Category Archives: Marriage
Bisbee Won’t Challenge Arizona Marriage Law
Bisbsee city officials will not attempt to do an end-run around Arizona marriage law by allowing the counterfeit civil unions it approved last week.
Arizona’s Attorney General Tom Horne had threatened to take the city to court for defying state marriage law, and the city backed down.
Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, said in an email alert tonight: “Today, the City of Bisbee acknowledged what we’ve said all along: Bisbee lacks the legal authority to enact a so-called “civil unions” ordinance that grants marital-type benefits to unmarried individuals. The city now plans to revise the recently adopted ordinance.”
Also, Herrod said the power to grants marital benefits is a power reserved to the state and the voters of Arizona. In 2008, Arizonans strongly voted in support of marriage being defined as the union of one man and one woman.
“While this debate is far from over, today’s announcement is a victory for the rule of law, and the will of voters,” Herrod said.
The Dark Side of Homosexual Parenting
Dawn C. Stefanowicz Public Hearing of the Judiciary Committee on the Marriage Amendment Boston, Massachusetts
Thank you for permitting me to speak.
I am supporting this marriage amendment.
My mother was very seriously ill. From infancy I grew up with a homosexual father. I loved my Dad, but my father exposed me to diverse sexual subcultures. The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual subcultures did not have boundaries and principles of morality and monogamy. Rather it was experimentation, pansexuality, many sexual partners, and self-indulgent lifestyles. Gender and sexual orientation were blurred. Unisex dressing, transsexualism, and transient and anonymous multiple partners were common. My father and his associates were not limited by gender nor age. They frequented public areas. By age ten, for example, I was exposed to a gay nude beach, a sex shop, and a gay cruising park. My father had partners in the home from my infancy. All our vacations were to key GLBT areas where cruising was available.
I was traumatized by six years old in my household. I was stuttering, blacking out and having nightmares caused by molestation, physical and verbal abuse, and abandonment. My father would leave us alone for days to be with his partners. At eight, two of my father’s partners committed suicide. My father intimidated me into silence, making me fearful for my life, and unable to talk about my father’s lifestyle. Alcohol, drugs, gay bars and parties were part of the scene. Youthfulness, beauty, art, fashion, and travel were prized. However, the painful losses my father’s friends experienced were devastating. My father and his partners were involved in domestic violence and he dropped them like commodities. Males who were minors were at risk in my home of being preyed upon sexually.
Dad had encouraged me to be more open sexually, while teaching me by example that sex was gratuitous. I could not look to my father as a moral agent in my life. This left me confused about my sexual identity, and my feelings and roles as a girl and woman. My father could not show affection or affirmation to females, making me believe it was better to be a boy. He doted on his male partners – time, communication, affection and sex – travelling and buying them gifts, leaving me feeling worthless. If particular judges had their way, I would have had at least three “psychological” parents – men I would not have wanted to be named my parents.
I felt worthless and began seeking other boys’ affections by age twelve. Long-term, I became depressed, anxious, and suicidal. I was in and out of counselling between the ages of sixteen and thirty. All my family members were severely impacted.
My father left his associations within the subcultures in the late eighties, succumbing to death by AIDS in 1991 at the age of fifty-one. Many of his partners have died of AIDS, some in their early forties.
Children have no voice when they grow up in a homosexual household. Children are unwillingly forced to tolerate their parent’s sexual choices and living arrangements. If I spoke about what happened around my father, I would risk being sent to the streets or a group home. I was silenced for over forty years, afraid to share the reality of what I had lived through. I waited until both my parents had died before speaking publicly. Most other adult children feel that they cannot speak about their experiences until their parents have passed away. By the way, I know of 14 children who grew up with a homosexual parent, including myself. All of us have been negatively impacted long term. This includes adult children who have not been able to cope with their difficulties growing up – Some have tried to numb the pain with drug and alcohol addictions and sexual promiscuity.
My first thirty years around my father and his partners showed me how not to live my life. Marriage exclusively between a man and a woman is the best environment for children. Children need to see gender as male or female. Children need firm moral boundaries around sexuality. As a child, I could not comprehend the emphasis on being gender-neutral, unisex dressing, and pansexual practices. Group sex, bathhouse sex, cruising, and other expressions of diverse sexuality broke down the barriers between private and public sex.
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, has stated, “Undermining the traditional definition of marriage is an assault on the beliefs of virtually all cultural and religious communities who have come to this country,” according to Lifesite News.
Freedom of speech and democracy are eroded by hate crime and same-sex marriage legislation, and by judicial activism. Human Rights Tribunals in Canada police speech, and penalize upstanding citizens for their expressed opposition to homosexuality. It takes only one complaint against a person to be brought before the tribunal, costing the person tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. On the other hand, the person making the complaint has his legal fees completely paid for by the government. Even if the defendant is found innocent, he cannot recover his legal costs. If he is found guilty, he must pay fines to the person(s) who brought forth the complaint. All television, radio and print media are monitored. May what is happening in Canada serve as a warning to Massachusetts. Where can the children find safety if legislation is in place legitimizing homosexual marriage?
Bisbee Promotes Social Breakdown
Attorney General Tom Horne has issued a letter to the Bisbee City Council stating that a proposed Civil Union Ordinance, if passed, would be unconstitutional and require the attorney general’s office to initiate an action in the courts to enjoin, or stop it.All three members of the legislature representing Bisbee have expressed deep concerns about the constitutionality of the ordinance. In a statement today, Attorney General Tom Horne said: “I have today sent a letter to the Bisbee City Attorney and City Council members stating that they have no authority to pass the ordinance that they will be considering tonight. This is in response to a complaint received from all three state legislators representing Bisbee: Senator Gail Griffin, Representative David Gowan and Representative David Stevens.
The ordinance seeks to change seven separate State statutes within the boundaries of the city, dealing with issues such as community property, inheritance of property, and appointment of personal representatives. The only proper way to change a statute is through the Arizona Legislature, not through actions of the City Council attempting to change a State statute within its boundaries. I emphasize that I am not expressing any opinion on the policy of the ordinance. My job is to enforce the laws that exist and I am obligated to respond to complaints from state legislators. If the ordinance is passed, the Office will initiate a special action in the Courts to enjoin it.”
Civil unions are a radical, left-wing attempt to promote counterfeit “marriage.” They actually promote cohabitation — subjecting women and children to drastically heightened risks of violence.
An Interview with The Arizona Conservative
Isn’t the Conservative movement all about legislating morality?
In a word – no. All legislation, all lawmaking is someone’s morality. Those who say we’re imposing our morality on them are trying to impose their morality on us.
The Conservative movement is about advocating commonsense principles which have stood the test of time and which offer society the greatest opportunities of health and well-being.
Americans have the freedom to do a lot of things which were once considered harmful to the person, to others – and immoral. Rather than ask themselves “Can I do xyz,” people should ask themselves “Should I do xyz,” and “what are the consequences?” They don’t need government to decide that or ask for them. If everyone did this more often, we’d have fewer social problems, less crime, fewer divorces, less gambling addiction, less drug and alcohol addiction, less crime, and fewer socially transmitted diseases. And the bottom line is that we would then see healthier families, neighborhoods and communities, and far less government spending on trying to pick up the broken pieces. It’s a matter of personal accountability.
Aren’t we as a nation progressing by doing away with so-called “archaic” morality laws?
We are not progressing as a nation, period. American society is in a tailspin. We are going in reverse; progressives just aren’t willing to admit it. It is not possible to progress given the current direction and worldview of those shaping the culture.
C.S. Lewis wrote: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function.”
We have removed the Judeo-Christian morality as the source of morality and decision making at the highest levels of state and federal government. But we act shocked when someone commits a horrible crime. We’ve said “no more of that old morality, we’ll take it from here.” But they’re taking it all in the wrong direction.
Sign of violence seen at a Mesa movie theater
So we’re teaching children – through government and the influence of the mass media culture – that it’s not only okay, but preferential, to kill the defenseless and treat people with incivility. Look at the titles of movies and TV shows: Everybody Hates Chris, Kill Bill, The Weakest Link. And we’re surprised children are killing children? You can’t expect a high level of civility when the foremost messages presented to the public are negative and destructive.
And then there are the special interest pressure groups raising huge sums of money to buy politicians and demand judges fabricate special privileges radically altering society. Anyone who opposes them, no matter how civil the opposition, is demonized and called “hater.” Many of them are threatened. The radicals are demanding opponents lose their jobs just for having a different viewpoint. This is disturbing. And it’s not the recipe for a civil society.
The real story of “progressivism” can best be described as man’s inhumanity to man.
Should Conservatives support influential Republicans who are supporting amnesty and same-sex “marriage”? They don’t have anywhere else to go, do they?
No, no and yes they do.
We as a nation should never abandon the rule of law. If we do, we get chaos – everyone just doing their own thing. It will be a nation in great conflict. Every self-respecting, orderly nation must control its borders. Mexico certainly does, though it criticizes those in the U.S. who demand we control ours.
It is not fair to legal immigrants for people to walk across the border illegally, going around the U.S. points of entry, and then demanding legal recognition and taxpayer benefits. Most people who immigrated here oppose illegal entry. Democrats only want to use these people’s votes: let them in, legal recognition and control over them and then demand their votes at election time.
Only about 2 percent of the population struggles with same-sex attraction, less than that in Arizona. Why should a tiny segment of the population be allowed to re-define marriage and subject more children to fatherlessness or motherlessness? The kids are not all right with this. In states where same-sex “marriage” is legal, very, very few homosexuals get married. For the most radical of the homosexual activists, it’s not really about marriage. It’s about destroying the traditional notion of family and marriage. We re-define marriage only at our own peril and a monumental loss of freedom. We opt for adult happiness over the well-being of children at our own peril and reap the social whirlwind. Homosexuality is not genetic, and same-sex “marriage” is not a civil right. That’s offensive to the people who truly suffered the indignation of slavery and denial of civil and human rights.
Republican leaders who want to join others by walking over the social cliff and into the moral abyss are absolutely undiscerning of what the end results will be. Conservatives must never acquiesce, must never join them or approve of this. There are more than enough conservative Republicans, independents and members of the Constitution Party to uphold principles and policies that will point this nation in the right direction.
Senator Harry Reid, other Democrats and many media and educational elites claim Conservatives are polarizing the nation. Is this accurate, and did conservatives create the culture war?
This is pure propaganda intended to direct attention away from those pushing for the most radical departure from U.S. history and tradition. The biblical explanation for this is calling evil good and good evil.
For most of America’s history, Judeo-Christian morality was the dominant worldview. But when those disagreeing with that worldview – John Dewey, Roger Baldwin, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and others – moved the nation in a different direction, Christians and Conservatives were slow to defend the nation’s traditional ideals. By the time Dr. James Dobson, President Ronald Reagan and many others began to respond, the moral center had collapsed. Christians had been lulled to sleep by how things had always been; they were the frogs in the pot who were boiled before they what hit them.
Now the Conservative movement is organized and defending the worldview that enabled America’s greatness and freedom. But the recent decades of indoctrination by educators and the mass media culture, along with the government’s shift to the secular humanist religion and animosity toward Judeo-Christian morality have taken a terrible toll on the country. It will be a long, hard climb to get out of this mess. It will not happen through politics. It will take a cultural shift. Everything else flows through the culture, and our culture is weak, decadent and in turmoil. We cannot allow leftists to steal our children’s hearts and minds and turn them against us. Every year millions of our kids are graduating from indoctrination in school and college and moving us further away as a nation from where we need to be. Our focus needs to be on salvaging our youth and saving this nation from the policies and worldviews that are poisoning our culture. We must change the direction our young people are being led into following. It’s that simple. If we do not accomplish this, our culture will only continue to deteriorate.
Support for Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Eroding Fast
By Tony Perkins, Family Research Council
The Washington Post thought it knew where the American people stood on marriage. Just two days ago, news outlets were plastering its poll results of “record” backing for same-sex “marriage” on their websites–only to see the support vanish as quickly as it appeared. Today, the Reuters Corporation released the results of an even bigger poll than the Post‘s and found that only 41% of America supports the case being made by Ted Olson and David Boies at the Supreme Court. In an astonishingly large survey sample, 24,455 people (23,000 more than the Washington Post‘s survey!), barely four out of 10 Americans thought homosexuals should be allowed to “marry.” Those numbers are far and away more consistent with the findings of trustworthy survey houses in the last few months on marriage. It also shows the unreliability of the media’s polling. In 48 hours, we’ve seen a 17-point swing in public opinion on marriage. Of course, as we mentioned yesterday, the Post‘s questions were specifically structured to generate a more favorable response. When you frame the debate as the Post did–in criminal terms–Americans are far more wary of opposing same-sex “marriage.” In the meantime, Reuters’ numbers are even more significant when you consider that they come from a news agency with a public interest in redefining marriage. Last month, the Reuters Corp. threw objectivity out the window by signing on to an amicus brief urging the court to embrace same-sex “marriage.” If 41% was all the support Reuters could scrounge up for same-sex “marriage,” then you know they exhausted every avenue trying to push that number higher–and couldn’t. Let me be very clear: we don’t arrive at our policy positions because of polls. The point of sharing this is to once again draw attention to the media’s efforts to make you feel that same-sex “marriage” is inevitable–and that everyone but YOU thinks it’s okay. Trust me, as this latest poll shows, you’re far from alone in your support for natural marriage. Encourage your family and friends by sharing this truth with them!
Fortunate Son
To borrow an analogy from Credence Clearwater Revival’s song “Fortunate Son,” Will Portman is a fortunate son. He’s a senator’s son.
When he told his father, U.S. Senator Rob Portmann (R-Ohio), he is homosexual, the elder Portmann came out in support of same-sex “marriage.” He’s the same Sen. Portmann who was under consideration for a vice-presidential running mate by Mitt Romney.
The son’s struggle with same-sex attraction is certainly unfortunate.
But the father’s response is troubling. Instead of offering to help his son, he selfishly does an about face and wants to impose same-sex “marriage” on the nation. He selfishly wants to take away the religious freedom of people who will be punished for opposing same-sex “marriage.” Just because of his own son.
I have no doubt the senator loves his son. But the way he shows it is misguided, and his personal family situation should not adversely impact the entire nation. He’s imposing his personal family situation on the country, and this is selfish and wrong.
The same thing happened in San Diego a few years ago. The mayor decided to support same-sex “marriage” after learning his daughter gave in to same-sex attraction. So he and the city council passed a resolution to impose their will on the city.
It’s time for selfish politicians to realize their personal family situations do not justify the imposition of same-sex “marriage” on their constituents. Especially when the majority of Americans support marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Queue up Credence on Youtube:
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son
SHOCKING MUST READ: Don’t Let Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Advocates Institute Cultural Madness and Turn America on its Head
Sky Fall: Gender Ideology Comes to the Schoolhouse
In our discussions with advocates of redefining marriage, we often hear that defenders of marriage and sexual difference are overreacting to cultural and legal changes. “You run around yelling that the sky is falling,” we’re told. “We’ve had same-sex marriage for a decade now in Massachusetts, and guess what: The sky is not falling.”
This is not an argument, of course, but an attempt to end any discussion of what it would mean to remove sexual distinctions from the law. As it did to James Bond’s psychiatric evaluation in the recent hit movie, the mention of the phrase “sky fall” is supposed to terminate the proceedings.
No serious participants in the current marriage discussion are running around like Chicken Little. Defenders of marriage are concerned primarily about the long-term implications of redefining the institution. We might not expect the redefinition of marriage to alter cultural practices dramatically right away. After all, it took nearly two generations to realize the full effects of the divorce revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. But strange things are nevertheless happening in Massachusetts, where sexual difference was eliminated from marriage laws in 2003.
Two years ago, the Massachusetts legislature enacted a statute prohibiting, among other things, discrimination in public schools on the basis of “gender identity.” The law defines gender identity as “a person’s gender-related identity, appearance or behavior,” which is not determined by “the person’s physiology or assigned sex at birth.”
On the basis of that statute, the Massachusetts Department of Education (MDOE) has now eradicated sexual distinctions from public schools. MDOE’s new directive requires schools to let children use bathrooms and play on sports teams according to the gender they personally identify as theirs, not their anatomical sex. The directive also admonishes schools to eliminate sex and gender distinctions in graduation garb, physical education, and other practices.
Under Massachusetts law, the connection between gender identity and sexual distinction is now considered a historical accident, the result of arbitrary (at best) or mistaken documentation at birth. MDOE’s directive explains:
One’s gender identity is an innate, largely inflexible characteristic of each individual’s personality that is generally established by age four, although the age at which individuals come to understand and express their gender identity may vary based on each person’s social and familial social development. As a result, the person best situated to determine a student’s gender identity is that student himself or herself.
Because the child is solely responsible for identifying his or her own gender, the regulations require school officials to seek the student’s permission before disclosing the student’s gender identity to his or her parents.
That’s not all. The regulations suggest that students who don’t endorse a fellow student’s gender identity may be subject to punishment. After condemning bullying, the directive endorses a memorandum that a Massachusetts school principal sent to teachers instructing them to discipline students who intentionally refer to a transgender student by his or her given name, or the pronoun corresponding to his or her anatomical sex. Such behavior “should not be tolerated.”
MDOE justifies these regulations on pedagogical grounds: “All students need a safe and supportive school environment to progress academically and developmentally.” By “all students” MDOE must mean all students who share MDOE’s conception of sex and gender as an individual choice.
It is not difficult to imagine who will embrace MDOE’s conception. The regulations state, “A student who says she is a girl and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day and throughout every, or almost every, other area of her life, should be respected and treated like a girl” (emphasis ours). The caveat that the student might want to be treated like a boy for some purposes seems an implicit admission that gender identity is not, in fact, an inflexible characteristic, as MDOE insists, but rather can adjust over time. And the directive states that the law “does not require consistent and uniform assertion of gender identity” (emphasis original).
While we doubt that teenage boys will take much interest in the provenance of gender personality, it’s not a stretch to suppose that they will welcome its implications for co-ed activity.
Perhaps this is why many parents in Massachusetts find these regulations shocking. We must confess that we are not so surprised. Massachusetts lawmakers have for many years been eradicating sexual distinctions from the law. This result seems to us the logical consequence of those efforts.
Redefining marriage to eliminate sexual complementarity as an essential characteristic doesn’t automatically commit a state to forcing girls to share locker rooms with boys. But there is a logical connection. One of the premises justifying the redefinition of marriage also grounds these new regulations, that is, the view that sexual difference is irrelevant to the practice of marriage.
But if sexual difference is irrelevant to marriage, then how can it be relevant to any practices? Once the state has determined that sexual difference is no longer a legitimate reason to extend special recognition to man-woman monogamy, there is no reason in principle to maintain sexual distinctions in less intimate practices. If one’s anatomical reality isn’t relevant to one’s marriage, it’s even less obvious why it should be relevant to one’s bathroom choice.
To be sure, there are prudential implications of eradicating sexual distinction from education laws. But if letting people identify their own gender is a matter of justice, then it’s the job of law to solve the practical problems of implementation. (That is a key lesson of civil rights legislation.)
Though future practical problems might seem obvious, the law makes it far from clear that there are any. If a boy who identifies as a girl really is a girl, as the law declaims, then any perceived harms resulting from his presence in a girls’ locker room are illusory. No wonder the Commonwealth exhorts school officials to discipline students who object to the arrangement.
There are other indications that those who perceive inherent differences between men and women will increasingly be marginalized from public life in Massachusetts. A few months ago, a federal court in Massachusetts ruled that the United States Constitution requires the Commonwealth’s Department of Corrections to pay for a sex-change surgery requested by an inmate who is serving time for murder. It is cruel and unusual punishment, the court reasoned, to force the prisoner to keep his anatomy intact while he is incarcerated.
This ruling might seem unrelated to removing sexual distinctions from law, but for the court’s reasoning. The court discredited the Commonwealth’s expert witnesses, who expressed doubt that a sex-change surgery is medically necessary, and who recommended treating the prisoner’s psychological and emotional disorders instead.
The court ruled that these recommendations are “not within the range that would be acceptable by prudent professionals.” In other words, the court decided that no prudent professional would deny sex-change surgery to a male prisoner who identifies himself as a woman.
The lesson is clear. If you think male and female are two distinct sexes determined by your anatomy at birth, then don’t bother serving as an expert witness in the United States District Court in Massachusetts. Nor can you in good conscience send your children to public school in the Commonwealth. A view of human nature that until very recently was understood to be obvious is becoming a source of disqualification from participating in public life.
As lawyers, we perceive the logic of this latest regulatory innovation. But as fathers, we think that those who are dismayed by MDOE’s regulations are the only Massachusetts residents who can plausibly claim to be in their right minds. If the sky is not falling then it is at least showing ominous fissures.
Adam MacLeod is an associate professor at Faulkner University’s Thomas Goode Jones School of Law and a 2012-2013 Visiting Fellow of the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Andrew Beckwith is Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the Massachusetts Family Institute.
Cultural Red Alert!
Encouraged by the defeat of marriage in four liberal states this month, a politicial action committee has formed in Arizona to repeal Arizona’s constitutional marriage amendment. Arizona law and the state Constitution define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. National polling and voters in 33 states have defined marriage that way.
But now a radical leftist, Tanner Pritts, has formed the PAC “Arizona Advocates for Marriage Equality” to redefine marriage. He is already raising money for a 2014 ballot initiative to redefine marriage here.
We must fight this. Where same-sex “marriage” is legal, very few homosexuals have actually gotten married. Many of those people are already divorced. The real agenda is to destroy the traditional concept of family and radically overturn the social order.
Children raised in homosexual homes fare much worse than in homes with their biological parents. And with divorce and fatherlessness already damaging the social development of children, the last thing we need is same-sex “marriage.”
Combined with “hate” crime laws and attacks on free speech and religious liberty, same-sex “marriage” will result in the criminalization of people who believe homosexuality is sinful. Religious freedom and the demands of the Left for “sexual liberty” cannot co-exist; religious freedom will be destroyed. The result will be tyranny. In fact, radical homosexual activists are already engaging in fascim — death threats, vandalism, and extreme political and social pressure to silence and demonize their opponents.
Stay tuned here because we will have much more to say about this in the future. We cannot let these radicals undermine the Arizona family and damage society with this extremist effort.
