Ryan T. Anderson, the William E. Simon Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, testified before the Indiana House Judiciary Committee yesterday on their proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of a man and woman.
The controversial bill, which would place the amendment on the state ballot and give citizens the right to vote about such an important matter, spurred a three-hour heated debate full of testimonies from both supporters and opponents.
Anderson, co-author with Princeton’s Robert P. George and Sherif Girgis of the acclaimed book “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense” which Justice Samuel Alito cited twice in his dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court case involving the Defense of Marriage Act, began his testimony by explaining what marriage is and why marriage matters. According to Anderson, the collapse of marriage over the past 50 years is directly tied to the over-expanded welfare state of the country, and lack of male figureheads in families.
“If the biggest social problem we face right now in the United States is absentee dads,” Anderson said, “How will we insist that dads are essential when the law redefines marriage to make fathers optional?”
Part of this is based on the reality that there’s no such thing as parenting in the abstract: there’s mothering, and there’s fathering. Men and women bring different gifts to the parenting enterprise. Rutgers sociologist Professor David Popenoe writes, “the burden of social science evidence supports the idea that gender-differentiated parenting is important for human development and the contribution of fathers to childrearing is unique and irreplaceable.” He then concludes:
We should disavow the notion that mommies can make good daddies, just as we should the popular notion that daddies can make good mommies. The two sexes are different to the core and each is necessary—culturally and biologically—for the optimal development of a human being.
This is why so many states continue to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, many doing so by amending their constitutions.
So why does marriage matter for public policy? Perhaps there is no better way to analyze this than by looking to our own president, President Barack Obama. Allow me to quote him:
We know the statistics: that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.
There is a host of social science evidence. We go through the litany and cite the studies in our book, but President Obama sums it up pretty well. We’ve seen in the past fifty years, since the war on poverty began, that the family has collapsed. At one point in America, virtually every child was given the gift of a married mother and father. Today, 40 percent of all Americans, 50 percent of Hispanics, and 70 percent of African Americans are born to single moms—and the consequences for those children are quite serious.
The state’s interest in marriage is not that it cares about my love life, or your love life, or anyone’s love life just for the sake of romance. The state’s interest in marriage is ensuring that those kids have fathers who are involved in their lives.
People who are honest in recognizing that fathers matter cannot press for a redefinition of marriage that makes fathers optional. Any policy that normalizes and celebrates gender-interchangeability is bad for children, and we should be favoring the rights of children over the selfishness of adults in our laws and policies. Period.
The rest of the article is a nice short summary of the case for traditional marriage. It addresses social issues like religious liberty, but it also addresses fiscal issues like the costs of social programs.
Gay activist Dan Savage thinks that we should murder every single child born on the planet for the next 30 years, against the will of the parents, in every single country in the world.
Self-styled anti-bullying advocate Dan Savage told a giggling and applauding audience in Australia that “abortion should be mandatory for 30 years” on Monday during a panel discussion on Christianity, marriage and sex.
Savage made his remarks during a program titled “Q&A, Adventures in Democracy” broadcasted from the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall on Monday in response to the question: ”Which so-called dangerous idea do you each think would have the greatest potential to change the world for the better if it were implemented?”
“Population control: There’s too many goddam people on the planet,” Savage said as the audience burst into applause at his predictable response. “You know, I’m pro-choice. I believe that women should have a right to control their bodies. Sometimes in my darker moments, I’m anti-choice. I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years.”
Savage, creator of the “It Gets Better” viral video anti-suicide crusade on behalf of gay teens, takes a hateful, violent pro-death position toward everyone who irritates him, from unborn babies to hapless Green Party candidates standing in the way of total Democratic domination.
“I wish [Republicans] were all f***ing dead,” he said on liberal comedian Bill Maher’s HBO show “Real Time” in 2011 during the debt-ceiling brouhaha.
Back in 2006, Savage called for the barbaric murder of a Green Party candidate, angered by the threat of third-party candidates to spoil the Democratic Senate victory of Bob Casey.
“Carl Romanelli should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there’s nothing left but the rope,” Savage told the Daily Pennsylvanian, alluding to the 1998 torture and death of hate crime victim James Byrd, Jr.
Voters thinking of casting a ballot for Romanelli should be “beaten,” said Savage, who had previously used the beating death of 21-year-old gay teen Matthew Shepard as blog post fodder.
Remember, this is just what he says in public. Can you imagine what his real views are?
The Obama administration is a big fan of Dan Savage:
President Barack Obama himself supports Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign, devoting a page of WhiteHouse.gov to it as a civil rights issue.
Obama appears to share Savage’s view on abortion as well: During his tenure in the Illinois state legislature, Obama spoke and voted against a version of the “Born Alive Infants Protection Act,” which would have made it illegal to kill a living, breathing, defenseless child that survived an abortion.
It’s very important to take a close look at what gay activists say and do. Below are a couple of examples of what gay activists do.
A satellite church affiliated with controversial Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll was vandalized early Tuesday (April 24) and a group calling itself the “Angry Queers” has reportedly taken responsibility.
Stained glass and other windows were broken at the Mars Hill Church, according to a post on the Facebook page of Pastor Tim Smith.
“Neighbors of the church reported seeing several young adults in black masks throwing large rocks into the windows,” a church news release said. “Police stated that a bank in the area was also vandalized in the same way and that they believe the vandalism was planned ahead of time, most likely by an activist group.”
On Tuesday, KPTV FOX 12 reported it had received an email from someone using the name “Angry Queers” and claiming responsibility.
Mars Hill Portland opened last October. During the first service, protesters gathered in front of the church and yelled obscenities at worshipers to speak out against the church’s stance on homosexuality.
Here’s part of the e-mail written by the gay activists responsible for the attack:
The e-mail, which is peppered with foul language, berates the Q Center, a local LGBT activist organization, for engaging in a dialogue with the Mars Hill’s leadership. “What we have to say to the Q Center is this: F—K YOU, you don’t represent us. You are disgusting traitors who prioritize social peace and the bourgeois aspirations of rich white cis gay people over the more pressing survival needs of more marginalized queers.”
“F—k dialog with people who want us dead,” the e-mail read. “The only dialog we need with scum like Mars Hill is hammers through their windows.”
“We hope this small act of vengeance will strike some fear into the hearts of all of Mars Hill’s pastors, and warm the hearts of our friends and comrades (known or unknown). It may not get better, but we can certainly get even,” it concludes.
And of course, we can’t forget the prominent gay activist Floyd Corkins, who was convicted of domestic terrorism for his attack on the Family Research Council.
The man accused of opening fire and shooting a security guard at the conservative Family Research Council headquarters last August plead guilty to three charges in a D.C. federal court Wednesday.
Floyd Lee Corkins, II of Herndon, Virginia entered guilty pleas to a federal weapons charge as well as a local terrorism charge and a charge of assault with intent to kill, according to news reports.
The Washington Post reports that, according to the plea agreement Corkins signed, he told FBI agents on the day of the shooting that he “intended to kill as many people as possible” and planned to “smother Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces.”
Investigators found additional magazines and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his backpack on the day of the shooting.
Following the guilty plea the FRC issued a statement placing a large portion of the blame for the shooting at the feet of the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, which had listed FRC as a hate group. FRC noted that prosecutors discovered Corkins identified his targets on the SPLC’s website.
“The day after Floyd Corkins came into the FRC headquarter and opened fire wounding one of our team members, I stated that while Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group,’” FRC president Tony Perkins said in a statement, which went on to demand that SPLC stop attacking organizations that have a different opinion on gay rights.
The Human Rights Campaign, a very large and influential gay rights group favored by Democrats, joins the SPLC and the convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Corkins in condemning the FRC as a “hate group”. Gay activists continued to condemn the FRC after the terrorist attack had occurred.
You can read more about the views of Floyd Corkins here, and note this:
Corkins told the FBI he found the FRC building as his target using a “hate map” on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for the shooting. SPLC still lists FRC as a hate group and continues to maintain a map to FRC’s office building on the SPLC website.
Dan Savage often speaks on college campuses and on television as a liberal commentator. He often makes controversial remarks, such as saying that Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, in opposing homosexual behavior, contributes to gay suicide.
On Sept. 27, 2012, Savage told a student audience at Winona State University, “[E]very dead gay kid is a victory for the Family Research Council. They argue that the gay lifestyle is sick and sinful and dangerous and they point to the suicide rate, and then they turn around and do everything in their power to make sure that suicide rate does not come down and to drive it up.”
“Tony Perkins sits on a pile of dead gay kids every day when he goes to work — and he calls himself a Christian,” said Savage. “I don’t understand how real Christians let that little f–ker get away with that.”
What does the FRC do? They put out research papers showing the importance of mothers and fathers to children. That’s what gay activists consider to be “hate”. It’s very important to understand what gay activists actually say. I have no doubt that if you ask gay activists like Dan Savage and Floyd Corkins whether they are tolerant people, they would say “of course we are tolerant”. So you have to look for yourself at what they say, and what they do, and judge for yourself whether they are as tolerant as they want you to believe.
Children born last year are more likely than any previous generation to see their parents split up, research suggests.
Nearly half will experience family breakdown, according to a report by the Marriage Foundation think tank.
Its researchers estimate that 354,000 out of the 729,674 children born in England and Wales in 2012 will have parents who are separated by the time they reach the age of 15.
The report also suggests that married couples are much more likely to stay together than those who are unmarried.
The vast majority of children whose parents will still be together by their mid-teens will have a mother and father who are married, the report said. Only 5 per cent will have unmarried parents.
Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation, said: ‘We continually hear about divorce rates shooting up and causing the exponential rise in family breakdown, but this is demonstrably not the case.
‘The percentage of marriages ending in divorce has actually fallen since 2005 to 42 per cent. For all marriages lasting over ten years, the divorce rate has barely changed since the 1960s.
‘It is the declining rates of marriage which provide the only conceivable explanation of the doubling of family breakdown since the 1980s.
‘Of the teenagers not living with both parents, just 32 per cent of cases involved divorce.’
Last week a report by the chief inspector of schools Sir Michael Wilshaw linked social problems in Britain to bad parenting. He criticised ‘hollowed-out and fragmented families’ where parents suffer a ‘poverty of accountability’.
Sir Michael said many children were ‘alienated’ from their fathers, and warned of social problems resulting from ‘making excuses’ for bad parents.
‘Some people will tell you that social breakdown is the result of material poverty – it’s more than this,’ he said.
‘These children lack more than money: They lack parents who take responsibility for seeing them raised well. It is this poverty of accountability which costs them.
‘These children suffer because they are not given clear rules or boundaries, have few secure or safe attachments at home, and little understanding of the difference between right and wrong behaviour.’
Findings from the Centre for Social Justice have shown as many as one million children are growing up without a father.
I think that if we really want children to have what they need, then we have to take a very strong position on the tolerance and non-judgmentalism that is so popular among the social left today. Because we are tolerant and non-judgmental, 53 million unborn children are dead. Because we are tolerant and non-judgmental, a record number of children are being raised without their mother or their father (or both). Because we are tolerant and non-judgmental, children are being saddled with the costs of fixing the results of irresponsibility decisions made by adults. Because we are tolerant and non-judgmental, we have run up a $17 trillion dollar debt so that the President can congratulate himself on how generous he is by spending money that other people earned (or will have to earn).
Maybe we need to stop thinking about being liked by our peers and start thinking about doing what’s right for children – born and unborn. A good first step would be to view anyone who espouses moral relativism as an evil, destructive, selfish and foolish person. When a woman brags to you about how she doesn’t judge anyone, you should look at her as someone immoral who cannot see the difference between policies/choices that harm children, and policies/choices that help them. At the very least, you should never marry someone who supports redefining marriage to include no-fault divorce and same-sex marriage. You should never marry someone who supports paying people taxpayer money to have children out of wedlock.
If a person cannot see how natural marriage protects children, then don’t marry them. We need to shame people who don’t protect children. It doesn’t matter what they say to you in order to sound nice. It only matters that they won’t condemn things that are clearly wrong. That makes them a threat to children, and unsuitable for marriage.
WINTERY KNIGHT 