Tag Archives: Marriage

News

If you are looking for a good charity, try the Alliance Defense Fund

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The Alliance Defense Fund secured a matching grant of 1.25 MILLION dollars. These guys do more for religious liberty in the world than anybody. A great organization. It’s all about getting a return for your investment, and these guys provide a huge return on investment.

Watch the video:

What they’ve done:

Christian attorneys trained at the ADF Legal Academy are on the frontlines fighting for religious freedom in communities like yours every day. These faithful allied attorneys are protecting the Body of Christ from legal attacks – and by God’s grace, are winning case after crucial case.

Some ADF victories:

  • Charles LiMandri achieved an important victory for four San Diego firefighters who were forced to endure sexual harassment during a lewd city-sponsored parade celebrating homosexual behavior.
  • Natalie Decker successfully defended a Christian couple in Colorado who were criminally charged for disciplining their child in accordance with church teaching.
  • Steven O’Ban helped the Christian non-profit organization, World Vision, win an important victory after the ministry was sued by two former employees who were dismissed after admitting that they didn’t believe in the Holy Trinity.

What they’re doing:

ADF Legal Academy-trained attorneys are in communities across America defending the constitutionally protected rights of Christians who have been censored and punished for expressing their faith. Please be in prayer for these and so many other important allied attorney cases being fought to protect Our First Liberty – religious freedom – and to keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel.

Some current ADF cases:

  • Randall Wenger is representing a 5th-grade public school student in Pennsylvania who was prohibited from distributing fliers that invited classmates to a Christmas party at her church because the school district has a policy that bars speech “promoting Christianity.”
  • Karen Mueller is defending a nurse-practitioner in Wisconsin who was fired for sharing her faith with the patients for whom she cared.
  • Daniel Cox is assisting with the defense of three young women who were arrested, shackled, strip-searched, and detained overnight by Maryland state police after peacefully expressing their pro-life views.

Religious liberty is what I would call my “core value”. The freedom to be who I really am, and to say what I really think in public, whether people like it or not. The ADF defends my religious liberty, and no one does it better.

I never give money to charities that don’t promote my worldview. My goal is not to alleviate people’s suffering, primarily. My goal is to persuade others about the truth of the gospel. And that takes legal work, policy work and research on arguments and evidence. I want to defend God’s existence and character, and to promote the social conditions (e.g. – protection of unborn children, traditional marriage, low taxes, free trade, school choice, security from terrorism, etc.) that maximize the opportunities of non-Christians to investigate the gospel for themselves.

Yes, arguments and evidence are very important, but arguments and evidence are not weighed in a vacuum. Every person on the planet was created to know God, and my job is to make sure they get their best opportunity to do that. Part of that opportunity is letting Christians have the freedom to be who they are in public, in front of non-Christians. It’s also important for me to be able to find a job, to keep what I earn, and to spend my earnings on the causes that I think are important – not to let someone else take my money and spend it buying votes from special interest groups with wasteful government spending.

My favorite charities are Reasonable Faith, Stand to Reason, Please Convince Me, CrossExamined, Faith Beyond Belief, Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council, Access Research Network, Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture, and Alliance Defense Fund. These are charities that move the ball forward effectively.

News

Republicans hire top lawyer to defend traditional marriage against Democrats

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This is from liberal CNN. (H/T Reuben)

Excerpt:

House Republicans have hired a prominent conservative attorney to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act in a pending lawsuit, legal sources say, and will make an effort to divert money from the Justice Department to fund its high-profile fight.

House Speaker John Boehner disclosed the legal and political strategy in a letter Monday to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The Obama administration, which normally would defend federal laws in judicial disputes, announced last month it believed the Defense of Marriage Act, often referred to as DOMA, to be unconstitutional. The law defines marriage for federal purposes as unions only between a man and woman.

Boehner said that with the Justice Department not participating, he had “no choice” but to act unilaterally.

“The burden of defending DOMA, and the resulting costs associated with any litigation that would have otherwise been born (sic) by DOJ (The Department of Justice), has fallen to the House,” Boehner said. “Obviously, DOJ’s decision results in DOJ no longer needing the funds it would have otherwise expended defending the constitutionality of DOMA. It is my intent that those funds be diverted to the House for reimbursement of any costs incurred by and associated with the House, and not DOJ, defending DOMA.”

Such a move would require Senate approval, an unlikely prospect since Democrats control that chamber.

Boehner will probably end up finding money for the legal fight from other discretionary and non-discretionary spending sources, according to legal experts. There was no indication just how much the legal fight could eventually cost.

[…]Legal sources say the House Republican leadership hired [Paul D.] Clement, a Washington appellate attorney, to defend the law. He filed a brief Monday in a pending case from New York, where a lesbian received an estate tax bill of more than $360,000 after her longtime partner and legal wife had died.Clement is a former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, serving from 2005 to 2008. It was his job to defend federal laws and executive actions in court, similar to what he will be doing now as a private lawyer on retainer. He was mentioned at one time as a possible Supreme Court nominee.

Separately, he also is representing more than two dozens states in their lawsuit against the administration over the sweeping health care reform law passed by Congress last year. That case is pending in a federal appeals court in Atlanta.

Once again we see the importance of conservative parents raising influential children. Everybody talks about traditional marriage, but only Paul D. Clement is going to be in a position to really do something about it. And why? Because he has effectively pursued skills and jobs that put him in a position to have an influence.

News

New study finds that cohabitation damages children

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Story here from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

The astonishing speed at which traditional family life has collapsed is laid bare today.

Shocking figures reveal that births outside marriage are at their highest level in two centuries and nearly half of children can expect their parents to separate by the time they turn 16.

Nine out of ten couples now live together before – or instead of – tying the knot. Before the Second World War, it was fewer than one in 30.

From a situation 30 years ago where it was often considered shameful to have a child outside of wedlock, it has now become the norm.

Some 46 per cent of children are born to unmarried mothers, according to research by the Centre for Social Justice.

The think-tank said a child growing up in a one-parent family is 75 per cent more likely to fail at school, 70 per cent more likely to become a drug addict, 50 per cent more likely to have an alcohol problem and 35 per cent more likely to be unemployed as an adult.

Some 48 per cent of children are likely to see their family break up before they are 16. Ten years ago, it was 40 per cent.

Gavin Poole, executive director of the CSJ, which was set up by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, said: ‘Current high levels of cohabitation are a key factor in the rise in family breakdown in our country and this paper shows that we have not been here before.

‘Marriage and commitment tend to stabilise and strengthen families and cannot be ignored. The peculiarly high levels of family breakdown found in Britain are at the heart of the social breakdown which is devastating our most deprived communities.

‘We cannot ignore the wealth of evidence showing that the family environment in which a child grows up is key in determining their future life outcomes.’

The report says the decline in the traditional family is a crucial factor in the social decay that is blighting Britain.

It finds that – at around 5 per cent – levels of births outside marriage were the same in the 1950s as in the 1750s.

They remained at low levels through the 19th century and stayed flat until the 1960s. But since then they have soared. By the late 1970s, 10 per cent of babies were born to single or unmarried parents, by 1991 it was 30 per cent and today it is 46 per cent.

The authors of the research point to evidence suggesting that in the 1950s and 1960s, only 1 to 3 per cent of couples cohabited before marriage.

Today, nearly 90 per cent of couples live together before, or instead of, getting married.

Family breakdown, the experts claim, is being fuelled by the growth in the less stable relationship of cohabitation. ‘A child growing up in a fractured, chaotic or fatherless family is far less likely to develop the pro-social skills essential for success later in life,’ Mr Poole said.

The thing to understand about the secular left in Britain is that they are not really against poverty – not if it means telling people to be more responsible and informed about abstinence, courting and marriage. They are willing to “fix” poverty by taking money from one group and giving it to another group. But they are not willing to prevent poverty by holding people accountable to moral standards. That would be so judgmental, divisive and offensive to poor people. And if there is one thing the secular left stands for, it’s not making people feel bad for their own decisions. The secular left would rather have adults doing whatever makes them feel good than to have children grow up healthy and happy in stable environments.

Marriage is the best way to prevent child poverty, so let’s have some policies that promote marriage and discourage cohabitation.

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