TeaPartyWire.com – Tea Party News by and for Tea Party Members

Did you have a filet on chicken day?

My sympathy goes out to the president of the Chamber of Commerce where I live. Here Rob Clapper was simply trying to line up an interesting speaker and suddenly he’s in the midst of a controversy.

Who would have thought when he scheduled Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest as the November speaker that Forrest’s views on white supremacy would become the focal point of the event?

“We had begun to coordinate it long before his remarks, but his remarks are irrelevant because this chamber does not engage in or have a part in social issues, “ Clapper said.

“Regardless of what his personal beliefs are and what he’s stated about social issues, that doesn’t play a part in what he’s coming here to speak about. Many of our members…have expressed a strong desire to hear the business practices and strategies that the KKK deploys in building a nationwide organization with over one million members,” Clapper concluded.

Oh, wait — inviting a genuine bigot who promoted violence and intimidation would have been a genuine controversy. Instead what we have here is a faux controversy ginned up by the same fanatics supporting faux marriage.

When Clapper invited Chick–fil–A President Dan Cathy to speak to the chamber it should have been an interesting event with an excellent speaker. Instead Clapper is now fielding questions from hysterical grievance–mongers who make it a point to attack any public figure that does not support their unprecedented redefinition of marriage.

Well, you may say, that’s what Clapper gets for spewing his “hate” during a news conference at the National Press Club. Except that’s not what happened. Clapper was interviewed by the Baptist Press. So a Baptist news service was interviewing a prominent Baptist about his faith. Homosexual extremists had to conduct an extensive search to find something that would offend them.

What’s more, during the interview Cathy didn’t “attack homosexuals” and he didn’t “oppose homosexual marriage.” Here’s what he said after being asked if he and the company support the traditional family, “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit…We intend to stay the course, we know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”

In an earlier interview with the Biblical Recorder, a weekly newspaper published by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, Cathy said, “We are very much supportive of the family – the Biblical definition of the family unit…I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,’ and I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is about.”

It’s not like Cathy was asked to cater a homosexual wedding, although I’m sure there will soon be an avalanche of carefully documented requests by wedding parties eager to exchange their free–range, living–will crab cake tapas for a wheelbarrow full of Chick–fil–A nuggets.

Cathy was simply making a positive statement regarding what he believed. It was hardly a declaration of war on homosexual “matrimony” and I doubt many would consider the Biblical Recorder a national platform rivaling the Washington Post.

Still, Cathy does not appear to have read the part of the Constitution stipulating the separation of God and mammon. In today’s Brave Liberal World you are grudgingly allowed to practice Christianity in the privacy of your own home, as long as everyone is a willing participant and you practice “safe religion.” Of course there is zero tolerance for Christians if they start proselytizing at rest stops and in public parks.

On the other hand, if Chick–fil–A wanted to sponsor a float in a homosexual “pride” parade — where participants often dress as sexual organs and the behavior by some participants is so vile you would cover the eyes of children — Cathy might land a profile in the New York Times.

Social conservatives are in a culture war with an opponent that will accept no compromise. By the time you read this “Chick–fil–A Appreciation Day” will be over. I hope millions of Americans supported a company that is not cowed by the liberal media and homosexual extremists.

Even more, I hope that at the next chamber board meeting they not only reaffirm their invitation to Dan Cathy, but they do it between bites of a Chick–fil–A deluxe spicy chicken sandwich.

Source: HeraldOnline.com

By William McKenzie

Posted: June 7th, 2012

Abortion and same-sex marriage will get ample airtime during this fall’s campaign. But add to the social agenda the notion that religious freedom is under attack.

Conservative Catholics and evangelicals are driving the topic, which Rick Santorum and Rick Perry pressed during the primaries with their suggestion that the Obama administration has declared war on religion.

Most Republicans agree. Sixty percent of Republicans think religious freedoms are in jeopardy, according to a March poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and Religion News Service.

As is often true in cultural debates, we have a red-blue divide. The poll found 69 percent of Democrats don’t consider religious liberties under attack.

Both sides have a point – and each is missing something important.

Let’s start with the Obama administration requirement that employers provide birth control through their health plans. The mandate illustrates where some liberals fail to recognize an issue of religious liberty.

Yes, the administration exempted houses of worship. But Catholic leaders claimed the move violated their teachings about contraception. They were right, especially about how far government can go in forcing a faith to compromise its identity.

The administration scrambled to compromise, proposing that insurers be required to fund the contraceptive coverage of workers in religiously affiliated organizations.

But numerous Catholic leaders blew back again. Last month, 43 institutions sued.

They argue – persuasively – that this debate isn’t just about contraception. It’s about religious freedom, which remains threatened under the compromise.

During an email exchange last week, Bishop Kevin Farrell, who heads the Dallas diocese, backed up that claim. I especially was struck by his contention that the compromise creates an unworkable formula for determining what organizations can be exempted from the ruling.

For instance, to qualify for the exemption, an institution must primarily serve people who share the institution’s religious beliefs. How will Washington enforce that provision? Should it survey every client who enters, say, a Catholic charity to determine how many are Catholic?

That’s a slippery slope for any administration to head down.

Now, let’s flip this discussion around, and look at how conservatives, especially conservative evangelicals, miss a key point in their concerns about religious freedom. In their case, they too often confuse religious freedom with religious privilege. Specifically, some seem to want an advantage for their faith, which leads them to complain when they feel that privilege is not being upheld.

This important article talks about the structural effect of same-sex marriage: marrying the welfare state to big government.  This article demonstrates why same-sex marriage would have a profound, chilling effect on both sexual equality coupled with vast expansions of the welfare state.  This demonstrates a number of reasons why same-sex marriage is structurally unconstitutional.

By David R. Usher, President Center for Marriage Policy

============

Marrying the welfare state to big government

“Marital responsibility” is the priceless institution greatly missing in low-income households.  Traditionally married couples and their children are the least likely to live in poverty, get in trouble, or need big government to incarcerate or care of them from womb to tomb.

The welfare state and same-sex marriage are issues deeply interwoven but not commonly understood.  Behind the “rights” language is the socialist purpose of feminists who have fought for decades to create the right for women to marry each other.

In a nutshell: Feminists set out to destroy marriage and marginalize the influence of the church in the 1960’s.  With marriage significantly  diminished, feminists set out to turn marriage into a feminist institution in the late 1980’s. Feminist leaders believe that allowing women to marry each other will resolve the economic and social problems of poor single mothers, and give feminists more sociopolitical power over the dual institutions of marriage and family – by harnessing public policies commonly assigning children as chattel regardless of the context of childbirth.

It is well-known that poverty is lowest in married families.  If the welfare state could be downsized by allowing women to marry each other, why not allow it?  Even budget-cutting Tea Partiers (who largely ignore social policy matters) understand this under-the-table math.

As with most feminist illusions, creating a publicly recognized legal bond creates more of a loss to the public coffers than a gain.  Take the case of Desmond Hatchett, who fathered 30 children by 11 different women in Tennessee.

The media failed to grasp the most important part of the story: Why did 11 different women want to have 30 children out of wedlock knowing that Hatchett could not possibly support them?  Answer:  They wanted the welfare income and benefits that arrives immediately upon getting pregnant out of wedlock to support themselves.  Hatchett was the means to that end.

Despite having the most effective birth control methods at their disposal, the illegitimacy rate is at record levels.  Why? Because for low-income women it is a path to a reasonable, steady income.

Most women do not accidentally get pregnant out of wedlock.  Consider this:  What would happen if unemployment checks were equivalent to what you could earn and were guaranteed for 20 years?  Nobody would work for decades.

This policy paradox illustrates the insanity of the American welfare state.  Unemployment policy encourages individuals to return to work. Welfare policies encourage women to avoid marriage and have children at the taxpayer’s expense.  Our economy always bounces back.  The news about marriage, poverty, social problems, and crime has been increasingly negative since 1964.

Legal recognition of homosexuality does not predict smaller government or lower taxes.  It doubles the destructive impact of the welfare state on marriage.  We may be creating a disincentive for low income women to marry men and live on their incomes when they can marry other women, collect any number of welfare checks, sleep with whoever they want, and entertain men like Lady GaGa?

Why does the NAACP support homosexuality?  The NAACP wants to expand the welfare state and will do anything to get it – including policies that destroy marriage and permanently obliterating trust and functional social structure between black women and men.

Fortunately, many of the black churches do not agree with the NAACP and are willing to confront the deep-rooted, socially-destructive sexual inequality established by the welfare state.  Black church leaders are more aware than any other demographic group of the damage the welfare state did to the relationship between men and women, the decline of moral values, and even weakening of their own churches.  Many black church leaders have shared this with me.

Arguments comparing racial discrimination to same-sex marriage are phony.   Legal recognition of homosexuality is sexual inequality on steroids.  It will institutionalize maximum socioeconomic inequality between men and women at all social, economic, parental, and property rights strata.  It will make federal government the automatic statutory party collecting child support for even more millions of children born out of wedlock within the institution of marriage, with the taxpayer acting a guarantor for supporting the extramarital welfare complex.

Now, for the trillion-dollar question: Would low-income women marry each other for economic reasons?  The answer: follow the money.   Many poor women have abandoned marriage for welfare-state economic advantages.  Too many will marry each other for the additional economic advantages, not to mention the impenetrable matriarchal legal structure that same-sex marriage is designed to establish.

Women marrying women does not imply a sexual relationship or a significant change from the matriarchal residential culture of the black underclass.  However, it does establish a predatory welfare machine destined to make the federal government and the taxpayer the automatic third party in the vast majority of marriages between low-income women.

Liberal black leaders should no longer blame whites for problems in their community.  They must own-up to the truth: the massive welfare state they created has destroyed the socioeconomic fabric of their constituents, held them down for decades, and aborted the migration of low-income blacks to educated, higher-income, safe neighborhoods.

Leading conservative policy advocates such as Star Parker, Herman Cain, Rep. Allen West, Cynthia Davis and Phyllis Schlafly are excruciatingly aware that marriage-absence is the primary reason why so many poor remain trapped in intergenerational crime and poverty, with no path to upward mobility. It is time to end the plantation arrangement of the welfare state, not embed it within a convenient government institution of faux marriage.

Marriage-absence is the greatest social and economic problem we face.  The effects are felt most acutely in low income, welfare-addicted communities.  The costly problem of illegitimacy and marriage-absence must be confronted to decrease demand social spending and balance budgets.  We must transform the welfare apparatus to get  government out of the business of actively destroying marriage.

I shall digress for one important point:  The first presidential order signed by President H.W. Bush upon taking office required all federal agencies to examine their policies and remove any policy that unnecessarily interferes with marriage.  The first Presidential order signed by Bill Clinton upon taking office rescinded H.W. Bush’s order.

Contrary to conventional wisdom in the Republican rhetoric, budget cutting cannot be the only approach to reduce social spending. French President Sarkozy and Andrea Merkel now know that “Austerity”, without social policy changes to get government out of the business of destroying marriage only result in an angry populace and massive political expulsion.

We must now focus socioeconomic policy on restoring the institution of traditional marriage, reducing welfare dependency with scrupulous budget trimming, and establish new roots for socioeconomic success of millions of our poor citizens.

————————————————-

David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy

http://marriagepolicy.org

Mathew Staver, Chairman
Liberty Counsel Action   LCAction.cc

Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered women’s restrooms be opened to males. According to a Holder DOJ letter to an Arkansas university, if a male simply “gender identifies” with being a female, then women’s facilities must be open to that individual. This latest announcement follows the recent action by Holder forcing clothing stores to allow males to use female fitting rooms and changing rooms.

This outrageous action from Eric Holder’s DOJ creates a very dangerous precedent for our nation – especially for women and children who use restrooms marked for females.

Sadly, there are people who will pervert, exploit, and manipulate the DOJ’s directive to facilitate their disordered sexual appetites.  This directive is the proverbial “camel’s nose in the tent” when it comes to women losing any reasonable expectation of having privacy in public facilities. 

As you know, Liberty Counsel Action has been intensely calling for congressional action against Eric Holder. The time for Congress to take action against Holder’s misguided and agenda-driven policies is NOW! 

A letter from the Department of Justice (DOJ) caused the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith (UAFS) to reverse its policy and allow a 38-year old anatomically-male “transgender” student permanent use of women’s restrooms on campus despite strong opposition from female students.

Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has created a whole new front in the real “War on Women” by implementing an explosive directive that could endanger women all across our nation. 

In fact, this is an unconscionable extension of the Obama administration’s pro-homosexual agenda, recently expressed in the President’s announcement of support for same-sex “marriage.”

 ++Here’s how one radical activist managed to get Holder’s powerful backing…

Jennifer Braly is a male. But Braly desires to become a woman – and is raising money for “Sex Reassignment Surgery.”  Braly was using the UAFS women’s restrooms, despite being a male – and in spite of the complaints of female students who opposed seeing Braley in the women’s restrooms. 

The university offered Braly unisex facilities, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. Braly contacted the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and at that point, Eric Holder’s Department of Justice stepped in. 

“In the eyes of the law, this individual [Jennifer Braly] is entitled to use the bathroom that she identifies with,” university Vice President Mark Horn said.

The DOJ threatened the University with a lawsuit if it did not comply with its assessment after Braly filed his/her complaint.

++This DOJ rule on “gender identity” will have a chilling, widespread impact.

Holder’s DOJ forced the university to implement a campus-wide policy because of one “transgender” student’s inconvenience.  That could start a domino effect that will be unstoppable as public institutions rethink their “gender identity” policies. 

If choosing which restroom to use is based on how an individual “identifies” their gender, what’s to stop ANY man from using ANY women’s restroom ANYWHERE in our nation?

What’s to stop males from “deeming” themselves to be female to live in female dormitories – or to attend women’s schools – or girls’ camps – or any other number of other outrageous scenarios?

The Department of Justice’s ruling is a travesty of justice catering to radical special interest groups and the Obama administration’s pro-homosexual agenda. It is ill-advised and simply wrong for America.

++Holder MUST GO!

******************************************************************

This may be an alternative to stop this nonsense.  Women go into a male restroom, they don’t have doors on urinals  and just stand there and watch.  If a male says something then say then stay out of our restrooms, what is fair is fair.  Warning, do not attempt this by yourself, bring ALL of your female friends with you to make a point.

The Convict and the Emperor

By: Bill Colley

The convict got more than 40 percent of the vote. Once more, 4 of 10 voters selected the convict over the President. These were voters inside Mr. Obama’s own party. The convict got more than 40 percent of the vote. For those just returning from the other side of the galaxy, a convict in a Texas prison received more than 40 percent of the votes cast in West Virginia’s Democrat Party Primary.

Media explains it away as West Virginia is a coal state under siege from White House energy policies but it’s a fair argument to call the outcome the canary in the mine. The Washington Post suggested rural West Virginia will be irrelevant when November arrives. The Washington Post suggests West Virginians are racists (Say, I just noticed the President is a person of color!!!) and preferred Hillary Clinton four years ago. In the General Election the Republican candidate won West Virginia with a thick cushion. Media and liberal academics would describe West Virginia as an outlier.

The convict got more than 40 percent of the vote.

This week I saw a post at Red State from Erick Erickson and he described the Pauline Kael moment being experienced by American lefties. The writer is referencing the President’s evolution on same-sex marriage. Tens of millions of hungry, homeless and jobless and the White House sees the union of Timmy and Tommy as the path to victory. The convict got more than 40 percent. It should also be noted the jailed Keith Judd has got a roof over his head and food on the table! As for liberals who believe the world was formed January 20, 2008 there was life before Obama and Pauline Kael was a media queen living in a bubble. When 40 years ago Richard Nixon trounced the leftist George McGovern, Kael was distraught and during a drunken binge told a party guest it couldn’t be possible. She didn’t know anyone who voted for Nixon.

The whole weeklong evolution business was a calculated maneuver by some fellows who can’t seem to get their feet out of the goo. Let’s re-examine West Virginia. The Obama campaign staff from 2008 was enshrined as brilliant by media sycophants. Were they? Hillary Clinton won 18 million votes inside the party. The figure is ten times the population of West Virginia. It tells us a great many people in the Democrat Party shunned Barack Obama. Then weeks before Election Day one of the worst Presidential campaigners in modern history watched the economy melt down on a fellow Republican’s watch. On Election Night the media minions insisted we had passed through a portal and evolved into another national species and they called it transformational change.

This week the convict got 40 percent. Four years ago the media insisted Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin had high negatives. The convict got 40 percent in a Democrat Primary against a sitting Democrat President. What’s the definition of high negatives?

Media is scrambling to portray Republican Mitt Romney as a mean and divisive figure. Did you know when Romney was in high school sometimes he was a bully? In modern America bullies are also supposed to be in lock-up and Mitt was a bully to a possibly homosexual man, however. They weren’t yet men and the other teenager apparently had no idea what his preference was the day Mitt Romney sheared the other boy’s hair. Mitt Romney also had no idea about the other boy’s orientation. Of course, Mitt’s actions 47 years ago must certainly tell us a great deal about his character. So says mainstream media. And while we were all bullied when young and we bullied others we need it explained Mitt’s quite normal teenaged behavior is different. It’s because Mitt is rich and rich people are all obviously mean and they prowl the country cutting hair from homosexuals and hang the locks as trophies from the walls of billiard rooms, don’t you know?

As you all well know the President was teaching in the temple when he was a boy and when he saw bullying he reproached the bully with words about casting the first stone. Although, no one really has any idea where or what Barack Obama was prior to sometime in the spring of 2004.

You can buy all this media spin but the convict still got more than 40 percent of the vote against the President and among the President’s fellow Democrats. It’s quite clear West Virginians don’t buy media spin. Keith Judd is just hoping for anyone but Obama. The convict who, from the pictures I’ve seen, also needs a haircut surely doesn’t want any more years tacked to his sentence!

No worries, Mr. Judd. A great shearing is coming in November.

Homosexual marriage is the unholy product of a union between "living Constitution" and "living Bible" propagandists.

John Hawkins, proprietor of Right Wing News, recently selected his favorite quotes from C. S. Lewis. One has a great deal of relevance with regard to President Obama’s recent embrace of homosexual marriage.

 “No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did…The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority that the patient refuses to accept. And therefore resents.”  

Coverage of Obama’s announcement stressed how his views evolved, but truth be told his view didn’t so much “evolve” as revolve. In 1996 when Obama first ran for the Illinois State Senate, he was a strong supporter of homosexual marriage. Now, like the earth around the sun, choose–your–own–plumbing marriage has done a complete orbit of The Obama and arrived where it began.

That a peripheral question like this could have any role, however large or small, in a presidential election is yet another indicator that we live in a decadent age. Homosexual marriage is the Rosemary’s Baby of political questions: The unholy product of a union between the “living Constitution” and the “living Bible” crowd.

“Living Constitution” advocates interpret the document to support whatever faculty lounge fad is currently making the rounds in intellectual circles. In the last 50 years the Constitution has gone from a document protecting individual liberty to a grimy little pamphlet protecting the sexual proclivities of the libertine set.

The Bible has not fared any better. It could not be more clear on homosexual practices, yet there are clergy who take it upon themselves to breathe a little life into that dusty scroll. The Post quotes the Rev. Clement Aapengnu of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church claiming, “Who has the authority to define what marriage is?”

For starters I would have said the church does, based on the Bible, but if one doesn’t regard the Bible as the inspired word of God, then the book becomes just an ancient collection of folktales. We don’t take child–rearing advice from Hansel & Gretel, so why consult the Bible for a definition of marriage?

In fact that’s pretty much the take of the Post’s “religion” columnist Lisa Miller who wrote last week, “On the specifics of what constitutes a “good” or “right” kind of family, the Scriptures offer no guidance at all.”

The interesting question is why make the change now? Obama was going to carry Hollywood and San Francisco anyway, why take a chance on alienating red state voters?

Each time homosexual marriage has been put before voters it has, without exception, lost. North Carolina, the most recent state to vote, ratified man–woman marriage by a landslide 61 percent.

In its top–down campaign of sexual enlightenment, the media drags out various polls that show when the choice is binary between regular marriage and imitation marriage 51 percent support imitation marriage. When offered “civil unions” as a third option, support for homosexual marriage plummets to 38 percent.

This, however, is not good news for social conservatives. There is essentially no difference between civil unions and marriage. Just as the marriage of male and female by a justice of the peace has all the rights and privileges of a wedding in a church, the civil union is essentially the same as heterosexual marriage.

Even worse, as we saw in California, once they get “civil unions” the homosexual lobby terms it  “second class” marriage and uses its existence to prove discrimination in the courts.

You don’t have to be a Wal–Mart shopper to fall prey incoherent thinking with regard to homosexuals and the family. Mitt Romney, to his credit, opposes both homosexual marriage and civil unions. But then Romney says he does not oppose two random homosexuals who decide it might be fun to play house and adopt a child without even the formality of marriage.

If your basis for defining marriage is the “feelings” and “love” of the interested parties, then no coherent intellectual argument can be made to define numbers of wives or husbands and, with a bit of evolving, their ages. It’s not a slippery slope, this change is a leap into the abyss.

Currently Obama reassures the religious that he supports a same–sex marriage law that is “respectful of religious liberty.” Which sounds a lot like what he said regarding forcing religious institutions to cover abortion and contraception before the passage of Obamacare and we know how that turned out.

By Alex Roarty
NationalJournal.com
May 17, 2012

The Great Recession took a sledgehammer to young job-seekers. As a Rutgers University study released this week reported, only half — 51 percent — of college graduates since 2006 are employed full-time. Eleven percent of them, the study found, are unemployed — a figure well above the national rate of 8.1 percent. Another 12 percent are working part-time.

Imagine, then, the difficulty that other young people, those without the advantage of a college education, face in trying to find a job. Avoiding unemployment isn’t easy for most in this job market, but the struggles are acute for men and women younger than 30.

Their hardship explains President Obama’s dilemma this November. The White House incumbent enjoyed the overwhelming enthusiasm of young voters in 2008, winning them by a two-to-one margin over Republican John McCain — an incredible edge even for a group that usually leans left. But replicating that success could prove difficult when so many of those same voters are beset by personal financial difficulty.

To do so, the Obama campaign might have to rely on a culturally oriented pitch, one that can tout the president’s support of same-sex marriage. That’s not necessarily a losing strategy, because many young people strongly identify with the president’s views. But it’s also one that Republicans bet won’t be enough to prevent them from making inroads on Election Day.

To read more, please visit: NationalJournal.com

Bristol Palin says children do better with a mother and father. Palin quickly drew fire from critics who note she was an unwed mother at age 17. / AP PHOTO

Source: Detroit Free Press

Posted: May 12th, 2012

On May 9th, President Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage; sort of. Acknowledging that it’s a matter of fairness that remains up to the states, he was planning to get around to it if and when convenient.

There is already excessive Federal involvement in marriage, including multiple tax and Social Security consequences; we don’t need more. Aside from that Federal involvement, I view marriage as an undertaking between two adults, often loving but sometimes not, that their friends and acquaintances can respect or not as they may wish. Several of our friends have long been in heterosexual relationships, yet for their own reasons continue to “shack up.” Never having asked couples to produce their marriage certificates, we know the natures of their relationships only because they volunteered the information. It is irrelevant to our friendships with them and seems to be so as well to the relationships they have with each other and to the friendships they, as couples, have with others. We also have several unmarried friends in same-sex relationships. That their genders can be easily noticed does not affect our friendships with them. We would respect them no more, and no less, if they were married.

Would anyone disrespect them on the ground that they are not married? Some apparently think so. The word “marriage” was held to be of critical importance in the California Marriage Cases. As I noted here, in his August 4, 2010 decision rejecting California Proposition 8 limiting marriage to one man and one woman, Federal District Judge Walker acknowledged that civil unions in California provide all of the tangible benefits of marriage that the state is capable of providing. However, he concluded that a mere civil union or other species of domestic partnership fails to

provide gays and lesbians with a status equivalent to marriage because the cultural meaning of marriage and its associated benefits are intentionally withheld from same-sex couples in domestic partnerships. (Emphasis added.)

Can the “cultural” meaning of a word be changed by altering the way it is used in official documents? Judge Walker concluded that the withdrawal, but only of the name “marriage,” (available to same-sex couples for only a few months before Proposition 8 had become effective) had been the product of hostility toward homosexuals, stigmatizing them as inferior to heterosexuals and accordingly undeserving of the full benefit of recognition uniquely afforded by the word “marriage.” That hostility had not been sufficiently great to result in the withdrawal of any of the previously conferred benefits of civil unions. Apparently, those in homosexual relationships in California would deem themselves less subject to hostility, and perhaps even in more loving and lasting relationships, if they could have “marriage” certificates instead of civil union papers and be “married” rather than civil unioned.

On appeal, a majority of the 9th Circuit appellate court panel held on February 7, 2012 that Judge Walker had been right and that withdrawal only of a briefly held right to use the word “marriage” had lacked any legitimate basis. It rejected as irrational all of the various bases presented by Proposition 8 proponents, including historic procreational and child rearing interests, traditional religious views of marriage and of morality. In dealing only with the situation it claimed to have before it, the majority did not reach the constitutional question of whether states must extend the marriage designation to same-sex couples receiving all of the tangible incidents associated with marriage. Judge Smith dissented in parts here relevant, arguing that the majority had applied an inapplicable standard of review. For anyone interested in reading the opinions, it would probably be best to read the dissent first; the majority opinion does not, in my opinion, deal adequately with the points it raises and they should be considered in evaluating the majority opinion.

Against that somewhat remotely relevant background, President Obama made a “gutsy call,” flip-flopping in stiff headwinds. Not really a flip-flop, it was instead deemed an “evolution” because he at least appeared to transition to a “liberal” stance. According to Roger Stone,

Once Gay Americans are through celebrating President Barack Obama’s “personal” support of Gay marriage equality, they will learn that Obama’s “evolution” changes nothing. Obama’s new position is a bullshit cop-out.

This comes on the heels of an [sic] cynical Obama campaign pirouette where Team Obama trotted out first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then Vice President “Crazy” Joe Biden to say they support gay marriage and imply that the President would too–after the election.

Now, incredibly, Obama says Gay marriage is a state issue. That’s what they used to say about abortion and before that, slavery. Now Obama tells us that gay couples should be able to marry but he doesn’t believe they have a right to do so. Obama would leave the question to the states–in other words -the status quo. This is like saying that public schools ought to be integrated but if the people of Mississippi disagree, well he says, “let the states decide”

Clearly, it was a form of evolution. Will it turn out to be one furthering his political survival?

Since President Obama claims to agree that same-sex marriage is a state issue, at least it’s a rare area where his (current) position can’t reasonably be characterized as extreme. Nor is it a bold new departure; a year ago, he had announced that his administration would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Nevertheless, according to Diane Sawyer of ABC News, President Obama’s announcement that he supports same-sex marriage was an historic event — an announcement that no other President had ever gone forth to boldly make before. I have noticed little more than perfunctory upset about it in the conservative blog-sphere, more intensely focused on other concerns.

According to former Speaker Pelosi,

President Barack Obama’s embrace of same-sex “marriage” on Wednesday was not political “at all,” nor due to concerns over fundraising from the LGBT community . . . .

While campaign funds are unimportant (yeah, right) to President Obama, his announcement does seem (only inadvertently, of course) to have helped his campaign fund raising; his campaign promptly sent out fund raising appeals based on it. Within ninety minutes of his announcement, “the campaign received $1 million in spontaneous contributions.” Might Vice President Biden’s earlier “gaffe” of announcing his own support for same-sex marriage have been part of the choreography? Why no! Impossible! Surely, President Obama would never (well, hardly ever) stoop that low. According to Politico,

Obama aides fretted that delay would dent his new-breed brand, and likewise that plunging in could weigh him down in battleground states. They even hatched a plan to announce his support just prior to the Democratic National Convention — a characteristically all-in-good-time solution that acknowledged the minefield he was walking through.

The pace of events necessitated a bit of damage control.

Multiple top Democrats said senior Obama aides were deeply annoyed with Biden for forcing the conversation on same-sex marriage earlier than planned. These officials said Biden had, in the past, advised the president against coming out in favor of same-sex marriage because of the potential political downsides, making it all the more frustrating, multiple sources said.

Despite this, President Obama is a forgiving sort and is not unhappy that Vice President Biden preempted him.

“He probably got out a little over his skis, but out of generosity of spirit,” Obama told ABC’s Robin Roberts in an interview that aired Thursday on Good Morning America. “Would I have preferred to have done this in my own way on my own terms without, I think, there being a lot of notice to everybody? Of course. But all’s well that ends well.”

As Roger L. Simon argues here, the announcement is yet another diversion from our many (evidently trivial) domestic and foreign problems oddly seen by some as far more important. President Obama needs all of the diversions he can save or create. Along with with the current recession, President Obama may want us to forget about all distractions that could damage his reelection prospects and his legacy of great works such as ObamaCare. Still, his (possibly first, if one credits the source) “gutsy call” may attain historical significance right up there with such crucial efforts as Federal limitations on school bake sales and bullying (except for a good cause).

While the substantive impact of his announcement may be only transitory, this part of his historic statement will probably endure:

“When I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” said Obama. (Emphasis added.)

It may seem a bit odd to have claimed that military personnel had been fighting on his behalf, even for his previously announced, withdrawn and then re-announced support for same-sex marriage; however, in their hearts they must have known that he would get around to it if and when convenient. Having been personally in harms way, most recently in Afghanistan, President Obama knows full well how they feel.

Same-sex marriage per se is low on my list of major concerns. The Constitution does not mention same-sex marriage; nor, for that matter, does the word “marriage” appear there in any context. That suggests that if marriage was considered at all when the Constitution was written, or thereafter as it was amended, marriage was among the matters thought best left up to the States under Article X. Another term in office for President Obama, with post-reelection flexibility to “evolve” without constitutional or congressional constraints, is pretty close to the top of my list of concerns.

The fruits of post-reelection flexibility to “evolve” may be abundant. The Washington Post observes,

[J]ust as President Lyndon Johnson became a champion of civil rights for African Americans with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Obama could become a champion of LGBT rights by endorsing legislation or signing an executive order that would forbid states from discriminating against LGBT couples. Marriage equality should be enshrined in our U.S. Constitution, which would take congressional action and public will and support. Obama can’t do it alone.

The Democrats and Obama should now capitalize on the increasing public support for same-sex marriage by taking the bold move of making marriage equality part of the Democratic presidential platform. This would send a clear and resounding message against “separate-but-equal” treatment of same-sex couples.

It will take federal and executive intervention to keep states like North Carolina from denying LGBT couples important entitlements such as Medicaid, Social Security, tax breaks and federal retirements benefits. It is of further significance that Obama, an African American, can serve as a bridge of understanding who could encourage greater tolerance in the black community — which highly regards the president — on the issue of same-sex marriage.

Obama’s action is historic on many levels. He should now give his public endorsement of marriage equality the legal weight, force and legitimacy of executive orders and party platform recognition. (Emphasis added.)

Perhaps if a reelected President Obama decides to bypass the courts and the Congress to go the already well trod executive order route, he might wish to use highly suitable American Flag doormats at the White House; they are available from Lowe’s, although at least one store removed them from display “because of complaints.” President Obama’s people can surely find enough somewhere; China would be honored to provide as many as might be needed. The American Flag chosen would probably not be the one shown at the right; it would be unpatriotic to walk on a picture of President Obama. Perhaps a Constitution-themed doormat could be made just for him. He would probably not want it, however, because it would be more difficult to shred than the old fashioned parchment and paper versions.

First published at Dan Miller’s Blog.

Romney adamantly rejects same-sex marriage (via AFP) Republican White House challenger Mitt Romney, wooing social conservatives, adamantly rejected same-sex marriage Saturday and trumpeted his belief in Christian values and the family. Three days after Barack Obama became the first US president to approve gay and lesbian marriage, Romney told university…   Technorati Tags: 2012 Election, romney, same-sex marriage

By Kyle Becker | Own The Narrative

It’s only May and the campaign season has already turned gay.

Obama is running around like a hysterical schoolgirl courting his left-wing base, which is a portentous sign for an incumbent who should be wooing the moderate middle like Selma Hayek worked the room in Dogma.

The war on moms, condomgate, dog-eating, and now rainbow flag-waving studs in assless chaps complete the sideshow circus tableau for our nation to move ‘forward’ into. If the mise-en-scène is not jovial, it sure is frivolous; ‘gay’ in more than one regard.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I had more than a few gay friends in college, an institute of higher learning that unfortunately was not too adept at the finer points of rhetorical parlance. One of my friends came out of the closet and I neither had a clue he was gay, nor did I bat an eye. Consider it a lack of gaydar that springs from a devil-may-care individualist streak.

Apologias aside, the gay mafia demanded its pound of flesh from Obama in exchange for a commitment to ‘marriage equality,’ and he both pandered and hedged at the same time: he paid lip service to a supposedly lofty ideal while maintaining the status quo — a familiar track record for the president and a sign of electoral weakness.

Obama has thereby inflamed the more extreme elements of his base by opting for an ‘evolved’ position that basically says it’s super if states want to pass gay marriage laws, a non-committal committal if there ever was one, while chilling the religious ‘black community’ he needs another strong showing from on election day. Van Jones can flippantly make remarks about Obama coming out as gay and not losing any of the black vote — wait, why is an avowed communist and known truther doing on MSNBC again?

Read more and access this work’s audio version (monoblog), please visit here- OwnTheNarrative.com

About the Author
Kyle Becker is a political analyst and freelance writer, with articles published at American Thinker, Misfit Politics and Conservative Daily News. In 2010, he was the Assistant Director of Field Operations for Congresswoman Nan Hayworth, and a board member at Tea Party Nation. An advanced PhD. student in Political Science, Kyle speaks fluent Russian and worked in Moscow as a copy editor for the economic news agency Prime-Tass (prime-tass.com). He believes that defeating socialism and all other forms of collectivism once and for all means thoroughly discrediting the ideology utilizing reason, evidence, history, and philosophy. And humor. And whatever else works. He is currently editing his first fiction novel.

President Obama speaks at an annual Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies dinner on May 8. (Carolyn Kaster / AP)

Source: WashingtonPost.com

By: Peter Wallsten and Scott Wilson

Posted: May 9th, 2012

President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage Wednesday, capping days of frenzied speculation about his views and intensifying pressure from gay campaign donors that began with surprising comments on the issue over the weekend by Vice President Biden.

The announcement marked an apparent end to Obama’s self-described “evolution” on the issue.

“I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Robin Roberts, in an ABC News interview.

Obama went on to explain that he had “hesitated” on marriage because he thought same-sex unions would be “sufficient” in order to guarantee rights for couples such as hospital visitations. And he said he wanted to be “sensitive” to the fact that for many Americans, the word “marriage” evokes “very powerful positions, religious beliefs and so forth.”

ABC will air the interview on its evening news Wednesday night and on “Good Morning America” Thursday. In a brief special this afternoon, Roberts said that Obama invoked his daughters, and conversations over dinner in which they have said that some of their friends have gay parents.

Read More: WashingtonPost.com

Will the Real Tea party Please Stand Up

By: Paul Roy Jr

As the election cycle is beginning to kick into high gear, I have to ask the question: Which tea party is the real tea party? Is it the tea party that is true to the founding principles of the movement, fiscal responsibility, smaller government, strict constitutionalism and personal freedom? Or is it the tea party which seems to be focused on social issues, such as same-sex marriage, reversing Row v. Wade and stopping the war on religion, most notably Catholicism? Or should these all be part of the mix?

This question was discussed vehemently last month when there was a difference in opinion on which Tax Day rally was more appropriate, one which was mostly fiscal in nature or a separate rally which was more social issue focused. Another question which arises is should the tea party movement coalesce behind Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee or on another candidate, such as Ron Paul?

In some tea party groups there is even another question, that of how much time and effort should be spent on local elections as opposed to national elections, which of these would be most effective at changing the direction of this country?

Tea party detractors point to the reason for these divisions amongst us is because we have no leader, therefore no focus. There are several “national” tea party groups out there, all with “national leaders” and who seem to all have slightly different agendas. But I will argue that these groups don’t necessarily represent what the intent of the movement was when it began. I sometimes wonder if many of us in the movement have actually begun to believe what has been written about us from our detractors, that we are nothing but a pawn of the Republican party, that we are extreme religious conservatives who want to bring the country back to the fifties when people couldn’t profess who they were publically for fear of being bullied or that we our only mission in life is to remove Barack Obama from the Presidency because we are all obviously racists. I have to admit, these are some of the message which I seem to be getting.

Back to the original question which is the real tea party, is it one or a combination of all? There is no easy answer, which is why the divisions in the first place. When the movement started it seemed all those involved were focused on the core principles of the movement. We called ourselves Patriots and believed we could actually change the country, and we did, or at least we began to. One only needs to look at the 2010 mid-term elections to see the dent we made. Long-time incumbents were ousted, many new faces appeared in Congress and even more ran, although not elected. For the first time in my voting life there were races here in Massachusetts that were actually contested and while no incumbents on the national level were defeated, several were in trouble. The real change here was at the state level where the long time Democratic controlled legislature lost some of its clout with some new Republican blood appearing under the golden dome on Beacon Hill.

In this writer’s opinion this is where the tea party movement needs to focus, at the state and local level. We need to change the culture at the lowest levels first so this culture can work its way up through the system. While I agree we need change at the top, unless we change those who are coming up, we will return to the same old system in four years. The culture of spending, entitlements and bigger government needs to stop, and this begins in our own backyards. Local spending is out of control throughout the country. If we begin to affect change at the level we can prove it can be done. This is how we will truly move “Forward”.