Ruth Institute Blog

from Leo:

Dr. J. has previously pointed out that the theology and defense of marriage is uniting (http://www.ruthblog.org/2010/07/22/christian-unity/) the Orthodox and the Catholic traditions around a subject vital to both.   The same issue has divided the Anglican (Episcopal) community.  I would like to call your attention to some stories in the news about what is happening among the Lutherans.

The welcoming of seven openly gay and transgender pastors back to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) received warm attention in these articles in the New York Times and the Ms. Magazine newswire. Read more…

by Sheila Liaugminas

After declaring a California voter initiative wrongly passed because he disagreed with the citizens’ conclusion, Judge Vaughn Walker took it upon himself to declare anyone who disagreed with him ineligible to appeal to a higher court. Case closed, he thought. He was wrong. Read more…

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…

By Todd Starnes

A federal judge has ruled in favor of a public university that removed a Christian student from its graduate program in school counseling over her belief that homosexuality is morally wrong. Monday’s ruling, according to Julea Ward’s attorneys, could result in Christian students across the country being expelled from public university for similar views.

“It’s a very dangerous precedent,” Jeremy Tedesco, legal counsel for the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, told FOX News Radio. “The ruling doesn’t say that explicitly, but that’s what is going to happen.” Read more…

by Matthew J. Franck

The latest decision from our judicial overlords on same-sex marriage spells trouble for republican constitutionalism and the institution of marriage.

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was grounded on a fear of judges run amok. This past Thursday, federal district court judge Joseph Tauro of Boston justified this fear when he struck down section 3 of the act in two separate cases, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In the Gill case, Judge Tauro held that the law unjustly denied various federal benefits to spouses in same-sex marriages contracted under Massachusetts law, contrary to the equal protection principle. Meanwhile, in the HHS case, Tauro ruled that the state itself was the victim of an unconstitutional intrusion by the federal government on its reserved powers under the Tenth Amendment. Read more…

This is a crock, and, undoubtedly, a double standard.

by Sheila Liaugminas

This story is picking up press, and it should. Freedom of speech is at the heart of it, as is the effort yet again to attack legitimate expression of belief, expressed…where? In a classroom setting that fosters intellecutal inquiry and critical thinking skills?

Not exactly.

The University of Illinois has fired an adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism after a student accused the instructor of engaging in hate speech by saying he agrees with the church’s teaching that homosexual sex is immoral….

[Prof. Ken] Howell, who taught Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought, says he was fired at the end of the spring semester after sending an e-mail explaining some Catholic beliefs to his students preparing for an exam.

“Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY,” he wrote in the e-mail. “In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same.”

These days, this gets someone in academia in all sorts of trouble, which is what he quickly got. An unidentified student complained, on behalf of an “offended” student, (not sure why the offended student didn’t speak for himself or herself…), that this was ‘hate speech.’

“Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing,” the student wrote. “Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another.”

Just to clarify a point here, the phrase “natural laws of man” is an oxymoron. (Just Wiki natural law and read the first three sentences.)

But that wasn’t all the student complained about that was contradictory.

The courses at this institution should be geared to contribute to the public discourse and promote independent thought; not limit one’s worldview and ostracize people of a certain sexual orientation.” 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 Stephen Baskerville

It may be no accident that Dale McAlpine, the Christian arrested for street preaching in England, was nabbed for his views on homosexuality. As Melanie Phillips points out in the Daily Mail, the preponderance of cases in what she calls Britain’s “attempt to stamp out Christianity” involve homosexuality. Read more…

Fred Reed writes some provocative stuff.  I often disagree with him, but he’s smart as a whip and always interesting.  In this article, he takes on hooking up.

I see where women, or college girls anyway, are honking and blowing most fierce about how they don’t like the way sex works nowadays. Yeah. It seems that the hook-up is in flower. 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…

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…