What Is 'Conservative' and Does It Matter ?

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David Mills writes an interesting article which posits that the definition of marriage is both more important and more attainable than the definition of 'conservative'- and rebuts Steort's article on marriage :

... Imagine the original editors of National Review, Buckley, Kirk, Chambers, and the rest, and others of their sort, gathered in a room in the fifties, and then imagine the scalding rebuke they would have given to someone who proposed homosexual “marriage” as a conservative position, especially if he argued for it on the basis of “maximal experiential union.”...

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1 Corinthians 13: 4- 8

..Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up;  Is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil;

 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth;  Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never falleth away..

(Douay-Rheims)


Thinking about my husband and our marriage, I realize how often I fail to live up to St. Paul's standards. Especially the 'beareth,hopeth,believeth and endureth' part- at least, not without  expressed doubt !

Something to work on. God has expectations.

Perspective: Same Sex Marriage

Will The Gays Win? No.

(By Mike McManus April 15, 2009)

Gays have won significant victories in the last couple of weeks. First, there was the unanimous decision by the Iowa Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. There have been other top state court decisions but they were always 5-4, barely enough to win. It was also the first state to take this step in the Midwest.

Second, Vermont not only became the first state to legalize gay marriage by the Legislature, but also without pressure from a court case, as in Massachusetts. Third, the governor vetoed the bill, but the Legislature overrode the veto.

Fourth, the Washington DC City Council voted unanimously last week to recognize same-sex marriage performed elsewhere. All recognize this is a half step toward legalization.

However, I believe the battle will ultimately be won by supporters of traditional marriage. Remember that the Germans were ahead in 1943.

Take Iowa, where the Supreme Court declared there was no "constitutionally adequate" justification to prevent "same-sex marriage" Iowans disagree. A February 2008 Iowa Poll showed 62 percent of Iowans believe marriage should be only between one man and one woman, with only 32 percent saying it should not.

Who will lead the opposition? Start with religious leaders.

Within hours, Iowa's Catholic bishops "strongly disagreed" with the decision, calling it "unwarranted social engineering" weakening the relationship between marriage and parenting. "This decision rejects the wisdom of thousands of years of human history. It implements a novel understanding of marriage, which will grievously harm families and children," they wrote. The rights of marriage "are not something that the state creates or may redefine."

Religious leaders have had many victories hardly mentioned in recent weeks. In California, for example, evangelicals joined Catholics to lead a 52-48 percent victory for Prop 8's limit of marriage to joining a man and woman. And that was the 30th state constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. Only three states have gay marriage.

The good guys are winning by a 10-1 margin.

Maggie Gallagher, President of the National Organization for Marriage, quotes Vaclav Havel saying "Truth and love will prevail over lies and hate." She adds, "On that basis Havel took on the Soviet empire. Where is the invincible empire now?"

"Same sex marriage is founded on a lie about human nature: 'There's no difference between a same-sex and opposite sex unions and you are a bigot if you disagree.' Political movements can - sometimes at great human cost and with great output of energy - sustain a lie but eventually political regimes founded on lies collapse in on themselves."

She asks, "What does losing marriage mean? First, the rejection of the idea that children need a mom and dad as a cultural norm...Second, the redefinition of traditional religious faiths as the moral and legal equivalent of racists. The proposition on the table right now is that our faith itself is a form of bigotry."

The Washington Post, hardly a conservative paper, published examples recently: "A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney's costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple's commitment ceremony.

"A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship. Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.

"It really is all about religious liberty for us," said Scott Hoffman, chief administrative officer of a New Jersey Methodist group, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, which lost a property tax exemption after it declined to allow its beachside pavilion to be used for a same-sex union ceremony. "The protection to not be forced to do something that is against deeply held religious principles," reported the paper.

This sort of honest reporting will awaken a sleeping giant, millions of Americans who believe deeply in traditional marriage and who resent any trampling of people because of their deeply held religious convictions.

Wednesday's Washington Post even published a column by 1,000 retired generals and admirals who argue that if Obama repeals the law stating that homosexuality is incompatible with military service, it "would prompt many dedicated people to leave the military."

They cite a poll that 10 percent would not reenlist and 14 percent would consider leaving. Even the lesser number means 228,600 would exit, more than all active-duty Marine Corps.

Some battles have been lost, but this war is not over.

(Michael J. McManus is a syndicated columnist writing on "Ethics & Religion". He is President & Co-Chair of Marriage Savers.)


I think that something not discussed much in this debate, is the injustice of redefining marriage to suit a group that wants to usurp its 'meaning'. Same-sex marriage is all about 'pretending' to be an actual married couple.

Advocates of same-sex marriage need to step back and face themselves in the mirror. They will see someone willing to take away from someone else what they themselves can not have. Same sex marriage does not make two men or two women married. It makes marriage meaningless. Its purpose cannot be to accomplish the physically impossible. The real purpose must be to exact a price on society for a non-crime ...namely not being able to fabricate a heterosexual normalcy for gay couples.

Why Traditional Families Must Survive - Julie Culshaw

Slippery Slope

"The Amazing Power of Culture"

Maggie Gallagher at The Corner has been posting an excellent series on culture and marriage:

(Part 7)...Between roughly 1960 and 1980, marriage came under a rather fierce and multi-faced ideological attack.

Five great strands of contemporary liberalism — the sexual revolution, the gender-role revolution, the expansion of welfare for the poor, the movement for racial equality, and the environmental movement — came together to support de-norming of marriage, knocking it off its pedestal and de-legitimating, in various ways, its privileged cultural postion.

Why? The monologue ran something like this: Moral norms disapproving of illegitimacy must be overturned to make room for expanded financial supports for poor single mothers; concern for married childbearing was implicitly and sometimes explicitly racist; marriage trapped women into unfulfilling domestic roles and interfered with the sexual pleasure that should be available equally to men and women. The fear of the slut within must be conquered. Abortion must be elevated to a constitutional right or women cannot be just like men in bed or in the workplace. And the population explosion reinforced the sexual revolutionaries' idea that the generative capacity of women — our power to create new life — was a problem, not an asset....

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10

Marriage Means Nothing

...in Canada. Under the Liberals, with their approval and government funding, marriage has been reduced to an agreement with financial and legal benefits and a symbol of homosexual power.

William Gairdner fills us in on the repercussions :

...We need to be reminded that marriage in the West has always been an institution based on four requirements, or qualifications that have provided whatever marital-social stability we used to enjoy. Until recently the law said that anyone is permitted to marry as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex, only one such person at a time, who is not beneath a certain age, and not a close blood relative. That is the four-legged matrimonial chair on which Western Judeo-Christian society has always rested.

But due to the undermining of marriage that results from having removed the gender requirement, the case of open polygamy practiced at Bountiful will not be prosecuted in the confidence that this rational social and moral ground of marriage, this stable structure that has been the very best thing for men, women, children, and for society as a whole for generations, must be upheld. For it as already been trashed.

Instead, polygamy will be prosecuted simply because it is against the current law (Section 293). And polygamy will defended under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a matter of religious right.

When it gets to court, judges will fall back on the question of whether or not one individual right (to religion) does or does not “trump” another individual right (say, a woman’s right). In other words, the process of adjudication in the war over rights will come down, as always, to some judge’s effort to construct a reasonable hierarchy of individual rights. Society, and the greater common good, will be entirely absent from this deliberation...

Related Articles:
Cdn Law Prohibiting Polygamy Faces CHallenge
Cdn Gov't Study Suggests Legalizing Polygamy
Special Report: The Conspiracy To Abolish Marriage In Canada

John Pacheco and Mark Bonocore at SoConwrite on the devastating effects the purposes of Communism have had on Western society, particularly the family and marriage:

....Frederic Engels wrote the Principles of Communism which become, arguably, the defining document for the communist movement. In that paper, in answering a question on the influence of communist society on the family, he prophetically wrote:

"It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage — the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents."(21)

Engels’ propaganda sought to separate the marital union from its divine conception in favour of a mere utilitarian ideal, devoid of any moral underpinnings. Indeed, his observation that Communism would reduce marriage into a “purely private matter” between citizens has been tragically accurate. Such a “purely private matter” has found its zenith with the legalization and widespread acceptance of same-sex “marriage”.....

Gays on the Rampage

CustosFidei has the video showing an attack by losers on a supporter of 'prop 8', in Palm Springs, California.

Its about power. Somehow they have the idea that being homosexual gives them 'extra' super-citizen powers. Like the power to co-opt everything and make it 'gay', and the power to beat the opposition away with vulgarity and violence, without any fear of 'the law'.

Super-Citizens!

'Maintaining the Bedrock'

ZENIT:

The archbishop of Los Angeles says the California vote banning gay marriages was the result of "an unprecedented coalition" that "understood the importance of maintaining the bedrock institution of marriage."

Cardinal Roger Mahony affirmed this today in a statement to the Catholic community and others who supported Proposition 8, which amends the California State Constitution to include a definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman.

"The passage of Proposition 8 was the result of an unprecedented coalition of many faith communities and other citizens who understood the importance of maintaining the bedrock institution of marriage," Cardinal Mahony wrote.

Quoting the book of Genesis as God's plan for the human family, he added: "Our collective efforts in the support of Proposition 8 have centered solely around preserving God's plan that marriage between one man and one woman is to be that unchanging reality through which their mutual love becomes fruitful through bringing forth children to continue the human family.

"The raising, formation and education of these children is destined by God to take place within a traditional family of one father and one mother."....

Marriage Wins, Life Loses

CNA:

Voters in South Dakota and California rejected proposals that would have limited abortions, but all propositions aimed at declaring marriage as between one man and one woman passed, even in California, where an unprecedented amount of money was spent by homosexual advocates to oppose the pro-marriage Proposition 8....

Vote YES Prop.8 California

UPDATE :Marriage Wins

American Catholic:

Readers in California, please don’t forget that as you attempt to choose a pro-Life candidate for President of the US you are also being called to defend marriage by voting Yes on Proposition 8,. Whether they are beloved friends, co-workers or relatives, we probably all know gays and lesbians that we love and care deeply about; many of them may be in long-term loving relationships. But let’s not fool ourselves, a “marriage” between two people of the same sex is not a marriage in Christ. It is not love in the way Christ called us to love one another and the more we head down this path of destroying the institution of marriage, the further we move down the road to our own destruction as a society.

For proof you need only look at the dying populations of many European nations that have allowed gay “marriage”.There is no doubt you will be persecuted and maligned for your views and actually following you faith, but remember, this is the Truth of Christ and he was persecuted for us.

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property "10 Reasons"

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall

RedCardigan writes (very well):

"Imagine an American Christian family in the not-too-distant future. Like many families today, they're unhappy with the public school their children attend, but can't afford private schools, either. They've thought about homeschooling, but since the passage of the Educational Diversity Act of 20--, they know that even homeschoolers must use "approved diverse" textbooks and materials, which include units on homosexual families, pictures of gay men and lesbians with the children they are currently raising, and even "sex ed" materials that include discussions of heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, transgender, and other "options" which the child is encouraged to explore in order to discover "hyser's" orientation..."


This kind of curriculum is already in place in parts of Canada and the UK. Homeschoolers are already facing more and more restrictions. Small businesses are already being sued, employees already being intimidated, Christian churches already being stifled. This future is THIS AFTERNOON!

We still sleep.

A Letter From Karl

CANADIAN “HUMAN RIGHTS” THUGS ATTACK A PRIEST AND HIS MAGAZINE

You may have heard about the “human rights commissions” in Canada. These are extra-judicial bodies set up to make an end run around judicial niceties. The commissions are staffed by left-wing activists who, unable to win election to provincial legislatures, try to impose their will by coming down hard on people who are not left-wing activists.

The main purpose of the commissions is to squelch free speech. This is done by dragging before the commissions people who speak their minds and whose minds are not in accord with left-wing views.

The commissions have been styled by commentators who are not left-wing activists as “kangaroo courts.” This is imprudent talk, because it probably will result in some poor Canadian writer being brought before a commission on a charge of hating marsupials.

The best-known case now before a human rights commission concerns Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who, in Maclean’s magazine, wrote an article (actually, an excerpt of his book America Alone) alleging, more or less, that Muslims are not friendly to Western culture and that Western culture is to be preferred to Muslim culture.

This did not sit well with Muslims in Canada. One of them filed a complaint against Steyn and Maclean’s, asking the human rights commission in British Columbia to penalize them for “hate speech.” The goal is to cow the magazine—and other periodicals in Canada—into silence, making it too onerous and expensive to run articles that counter left-wing sensibilities.

How can this happen, you ask? In Canada there is no equivalent of our First Amendment. In America you can write pretty much what you please, and the government can’t do anything about it. In Canada (as in Europe), you don’t have that liberty. Saying the “wrong” thing can get you in a lot of trouble.

(Which reminds me of a joke that made the rounds when Nikita Khrushchev ruled the Soviet Union. Johnny and Ivan guarded opposite sides at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. They daily exchanged brags about their respective countries. One day Johnny thought he had come up with proof of the superiority of the American system: free speech. He said, “I can stand in front of the White House and yell, ‘President Eisenhower is a fool,’ and nothing will happen to me.” Ivan thought for a moment and then replied, “So what? I can stand in front of the Kremlin and yell, ‘President Eisenhower is a fool,’ and nothing will happen to me either.”)

The Canadian human rights commissions are not elected bodies. They do not have established rules of evidence. The government picks up the legal bills for people who prosecute complaints through the commissions, but the accused have to cover their own expenses. Naturally, this is a disincentive for the defense.

Mark Steyn and Maclean’s have the wherewithal to cover their costs, but many accused persons do not. Unable to afford to fight the charges, they cave. This, of course, tends to encourage additional frivolous complaints.

But some people and groups without deep pockets choose to fight back. Case in point: Fr. Alphonse de Valk and Catholic Insight magazine.

The Catholic priest, well known for his pro-life activities, wrote in defense of the Church’s teaching on marriage. Specifically, he wrote against “gay marriage,” citing the Bible, the catechism, and the writings of John Paul II. He wrote nothing that you or I would consider inflammatory; he simply restated constant Church teaching: marriage can exist only between one man and one woman.

What Fr. de Valk got for his troubles was a complaint filed by homosexuals who accused him of fostering “extreme hatred and contempt.” So far, the legal expenses for the priest and his magazine have exceeded $20,000. They are sure to rise.

Catholic Insight is a small-circulation, orthodox Catholic magazine. (That is almost tautological. All orthodox Catholic magazines have small circulations.) If its legal bills pile up enough, the magazine will have to fold—which is probably the goal of both the complainants and the activists on the human rights commission.

Fr. de Valk and Catholic Insight deserve our support because they support Catholic teachings. The magazine’s web site has an appeal for help in covering the legal bills. There are instructions about how to write a check or how to contribute through PayPal.

A few days ago, I donated $500 to the magazine’s legal defense fund. I hope a good many of you will choose help too. I’d like to see Fr. de Valk have a kitty large enough for him to do whatever it takes to defend his magazine and, derivatively, the Church, because the complaint filed against him and Catholic Insight really is an attack on the Catholic Church and Catholic moral teaching.

Until next time,

Karl Keating


(questions for Karl may be directed to Catholic Answers)

No More Marriages!

I call this being quick on your feet! Social Activism on the local level...
(h/t fidelis)

Real Sex vs Faux Sex

Marriage (REAL MARRIAGE) puts it into perspective Christianity Today:

"The church, following the picture of sexuality throughout Scripture, has consistently taught that sex belongs smack dab in the middle of marriage. 'One can say that in Christianity's vocabulary the only real sex is the sex that happens in a marriage,' Lauren Winner wrote in Real Sex. 'The faux sex that goes on outside marriage is not really sex at all.' Thus, a distinctly Christian argument for premarital abstinence is ontological, not utilitarian. God keeps sex in marriage as an expression of the audacious covenant that two people make, in the context of community, to be bound together exclusively and eternally—an echo of the bond between the persons of the Trinity.

Against this backdrop, premarital abstinence is all about obeying God's statutes on sexuality, trusting that his statutes are anything but arbitrary—they're an expression of God's desire to protect the integrity of the family and to see his image-bearers experience true intimacy with each other. In the end, we can trust that abstinence really does "work," because STDs, rape, broken marriages, and souls in pain have no place in a world where everyone plays by God's rules."

HOMOSEXUAL INDOCTRINATION - Public Schools

Canada; UK; US ;Europe - the homosexual activist lobby is not satisfied with being 'left alone'. They seem to be aiming for a total realignment of reality. They want the next generation of children to be born into a world where sexuality is unimportant. Where there is no significance to being male or female, no mother and father, no identity with a particular gender. Every possible combination of sexual preference and behavior ok. Every social structure to honour and preserve family and marriage obliterated. (No particular significance to being human. No God.)

They imagine they will accomplish this through the courts, the UN, the EU.

Through the public schools.


(As a Catholic family with eight children, I feel that we are doing our part to supply the RESISTANCE that will assuredly be required. Also the sacrifices and prayers. We know the end of the story - Lucifer loses. I'm just not really looking forward to the battle - homosexual activism being only one legion to contend with.)

SS Marriage - It Doesn't End There

Jennifer Roback Morse lays out the path of 'social de-construction' that necessarily results from same-sex legislation:

"Legalizing same-sex 'marriage' is not a stand-alone policy, independent of all the other activities of the state. Once governments assert that same-sex unions are the equivalent of marriage, those governments must defend and enforce a whole host of other social changes.

Unfortunately, these government-enforced changes conflict with a wide array of ordinary liberties, including religious freedom and ordinary private property rights." more...

Obfuscation Versus Truth

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus compares 'Catholic' responses to California's recent 'same-sex' decision:

"...Father Reese concludes: “The issue of gay marriage is not going to go away quickly. It is a highly emotional issue that continues to divide our country. Everyone needs to step back, take a deep breath and count to ten before saying anything.” (Now that I’ve had my say, Father Reese says in effect, you should shut up.) Presumably Father Reese took his own advice. If only he had, in addition to taking a deep breath and counting to ten, considered how embarrassingly transparent his support for same-sex marriage and opposition to the Church’s teaching would appear to any thoughtful reader.

Very different is the response to the court’s ruling by Bishop Allen Vigneron of Oakland, California. Writing in the diocesan paper, he says, “We appear to be heading—at least for a time—toward a social order in which same-sex couples will be able to contract marriage. This is a profoundly significant matter. . . . Marriage is a reality authored by God in his very act of creating the human race. According to his irrevocable plan, the marriage relationship is only possible between one man and one woman. The purposes of this relationship are (1) the mutual loving support of husband and wife and (2) their loving service of life by bringing children into the world and raising them to be virtuous and productive. The experience of history—both ancient and in our own time—has taught us that no government has the power to change the order which God has inscribed in our nature..."

Its Not News - Same Sex Ruins Marriage

Even Liberals Know Its Bad :

"International surveys show that same-sex marriage and the erosion of traditional marriage tend to go together. Traditional marriage is weakest and illegitimacy strongest wherever same-sex marriage is legal. "

Frank Turek discusses David Blankenhorn's book "The Future of Marriage", and the impact that same sex marriage has already had in other countries. Of course, we'd much rather learn the hard way, through experiencing the total disintegration of traditional marriage and the concept of 'family'. We'd rather have the next generations grow up bereft of personal security and completely centered on self....or maybe we are already experiencing that!

Why do we hate ourselves SO MUCH !

'Thought Police'

The CHRC may not 'form policy', but are they being used to repress expression of ideologies that reject homosexuality ?

Bishop Fred Henry voices concerns:

"Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary said the issue is whether Christians can continue to maintain their freedom of religious expression. Bishop Henry has also been through an Alberta HRC complaint by homosexual activists in 2005 after publishing a pastoral letter defending the traditional definition of marriage earlier that same year.
'I really feel that we are into a crisis situation here where we are experiencing a trumping of religious freedom,' said Bishop Henry.
Despite assurance from politicians that Canadian faith communities would not be affected when the government legalized same-sex marriage, the number of complaints against Christians have significantly increased since 2005.
Bishop Henry feels that Canada's human rights tribunals are censoring the expression of traditional Christian teaching: 'The social climate right now is that we're into a new form of censorship and thought control, and the commissions are being used as thought police.'"

The Last Stand

From Chapter 3 of 'Marriage:The Dream That Refuses To Die' by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese:



"The demands for same-sex marriage flow logically from the moral tenor of our culture, and nothing in that culture arms us to resist them. Above all, having first acceded to the primacy of the individual over any semblance of a group, we are now capitulating to the non-negotiable demands of sexual desire. Nothing, in this climate, could be further from the dominant cultural sensibility than the idea that sexuality per se and pro se offers a woefully impoverished definition or measure of the individual. As our culture has loosened the bonds of sexual repression that allegedly thwarted the development and happiness of individuals, it has increasingly succumbed to the notion that no sexual desire can be denied. If you couple this assumption to the notion that marriage exists only to serve the interests and comfort of the individual, you are left with few weapons against the advance of same-sex marriage.

In an ominous development, the largest corporations, according to Business Week, are beginning to understand and adjust to this trend. Some are now offering benefits to a variety of domestic units and, in the process, are effectively displacing marriage as a special relationship or union. The consequences of this tendency, combined with our “me, me, me” cultural ethos, will soon end in the destruction of marriage. Oh, marriage will survive as one “lifestyle” choice among many, but as no more than that. And, make no mistake, that form of survival will amount to destruction, which is precisely the goal of the activists who are fighting for the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Many Americans, who come to see same-sex marriage as just another step in marriage’s evolution, will accept the public pronouncements that they are doing no more than supporting “fairness” by extending some valuable benefits to people of the same sex who happen to love each other and wish to live together without shame or stigma. What could be more innocuous? But for the hardcore activists, the real goal is the destruction of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. They aim to discredit all forms of authority — especially God and nature — that dare to tell people how to lead their lives. In the view of queer activists, desire, like love in Carmen’s “Habenera,” knows no law — nor should any be imposed upon it.

In the current climate, the appeal of their position is not hard to understand, especially since most of those who accept it do not begin to understand its implications. If anything, the defense of same-sex marriage looks like yet another logical step in the gradual increase in freedom for all members of society. And since activists, the courts, and the media overwhelmingly encourage this deception, we may readily understand that many people may come to see same-sex marriage as another blow against outmoded and illegitimate forms of authority — a blow for freedom and equality. Buying into this view, however, they will remain blind to the ways in which they are playing into the hands of vast governmental and economic powers. The freedom for gays and lesbians to marry will decisively contribute to disaggregating all of the remaining social institutions that provide the foundations for any collective resistance against political and economic domination.

Contrary to many prevailing views, marriage is not the seat of oppression but rather the last best ground for resistance against it. In binding men and women into loving relations and shared purposes, marriage acknowledges the reality of sexual difference even as it works to bridge that difference and lay a foundation for a vital and, yes, grown-up social life."

(h/t dawnpatrol)