Ruth Institute Blog

Gotta love the first paragraph.

by Stephen J. Heaney

Re-examining the essential characteristics of marriage.

Abraham Lincoln once asked how many legs a dog has if we call a tail a leg. The answer, he said, is four: calling a tail a leg does not make it so. We chuckle and move on.

But what if people began to argue that a tail really is a leg? They might say that what defines the leg is that it is an appendage of the dog’s body, that it contains bone and muscle covered with skin and fur—just like a tail. Tails just happen to come out of the body at a different angle than other legs. When a tail hangs down low, who can tell the difference? Read more…

Oh boy. Here we go.

by Walter R. Schumm

The evidence shows that gay marriage is equal to or better than traditional marriage, according to a Federal Court judge. But what sort of evidence?

In one sense, Judge Walker can’t be blamed for his decision since he was provided a great deal of inaccurate and incomplete information through the trial process. I hope that future amicus briefs will be able to correct those deficiencies. Read more…

by Mary Rice Hasson

What gays can teach straights about marriage, according to some people.

Of all the things that Tom and Tina Average might want for their marriage, one they have quite likely never thought of is innovation. It is the kind of word they might look for in the home improvement pages of the weekend paper or on their favourite consumer website, but not in a marriage guidance brochure. Read more…

by Sheila Liaugminas

As if there were only a couple…

Besides every other issue dividing politicians and the culture, which seem to abound right now, the battle for the legalization of same-sex marriage is throwing more heat than light on the larger issue of human rights.

In the past two weeks, Hawaii’s governor had to pronounce on state legislation that would have permitted gay marriage. She said no. Read more…

What do you all think about this article?

by Frank Turek

When one judge overturned the will of more than seven million Californians last week in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, he listed 80 supposed “findings of fact” (FF) as evidence that Proposition 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Many of those 80 findings are not facts at all. They’re lies or distortions. Read more…

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.

Clinton’s “first concern for Africa is how LGBT persons are treated on the continent. . . it is fortunate that the US does not have an embassy in Mogadishu, because if the word got round that THIS was the African priority for the present US administration, there would be a repetition of Black Hawk Down.” For reals! I think they’d probably just laugh, and be disappointed. “Crazy Americans!” they’d say. Read more…

by Walter R Schumm

Research showing the risks of lesbian and gay parenting is ignored in the race to make a political case.

There is an inherent risk that anyone who has anything to say about gay male or lesbian parenting, no matter how cautious, will be misunderstood at best and vilified at worst. Nevertheless, the mission of a university professor includes seeking new ways to look at old issues, to resist all forms of intimidation, and to ensure that multiple sides of controversial issues are considered. Since there are more voices promoting the virtues of parenting by people defining themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (GLBT), I will present here an alternative, possibly minority, view that focuses on some of the possible risks associated with gay and lesbian parenting. Read more…

The Congress of Argentina will be voting on Same Sex Marriage tomorrow, Wednesday, July 14th. Today, supporters of natural marriage will hold a major rally in Buenos Aires. The lower house of the Argentine Congress approved a same sex marriage bill in May: now the measure goes to their Senate. The coalition supporting natural marriage is called Argentines for the Children. Read more…

By JESSE J. HOLLAND (AP)

WASHINGTON — An ideologically split Supreme Court ruled Monday that a law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won’t let gays join, with one justice saying that the First Amendment does not require a public university to validate or support the group’s “discriminatory practices.” Read more…

By DANNY YADRON

CHICAGO—A Wisconsin evangelist will be able to distribute Bibles and discuss sin this weekend at a Minneapolis gay-pride festival, the result of a federal court ruling Friday that could spark a First Amendment battle in the Midwest. Read more…

by David Schaengold

Another reason the analogy between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage fails.

Recently in Public Discourse, Francis Beckwith argued that the frequently invoked analogy between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage is flawed, and should not be used by advocates for the legal recognition of same-sex unions. As Beckwith wrote, this analogy is freighted with enormous moral and intellectual force, but it does not withstand examination. Bans on interracial marriage are not relevantly similar to current marriage law with respect to homosexuality. Read more…

W. Bradford Wilcox

I have a lot of respect for Pamela Paul. So it pains me to say that her new piece in The Atlantic, “Are Fathers Necessary?”, gets it wrong, and in two very big ways. The gist of her argument is that sociologists Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey are right in claiming that fathers play no essential role in the lives of their children. Or, in their words, ”based strictly on the published science, one could argue that two women parent better on average than a woman and a man…” Read more…

Might as well post this as well.

by Sheila Liaugminas

Sometimes, the Proposition 8 battle seems surreal. But then, so do other serious, emotional and intense conflicts playing out in the nation’s courts and city halls and classrooms and media, over what we knew not long ago as core Judeo-Christian traditional values. Read more…

According to Gallup’s recent Values and Beliefs survey, Americans are “sharply divided” on 4 issues: doctor-assisted suicide, homosexual relations, abortion, and out-of-wedlock childbearing.  Close to half of us perceive these activities in particular as “morally acceptable;” close to half disagree and find them “morally wrong.”  (The survey asked about 16 behaviors; these were the most evenly divided among those polled.)  Curious?  Listen in. (Click the POD icon.)

By Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse|Published Date: April 04, 2010 at The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

Equal, but…

“Kids Do as Well with Same Sex Parents,” the headlines screamed. I crossed swords with Judith Stacey, one of the authors of this most recent study, at a debate at Bowling Green State a few years ago. I asked her point blank if she believed men and women were completely interchangeable as parents. In front of that very friendly audience, she said absolutely: the gender of parents doesn’t matter. And so she says now, in this new article the media loved. But midway through the article, her argument shifts from a “no difference” argument to my favorite definition of feminism: men and women are identical, except women are better. Her article ends with an intimation that I believe tells strongly against same sex marriage. Redefining marriage will create a cultural climate that will drive men out of the family, and lead to the belief that the only good man is a gay man. Read more…

Is Father’s Day going to become obsolete? I guess those for whom it is actually celebrated are a dying breed.

By Van Helsing

Father’s Day is coming up a week from Sunday. MSNBC has begun to honor it already — by proclaiming that fathers are needed only for their sperm: Read more…

Our Lefty opponents criticize our arguments saying that they are a non sequitur.  Recently, for instance, I argued that the denigration of traditional marriage including by means of redefinition may contribute to fatherlessness.  I then showed that fatherlessness has contributed to the social disorder in the American and British underclasses.  I argue that it is reasonable to expect similar disorder and breakdown if fatherlessness becomes more pervasive in the middle class.

The shouts of “Non-Sequitur” followed immediately. Read more…

Carolyn Moynihan

Right on cue for “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride month” the journal of the American Academy of pediatrics has published a study purporting to show that the children of lesbian couples “do better than their peers” on some measures. Read more…

by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse. Originally pubished at National Catholic Register, March 22,2010.

“Domestic partnerships make us second-class citizens. We want marriage, just like everyone else.”

This is the constant refrain of the marriage-redefinition advocates. Drawing a legal distinction, any legal distinction, between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples is unfair and amounts to ill treatment of the same-sex couples. But does this argument really hold up? Read more…