Ruth Institute Blog

by Ruth Art Director, Todd Bingham
This week the Ruth Institute experienced a somewhat amusing shot across our bow:  a negative and somewhat specious analysis of our logo, of all things.

Since our standard was raised, the Ruth Institute professed to concern itself with the  revival and resuscitation of Traditional Marriage in this country, and a commitment to cultivating that concept with young people.

Our concept is simple:  start where the likely future proponents of marriage are to be found—on college campuses.  We wanted to have influence on and give a voice to the students who will one day comprise the marriage statistics which we now find so disheartening.

And yes, we do say that our concept of traditional marriage is between one man and one woman–for life.

It’s that ‘for life’ part that is apparently such a sticky wicket.

Nonetheless, even for those who agree with us but who find that they just can’t fulfill their promise of ‘til death do us part’, the fact still remains that their unions are comprised of a man and a woman.

In the end,  it’s the children who get the short shrift in all this, even amongst those who get disillusioned with their vows and give up.  But especially when one of those children is deprived of knowing who both his parents are.  The children are really what all this is about, in our view.

So, is all that rendered moot at the notion that our logo has a circle of women holding hands?  And is that fact enough to warrant arguments that we are evil and worse, hatemongers?

Well, evidently.

So, that’s okay, but just for the record, we never envisioned that our logo held any deep seated and far-flung iconography, or that there was any dark and spurious alchemy associated with it.

Here’s why we chose the logo:  we thought it looked cool.