Ruth Institute Blog

Link: Are three parents sometimes better than two? B.C.’s radical idea

When this was brought to my attention (look on the third page) all I could think is “You have got to be kidding…”

But because we are by now such a thoroughly (indeed absurdly) non-judgmental, morally neutral, nonsensically ‘tolerant’, hyper-inclusive, politically correct society there are bound to be those who insist that the National ‘Education’ Association simply must allow the Drag Queens among them to have their own caucus if they are also willing to countenance the NEA Christian Prayer Service Caucus, the Catholic Caucus, the Creation Science Educators Caucus, the Jewish Caucus, or the People of Faith Caucus; as they in fact do.

And because our culture has to a significant extent succumbed to nihilism, some will also dismissively declare, “So what? How much more cynical is that than the Bourbon Caucus or the (apparently) competing No Cocktail Left Behind caucus? Or does it sound any sillier than the Princess Caucus?” And the NEA does also consent to those as well, after all…

Some will even assert (mindlessly, if you ask me) that the NEA Drag Queen Caucus is adequately counterbalanced by their Ex-Gay Educators Caucus.

And even I can understand how the Lesbian & Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus could be relevant to advocating the ‘rights’ of it’s members in the workplace.

But be honest with your self. Are any of those others in any way morally comparable to a Drag Queen Caucus? So now we are to be compelled to provide our children to cross-dressers so they can act out their ‘sexuality’ in front of a captive (and compliantly impressionable) audience?

For an organization that purports to be attending to the education and care of all of our young to indulge such a bent is beyond cynical. It’s just plain malicious.

I found this Buzzflash Blog report on Ruth Institute while doing my daily googles. (Gayapolis News also linked to the piece.)

Looks like we’re still making the right kind of enemies, but for the record, RI is not “anti-gay,” just anti-gay marriage.

My favorite line from the review: “…Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, also known on the website as Dr. J (unless she can dunk with balletic grace like NBA great Julius Erving, she’s no Dr. J!)…”

Well I have a news-flash for the author of that line: Our Dr. J does intellectual slam-dunks with “balletic grace” as a matter of routine.

Recently (Saturday, June 10th) there was an awesome webcast called Ending Abortion. It’s well worth checking out.

You can download any (or all) of the ten hour-long sessions as an MP3 to your computer or ipod and listen to each at your leisure.

Monday (July 5th) I listened to a broadcast on the Diane Rehm Show of an interview with James T. Patterson, author of Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life from LBJ to Obama. That title was already on my long (long…) wish-list of books I’d like to buy if I had a few thousand bucks to spare (and a few years of leisure time I could spend to read them) so of course I listened with interest. But if what I heard was any indication of the kind of self contradictory ‘logic’ to be found in his book, then it’s probably no longer one of the must-have titles on my list. (So don’t take this as a review of Professor Patterson’s book, which I haven’t read. This is just my reactions to some of the assertions he made in his interview.) Read more…

As part of its Newly Wed In America series, National Public Radio today aired a segment titled Kids First, Marriage Later — If Ever.

A couple of quotes:

“Many of these parents are children of divorce… Today, these parents say they’d rather raise a child alone or with multiple partners than risk putting that child through a divorce.”

“As to what kind of consequences this new concept of marriage will have for the next generation… Experts say it’s too soon to say what the effects will be. We’ll have to ask these children in 20 years.”

This LifeSiteNews article describes how a recent ruling by the IRS means that in some cases same-sex domestic partners in California (and a couple of other states) could get a better deal on their taxes than a comparable heterosexual couple would have available to them. Most tax experts seem to think this new regulation is a clear violation of the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA).

This is just one more example of how impractical it is to attempt to degender marriage, and how it will require the government to intervene in ways that actually disadvantage traditional family structures.

The Helena Independent Record posted a letter to the editor June 27th that cites some examples of the kind of sexual indoctrination that often goes on in our public schools. (“In first grade the concepts of homosexuality will be introduced; in third grade, same-sex marriage. By fifth grade, our children will be taught the difference between heterosexual and homosexual relationships, the various ways individuals can engage in sexual activity, and the body parts that can be used.”) The letter also makes some excellent arguments as to why we don’t need to be (and indeed should not be) sexualizing our young, especially at a public school.

The final reason offered (“…the loss of innocence that many children will experience as a result…”) made me think of how when I was a child all of society dearly cherished the innocence of children and was committed to protecting that innocence. The outstanding article, Life Without Children, that Betsy linked to in her thread of the same title concludes by talking about how as society becomes more and more childless (and less and less child centered/oriented) more and more so-called ‘adults’ are actually becoming hostile to the notion that they should even consider inconveniencing themselves in the slightest to help shield the eyes of children (of any age) from their ‘adult oriented’ videos, magazines, billboards, behavior, or whatever.

It seems that as our culture becomes more and more childless we as a culture are becoming more and more childish.

Consider carefully the boasts made in this recent San Francisco Chronicle article about what a politically potent interest group the LGBT community has become 40 years after the Stonewall Riots (at least according to the LGBT community themselves…)

Then try to reconcile those boasts with the arguments made at the Prop 8 Trial that same-sex couples need the courts to intervene on their behalf because they have no political voice of their own with which they can advocate for their rights…

The title of the article says it all:

Wisconsin Court Tells Lesbian: Legal Adoption, Not ‘Nurturing,’ Gives Parental Rights

But it’s worth reading the entire article anyway. Maybe we’re starting to make some progress after all.

So there’s a new study out entitled Findings from a Decade of Polling on Ballot Measures Regarding the Legal Status of Same-Sex Couples. The two main questions focused on in the study are: What effect did the campaign have on the outcome of the election? and How predictable was the outcome of the election? To answer these questions they studied polls taken before and during various same-sex marriage and domestic partnership ballot initiative campaigns.

One conclusion of the study is that the actual vote on election day against same-sex ‘marriage’ is typically about seven percentage points higher than polling would have indicated. (That is definitely a significant difference!) They were not able to determine exactly why that is the case, but the study did debunk two popular theories: People were not answering poll questions dishonestly because they were afraid of appearing to be too politically incorrect, nor were voters confused about what a Yes or a No vote meant.

When it comes to the effect of the campaign on the outcome of the election, the study suggests that both sides consistently fought each other to a standstill. Polls taken at the end of the campaigns were remarkably close to what the polls showed before campaigning even began. Some are deducing from this that what you have going into such an election is what you’ll end up with for the results regardless of what you put into the campaign. But I think we should be very wary of that conclusion lest we become complacent.

Nowhere in the study could I find any data at all about how much was spent by each side on the campaign or anything about who was able to mobilize the most volunteers to canvass during the campaign and get out the vote for their side on election day. (If the Prop 8 campaign was very typical, then both sides were probably most often about evenly matched in terms of resources.) Obviously starting off in the lead would be an advantage, but if one side was able to get their message out to the voters during the campaign and the other did not, how could that not have a significant effect on the results of the election? (You are very unlikely to win a gunfight if you show up with a knife…)

On the other hand, laying the groundwork between elections would seem to be key to the outcome. Those who are attempting to undermine marriage are definitely networked. (How do you think they got this far?) We need to be organized to have the strongest affect on our culture as well. That is what Ruth Institute is all about, isn’t it? You can be certain there will always be another battle at the ballot box over same-sex ‘marriage’ for the foreseeable future. These are indeed the times to fight the good fight. And IMHO Dr J is just the general we need to lead us.

Did anyone watch (well, read actually) the closing arguments for Perry v. Schwarzenegger?

For what it’s worth, this blog looked to me like the best place to watch the proceedings live. (Per the court’s ruling, there was no video or audio of the trial available.) Yes I know, that website advocates overturning Proposition 8. But they still had the best (most verbatim) live transcription of the proceedings that I was able to find. And now they have the official court-approved transcripts available at this LINK. (It’s a lot easier than registering at scribid.com, and you won’t have to decipher incomplete sentences or figure out that the live transcription consistently rendered as “i am mutable” the word “immutable”…)

Anyway, from what I saw while viewing the live transcription, I would say that our closer can beat up their closer any day. Read more…

The news is that the effort to gather enough signatures to put a repeal of Proposition 8 on the ballot for 2010 has fallen short. But the pro same-sex ‘marriage’ folks are resolved to bring it to a vote (again) in 2012.

I’m almost disappointed. An effort to repeal Prop 8 just two years after the voters of California passed the amendment would have probably failed severely and made it all the more difficult (if not impossible) to pull it off in 2012. At least we’re safe for the next two years, though.

It will be interesting to see how another battle over same-sex marriage during a Presidential election year will affect the vote.

Tips-Q bills itself as “GLBT News & Commentary – Neither Lifestyle Nor Agenda”. It’s interesting (sometimes even amusing) to surf the site for a perspective of their views and attitudes. (Be sure to look in the Talking Points drop-down menu at their Fundie to English Dictionary.)

Recently they alerted their site’s followers to an article by Dr. J (PERSPECTIVES: Gay Men Only?) published on the Chuck Colson Center site.

Way to go Dr. J! If you’re becoming notorious with folks who would like to undermine marriage, you must be doing something right.

Suppose you were involved in a dispute with someone. It could be with anyone over anything… with a merchant over a warranty for something you had purchased at his store… or a coworker over a situation at your place of employment… a spouse over a relationship issue… or (as in this case) it could be a legal dispute being resolved in a court of law.

Now suppose it became obvious at some point that whoever you were at odds with was insisting that they should be held to much less rigorous standards of conduct and proof than you should be held to in whatever process was being pursued to resolve the disagreement.

Would that not seem to be just a little bit disingenuous to you? Read more…

If you go to PersonhoodUSA.com and click on the map of the United States, you’ll see there are now thirty-one states where they are working on putting a Personhood Amendment on the ballot. (Thank you, Kristi Burton!) You can also look at the top of the page and see links to sites where you can find the language of a few of the states’ Personhood Amendments, including the California Human Rights Amendment.

Language is critical when writing a law Read more…

OK, it’s not that I’m Australian mates (born and raised right here in the good old USA, as a matter of fact) but for some reason the first two times I’ve felt motivated to post on Ruth Institute blog it’s been because of something that was happening ‘down under’ (and both times specifically in Queensland, no less).

Before, I was concerned about the vote on an initiative to liberalize the law concerning surrogate births. And now there’s a lobby group in Queensland that wants to make facebook let their members have the option of identifying themselves as ‘transgender’.

It seems the gay lobby and their supporters are determined to force us all to conform -  in terms of our language, thoughts, and behavior – with their world view. Remember how eHarmony was forced to facilitate same-sex dating on their own website?

I’ll bet nobody is taking any gay dating websites to court to make them facilitate Christian evangelism… or the efforts of organizations like Exodus International.

An article at TheCatholicLeader.com laments that the Parliament of the Australian state of Queensland recently passed a law that extensively liberalized the use of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART).

Of particular importance to opponents of the bill (such as KidsRightsCount.org) was the issue of surrogacy, especially as it relates to same-sex parenting.

If you go to their website and click on <multimedia> at the top of the page you can find excellent videos that discuss ART and its legal, moral, and social ramifications. (Surrogacy & A Child’s Sense of Identity and The New Stolen Generation, for example.)

Understand that in America, as things stand now, there would be no controversy over any of this. That’s because (what very few people realize is) in the United States there are fewer regulations on ART than probably any other developed nation in the world – or almost any other nation in the world period, for that matter. You can do virtually anything you want reproductively in America without any consideration for how it affects anyone involved, least of all the children conceived.

Does anyone (besides me) have any concerns about that?