Tag Archives: Gay Marriage

News

Hawaii federal judge strikes down bid to redefine marriage

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From Life Site News.

Excerpt:

A federal court Wednesday upheld Hawaii’s definition of marriage as one man and one woman, rejecting a lawsuit to tear down both the definition as well as Hawaii’s constitutional amendment giving the legislature the power to maintain it.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys defended the law and the amendment on behalf of Hawaii Family Forum, which the court allowed to intervene in the case in April.

“This ruling affirms that protecting and strengthening marriage as the union of one man and one woman is legitimate, reasonable, and good for society,” said Legal Counsel Dale Schowengerdt. “The people of Hawaii adopted a constitutional amendment to uphold marriage, and the court rightly concluded that the democratic process shouldn’t be short-circuited by judicial decree.”

The three individuals who filed the suit asked the court to declare the state’s constitutional amendment on marriage and the state’s law defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman unconstitutional. The lawsuit also assailed Hawaii’s “civil unions” law, which became effective Jan 1, saying that equal rights would only be fulfilled by redefining marriage itself.

But in its order, the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii concluded, “Throughout history and societies, marriage has been connected with procreation and childrearing…. It follows that it is not beyond rational speculation to conclude that fundamentally altering the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions might result in undermining the societal understanding of the link between marriage, procreation, and family structure.”

“In this situation,” the court continued, “to suddenly constitutionalize the issue of same-sex marriage ‘would short-circuit’ the legislative actions that have been taking place in Hawaii…. Accordingly, because Hawaii’s marriage laws are rationally related to legitimate government interests, they do not violate the federal Constitution.”

[Democrat] Gov. Neil Abercrombie stated both publicly and in the lawsuit that he would not defend the state’s marriage law. His attacks on the law’s constitutionality prompted Hawaii Family Forum to ask the court to allow it to intervene in defense of marriage in the state.

See, that’s interesting. Hawaii legalized same-sex civil unions, but that wasn’t enough. Even with legalized same-sex unions, the gay activists pushed for gay marriage. An even their constitutional amendment wasn’t safe – imagine if they had a different judge who went the other way.

News

Chick-Fil-A appreciation day sets sales record

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Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day sets sales record
Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day sets sales record

From the Los Angeles Times.

Excerpt:

Chick-fil-A appears to have set a company record in sales on Wednesday, a day on which Americans were encouraged to show their support for the fast-food restaurant whose leadership has drawn both criticism and praise in recent weeks for its opposition to same-sex marriage.

The privately held company declined to give specific sales figures but released a statement to the Los Angeles Times confirming that frenzied sales of chicken sandwiches and cross-cut waffle fries had made for a record-setting day.

“We are very grateful and humbled by the incredible turnout of loyal Chick-fil-A customers on August 1 at Chick-fil-A restaurants around the country,” said Steve Robinson, executive vice president of marketing, in the statement. “While we don’t release exact sales numbers, we can confirm reports that it was a record-setting day.”

[…]Robinson said the Atlanta-based company was “grateful and humbled by the incredible turnout of loyal Chick-fil-A customers” who showed up at outlets in droves coast-to-coast. Customers often waited in long lines, many weathering the blistering summer sun, just to get in the front door.

Such images — as well as those of crowded Chick-fil-A counters and long lines of cars snaking through the drive-thru lanes — created a social media frenzy on Wednesday as they were shared and reshared on a variety of platforms, including Twitter.

The images suggested that sales were indeed going gangbusters, and confirmation of those suspicions arrived when Orange County Pastor Rick Warren tweeted a snippet of a conversation he’d had with Dan Cathy, president of the popular fast-food chain:

@DanCathy just called me. #ChickFilA has already set a world record today, with 7 more hrs to go in the West. #OutOfChicken”

The company, which proudly abides by Bible-based principles and closes its doors to sales on Sundays, stressed in its statement that Chick-fil-A did not promote Wednesday’s turnout.

It also stressed that its employees abide by a service tradition to “treat every person with honor, dignity and respect — regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.”

But not everyone is happy about the protests. Here is an example taken from Sooper Mexican:

This sort of thing happens often, actually.

Why is it that everyone is so angry with people who express a pro-marriage point of view? I think the problem is that militant secularists are very focused on hedonism in this life. They cannot ground objective morality, including human rights such as the right to free speech. They have no notion of an after-life, so they are trying pack in as much happiness as they can. Their purpose in life is not to form their own character in this life, so they can be rightly related to God. They want to be selfish and they want to be celebrated by others for it.

Often, militant atheists know nothing at all about Christianity and why Christians hold to their positions. This makes them even more intolerant of Christians who act like Christians in public and who participate in politics, like the abolitionists or pro-life activists. These people have never sat through a formal academic debate, and they have never heard the arguments for God’s existence and Christianity in particular. They don’t want to listen, they just want to shame Christians and smash the windows of their businesses and put them into prisons until there is no one left to call their selfishness into question.

People who supported Chick-Fil-A were protesting this coercion and censorship by the secular left. They were saying, “you can’t use the law and the government to take away my freedom to speak out in protest of things like slavery, abortion and redefining marriage”. It’s ironic that everyone is always accusing Christians of hypocrisy, and yet when we are authentic in public, they try to coerce us into acting like non-Christians!

I noticed that Gay Patriot, a well-known gay Republican and supporter of gay marriage, was out with his partner to Chick-Fil-A. He got some Chick-Fil-A food, and spent some time talking to the pro-marriage Chick-Fil-A customers. And everyone was nice to him. He is not a militant secularist – he thinks that everyone should be able to participate in defining policy and not be discriminated against for their views. No one who went to Chick-Fil-A was protesting Gay Patriot’s freedom to do what he pleases in his own life. We were protesting the government’s use of force to silence and coerce those who don’t want to have marriage redefined for the whole society. And we can defend our view using a variety of secular reasons, too, if anyone is interested.

News

Coalition of African American Pastors launches national pro-marriage campaign

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Here’s some good news from CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) announced at the National Press Club on Tuesday that  the grassroots group – comprised of the more than 3,000 members – is a launching a national campaign to support marriage between one man and one woman and to oppose the Obama administration’s efforts to advance same-sex marriage.

“The time has come for a broad-based assault against the power that be that wants to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women,” CAAP President William Owens said at the press conference, held to announce the Marriage Mandate campaign, which includes a petition seeking 100,000 signatures pledging support for traditional marriage.

“Mr. President, I’m not going to stand with you, and there are thousands of others across this country that are not going to stand with you with this foolishness,” Owens said.

In a press release announcing the campaign, Owens encouraged black pastors and the black community to “withdraw their support for [Obama].”

“Today we will be launching a nationwide campaign rallying black pastors and African Americans to voice their opposition to the president’s position on same-sex marriage, and withdraw their support from him,” said Owens, who told reporters he voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

“We will see that the black community is informed that the president is taking them for granted while pandering to the gay community,” Owens said.

Bishop Janice Hollis, presiding Prelate of the Covenant of International Fellowship of Churches, called Obama’s support of gay marriage a “travesty” and said it reflects the “disorder in the highest office in the land.”

Owens said CAAP sent a letter to Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder in May asking for a meeting to discuss the gay marriage issue.

“We wrote the president and Mr. Holder May the second, requesting an audience with him to discuss this very issue,” Owens said. “He has not given us the courtesy of any reply.

“The Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) consists of 3,742 African American pastors, and he has totally ignored us,” Owens said.

He said Obama is ignoring the black community “because he feels that he has us in his pocket.”

“Well, we are not in his pocket,” Owens said.

In the 2008 election, black Protestants voted overwhelmingly for the pro-abortion and pro-gay-marriage Obama. (He had a radical pro-abortion record and had come out for gay marriage earlier, so this was all known then).

Which religions supported Obama most in 2008?
Which religions supported Obama most in 2008?

So 94% of African-American Christians voted for an abortion and gay marriage radical. NINETY-FOUR PERCENT.

I actually believed, based on this voting data, that American black Protestant churches were officially pro-abortion and pro-gay-marriage. I just considered them to be apostate denominations the same way that denominations like the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church United States of America are apostate. (Note: this does not apply to non-American black churches, which are conservative).

These voting numbers confirm my experiences. For example, I remember one African American woman at work who was interested in me who could not understand why I would not join her in working on The United Way workplace partnership initiative. I took her aside in the hallway and told her that the United Way supported abortion and opposed the Boy Scouts, and she was like “So what?“. She attended church weekly and she supported Barack Obama. So I just figured based on these voting numbers and my personal experiences that most African-American churches were pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage, pro-socialism, etc.

This action by the 3,742 black African-American pastors shocks me as much as if those gay bishops in the Episcopal church had suddenly came out in favor of defending traditional marriage. Maybe these 3,742 pastors will be able to begin to educate their flocks about what the Bible actually says on these issues so that these voting numbers change. I did know about the good African-American pastors like Harry Jackson and Ken Hutcherson who are pro-life and pro-marriage, but I just thought that there were only a handful of faithful black pastors. I guess I was wrong, at least on the marriage issue, and that’s a good thing. Color me surprised.