Tag Archives: Gay Marriage

How would allowing gays to marry affect your life?

Here’s a post from Legal Insurrection, a prominent law blog.

Excerpt:

King & Spalding has withdrawn from representing the House of Representatives with regard to the Defense of Marriage Act.  King & Spalding was hired after the Obama administration abruptly — and disingenuously — changed its legal position recently.

The attempts to intimidate, both politically and sometimes physically, supporters of traditional marriage are nothing new.

The strategy is to define the traditional marriage view as bigotry on par with racism.  Once you accept that premise, then everything else follows and is justified.  Even expressing a legal view that there is no federal constitutional right to same sex marriage — a view expressed under oath by Elena Kagan — now constitutes hate speech.

There were numerous boycotts of businesses owned by people who supported Prop. 8 in California, including a boycott organized by an association of law professors.

Taking it one step further, there was a widespread campaign to demonize and boycott Mormon-owned businesses in the wake of Prop. 8 in California…

[…]Now the intimidation has moved beyond political supporters of Prop. 8 and Mormons, and into an attempt to deprive pro-traditional marriage groups of their counsel of choice.  As Jennifer Rubin points out (via John Hinderaker), the attempt to intimidate lawyers into not representing pro-traditional marriage clients is part of a deliberate strategy, not a haphazard reaction.

[…]Would such lawyers and staff now be afraid to express their views on the subject, fearing a backlash against their individual careers much as King & Spaulding feared a backlash?  If representing the pro-traditional marriage view is unacceptable for the firm, would there be a hostile work environment for such people?

Dennis Prager wrote more about how same-sex marriage affects society back in 2008.

Excerpt:

Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming — to do so would be declared “heterosexist,” morally equivalent to racist. Rather, they will be told to imagine a prince or a princess. Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female ways alone. Little girls will be asked by other girls and by teachers if they want one day to marry a man or a woman.

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity — especially females — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage. But that of course is “heterosexism,” a bigoted preference for man-woman erotic love, and therefore to be extirpated from society.

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law.

Companies that advertise engagement rings will have to show a man putting a ring on a man’s finger — if they show only women fingers, they will be boycotted just as a company having racist ads would be now.

Films that only show man-woman married couples will be regarded as antisocial and as morally irresponsible as films that show people smoking have become.

Traditional Jews and Christians — i.e. those who believe in a divine scripture — will be marginalized. Already Catholic groups in Massachusetts have abandoned adoption work since they will only allow a child to be adopted by a married couple as the Bible defines it — a man and a woman.

Anyone who advocates marriage between a man and a woman will be morally regarded the same as racist. And soon it will be a hate crime.

Indeed — and this is the ultimate goal of many of the same-sex marriage activists — the terms “male” and “female,” “man” and “woman” will gradually lose their significance. They already are. On the intellectual and cultural left, “male” and “female” are deemed social constructs that have little meaning. That is why same-sex marriage advocates argue that children have no need for both a mother and a father — the sexes are interchangeable. Whatever a father can do a second mother can do. Whatever a mother can do, a second father can do. Genitalia are the only real differences between the sexes, and even they can be switched at will.

And what will happen after divorce — which presumably will occur at the same rates as heterosexual divorce? A boy raised by two lesbian mothers who divorce and remarry will then have four mothers and no father.

We have entered something beyond Huxley’s “Brave New World.”… Our children and their children will pay the price.

Check out this vandalism at a Catholic church by supporters of same-sex marriage. The vandalism says “where is the love?” I don’t think that the vandals showed much love for those who disagree with same-sex marriage, though. And sometimes the consequences for disagreement can be much worse than vandalism.  It can mean legal consequences, sensitivity indoctrination, vandalism, or even violence. What’s sad is that the well-meaning young leftists, who think what they are doing is compassionate, are actually encouraging this coercion.

How would allowing gays to marry affect your life?

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Round-up of good news for conservatives from the past week

First, from Heritage Foundation think tank, school choice reform passes in Washington, D.C. and Indiana. Now poor parents will have a choice to send their children to better schools without having to move to a richer neighborhood.

Excerpt:

The month of March closed with a victorious week for schoolchildren and families across the nation. School choice bills passed in both Washington, D.C., and in Indiana to expand educational options for students.

In Washington, the SOAR Act sailed through the House on a 225–195 vote, reauthorizing and expanding the successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP), which has been under attack by the Obama Administration for the last two years. In Indiana, legislation that has been cited as the “broadest” voucher expansion bill in the country similarly won hands-down in the Indiana House.

In Washington, House Education Committee chairman John Kline (R–MN) said last Wednesday:

Today’s vote is a victory for disadvantaged students throughout our nation’s capital. Over the last seven years, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program has placed a quality education within reach of students previously trapped in underperforming schools. This program has engaged parents, motivated children, and helped the dream of a diploma become a reality for thousands of D.C. students.

In a similar vein, Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma noted:

This is about promoting opportunity, focused tightly on those that have no choice today. … I’m here to give parents—especially parents without the means—opportunities for their children.”

The SOAR Act not only restores the DCOSP—which provides scholarships to low-income students in D.C.—it also expands the DCOSP to allow more students to receive scholarships.

Indiana’s legislation would provide families with a portion of their children’s public school funding to use on their choice of private schools. The amount of money families receive would be based on income levels.

Christian parents are not well served by government-run public schools, because public schools undermine Christian beliefs and result in poorly-educated educated children to boot. Let us have our tax money back so we can choose a school that serves our needs. We don’t let the government pick our laptop and cell phone, why should we let the government take our money and then choose a failing school for our children? I want to choose the school my children will go to – because I am the one who will be held accountable to God later for the children I’ve produced. And I want the poor parents and the rich parents to get the same voucher so that everyone can choose. I want the poor to have the exact same options that the rich have. And I want the failing schools to be closed down due to lack of funds, just the way that a business that fails its customers is closed down due to competitive pressures.

Next, Denver Republicans reject same-sex civil union bill.

Excerpt:

A bill to allow civil unions for same-sex couples in Colorado was stopped on Thursday night by a vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

The committee voted 6-5 to stop the bill from moving on to the full House.

The vote came after eight hours of testimony in a packed chamber at the State Capitol.

The measure easily passed the Senate last week with three Republicans joining all the Democrats voting for it.

Democrats said Senate Bill 172 could have cleared the House if all members there were allowed to vote.

This is a good idea because marriage benefits are given out to promote marriage, which is the most stable environment to raise children. Same-sex civil unions are proven to be less stable than opposite-sex marriages, and that is bad for children. If we care about children, then we need to give tax incentives for traditional marriage – the best environment in which to raise children. It’s not personal – it’s business.

Next, Texas Republicans shift money from contraceptive programs to crisis-pregnancy centers.

Excerpt:

About $7 million over the next two years would be moved from state-funded family planning services into crisis pregnancy center funding under an amendment passed by the Texas House during the budget debate.

The House voted 100-44 to pass the amendment, despite a short battle between author Rep. Randy Weber, R-Pearland, and several Democrats, who argued that family planning services help not only in the prevention of unwanted pregnancies, but also allow low-income women to get healthy check ups and cancer screenings. They said the amendment would cost the state money in the end.

“This takes money from the pot of funds used to reduce the rate of unplanned pregnancy to give money to counsel women who are pregnant already. Isn’t that counter-productive? asked Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio.

Author of the amendment Rep. Randy Weber, R-Pearland, said that the “most innocent” need to be protected, which he said more funding for abortion-prevention centers would accomplish. He also said studies point to statistics that the poorest families using contraceptives were not successful.

I am not a big fan of single motherhood, but I am a big fan of adoption. And murdering an innocent child is certainly worse than either of those. Studies show that more contraception does not prevent abortions, it increases them.

Next, more education reform by Florida Republicans.

Excerpt:

Florida is widely recognized as the state leader in education reform. Students in the Sunshine State have made the strongest academic achievement gains in the nation since 2003, and they are one of the only states that have been able to narrow the achievement gap between white and minority students. Yesterday, the Washington Post highlighted the Florida model, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s role in its creation:

“The president who turned No Child Left Behind from slogan into statute is gone from Washington, and the influence of his signature education law is fading. But another brand of Bush school reform is on the rise.

“The salesman is not the 43rd president, George W. Bush, but the 43rd governor of Florida, his brother Jeb.

“At the core of the Jeb Bush agenda are ideas drawn from his Florida playbook: Give every public school a grade from A to F. Offer students vouchers to help pay for private school. Don’t let them move into fourth grade unless they know how to read.”

State leaders seem to know a good reform strategy when they see it, and many across the country are beginning to embrace the Florida reform model.

Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Governor Gary Herbert of Utah just signed the Florida-style A-F grading system into law in their respective states. The scale grades schools and school districts on a straightforward, transparent scale designed to inform parents and taxpayers about achievement results. The move will arm parents with more information about school performance – a necessary step to improving education. State leaders in Indiana, Arizona and Louisiana also recently implemented the A-F grading scale.

While transparency about school performance is essential to results-based education reform, providing parents with opportunities to act on that information is crucial. Many states are now working to enact that most important piece of the Florida reform model – school choice.

[…]Florida students have demonstrated the strongest gains on the NAEP in the nation since 2003, when all 50 states began taking NAEP exams. Moreover, between 1998 and 2008, the average score for black students increased by 12 points in reading from 192 to 204. In Florida, it increased by 25 points—twice the gains of the national average. If African American students nationwide had made the same amount of progress as African American students in Florida, the fourth-grade reading gap between black and white would be approximately half the size it is today.

Republicans are all about helping the poorest African-American children to get high-quality educations. And we don’t just talk about it, and we don’t just express good intentions, and we don’t just pass ineffective laws to much media fanfare. We deliver the goods – we walk the walk – we have the evidence of good results. It’s not about vague rhetoric and happy feelings. It’s about delivering the goods we promised to deliver. Better educations for poor minority students. Higher standards. Better outcomes.

If we care about children, then we do not kill them, we do not make them grow up without mothers and fathers, we do not force them into failing schools. Conservatism is pro-family, pro-parent, and pro-child. This is what we believe, and we act on those beliefs when we are voted in. No more happy talk about hope and change. If you want results for poor minorities, you vote Republican. And we don’t provide “compassionate” welfare programs to incentivize broken homes either, because that is the number one cause of child poverty. Conservatives hate making people slaves to the government.

Must-see videos on education policy

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MUST-HEAR: Jennifer Roback Morse on contraceptives, divorce, cohabitation, SSM and ART

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

I often tease women for being too focused on happiness and feelings, but Dr. J isn’t like that at all. She is all about economics, incentives, and moral boundaries. She thinks about the big issues. She once chastised me in an e-mail for being too emotional. I think she has had it with the feelings-based arguments from the socially-liberal left.

This lecture does not repeat much from her previous lectures.

Anyway – DO NOT MISS THIS LECTURE!

The MP3 file is here. (93 minutes, 43.5 Mb)

Keep in mind that this speech was given to Wisconsin Catholic seminarians, so there is a lot of rah-rah Catholic stuff. I’m an evangelical Protestant, so I just smile when she talks about that. At least there was no Mary in it. Yay!

SUMMARY

Contraception:
– contraception does not reduce the abortion rate
– contraception is bad because it makes sex a recreational activity
– contraception fails, which leads to the need for abortion
– 80% of abortions are done on unmarried women
– teenagers do not think that contraceptives will FAIL for them
– they don’t understand that the probabilities is PER ACTION – more actions increases probability
– the more you rely on something that has a small chance of failure, the more chance you will get a failure
– more sex, means more chances for a person to get a failure
– older women are naturally less fertile, so they skew contraceptive effectiveness figures higher
– contraceptives are most likely to fail for the young, the poor and the unmarried
– contraception means that women cannot ask men to promise to marry them before sex
– the pressure for a man to marry if the woman gets pregnant is gone
– the presumption is that the woman will have an abortion
– women who want to get married are at a disadvantage to get male attention now
– because men will prefer women who are willing to have an abortion if they get pregnant
– when people argue for these social changes, they don’t accurately assess consequences
– they think that they can have the happiness-making freedom without damaging anything else
– they think that no incentives will be created so that others start to act differently
– example: no-fault divorce – there were terrible consequences that were minimized by the social engineers

Divorce:
– people who wanted this believed myths in order to get the happiness-making freedom for the adults
– they said that divorce would be less harmful for children than if the parents stayed together
– they argued for no-fault divorce because they wanted happiness and didn’t care about children
– in a low conflict marriage, it is better for children if the parents stay together
– in a high-conflict marriage, it is better for children to divorce
– but for high-conflict divorce, you could have gotten a divorce for cause
– what people pushing no-fault divorce really wanted was to divorce to pursue happiness elsewhere
– there is also a financial incentive to divorce for no reason – alimony, child support, property
– but divorce really disrupts the lives of the children
– the VAST MAJORITY of divorces are in low-conflict situations
– the social norm was that low-level conflict meant that you stayed married for the sake of the kids
– a pregnancy after a re-marriage is devastating to children of the first marriage
– not being able to have a normal relationship with both biological parents is devastating to children
– what often drives people into co-habitation is the fear of screwing up their own marriages
– pro-divorce people want women to re-marry afterwards to provide kids with a “father-figure”
– the presence of a stepfather increases bad behavior in the kids, as well as risk of abuse
– but actually, stepfathers spend little time with kids, and draws mother away from the kids
– biological fathers spend the most time with the children
– disciplining the children is more complex with a non-bio dad
– normally, dads wants the kids to behave, and moms want the children to be happy
– often, the woman will forbid the father from disciplining the children
– the father will just drop out of parenting completely when his authority is not respected

Co-habitation:
– social engineers understate the risks of co-habitation and overstate the risks of marriage
– but research shows that co-habitation makes no positive contribution to marriage
– feminists love to say that marriage is very risky, but without comparing it to alternatives
(feminists don’t like marriage because of the “unequal gender roles”)
– when compared with the alternatives, like co-habitation, marriage is better on every measure
– feminists say that married women do not report abuse in marriage, that’s why marriage LOOKS better
– but murders HAVE TO BE reported, and co-habitation results in NINE TIMES more murders than marriage
– children are killed FIFTY TIMES more with co-habitation with an unrelated adult than with 2 bio-parents
– the live-in boyfriend is the culprit in 85% of these cases

Same-sex marriage:
– alternatives to marriage change rules and incentives, it is NOT the same thing as marriage
– necessarily, one of the parents will not have a close relationship with one bio-parents
– social engineers say that mothers and fathers are interchangeable – but they are different
– SSM undermines the presumption of paternity, and substitutes state-ordered parenting
– the public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers to fathers, and parents to children
– SSM elevates private purposes for marriage over and above the public purpose of marriage
– SSM will lead to fathers being marginalized from the family
– the state will have to force people to equate SSM and natural marriage

Artificial reproductive technology:
– it is the next substitute for marriage
– highly educated career women do not have to prepare for a husband to get a baby
– her behavior through her life changes because she doesn’t have to care about marriage