Ruth Institute Blog

by Ryan T. Anderson

For most of us, the defining exercise of political judgment is voting. It is the central activity of democratic citizenship. In a system of republican self-government such as ours, the decision of whom to place in public office is of paramount importance. It sets the direction of our public policy and law, and it has profound consequences for our liberty, the justice of our relationships, and the common good of our political community. Read more…

Governor Rick Perry was quoted as saying:

“Our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. And you know what? That’s New York, and that’s their business, and that’s fine with me….That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business.”

As I said in my earlier post, there at least two bad ideas embedded in this statement attributed to Gov Perry.  I’ve already dealt with the first problem: the states’ rights” position is not really available any longer.  The second bit of foolishness is the claim that because “our friends” in NY redefined marriage, no one else has any right to say anything against it. It is highly dubious that those responsible for redefining marriage are “friends” to anyone else in the country, or to the people of New York.

According to the New York Times, marriage was redefined in NY through a combination of backroom deals, arm-twisting and loads of money.  Read more…

From PublicDiscourse.com.

These quotes by Chesterton are the highlights of this article:

The English journalist and cultural critic G.K. Chesterton noted in the early twentieth century that the general disposition of modern men has been to “say something more like this: ‘We hold these truths to be probable enough for pragmatists; that all things looking like men were evolved somehow, being endowed by heredity and environment with no equal rights, but very unequal wrongs,’ and so on.” Read more…

“This is what happens when you take bad advice.”

A couple of months ago, Ari had posted about a San Francisco ballot initiative that would have banned male circumcision in that city.

Now, a Superior Court judge has ruled that the measure be removed from the ballot, saying that the state, not cities, has the right to regulate medical procedures.  She also found that ban would violate the free exercise of religion: Read more…

By Steven Nelson

The four New York Republican state senators who voted to legalize same-sex marriage in the state are now raking in major campaign donations.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the maximum amount possible — $10,300 — to the re-election campaigns of Sens. James Alesi, Mark Grisanti, Roy McDonald and Stephen Saland after the June vote. Read more…

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBANY (AP) — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who led the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, received $60,000 in campaign money from one of the state’s leading gay-rights groups, according to campaign finance records filed Friday with the State Board of Elections. Read more…

I Am a Man

Now that we lost a big one in New York,

I have an idea: let’s all the social conservatives stand around in a circle and criticize each other.  NOT! I stumbled over two separate social conservatives criticizing the Catholic Church in New York for not doing enough, here and here. These articles were mostly repeats of a New York Times article, with virtually nothing in the way of original reporting. (Why we should repeat the talking points of our enemies is beyond me.)  Others seem to think that if we could just get the arguments right, we might have won. I don’t agree with that assessment, in spite of the fact that I spend a lot of effort trying to craft the best possible arguments.  

The very same New York Times article which the critics of the Church Read more…

Critics of the Catholic Church claim that the Church wields authoritarian control over all its members. The Pope and the bishops ruthlessly suppress all dissent, debate or disobedience.

To those who think this way, I have two words: Andrew Cuomo. 

Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, lives in the Governor’s Mansion with a woman to whom he is not married. The Catholic Church holds that he is living in a state of mortal sin.

The Catholic Church holds that marriage was instituted by God in the Garden of Eden, and that marriage is the lifelong union of a man and a woman, ordered toward the procreation and education of children and the mutual good of the spouses.

Andrew Cuomo pressured the legislature of New York to change the definition of marriage to the union of any two persons, instituted by His Divine Self in the Garden of Albany, ordered toward no particular purpose at all. 

If the Church were the ruthlessly conformist authoritarian institution she is taken to be, you might think someone in authority would have something to say to Andrew Cuomo.  He is an excellent candidate to be asked to go elsewhere to meet his spiritual and religious needs, such as they are.

No one in authority has made this rather obvious suggestion to him. Perhaps some ordinary New York Catholics ought to politely ask him to get lost.

There will be a hearing next Wednesday, June 22, on SB 48–the bill that would require California schools to teach, not merely the accomplishments of historical figures, but their sexual preferences as well.  It would apply to students in kindergarten on up.

If you can’t attend the hearing, call your legislator.

From Bill May: Read more…

David Tyree, whose name is well-known to football fans, is standing up for marriage in New York.  Here is an interview he did recently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6lwIx9f5uk&

It starts off with footage of “the catch”–take a look!

One has to wonder sometimes if Western Civilization is even going to bother showing up for the the future of the world.

Well, not the way things are going in America lately, at least not according to recent government data as reported in the LA Times:

LA Times:
The maternity business has experienced a recession, too, it appears. Births fell 4% from 2007 to 2009, the biggest drop for any two-year period since the mid-1970s, according to federal government data released Thursday.

Meanwhile across the pond, our British cousins are procreating, but not bothering to get married. Consider a few items published recently by their Office for National Statistics: Read more…

from WinnipegFreePress.com:
The last time Canadians had a debate about the definition of marriage, it was over whether gays and lesbians had a constitutional right to marry.

In the end, the courts decided they did.

Now, as a British Columbia judge weighs whether polygamy should be decriminalized, advocates on both sides of the debate are pointing to the legalization of same-sex marriage to bolster their claims.

Keep reading…

LGBTweekly.com:
The Irish edition of tabloid news magazine The Sun recently covered the story of Penny Lawrence, a 28-year-old woman suffering from Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA) who is now pregnant with her father’s child.

If you seriously don’t think there are folks waiting in the wings for same-sex ‘marriage’ to set the legal precedent they need to make what is described above legal – along with absolutely anything else you could imagine – then check out a website called Full Marriage Equality. (They refer to this father and daughter’s relationship as “consanguinarmory”.)

By Maggie Gallagher

Last month, facing the problem of Muslim assimilation, British Prime Minister David Cameron denounced multiculturalism and called for a new “muscular liberalism” as the basis for a shared national identity.

Applauding conservatives, beware. Read more…

by John McCormack

The Democratic leadership in Maryland’s House of Delegates announced Friday night that it didn’t have the votes to pass a gay marriage bill. The Associated Press reports:

The speaker of Maryland’s House vowed that Democrats would try again next year to pass legislation legalizing gay marriage, but the intense lobbying by faith groups against the measure in recent weeks shows that it won’t be easy, even in a state known for its liberal politics. Read more…

From the FRC article:

As the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), an organization that has filed amicus briefs defending both Proposition 8 and DoMA, I am troubled by the lightning-fast integration of concepts and actual language from the Attorney General Letter into the Motion to Vacate Stay. Let me repeat: the Motion was filed within two-and-one-half hours of Attorney General’s press conference. Consequently, I am deeply concerned that officials at the Department of Justice were collaborating with the litigants in the Proposition 8 case. Even the appearance of collusion between the Department of Justice and litigants is highly damaging to the rule of law in America.

How often have we all heard pro same-sex so-called ‘marriage’ folks vehemently insist that Christians will not have to be politically or socially marginalized for them to get their way.

And yet this is happening in Great Britain where, if I’m not mistaken, same-sex ‘marriage’ isn’t even recognized yet – just civil unions.

On another site, this story was aptely titled Christianity isn’t dying, it’s being eradicated.

Philosopher Francis Beckwith has posted a short, but incisive, comment on patheos.com concerning the legal implications of the ‘reasoning’ undergirding the Obama administration’s refusal to continue to defend DOMA.

This is the core of his argument: Read more…