must logically be recognized as marriages.

Once the public becomes persuaded that love is all there is when it comes to marriage, they will start clamoring for the legalization of plural and incestuous unions. Once the notion that any adults raising children are entitled to have their relationships recognized as “marriages,” then judges will be obliged to find legal rationales to jettison requirements regarding monogamy and consanguinity from the legal definition of marriage—oh, unless doing so would cause the sky to fall in, which we won’t know until decades after platonic, plural, and incestuous marriages are legalized.  Once marriages are no longer restricted to erotic/sexual unions, the minimum age requirement too becomes irrelevant.

And at long last, we will arrive at the end game for the far Left: the destruction of marriage. Once society concludes that marriage is wholly a social construct with no objective nature, and once all criteria that define marriage are jettisoned so that any persons or number of persons can “marry,” marriage ceases to exist. Once marriage is anything, it’s nothing, with no relevance to the public good.

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This is a must-see short video clip to help everyone understand how the debate about same-sex “marriage” is not about equality or discrimination. Ryan T. Anderson is from the Heritage Foundation. Please forward to your email database and networks and share below on social media.

Ryan T. Anderson will be the keynote speaker at the September 24th banquet for Catholic Citizens of Illinois.  The event will be held in Oak Brook, Illinois.  Click HERE for more information.

One year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the Defense of Marriage Act, this much is clear: Justice Antonin Scalia is a prophet.

Back in 2003, when the court handed down the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, striking down all criminal statutes against homosexual acts, Scalia declared that the stage was set for the legalization of same-sex unions. That was 2003.

“Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as a formal recognition in marriage is concerned,” wrote Scalia.

He was proved to be absolutely prophetic when, just ten years later, the court ruled in United States v. Windsor that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional — thus striking down the federal statute defining marriage exclusively as the union of a man and a woman.

Once again, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, while Scalia handed down a fiery dissent. As before, Scalia was prophetic.

Even though the Court did not rule that same-sex marriage must be legal in all states, it set the stage for that to happen. As Scalia wrote: “As far as this Court is concerned, no one should be fooled; it is just a matter of listening and waiting for the other shoe.”

One year later, it is abundantly evident that we did not have to wait or listen for long.  Almost immediately, challenges to state laws and constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriages erupted.

In a staggering series of decisions at the federal and state levels, judges explicitly cited the nullification of DOMA and the central arguments of the Windsor decision in striking down those laws and constitutional amendments.

A year after the death of DOMA, not one major decision has defended any of these statutes or amendments. Kennedy’s opinion has been cited as authoritative in virtually every one of these judicial actions.

This has meant that in a single year, the legalization of same sex marriage has become a reality or received a positive judicial action in states including Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Virginia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon and a host of other states far from where such unions had previously been recognized.

A year later, it is clear that the Supreme Court remains the central political institution of moral transformation in America.

A year later, it is also clear that the court was riding a vast change in public opinion.

We must also see that the time is almost at hand for that transformation to be made complete, at least in terms of the legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

What was not clear a year ago was the velocity of this transformation. Even the architects of the revolution are expressing surprise at the speed of these judicial actions.

By the end of this summer, the Supreme Court will likely need to revisit the question once again, this time responding to the cavalcade of lower court decisions the high court spawned.

There is very good reason to expect a decision mandating same-sex marriage coast-to-coast in the Court’s next term, with a decision to be handed down just a year from now, almost to the day.

Furthermore, the Obama administration has been pushing the agenda vigorously, with the federal government now aligning all agency policies in line with the Windsor decision – even extending to areas the decision was never intended to reach.

Where does that leave committed Christians?

Those of us who believe that human flourishing depends upon the recognition and honoring of marriage as exclusively the union of a man and a woman see this transformation of marriage into something radically different as a grave threat to human society and human happiness.

We do not argue that these damaging effects on society and its individuals will be immediately apparent, but we are sadly confident that the subversion of marriage will bring devastating effects over time.

In retrospect, we can also see that previous subversions of marriage set the stage for the radical redefinition of marriage in our times.

Our failure to answer the challenge of rising divorce rates was, eventually, fatal to our effort to defend marriage against its redefinition in terms of gender. Some of us saw this danger at the time, but there was no adequate effort to oppose the devastating impact of divorce.

The larger sexual revolution also plays an incalculable role in this transformation. The moral separation of sex and marriage among millions of Americans removed any hope of establishing a lasting consensus on the central importance of marriage and its essence as a monogamous man-woman union.

A year after the death of DOMA, it is also clear that very real threats to religious liberty now loom before us. This is perhaps the inevitable consequence of a moral revolution of this scale.

Will the government now coerce the consciences of churches, religious institutions, schools, colleges, social service agencies, and the like? There is now strong evidence that government at every level will attempt such coercion. Will America abandon religious liberty for the sake of erotic freedom?

Those of us who believe same-sex marriage to be a moral impossibility now face a very daunting challenge — how to live in a society that is moving so rapidly against our moral worldview, even as the society shared that worldview for over 2,000 years.

We face the challenge of finding how to relate to our neighbors and contribute to the common good when we see that very society undermining human flourishing in the name of sexual liberty.

A year after the death of DOMA the listening and the waiting are almost over. The revolution is almost complete. The shoe is dropping fast.

One thing is clear to all – no one was exaggerating when the Windsor decision was declared by both sides to be revolutionary.

We can all agree on that much, just one year after the revolution was declared.

This article was first published on the CNN Belief Blog.