Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Why I Fight Against Same-Sex Marriage

(Getty/Tom Williams)

Rich Stearns is a servant, a Wharton grad who leapt from the top of corporate America and landed in a stream, knees bent bracing. Arms outstretched, he is a fisher of men, desperate to save the poor, sick and suffering. Stearns’ talent has transformed World Vision into the eighth largest charity in America, with annual revenues of more than $1 billion. Some 40,000 employees are active worldwide doing disaster relief, providing food, and assisting refugees.

According to a 2009 interview, Stearns intends to reduce by half the number of children who die daily from poverty-related causes. If he succeeds (count me among those who believe he will) that number will still be 13,000 dead children daily.

At a recent gathering in Los Angeles, Stearns privileged the work he and others do around poverty issues and criticized Christians who he sees as preoccupied by work focused on the meaning and purpose of marriage. “No one ever died of gay marriage,” he argued.

It is unlikely that “number of deaths prevented” is actually Stearns’ metric for determining the legitimacy of a vocation. Surely he recognizes the mundane contributions of faithful Christians in education, law, engineering, art, and a thousand other fields as legitimate whether or not life hangs in the balance.

No, the comment tells us that Stearns finds marriage a trivial issue. Nero fiddled as Rome burned; meanwhile, Teetsel blogged about same-sex marriage. And so he pleads, “Why don’t you do something that matters?”

Stearns is not alone. As the 29 year-old director of the Manhattan Declaration I am often asked that question.

Founded in 2009 by Charles Colson and more than 100 religious leaders from the three historic Christian traditions, the Manhattan Declaration defines life, marriage, and religious liberty as foundational principles necessary for the common good. The Declaration asks Christians to prioritize these concerns and refuse to “render unto Caesar” when the laws of man contradict moral obligations to God. Why be involved in such work?

Life, marriage, and religious liberty are not arbitrary choices; they are inextricable. The ethic of life is premised on the doctrine of Imago Dei, the inherent dignity of every human being as a creature uniquely crafted in the image of God himself. Why do we care about the poor, oppressed, and suffering? Because they are human beings.

Read more at Religion and Politics.

What is a mother to do? Questions for same-sex ‘marriage’ advocates

June 25, 2013 (thePublicDiscourse) - The speed at which marriage was redefined last month in the state of Minnesota has left me with a sense of vertigo. My head is still spinning. And though the war wages on, one thing seems clear: Those of us for whom same-sex marriage has been, until now, almost impossible to contemplate, have some things to figure out. Of those, the most urgent is the question of what we are to tell our children.

I am the mother of a ten-year-old girl, a beautiful child, more precious to me than anything you can imagine. When, on June 1, same-sex marriage became legal in the state of Minnesota, I needed to know what to tell her. How is this supposed to work—actually—in the concrete world of a ten-year-old child and her mother? Her father is wondering too, of course, but he is rather speechless at the moment. And the way it works in our house, though he is really good at protecting her from possible physical threats, it usually falls to me to protect her from the more psychological threats she encounters occasionally in her young life. But this is a new one. So I need some advice.

When you ask my daughter to accept that a man may marry another man, that a woman may marry another woman, you are requiring her to declare that 2 + 2 = 5.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should state that, as a philosopher, I have gotten fairly skilled at treating the philosophical errors of our age in the classroom setting. But a ten-year-old is at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to the arguments I have developed against relativism, nominalism, dualism, materialism, and so on. And then of course, parenting comes with its own specific challenges. So I am hoping those who advocate same-sex marriage have given some thought to this, eager as they seem to be to take on the task of parenting themselves.

For starters, can we agree that, along with her father of course, I am still responsible to her for doing my part to raise her to be the intelligent, responsible young woman she is destined to be? If so, how should I help her grapple with what it means to know the truth about something? Doesn’t any claim to the truth have to begin with a grasp of what is actually so? Should there not be some sort of correspondence between what is so and what she thinks is so? At least, that is what I have been trying to teach her.

Read more at Life Site News.

The False Narrative of Gay ‘Marriage’: It Is Not Inevitable

June 25, 2013 (Breakpoint.org) - In his book, “The Black Swan,” Nicholas Nassim Taleb discussed what he calls the “narrative fallacy.” This refers to our “limited ability” to look at a sequence of facts “without weaving an explanation into them.”

While this tendency helps us make sense of the world around us, it can and often does mislead us. It creates a mistaken impression that we understand things better than we really do. And, it often causes us to view the facts in ways that are consistent with the narrative we ourselves have created.

Or is it?

Case in point: the recent news – or in this case, news blackout – out of Illinois.

A few weeks ago the state legislature took up the issue of same-sex marriage. The outcome was regarded as a foregone conclusion. Illinois is President Obama’s home state, and his party enjoys commanding majorities in both houses. Same-sex marriage enjoyed the support of both the governor and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The president had even personally lobbied state legislators.

Given all that, the vote in favor of gay “marriage” in Illinois was inevitable, right?

Well, no one bothered to tell the state’s African-American pastors. As Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage wrote in the National Review, the pastors “worked hard to reach and convince African-American legislators to stand tall for the truth of marriage.”

The pastors demanded that legislators acknowledge that marriage “is an institution created by God to bring men and women together for the benefit of children that can only be created through the union of men and women.”

Read more at Life Site News.

How Songs Like Macklemore’s “Same Love” Change the Marriage Debate

So, too, with “Same Love.” At most, it theorizes that it’s the same love, that love is love however expressed, but this is never defended so much as assumed; and since, as Macklemore asserts, “We press play, don’t press pause / Progress, march on,” with all other positions retrograde and bigoted, the millions of viewers, “ten years hence,” may remember that there was a controversy, but not why.

As powerfully as any cultural artifact I know, “Same Love” reveals the odd imbalance or mismatch involved in the marriage dispute. On the one hand, the traditional, conjugal view held by, for instance, the Catholic Church, operates within the vocabulary of metaphysics (nature, being, cause, structure, purpose), practical reason/ethics (good, bad, right, wrong, proper, flourishing), and logos (causation, inference, syllogism, entailment). On the other hand, metaphysics is replaced with self-identity and expression (“Live on and be yourself”), ethics gives way to egalitarianism (“I might not be the same, but that’s not important / No freedom till we’re equal, damn right I support it), and logos to sentiment (“My love / She keeps me warm”).

So you have Theology of the Body or the arguments of natural law versus the word–image association of Macklemore—that’s not likely a ripe conversation—and Macklemore has a lead of 48 million views and a culture moving in his direction, not only in its beliefs but in its vocabulary.

Less Marriage, Fewer Fathers

In this day and age, we are being told to come to terms with the fact that marriage is on the decline. What we don’t often hear about however is one huge consequence, as pointed out in an article by author and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, Bradford Wilcox: and that’s the decrease of genuine and holistic fatherhood.

Why’s this? Wilcox points out that as society retreats from marriage, there’s a growth in fatherless families. With cohabitation, these couples are already more likely than married couples to end up on the rocks. But the institution of marriage is the only one that binds men to their children, the only one that can keep them under the same roof. Statistics make it clear that while the number of married middle-aged women in America fell from 82 per cent in 1970 to 62 per cent today, the share of children living in fatherless homes has doubled from 14 to 28 per cent.

Great Love Scenes that Could Have Never Been Homosexual

In honor of the Supreme Court's decisions on gay marriage tomorrow -- whatever those decisions are -- I want to invoke my shameless love of Hollywood musicals and share some classic dance scenes that epitomize men loving women and women loving men. These are scenes that could simply never be homosexual.

Men and women together, being themselves, in love -- nothing will ever match such chemistry. You can pass a law but gayness will just never measure up. Check these out:

If you want to pay proper tribute to male-female love, why not start with Marge and Gower Champion? Married for thirty years, they were the face of love in motion. Oozing sexuality and raw animal magnetism, the towering and slender blond boy Gower throws around the round-faced and athletic Marge but every move is tinged with seduction! Yowza!

Read more at English Manif.

More than enough love to go around

My mother Lupita is a beautiful, intelligent, charming woman, who has had eleven boys and five girls. They range from 28 to 8. She has never had a moment’s regret. Perhaps, as her daughter I am biased, but I believe that each birth has enriched my mother, making her even more attractive and allowing her heart to expand and reach each of her children in a special motherly manner. My mother is now past child-bearing age, but if she could she would have more. Adoption has crossed her mind, and my father’s mind, more than once.

There are some women out there who don’t have children because they think that having children will make them uglier. My mother is living proof that this is not the case. Just a year ago, when my grade 12 English teacher met my mother she was deeply impressed. There was even a hint of a tear. Afterwards she admitted to me: “I imagined your mother to be, well, ugly. And fat”. More than once, due to her youthful, charming, looks, people have taken her for my older sister.

There is plenty of constant hard work, but my mother has never considered herself a slave. Rather she is a living holocaust of love for her family. My mother is no superwoman and there days when she is exhausted and has not had one single moment for herself. Yet there is always a smile on her face.

Girls who smoke marijuana are more likely to sleep around at university, claims study

Girls are more likely to sleep around at university if they smoke cannabis, according to a new study.

American researchers set out to discover if some students are more likely than others to 'hook up'.

They discovered that smoking cannabis was one of the main factors determining whether first-year, female university students took part in casual, 'no-strings' sexual relationships.

Lead author Robyn Fielder, from The Miriam Hospital’s Centres for Behavioural and Preventive Medicine in Rhode Island, surveyed 483 incoming first-year female university students about their risk behaviours, personality traits and social environment.

Specific questions covered the students’ sexual behaviour and their attitudes towards sex.

They also discussed the students' self-esteem, religious beliefs, parents’ relationship status, alcohol and cannabis use, smoking, impulsivity and sensation-seeking behaviour.

Researchers re-interviewed the women monthly for eight months.

Fielder said: 'Our findings suggest hooking up during the first year of college is influenced by marijuana use.'

The study is believed to be the first to explore cannabis use as a reason why students took part in casual sexual relationships.

Latin America buckling under anti-life, anti-family imperialism of Obama administration

The Obama administration is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to propagandize the peoples of impoverished regions and to bribe their governments to impose the abortion industry on the weakest and most vulnerable countries in the world. It is joined in this by many European states, as well as multi-billion-dollar foundations established for the purpose of world de-population programs.

Obama's State Department is also aggressively undermining the sexual morality of young people and degrading the natural family. Governments that refuse to cave into the homosexual agenda and partake in the destruction of their precious family cultures are blackmailed by loss of development aid.

Despite a courageous response on the part of pro-life and pro-family groups to this terrible onslaught, Latin America is beginning to buckle. The signs are everywhere.

Read more at Life Site News.

Monday, 24 June 2013

What’s the connection between abortion and careers?

I told my mom I was pregnant. She said, “Get an abortion.”

I didn't say anything. I wasn't really thinking I had any choices. I didn't have a job that could support a child. And I wasn't sure if I was planning to marry my boyfriend, although we were living together. I knew that I had big ideas for my life and I hadn't figured things out yet.

My mom got militant. “You'll destroy your career possibilities.”

She riffed on this theme for a week, calling me every night. Her passion is understandable. My mom took a job when I was young because she hated being home with kids. She endured interview questions like, “Does your husband want you away from home working?” She was one of the first women to become an executive at her Fortune 500 company. She blazed trails so I could have career goals that required an abortion to preserve.

Here's what else happened: Other women called. It turned out that many, many women I knew had had an abortion. This is not something women talk about. I mean, I had no idea how ubiquitous the procedure was, at least in my big-city, liberal, Jewish world.

Each of those women told me that I should get an abortion so that I could keep my options open. “You're a smart girl. You can do anything with your life right now. Don't ruin it.”

My boyfriend was laying low. He was no slouch when it came to pro-choice politics and he knew it was, ultimately, my decision.

How a Country’s Economy is Determined by the Quality of its Marriages

Fagan notes that society is made up of five facets: the family, church, school, the marketplace and government. The first three mentioned are the places that “grow the people” so to speak, and are closely interrelated. The last two areas of society are those into which people are set loose, once they’ve grown up: but the role that they play in these spheres of economy and government really depends on what happened in their experience of family, church and school.

The statistics which Fagan shares are both interesting and revealing. When men marry, their productivity increases by over 20%, and the highest rates of productivity in society come from men who are married with three kids. Married people also make up the demographic that shows the lowest level of unemployment. And while sadly only 45% of children in America reach the age of 17 with their parents’ marriage still intact, those who do achieve better education results.

So it becomes obvious that the quality of marriage in a society affects its economy.

A Social-Metaphysical Theory of Marriage

To begin, I would like to engage with the notion of social-metaphysical necessity that I’ve just invoked. Marriage is not, in the proper sense, a mere metaphysical fact for, while the necessity is grounded in the essential metaphysical nature of man and woman, marriage is also essentially, in the metaphysical sense, a social institution. Ergo, social-metaphysical necessity. The structure of society as conditioned by the metaphysical properties of the two sexual groups makes it impossible for marriage, insofar as it is thatinstitution picked out historically to designate a kind of explicit communal oath, rather than some other social construct, to be a construct that involves sexually opposite pairs in a relationship grounded by some specific premises.

What I mean by this is that, however one may want to use the word ‘marriage,’ it will always be necessary for the good of society to pick out that particular relationship which has historically gone by the name of ‘marriage.’ Whatever happens politically, however language is changed, it will always be an essential good for society to save a particular veneration for the good of marriage. A society which foregoes the essential metaphysics of marriage, whatever else it may call ‘marriage,’ is a society which has lost an essential foundation, and it can only wither until it collapses. The argument which establishes this is partly historical, partly social theory. There is, comparing between the metaphysical potential a heterosexual union possesses and that of a homosexual union, a specific and important potential that heterosexual union possesses which society is built on that homosexual union does not possess.

Lesbians Try to Suppress Free Speech in Cambridge

Last month Jonathan Hall, a young student in Cambridge, was speaking in public about religion and same-sex marriage, to which he is opposed. To his amazement, a lesbian couple started filming him, shouting at him and then they telephoned the police and demanded his arrest.

This is the GAYSTAPO in action.

According to them, “Anyone who believes in man/woman only marriage should be sent to jail.” “Equality overrides free speech and your views are homophobic, intolerant and very very offensive” they screamed. “Nobody should be allowed to believe that marriage is only between a man and a woman in the 21st century, we’re calling the police and we’re calling them now.”

While one of them was on the phone to the police, Mr Hall asked, “What next, are you going to have MPs who voted against same-sex marriage arrested? What about people who voted UKIP in the local elections – are you going to have them arrested too?”

They replied, “We’d love to !” they screamed, revealing their fascist tendencies. “We’ve got all of the evidence to put you in jail!”

On Winning the Marriage Debate

No issue demonstrates this more than marriage. Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and Robert George recently wrote a masterful defense of what marriage is and why it matters. It is no exaggeration to say that their argument is the intellectual foundation for marriage advocates, used by the National Organization for Marriage, the Heritage Foundation, and others (including my own Manhattan Declaration). What did the same-sex marriage movement do with this seminal book? They ignored it.

They don’t have answers to the authors’ claims; they don’t need them. Advocates of same-sex marriage aren’t concerned about the logic of their arguments or the precedents they establish. Forget facts; theirs is a more powerful weapon in the era of amusement: fad...

This week, the Supreme Court will issue decisions in two cases involving the meaning and purpose of marriage. Whatever the results, our work to rebuild a culture of marriage and family will continue. Restoration will require that we better brand ourselves and make our case more attractive.

Saturday, 22 June 2013

Less than One Third of Americans Support Redefinition of Marriage

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 21, 2013 (Family Research Council) - With the Supreme Court due to rule on two cases seeking the redefinition of marriage next week, the media have been reporting widely on polls that claim a majority of Americans now support such a redefinition to include homosexual couples. The implication left by some of these stories is that a majority would therefore be happy to have the Supreme Court rule that the U.S. Constitution requires changing the definition of marriage and forbids any state from defining it as the union of a man and a woman.

Read more at Family Research Council.

New York Senate Defeats Andrew Cuomo’s Radical Abortion Bill

The failure of a last-ditch hostile amendment to try to effect passage of the Abortion Expansion Act is a remarkable victory for unborn children, as well as vulnerable women and girls who so often face unrelenting societal and family pressure to abort.

That’s the feeling of pro-life groups and the state’s Catholic bishops following the defeat of the radical abortion bill pro-abortion New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was promoting in the state legislature.

Senator Jeff Klein, leader of the Independent Democratic Conference, offered the late-term abortion expansion plank of Governor Cuomo’s Women’s Equality Act as a hostile amendment to a bill having to do with medical records. The amendment failed to garner the votes necessary to pass.

The Rev. Jason J. McGuire, President of New Yorker’s Family Research Foundation, made the following comments:

“New Yorker’s Family Research Foundation is thankful that late-term abortion expansion legislation has failed to pass the State Senate. New York is already the abortion capital of the nation, and the last thing New York needs is more abortion. It is wonderful to see so many New Yorkers—including Members of the Legislature—bravely standing for the unborn. Late-term abortion expansion would harm women and families, as well as resulting in the loss of more innocent lives. The Senate has done the right thing.”

Read more at Life Site News.

What is the Point of Marriage Equality?

Marriage equality. Equal opportunity. Wealth inequality. Gender equality. Equal outcome. Equality before the law. “All men are created equal.” The concept of equality is pervasive and used to justify a broad range of policies. But what exactly is equality, and why would it serve to justify anything?

There really is no straightforward and obviously correct definition of “equality” or “equal.” Aristotle, agreeing with Plato, defined equality as “treating like cases as like.” When you have two or more members of a set and there is some relevant likeness between them, they will receive equal treatment. But that’s the thing; equal treatment is dependent on that possession of relevant likeness. Appealing to equality presupposes that relevant likeness, but that relevant likeness is exactly what is at issue. Doubling down on the claim of equality misses the point.

Consider the notion of “marriage equality.” Why is it called “marriage equality?” The notion is that same-sex couples are being treated the same, since they already possess the relevant likeness to opposite-sex couples. Is there a relevant likeness? Maybe, maybe not, but you do not prove equality by calling it equality. This may be difficult to understand for progressivists, but demonstrating that marriage is a social construct essentially based on nothing more than love (rather than, say, certain material elements) is hard to accomplish; the testimony of history ought to make one skeptical of the illusively straightforward kinds of argument meant to demonstrate relevant equality.

Vatican Cardinal: We need a new appreciation of Christian wives and mothers

ROME, June 21 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Signitura launched the Vatican’s celebration of Pope John Paul II’s pro-life encyclical the Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae) Saturday, delivering the main address at the English-language catechesis. The promotion of a culture of life depends, said Cardinal Burke “on a new appreciation of Christian wives and mothers… on a new proclamation regarding woman and motherhood.”

Photo: Steve Jalsevac/LifeSiteNews.com

The catechesis on the encyclical marked the beginning of the Evangelium Vitae Day which culminated in a Mass Sunday morning with Pope Francis which was attended by over 200,000. An adoration hour and candlelight vigil concluded the Saturday events.

Quoting Evangelium Vitae, Burke drew attention to the “daily heroism” of "brave mothers who devote themselves to their own family without reserve, who suffer in giving birth to their children and who are ready to make any effort, to face any sacrifice, in order to pass on to them the best of themselves".

Burke further quoted from the encycical:

"In living out their mission "these heroic women do not always find support in the world around them. On the contrary, the cultural models frequently promoted and broadcast by the media do not encourage motherhood. In the name of progress and modernity the values of fidelity, chastity, sacrifice, to which a host of Christian wives and mothers have borne and continue to bear outstanding witness, are presented as obsolete ... We thank you, heroic mothers, for your invincible love! We thank you for your intrepid trust in God and in his love. We thank you for the sacrifice of your life ... In the Paschal Mystery, Christ restores to you the gift you gave him. Indeed, he has the power to give you back the life you gave him as an offering".

Read more at Life Site News.

Anal hazing is apparently a thing in American high schools

Anal hazing is apparently a thing in American high school

[Warning: Graphic Content]
In the last year, there have been more than a dozen hazing incidents around the country involving high school boys who have sodomized other boys with foreign objects, reports Bloomberg. Over 40 boys have been reported victims. Most have been younger students.

There’s a dearth of data concerning the size and scope of the national boy-on-boy anal hazing problem. Astonishingly, though, a study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence has claimed that nearly 10 percent of high school males report suffering some form of sexual assault including, in some cases, forced oral sex or rape.

Social media plays a big role in the spread of hazing in high schools, asserts Susan Lipkins, a New York psychologist who has studied the phenomenon. High schoolers learn new and more brutal ways to haze thanks to virtual communities.

Sexual Assaults in the Military: Porn is Part of the Problem

It is bad enough when high-ranking military officers are arrested for sexual assault, including instructors who have assaulted trainees. It is almost unthinkable that two military members recently arrested happened to be in charge of or were associated with sexual assault prevention programs for theirrespective services. It is not hyperbole to say that the US military is in a sexual assault crisis not seen since the Navy’s Tailhook scandal.

To extract itself from this sexual assault wash cycle, the Air Force, in which we serve, along with other branches of the military, must take swift action to recognize many of the underlying behaviors that lead to sexual assault and warn its Airmen accordingly. Specifically, it is imperative that the Air Force recognize the direct link between sexual assaults and the elevated amount of pornography consumption in its ranks. Pornography has become the new drug of many Airmen, and the service must help its members deal with this addictive new health hazard.

Members of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAGs) can help solve this problem and provide insight from their unique perspective on military duty. Military legal offices work closely with the military commanders to help maintain good order and discipline, and as a result, get to see the “ugly side” of the military services. Daily, they conduct investigations of and prosecute crimes committed by military members. JAGs also provide free legal advice to service members on a whole range of issues such as divorce, which offers JAGs another window into the causes of common personal problems. Many JAGs also gain rare insight into the root causes of crimes like sexual assault committed by Airmen.

The military’s sexual assault problem is grim, but unfortunately, the current Air Force sexual assault prevention training, although well-intended, is not cutting the mustard. A brief anecdote might help illuminate the issue.

Read more at Public Discourse.