Tag Archive for: marriage

Marriage works. Why won’t politicians back it?

Among parents in the top socio-economic groupings three quarters are married by the time their children are born.


Marriage Foundation, a UK charity, recently surveyed 2,000 young adults for Marriage Week 2021 and found that over 80 percent of 18-30s want to marry.

So why won’t our politicians back marriage?

I am the Research Director of Marriage Foundation. For at least two decades, I have been a strong advocate for marriage, not out of some sense of loyalty to outdated traditions, but because the psychology of marriage and the evidence about the effects of marriage go so strongly with the grain of human nature.

Study after study suggests that marriage works more than it doesn’t for most people, despite what many people assume about divorce rates.

The better-off know this.

Among parents in the top socio-economic groupings, for example, three quarters are married by the time their children are born. Among cabinet members in the UK, 85 percent (23 out of 27) are married for the first time. The Prime Minister is unusual in being the only person on his second or more marriage, in his case about to begin his third.

So why are our politicians and policy-makers such fans of marriage in their private lives and yet so reticent to back marriage in public policy?

If you doubt me, when did you hear a cabinet member give a speech on the importance of marriage? When did a cabinet member say that the £250 married couples allowance was not nearly incentive or reward enough? Or when did any of them comment, assuming they are even aware, that couples stand to lose up to £10,000 a year in universal credit if they marry their partner?

Maybe they won’t back marriage in public because they don’t think the public are interested.

Surveys suggest otherwise. In 2018, the Centre for Social Justice found that 93 percent of teenage young men said they expected to marry at some point. In 2008, a survey of young adults under 30 by Anastasia de Waal at Civitas found much the same.

But clearly there’s a need for an update. So we commissioned our own survey of 2,000 adults under 30, the Tik Tok generation.

What we found is that the vast majority of young adults still want to marry:

  • More than eight out of 10 young unmarried women and men want to get married. 86 percent of unmarried women and 80 percent of unmarried men under 30 in a relationship say they would “like to get married at some point” in their life, while 76 percent of women and 77 percent of men under 30 say they “expect to get married at some point”.
  • Nor does age dull the desire to marry appreciably, with slightly fewer women wanting to marry, falling from 89 percent of 18-24s to 83 percent of 25-30s, whereas slightly more men want to marry, rising from 78 percent of 18-24s to 81 percent of 25-30s.
  • Nor does social class, with 91 percent of women and 83 percent of men in the top tercile wanting to marry compared to 81 percent of women and 82 percent of men in the bottom tercile.

You can download our paper here. The verdict is clear.

Young adults overwhelmingly want to marry.

We invite government to affirm this strong desire to marry by backing the annual celebration of Marriage Week, and to motivate development of a fearless policy that promotes and distinguishes marriage in line with the evidence.

COLUMN BY

Harry Benson

Harry Benson is Research Director of the Marriage Foundation, a UK charity championing marriage for the good of society. More by Harry Benson

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

BLM’s Shroud is Ripped Off — It’s All About Leftist Politics

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) Global Network Foundation becoming a project of the Tides Foundation should dispel any notion that BLM (2.01) is a nonpartisan group dedicated to nonpartisan solutions for racial and policing challenges. According to the Capital Research Center (CRC), this recent move means the control Thousand Currents has over BLM’s chapters will merely be transferred to yet another prominently liberal group. Thousand Currents is a nonprofit that refuses to be transparent about its financial data, and it has close ties to violent activists like Susan Rosenberg. The shift to the Tides Foundation is little better; in 2018, Tides gave $291 million to leftist groups, ranging from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations to the Hewlett Foundation.

The questionable ethics of the backers behind the BLM Global Network Foundation means any donors to BLM are not contributing to a philanthropic cause, but a radical political movement.

Major corporations such as Amazon (1.29), Apple (1.00), and Facebook (1.00) have supported this blatantly left-wing organization by donating to BLM’s allies. If these companies want to maintain their conservative and apolitical customer base, they should refrain from validating the BLM movement and its unquestionably biased funding source.

Big Tech companies have consistently been one of the worst offenders when it comes to advancing liberal messaging by suppressing right-leaning content. While these companies have repeatedly protested against the idea that they’re anti-conservative, they have pledged to donate generous sums to causes connected to the BLM movement. By moving under the Tides Foundation umbrella, the BLM Global Network Foundation is clearly aligning with the political left. It is not a neutral effort to save black lives. Big Tech should question allying with BLM if their goal is to disprove the existence of an anti-conservative agenda.

Whether a corporation donates to BLM directly or to its allies, that company is clearly favoring one side of the political aisle while vilifying the rest. Corporations will need to decide if they serve the public by delivering a product or a service, or if they intend to operate as political actors who censor those who disagree with them.

EDITORS NOTE: This 2nd Vote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s Tyrannical Tactics to Suppress Religious Belief in Traditional Marriage

ANN ARBOR, MI—Watching, listening, tracking, and compiling secret dossiers on dissidents until they are finally accused and prosecuted—these are the police-state tactics one might associate with an authoritarian regime in a World War II movie.

Yet, these are the very methods the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) has found are being used by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel acting in concert with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On February 19, 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a notorious and discredited radical left-wing anti-Christian organization, published its annual Hate Map report which listed 31“hate” groups operating in Michigan in 2018.  Listed in that group as “ANTI-LGBT” was Church Militant, a nonprofit Michigan-based religious media organization which advocates traditional Catholic belief that marriage as instituted by God is for one man and one woman.

Three days later, on February 22, 2019, a disturbing joint news release by Attorney General Nessel and the Director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights was issued referencing and linking to SPLC’s Hate Map. The joint release contained Nessel’s promise to establish a hate-crimes unit to fight against hate crimes and hate groups which have been allowed to proliferate in Michigan.

Nessel’s spokeswoman, Kelly Rossman-McKinney, noted that SPLC is a good place to start when investigating hate and bias.

The Director of the Civil Rights Department told a Detroit News reporter that the Department is creating a database which would document hate and bias incidents that don’t rise to the level of a crime or civil infraction.

Additional damning evidence of AG Nessl’s hostility toward traditional marriage was provided by the findings of Chief Judge Robert Jonker of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. In a published 2019 legal opinion, Buck v. Gordon, Judge Jonker found that Nessel attempted to stop St. Vincent Catholic Charities from performing adoption and foster placement services because it professed the Catholic belief on marriage. Judge Jonker said that past statements by Nessel “raise a strong inference of hostility toward a religious viewpoint.”

Jonker concluded that “St. Vincent was targeted based on its religious belief, and it was Defendant Nessel who targeted it.”

Concerned that AG Nessel is continuing to weaponize the Attorney General’s Office to suppress religious beliefs in traditional marriage by threats of investigation and prosecution, the Thomas More Law Center, a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a request for records under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Using sham excuses, Nessel refused to supply crucial records that would shed light on her use of her law enforcement powers to target organizations that opposed her personal ideology supporting same-sex marriage.

TMLC filed a lawsuit in the Michigan Court of Claims on January 9, 2020, against Nessel for her refusal to comply with Michigan’s FOIA.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of TMLC, which represents Church Militant and its Founder and President Michael Voris, commented: “This lawsuit is about the right of the people to know what their public officials are doing. We believe that Attorney General Nessel targeted Church Militant because of its stance on traditional marriage as she had done in the case involving St. Vincent.”

Continued Thompson: “The combination of actions by the Attorney General Nessel, the Department of Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech and religion not only of Church Militant, but every religious group in Michigan that stands for traditional marriage.”

Astonishingly, Nessel’s office admitted in its response to Thomas More Law Center’s FOIA request that:

  • It had no policies in place to safeguard the constitutional rights of individuals who committed no crime but are being investigated for espousing traditional marriage.
  • It has no clear definitions of “bias incidents” or “hate crimes” against LGBT persons that are backed up by Michigan statutes or court decisions.
  •  The AG’s Office failed in its FOIA response to provide any clear policies or parameters governing the prosecution of hate crimes. Nor does it have a clear definition of what constitutes a “hate group.”

Without policies to adequately guide the actions of the Hate Crime Unit, it is free to roam about launching secret investigations against any organization based solely on the fact that it supports traditional marriage.

Consequently, it was easy for the Attorney General’s Office to claim that Church Militant was under investigation to avoid turning over records and to escape public scrutiny.

“Nessel has single-handedly turned the Attorney General’s Office into an instrument of thought control by intimidation, using its law enforcement powers to police the speech of Michigan residents.

“One of her primary goals is to suppress the religious definition of marriage that does not conform to her opinions on same-sex marriage,” Thompson said.

Church Militant, headquartered in Ferndale, Michigan, reports on current events around the world from a Catholic perspective. Defending the institution of marriage as between one man and one woman has always been a major theme of its video broadcasts and written reports, which are viewed by millions of people throughout the world via its website and YouTube channel.

Click here to read TMLC’s full complaint.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Thomas More Law Center column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

#FreeSpeechBus Tour Successful, Reveals Violence and Hate of LGBT Extremists

LGBT extremists did everything in their power to prevent us from completing the #FreeSpeechBus tour to promote a national conversation on the biological nature of gender – including engaging in violence, property damage and acts of intolerance, as well as coordinating with anarchist groups – but I’m pleased to say that we overcame them and completed the tour this morning in Washington, DC.

NOM joined with CitizenGO and the International Organization for the Family (IOF) to sponsor the tour as a way of provoking a national discussion about the biological truth of gender and to hit “pause” on the headlong push by the left to redefine gender based on “identity” and “feelings.” Throughout the tour we encountered the ugly side of the LGBT movement, which repeatedly engaged in violence and assault, and inflicted substantial property damage, in a failed effort to derail the bus tour.

Shockingly, we also discovered the deep coordination that exists between Democratic politicians, LGBT groups and extremists, including anarchists who are bent on destroying civil society.

As you may remember, within hours of launching the tour, the bus was attacked by two LGBT activists while parked near the United Nations in New York City. They assaulted the African American bus driver and destroyed several of the bus’s windows with a hammer, while also using graffiti to cover the bus with militant “trans liberation” messages. After repairs, the bus continued the tour to Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia, and concluded in Washington, DC. Along the way, it was frequently met by an angry mob of LGBT extremists and anarchists.

One of the major developments uncovered by the tour was how closely prominent Democratic politicians are in coordinating with LGBT extremists and their active participation in promoting activities that result in violence and hate.

In Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney’s office was deeply involved in organizing the violent demonstrations against us, which were attended by anarchist groups that are closely watched by the FBI. The mayor’s Office of LGBT Affairs proudly referred to themselves as ‘an accomplice’ in organizing protests which turned violent, with attacks on the bus and on police officers by gay activists and anarchists. At least one of them was arrested and we were prevented from speaking, an act of intolerant bullying the Mayor’s office takes pride in. Meanwhile, while we were being prevented from engaging in a discussion with these protestors, the mayors of both Philadelphia and Boston ordered LGBT/transgendered flags to be flown at City Hall.

What we encountered throughout the bus tour was a sustained, violent, coordinated attack designed to shut us down and force us to just go away. They failed to stop the tour or silence us, and, ironically, in the process made our very point that they don’t want to debate the issues and instead will use force and political power to silence Christians and all Americans who understand that biology determines gender.

Sadly, this kind of behavior is not limited to public demonstrations such as promoting our bus tour. Average Americans are routinely subjected to acts of intolerance whenever they speak up in defense of the obvious truth that gender is determined by biology and that nobody can change their gender.

The #FreeSpeechBus tour demonstrated in clear and stark terms why it is essential for Congress to move forward immediately to pass the First Amendment Defense Act, legislation which would prevent the federal government from discriminating against people of faith based on their views of gender, marriage and similar matters. No American should be subjected to discrimination or harassment by the government simply for standing by their deeply held beliefs about marriage, gender and human sexuality.

NOM will continue to work to counter the dangerous gender ideology of the left, and stand for the truth that we were all created male or female, and that gender is based on biology, not “identity” or emotions.

Faithfully,

Brian S Brown

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EDITORS NOTE: The #FreeSpeechBus tour was a taxing and expensive undertaking. Readers may make a financial contribution to help NOM recoup and replenish their resources.

What Marriage Was Like before Bureaucracy Marriage by Sarah Skwire

Marriage is not what it once was.

FEE contributor Steve Horwitz’s new book, Hayek’s Modern Family, reminds us all that “the use of ‘traditional’ as an adjective for either marriage or the family more generally is … ahistorical.” Marriage and the family, he argues, have always been changing and evolving institutions, and we are mistaken when we take the practices of one period and valorize them, and them alone, as “traditional.”

What is true for the institutions of marriage and the family is also true for the institutions of betrothal and weddings. By now, we all surely know that traditions like the white wedding dress and the diamond engagement ring are late innovations. The white dress came about after Queen Victoria set the fashion when she married Prince Albert. And while rings had been a popular wedding token for a long time, the diamond engagement ring became all the rage only after a successful campaign by DeBeers in the 1930s. But it is not merely the decorative furbelows that are modern innovations. Nearly everything we think of as defining a betrothal and a wedding used to be up for debate.

I spent some time recently looking at and discussing Jan van Eyck’s famous painting The Arnolfini Portrait. The painting is probably most often called The Arnolfini Marriage Portrait, though scholars have debated for decades over whether it depicts a wedding, a betrothal, or some other legal ceremony. Others have felt it might simply be a portrait of a married couple, or even a memorial for a wife who died young. We’re not entirely sure.

But in the discussion I was involved in, we thought of the painting as a wedding portrait. Because of that, several of the folks involved were a little startled to see the woman looking decidedly pregnant. (In much the same way that we don’t really know the occasion for the portrait, we don’t really know that the woman is pregnant. The style of her dress may just make her appear to be. But to a modern eye, she looks at least seven months along.) Was van Eyck making a moral judgment on the sexual morality of this couple — depicting them as newly married, but with a pregnancy that far advanced? Or is her pregnancy an argument against the notion that this is a wedding portrait, since 15th century morality would not have allowed for premarital sex and pregnancy? What kind of wedding portrait was this, exactly?

I’ll leave the arguments about the accuracy of our thinking about The Arnolfini Portrait to the art historians. What I want to talk about is the accuracy of our thinking about what weddings used to look like.

As the historian Lawrence Stone points out in his book The Family, Sex, and Marriage,

Before 1754 there were still numerous ways of entering into [marriage]. For persons of property it involved a series of distinct steps. The first was a written legal contract between the parents concerning the financial arrangements. The second was the spousals (also called a contract), the formal exchange, usually before witnesses, of oral promises. The third step was the public proclamation of banns in church, three times, the purpose of which was to allow claims of pre-contract to be heard.… The fourth step was the wedding in church, in which mutual consent was publicly verified, and the union received the formal blessing of the Church. The fifth and final step was the sexual consummation.

While parts of the process Stone describes are a little antiquated, they don’t seem completely unfamiliar. And the whole thing sounds remarkably orderly — though it is worth noting that wealthier couples found ways to evade the more tedious parts of the process, such as the triple proclamation of banns, by buying a special license. But the apparent orderliness and familiarity of the process falls apart rapidly when we look just a little more closely.

Stone continues, “But it cannot be emphasized too strongly that according to ecclesiastical law the spousals was as legally binding a contract as the church wedding.… Any sort of exchange of promises before witnesses which was followed by cohabitation was regarded in law as a valid marriage.”

Marriage required no certification by the church or the state. Two individuals merely promised to marry one another in front of witnesses, and then lived together. That was sufficient. And sex and pregnancy in the months between the spousals and a church wedding, if one ever got around to having a church wedding, were routine and accepted.

This sounds like an ideal situation from a libertarian perspective. It’s certainly how I’d prefer that marriages take place. But things soon got even more complicated.

After the Reformation, the Catholic Church required the presence of a priest for a wedding to be valid. The Anglicans did not, though a church wedding came to be expected. However, lawyers still recognized the spousals as valid. And they distinguished between two kinds of spousals — one was not followed by consummation and could be broken. The other was followed by consummation and was binding for life.

Stone reminds us of a few other complexities.

The canons of 1604 stipulated that a church wedding must take place between the hours of 8 am and noon in the church at the place of residence of one of the pair, after the banns had been read for three weeks running. Marriages performed at night, in secular places like inns or private houses, or in towns or villages remote from the place of residence … were now declared illegal [but] they were nonetheless valid and binding for life. This was a paradox the laity found hard to understand.

It could be hard to tell, in other words, if you were married or not. It could be hard to tell, in other words, whether one was engaging in legal married sex or illicit and illegal fornication.

This problem is a key part of Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure, which begins with the arrest of Claudio for fornication with Juliette. Claudio is shocked to be accused of the crime, because, as he says:

… she is fast my wife
Save that we do the denunciation lack
Of outward order.

But with the exacting Angelo now in charge of the city, the more rigorous definition of a legal marriage is being enforced, and Claudio is in trouble.

The attempt to codify and enforce a well-understood and long-standing traditional practice made that practice so complicated that it was incomprehensible and often made criminals out of well-intentioned and honest individuals. (Those who are thinking about the mess that is the discussion of bathroom laws in North Carolina may find that problem familiar.)

There’s little doubt now about who is married and who is not married. The United States has spent years in a painful debate over that question, but we finally do have legal clarity. But as two dear friends of mine head down the aisle this month and I listen to the complications and fees they are facing over the licensing of their marriage and their officiant, I do wonder if we’ve solved anything since the days of spousals contracted in front of witnesses or if we’ve just piled on unnecessary layers of legal complications, forms, and fees.

Sarah Skwire

Sarah Skwire is the poetry editor of the Freeman and a senior fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc. She is a poet and author of the writing textbook Writing with a Thesis. She is a member of the FEE Faculty Network. Email

RELATED ARTICLE: How to Avoid an Illicit Marriage: Marriage Banns.

Americans’ Incomes Are Unequal, But Mobile by Chelsea German

Americans often move between different income brackets over the course of their lives. As covered in an earlier blog post, over 50 percent of Americans find themselves among the top 10 percent of income-earners for at least one year during their working lives, and over 11 percent of Americans will be counted among the top 1 percent of income-earners for at least one year.

Fortunately, a great deal of what explains this income mobility are choices that are largely within an individual’s control. While people tend to earn more in their “prime earning years” than in their youth or old age, other key factors that explain income differences are education level, marital status, and number of earners per household. As Mark Perry recently wrote:

The good news is that the key demographic factors that explain differences in household income are not fixed over our lifetimes and are largely under our control (e.g. staying in school and graduating, getting and staying married, etc.), which means that individuals and households are not destined to remain in a single income quintile forever.

According to the economist Thomas Sowell, whom Perry cites, “Most working Americans, who were initially in the bottom 20% of income-earners, rise out of that bottom 20%. More of them end up in the top 20% than remain in the bottom 20%.”

While people move between income groups over their lifetime, many worry that income inequality between different income groups is increasing. The growing income inequality is real, but its causes are more complex than the demagogues make them out to be.

Consider, for example, the effect of “power couples,” or people with high levels of education marrying one another and forming dual-earner households. In a free society, people can marry whoever they want, even if it does contribute to widening income disparities.

Or consider the effects of regressive government regulations on exacerbating income inequality. These include barriers to entry that protect incumbent businesses and stifle competition. To name one extreme example, Louisiana recently required a government-issued license to become a florist.

Lifting more of these regressive regulations would aid income mobility and help to reduce income inequality, while also furthering economic growth.

This post first appeared at HumanProgress.org.

Chelsea GermanChelsea German

Chelsea German works at the Cato Institute as a Researcher and Managing Editor of HumanProgress.org.

U.S. Muslim Polygamy larger problem than Same-Sex Marriage

NPR.org published an article titledSome Muslims in U.S. Quietly Engage in Polygamy” on May 27, 2008 authored by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. The report states in part: No one knows how many Muslims in the U.S. live in polygamous families. But according to academics researching the issue, estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 people.

Quran 4:3 states:

“Marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess.”

Polygamy is just one of many Islamic tenets sanctioned by Sharia law that are contrary to American laws.   An in depth report on Sharia law around the world is posted here at Floridafamily.org.

It has been more than seven years since the NPR article was published. There has been a significant increase in the number of Muslim immigrants to the United States as well as Muslims granted asylum from Islamist countries since May 27, 2008.

National Review published an article earlier this year titled: The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration.  The article reports in part:

In 1992, 41 percent of new permanent residents in the United States — green-card holders — hailed from the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and North Africa, or sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Pew Research Center. A decade later, the percentage was 53 percent. Over that same period, predictably, the number of Muslim immigrants coming to the United States annually has doubled, from 50,000 to approximately 100,000 each year. In 1992, only 5 percent of Muslim immigrants came from sub-Saharan Africa; 20 years later, it was 16 percent. Of the 2.75 million Muslims in the United States in 2011, 1.7 million were legal permanent residents.

There is no official estimate of Muslims in the U.S.; religious affiliation is not tracked by the Census. However, Pew’s estimate of 2.75 million seems to be on the lower end. The Council on American-Islamic Relations says there are approximately 7 million Muslims in the country.

Therefore, the number of Muslims “quietly engaging in Polygamy in the United States” could be 100,000 to 200,000 or more today. 100,000 to 200,000 Muslims represent a small portion of the Islamic community that are polygamists. However, the significance of this number is that there are hundreds of thousands of Muslims in America that follow tenets of Sharia law which are inconsistent with American laws.   Some reports indicate that most Muslims worldwide do not practice polygamy because of financial restraints. This would indicate that there are far more Muslims in America that practice the other tenets of Sharia law.

There are likely many more Muslims practicing polygamy in America than there are gay marriages.  Pew Research reported in June 2015 “How many same-sex married couples in the U.S.? Maybe 170,000.” 

Muslims in America who practice tenets of Sharia law which are antithetical to the United States Constitution threaten to change public policy in America. American companies bidding for Muslim consumers will be tempted, asked and pressured to change their policies to be Sharia compliant. A large portion of Sharia law has to do with personal conduct and consumer behavior.

A tribute to County Clerk Kim Davis by David Carroll

Throughout the recorded history of mankind, there is no record of any culture having recognized same-sex marriages. It is astounding that five persons in black robes sitting in Washington D.C. can overturn millennia of marriage customs with the stroke of a pen or with fingers on a keyboard.

Not only do they find same-sex marriage permissible under the United States Constitution, but they impose upon the entire country a mandate based upon the 14th Amendment, adopted nearly 150 years ago primarily to protect former slaves in former Confederate states. No framer ever conceived that the Constitution could be so used to twist the institution of marriage.

I begin with the Bible, but I end with secular law.

For Christians and Jews, the Bible could not be clearer. Homosexual sex is a sin. God destroyedSodom and Gomorrah, which were described in Romans 1:26-27 as steeped in sinful homosexual activity.

In 1 Cor. 6:9, Paul writes: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals,[a] nor sodomites … ”

And in 1 Cor. 7:2: “Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.”

Still, Paul also said in 1 Cor. 5:9-10 (NKJV):

I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people.

Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of the world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since you would need to go out of the world.

Paul recognizes that Christians will keep company with the sexually immoral outside the church, because the world is full of the sexually immoral.  Paul does not advocate the persecution of same-sex relationships, but neither does he approve their celebration.

So that is the Bible’s take.  What about secular law?  Here we have five Supreme Court justices creating a right to state licensure of behavior that mankind, over the millennia, has deemed to be sexually immoral.

Which brings us to the case of Kim Davis. Kim Davis is an elected county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky. As county clerk, she issues marriage licenses. Her name goes on each license her office issues. When she was elected to the job, Kentucky law authorized marriage licenses only to opposite-sex couples: one man, one woman.

On June 26, 2015, five of the nine Supreme Court justices turned the Christian world upside down in the case Obergefell v. Hodges, holding that the 14th Amendment requires the states to issue licenses for the marriage of two people of the same sex. The plaintiffs in the case brought suit in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, claiming that those states violated the 14th Amendment by denying homosexuals the right to marry each other or to have their marriages recognized when performed in other states.

Kim Davis was not a party to the Obergefell case, but the state of Kentucky was. The Supreme Court held, “The Constitution, however, does not permit the State to bar same-sex couples from marriage on the same terms as accorded to couples of the opposite sex.”

Immediately after the Obergefell decision, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear said, “Effective today, Kentucky will recognize as valid all same-sex marriages performed in other states and in Kentucky.” The Kentucky legislature has not changed the Kentucky statutes. Nor have the people of Kentucky amended their state constitution, which defines marriage as being between one man and one woman.

The Kentucky Constitution’s definition of marriage (passed with 75 percent of the vote in 2004) and the Kentucky statute defining marriage as being between one man and one woman were declared unconstitutional. It seems, therefore, that without an act of the Kentucky legislature, Kentucky has no marriage law for anyone, because its statutes are unconstitutional.  Kim Davis viewed it exactly that way. After the Obergefell decision, she decided that her office would issue no marriage licenses to same-sex couples – or to anyone else.

On July 2, 2015, homosexual activists filed a class action complaint in the Eastern District of Kentucky against Kim Davis to force her to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.  The plaintiffs requested that the court issue a preliminary injunction to force Davis to issue same-sex licenses.

Ms. Davis asserted her right to refuse to issue licenses based upon, among other things, the failure of the Kentucky legislature to act and the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  Based uponObergefell, the U.S. district judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering Ms. Davis to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. When Ms. Davis refused to obey the preliminary injunction, the judge ordered her to jail. The judge released her only after her deputies promised to issue the licenses.

The remaining debate is over whether Ms. Davis, as a matter of conscience, has a right to refuse to issue marriage licenses that approve something the Bible condemns.

On one hand, Ms. Davis is a state official with a duty to follow the law as determined by the courts having jurisdiction, however ill-founded the law is. This side argues that her proper protest would be to resign rather than issue the license.

(In unrelated news, a Muslim flight attendant is fighting on religious-discrimination grounds the termination of her employment, after she refused to serve alcohol to passengers. She was not under a court order, so she is not going to jail, but she is not resigning either. Will there be consistency in the interpretation of religious conscience?)

On the other side of the debate is the duty of every citizen of conscience to disobey tyrannical laws that are offensive to the constitution as it is reasonably interpreted and understood, notwithstanding any twisting of meaning by five black-robed justices. If public officials must resign rather than disobey laws that are wrong, their positions will be filled by people without the conscience necessary to right these wrongs. And with these people in office, the wrongs will stick around.

Before the Civil War, the state of Wisconsin refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Act. Any state officer was barred from assisting federal officials in the return of escaped slaves. More recently, Washington, California, and Colorado are thumbing their noses at federal drug laws relating to marijuana. The states could simply refuse to obey the law and refuse to appear in federal courts on the subject. This is called “nullification” and is a response that the states can and should make to federal overreach.  For more about this strategy, read Nullification by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Alas, according to the polls, it is a losing proposition in our secular culture to protect the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman. More than half of all Americans approve of gay marriage. It is likely that the various legislatures and state constitutions would have eventually succumbed even without the Supreme Court, unless there were a serious religious revival in this country.

I salute Kim Davis, not for the rightness of her legal position,  but because she stood up for her Christian beliefs to the extent of being willing to go to jail for them. In the Bible, Daniel refused to worship a statue and got himself thrown into the lion’s den for exercising his religious conscience. The black-robed five have made it perfectly clear that in their brave new world, traditional Christian morality and believing Christians are unwelcome.

ABOUT DAVID CARROLL

David Carroll is an Ohio lawyer who has been practicing for 39 years. His work has included public interest litigation defending Judeo-Christian values, and he has served as chairman of the board for Christian Action Network for over 20 years. Mr. Carroll graduated cum laude from Capital University Law School in Bexley, Ohio in 1976 and has practiced law in Ohio and Arizona.

On Privatizing Marriage: No, Matrimony Is Not Irreducibly Public by Max Borders

Marriage is society’s primary institutional arrangement that defines parenthood. – Jennifer Roback Morse

The idea of marriage privatization is picking up steam. And it makes strange bedfellows.

There are old-school gay activists suspicious that state marriage is a way for politicians to socially engineer the family through the tax code. There are religious conservatives who are upset that a state institution seems to violate their sacred values. Don’t forget the libertarians for whom “privatize it” is more a reflex than a product of reflection.

But they all agree: it would be a good idea to get the government out of the marriage business. Principle, it turns out, is pragmatic.

First, let’s disentangle two meanings for one word that easily get confused. When we say “marriage,” we might be referring to:

A. a commitment a couple enters into as a rite or acknowledgment within a religious institution or community group (private); or

B. a legal relationship that two people enter into, which the state currently licenses (public).

Now, the questions that follow are: Does the government need to be involved inA? The near-universal answer in the United States is no. But does the government need to be as involved as it is in B? Here’s where the debate gets going.

I think the government can and should get out of B, and everyone will be better for it. This is what I mean by marriage privatization.

Some argue that marriage is “irreducibly public.” For Jennifer Roback Morse, it has to do with the fate of children and families. For Shikha Dalmia, it has to do with the specter of increased government involvement, a reinflamed culture war, and a curious concern about religious institutions creating their own marriage laws.

First, let’s consider the issue of children. According to Unmarried.org:

  • 39.7 percent of all births are to unmarried women (Centers for Disease Control, 2007).
  • Nearly 40 percent of heterosexual, unmarried American households include children (Child Protective Services, 2007).
  • 41 percent of first births by unmarried women are to cohabiting partners (Larry Bumpass and Hsien-Hen Lu, 2000).

Does the law leave provisions for the children of the unmarried? Of course. So while state marriage might add some special sauce to your tax bill or to your benefits package, family court and family codes aren’t likely to go anywhere, whatever we do with marriage. This is not a sociological argument about whether children have statistically better life prospects when they are brought up by two married parents. Nor is it a question about gender, sexuality, and parental roles. It’s simply a response to the idea that marriage is “irreducibly public” due to having children. It is not. (I’ll pass over the problem for this argument that some married couples never have children.)

Dalmia is also concerned that “true privatization would require more than just getting the government out of the marriage licensing and registration business. It would mean giving communities the authority to write their own marriage rules and enforce them on couples.”

It’s true. Couples, as a part of free religious association, might have to accept some definition of marriage as a condition of membership in a religious community. But, writes Dalmia, “This would mean letting Mormon marriages be governed by the Church of the Latter Day Saints codebook, Muslims by Koranic sharia, Hassids by the Old Testament, and gays by their own church or non-religious equivalent.” And all of this is could be true up to a point.

But Dalmia overstates the case. Presumably, no religious organization would be able to set up codes that run counter to the civil laws in some jurisdiction. So if it were part of the Koranic sharia code to beat your wife for failure to wear the hijab at Costco, that rule would run afoul of criminal laws against spousal abuse. Mormon codes might sanction polygamy, but the state might have other ideas. So again, it’s not clear what sort of magical protection state marriage conjures.

What about Dalmia’s concern that in the absence of state marriage, “every aspect of a couple’s relationship would have to be contractually worked out from scratch in advance”? Never mind that some people would see being able to work out the details of a contract governing their lives as a good thing (for one, it might prevent ugly divorce proceedings). There is no reason to think that all the functions normal, unmarried couples with children and property have in terms of recourse to “default” law would not still be available. Not only would simple legal templates for private marriage emerge, but states could establish default civil unions in the absence of couples pursuing private alternatives.

There is no reason to think that all the functions normal, unmarried couples with children and property have in terms of recourse to “default” law would not still be available. 

Indeed, if people did not like some default option — as they might not now — there would be better incentives for couples to anticipate the eventualities of marital life. People would have to settle questions involving cohabitation, property, and children just as they do for retirement and for death. Millions of gay couples had to do this prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality. Millions of unmarried couples do it today. The difference is that there would be a set of private marriage choices in a layer atop the default, just as people may opt for private arbitration in lieu of government courts.

In the debates leading up to marriage equality, an immanently sensible proposal had been that even if you don’t like the idea of hammering out a detailed contract with your spouse-to-be, simply changing the name of the entire statutory regime to “civil unions” would have gone a long way toward putting the whole gay-marriage debate to bed. The conservatives would have been able to say that, in terms of their sacred traditions and cultural community (as in A), “marriage” is between one man and one woman. Gay couples would have to find a church or institution that would marry them under A. But everybody would have some equal legal provision under the law to get all the benefits that accrue to people under B. You’d just have to call it a “civil union.”

And that’s fine as far as it goes.

But I like full privatization because “marriage” is currently a crazy quilt of special privileges and goodies that everybody wants access to — unmarried people be damned. But marriage should confer neither special favors nor goodies from the state. We can quibble about who is to be at the bedside of a dying loved one. Beyond that, marriage (under definition B) is mostly about equal access to government-granted privileges.

Not only does the idea that marriage is irreducibly public represent a failure of imagination with respect to robust common law, it also resembles arguments made against privatization in other areas, such as currency, education, and health care. Just because we can’t always envision it doesn’t make it impossible.

Max Borders

Max Borders

Max Borders is the editor of the Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also co-founder of the event experience Voice & Exit and author of Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor.

America at the Tipping Point

TimeMagOn June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 split decision, declared that the institution of marriage is not limited to individuals of opposite genders… one man and one woman.  Five of the nine justices found a way to conclude that the Constitution guarantees a right to marriage between same-sex couples.  “No longer may this liberty be denied,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.  “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.  In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”  His words were more appropriate to a lonely hearts club newsletter than to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the Constitution has nothing to say on the subject of same-sex marriage.  He wrote, “If you are among the many Americans… of whatever sexual orientation… who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision.  Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal.  Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner.  Celebrate the availability of new benefits.  But do not celebrate the Constitution.  It had nothing to do with it.”

It didn’t take long for the states to make their feelings known.  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton referred to the decision as, “A judge-based edict that is not based in the law.”  Paxton cited the 1973 abortion decision, Roe V. Wade, as another example of how the U.S. Constitution “can be molded to mean anything by unelected judges.”  He went on to say, “But no court, no law, no rule, and no words will change the simple truth that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.  Nothing will change the importance of a mother and a father to the raising of a child.  And nothing will change our collective resolve that all Americans should be able to exercise their faith in their daily lives without infringement and harassment.”

And now that the Supreme Court has placed their stamp of approval on same-sex marriage, we find that liberals and Democrats are reaching beyond that decision to find ways of making us “swallow” other items on the gay lobby’s agenda.  For example, Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA24) has introduced the Amend the Code for Marriage Equality Act of 2015, requiring that the terms “husband” and “wife” be stricken from federal law because she feels they are patently “anti-gay.”  She would prefer to see those terms replaced with more “gender-neutral” terms such as “spouse” or “married couple.”

In Portland, Oregon, Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners and operators of the Sweet Cakes by Melissa Bakery, have been ordered by the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industry (OBLI) to pay $135,000 in damages to Rachel Cryer, and her wife-to-be, Laurel Bowman.  The dispute arose last year when Cryer and Bowman asked the Kleins to bake a cake for their upcoming same-sex wedding.  And when the Kleins declined, saying that to make a wedding cake for the event would represent a violation of their religious beliefs, Cryer and Bowman filed a complaint with the State of Oregon.  In their ruling, the OBLI found that “the bakery is not a religious institution under the law and that the business’ policy of refusing to make same-sex wedding cakes represents unlawful discrimination based on sexual orientation.”

Any thoughtful person must conclude that the same-sex marriage decision of the U.S. Supreme Court has brought the nation to a “tipping point.”  It has brought us to the point where the alternatives available to We the People… alternatives that were once thought to be only remote possibilities… are now realities, staring us directly in the face.  The alternatives are, in order of preference, a) massive civil disobedience, b) widespread 10th Amendment nullification by states and local communities, and finally, c) dissolution of the Union, otherwise known as secession… by far the most draconian of the three alternatives.

What five Supreme Court justices, Barack Obama, liberal Democrats, gays, and lesbians apparently fail to understand is that they have forced the country so far to the radical left that they may have finally reawakened a “sleeping giant,” once known as the “silent majority.”

Already, black pastors across the country have announced that, instead of being forced to marry same-sex couples, they will engage in massive civil disobedience.  The vast majority of those pastors are men and women who have always urged their parishioners to support the Democrat Party and its candidates.  The Obama administration, under Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, have been highly selective in which laws they enforce and which they prefer to ignore.  If the Obama administration decides that they will side with the LGBT wing of the Democratic Party, will black pastors across the country sit idly by as their colleagues are arrested and hauled off to jail?

In her new book, ¡Adios America!, Ann Coulter reminds us that Democrats have not been able to win a majority of the white vote in presidential elections since 1948.  It is a trend that had been developing for many decades and there is little doubt that it is the unstated purpose behind the existence of the Immigration Reform Act of 1965.  As Democratic strategist Patrick Reddy is quoted as saying in a 1998 Roper Center report, “The 1965 Immigration Reform Act promoted by President Kennedy, drafted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and pushed through the Senate by Ted Kennedy, has resulted in a wave of immigration from the Third World that should shift the nation in a more liberal direction within a decade.  It will go down (in history) as the Kennedy family’s greatest gift to the Democratic Party.”

In other words, what the Democrats have done methodically over the past 50 years is to import the votes that they were unable to attract among traditional working-class European-Americans.  And now that they are importing millions of new voters from Mexico and Central America, and hundreds of thousands of Muslims from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa, apparently under the theory that they will be “eaten last,” one has to seriously wonder how many years we have left as the home of capitalism and the freest nation on Earth.

To be elected president or vice president of the United States requires a total of at least 270 votes in the Electoral College.  Through the strategic spending of other people’s money, especially among minorities in the major urban areas of the East Coast, the West Coast, and the Upper Midwest, Democrats have fashioned an electoral map that gives them a relatively firm base of 22 states with a combined total of 257 of the needed 270 electoral votes.

Republicans, on the other hand, have a firm base of 23 states with a combined total of 191 electoral votes.  That leaves a total of 6 swing states… Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia… with a combined total of 90 electoral votes.  In order for a Republican to win in 2016, and beyond, he/she must carry all 23 of the solid Republican states, plus all six of the swing states.  They could afford to lose either Colorado’s 9 electoral votes or Iowa’s 6 electoral votes, but not all 15.  To lose both Colorado and Iowa, while carrying Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia would leave them with a total of just 266 electoral votes, four short of an electoral majority.

That analysis brings into sharp focus just how close we are to sliding over the “tipping point” into the dustbin of world history.

The Founding Fathers could not have envisioned a time when the American people would elect a totally incompetent and constitutionally ineligible man, a dual citizen of the United States and Kenya, to two consecutive terms in the White House, followed immediately by the first female president who also happens to be, if not the most corrupt, one of the most corrupt political figures in U.S. history.

But still, there are positive signs of life in the body politic:

  • The decision by black pastors to engage in massive civil disobedience.
  • The numerous lawsuits by states against oppressive federal government rulings.
  • The decisions by a growing number of states to allow military recruiters to be armed.
  • The growing number of states that have engaged in 10th Amendment nullification.
  • The growing number of states that have joined the Article V Convention movement.

But, in the end, should all else fail, there is still the alternative of secession.  The 25 states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming would make one helluva fine country… a country with secure borders, a second-to-none military, the world’s most productive economy, and long term energy independence.

I’m sure we would also allow the states of Colorado, Iowa, and Ohio to join us if only they would agree to behave themselves and to make life inside their borders unbearable for liberals, radical Muslims, illegal aliens, and other undesirables.  The bottom line is this: we no longer have a margin for error.  If we wish to have a long term future as a constitutional republic we cannot afford to elect another Democrat to the Oval Office in 2016.  We are at the tipping point of our nation’s history and one more misstep could easily send us off to political oblivion.

To borrow a phrase from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the national motto for 2016 must be, “Friends don’t allow friends to vote Democratic!”

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The Marriage Between the Church and the United States of America

The Christian Church and the USA have been “married” from day one. Time to get it back on track.

As William Lane Craig, noted Christian apologist wrote, “God has necessarily decreed that human beings are to be treated as ends in themselves rather merely as means to ends.” It is the individual that controls government, not the other way around.

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SCOTUS Ignites New Level of Resistance

My sofa felt pretty comfortable. Ninety percent of the time, I’m on the road as chairman of the Conservative Campaign Committee. This was a rare occasion to be in town for the Volusia 9/12 Project monthly meeting. I saw the email reminder about the meeting earlier that day and thought it might be good to attend considering the two devastating outrageous rulings handed down by the Supreme Court (Obamacare and same sex marriage).

But when 5:00 p.m. rolled around and I would have to leave at 6:00 p.m. to get there on time at 7:00 p.m., I was sorely tempted to stay home on my extremely comfortable sofa. And yet, almost robotic, I showered and prepared to leave. At our front door, my wife Mary gave me a kiss and said, “I’m proud of you for going.” I asked, “Why?” She replied, “I don’t know.”

The 9/12 group’s meeting was the same day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage. I’m a Christian and know that God has everything under control. Still, I was emotionally shaken; angry, frustrated, hurt and concerned about the dark place our country is headed – evil appearing to triumph everywhere you turn.

Thank God I attended that meeting. It was awesome. The hall was filled with patriots, mostly Christian, still passionately engaged after meeting for the past seven years. The Supreme Court’s judicial activism though dispiriting appears to have sparked a new level of commitment in them to fight for God and country.

The leader of the group is Ray Sanchez. Wow, I regret not bringing in my phone to record Ray’s inspiring rip-roaring opening monologue, pledging to continue pushing back and seeking new ways to defend the Godly traditions and values that have made America great.

There was talk of churches bowing out of 501c3 status; liberating them from government dictates.

A gentlemen at the meeting lamented that the GOP is committed to staying away from social issues. Meanwhile, Democrats/Leftists are cramming their consensus on social issues down our throats. He said the Supreme Courts rulings punctuates how crucially important it is to put people of moral character in office.

Allowed a moment on the microphone to speak about his travels, I was blown away by the passion and commitment of 79 year old Reynerio Sanchez (not related to the group’s leader Ray Sanchez). Last year, Mr Sanchez drove 10,464 miles giving away copies of the U.S. Constitution. He also gives away copies of the Ten Commandments; upbeat, enthusiastic and not showing any signs of slowing down. Mr Sanchez read the group a moving “thank you” email he received from a young waitress on the other side of the country. Mr Sanchez’s website is: reysan.org

PATRIOT CAMP

Patriot camp for children.

One of the ladies excitedly reported about this year’s “Patriot Camp” for 1st to 6th graders. She and her team teach American history through storytelling, drama, crafts and games. I was told that Patriot Camp is extremely popular with kids and parents.

The keynote speaker was Dr Tom LaHue. His topic was “The Decline of the Church” which appears to be a worldwide phenomenon. The stats Dr LaHue shared showing the decline in attendance and effectiveness of the church in our culture were pretty disheartening.

When asked what we can do to change the direction of our country, Dr LaHue said we should “have a burden for America”. He said some may be called to Christian ministry, while others are led to fight back in other ways. His point was it is crucial that every patriot continues to do their part; continuing to fight to restore America.

From the ladies who run the group’s Patriot Camp to elderly Mr Sanchez touring America handing out Constitution booklets and the Ten Commandments, these are people simply doing whatever they can to restore the country they love. We did not reach this current level of debauchery in America over night. It will take faithfulness, prayer and wisdom to turn it around.

The unwavering determination and commitment of the Volusia 9/12 Project truly inspired me. I suspect their “burden for America” is representative of Tea Party groups across America.

My brother said, in essence, SCOTUS made it illegal to be a Bible believing and functioning Christian. I told him I do not think we are totally there yet, but are swiftly headed in that direction.

I pray that there is a silver lining in the Supreme Court’s betrayal, the igniting of a new intensity in the level of resistance to Obama and his minion’s fundamental transformation of America.

Brother and sister patriots, go with God. Go with God.

A Christian Argument: Getting Government Out of Marriage | Trifecta

Can Scott Ott make an argument that Christians should support the Libertarian belief that government shouldn’t be involved in marriage? Check it out!

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Foreign Policy thinks tweeting photos of gay marriage supporters will defeat the Islamic State

It is much, much more likely that the Islamic State will see the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage as evidence of the U.S.’s decadence and societal decay, and that will only serve to embolden and encourage them. But there is another glaring fallacy in this “analysis”: “That’s the lesson of history,” Rosa Brooks asserts: “Brutality and fear can keep people down for only so long. The Nazis learned this; the Soviets learned it; the Ku Klux Klan learned it; Pol Pot learned it; the Rwandan génocidaires learned it.”

How, exactly, did they learn this? By viewing photos of gay rights supporters? Or of loving couples of whatever persuasion? Did a photo of an embracing couple move Adolf Hitler to tears and induce him to call his genocidal armies back home and close the extermination camps? Did a photo of smiling people make Pol Pot realize that his stacks and shelves full of skulls were a terrible mistake, and lead him to resign and spend the rest of his life as a florist?

No. This kind of thing never happened, and by no stretch of the imagination is it the “lesson of history.” If the Nazis ever learned that “#LoveAlwaysWins,” they learned it in the blood and chaos and ruin of Berlin, as Soviet troops ran wild and raped every young German woman they could catch. #LoveAlwaysWins, indeed. The groups Brooks names learned that #LoveAlwaysWins, if they ever learned it, at the point of a gun, when they were forced by violence to stop what they were doing. Yes, even the Klan was prosecuted in the “racist” United States. The only exception to this is the Soviet Union, but Mikhail Gorbachev didn’t oversee the dissolution of the Soviet Union because he realized that the United States was not an enemy, but just a big gay hunk of love. The Soviet Union collapsed under the economic pressure that Ronald Reagan brought to bear upon it, and the societal/cultural pressure that Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa brought upon it. It might still exist today if Walesa hadn’t been willing to risk his life in the Gdansk Shipyard.

And that’s what will defeat the Islamic State today: people willing to risk their lives to safeguard the dignity and freedom of every human being. But those who are willing to do that are the very ones who, in a case of suicidal short-sightedness, are generally vilified as “racists” and “bigots” by the supporters of gay marriage.

“Can Gay Marriage Defeat the Islamic State? A few — admittedly sappy — thoughts on the power of #LoveWins,” by Rosa Brooks, Foreign Policy, June 26, 2015:

I was thinking about two sets of images this morning: one from an Islamic State-controlled city in Iraq, the other from the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

The first set of images, from early June, shows masked gunmen surrounding a crowd of people, mostly men. Some of the faces in the crowd show fear or hatred; others are studiously blank. But all eyes are fixed on the rooftop of a nearby building, where a blindfolded man is dangling upside down, his ankle held tightly by another masked man. Next image: The blindfolded man’s body plummets headfirst toward the pavement below. Final image: a crumpled, bloody heap on the ground, surrounded by a sea of faces. Headline and caption, from Fox News: “ISIS conducts more executions of men for being gay.… On June 3, 2015, Islamic State (ISIS) operatives in Iraq’s Ninveh province published photos of a public execution in Mosul of three men convicted of acts of homosexuality. The three men were blindfolded and dropped head first from the roof of a tall building in front of a large crowd of spectators, including children.”

The second set of images shows another crowd, thousands of miles away from the first. This crowd is full of men and women, all ages and all races, and they’re waving American flags and rainbow-colored flags. This crowd isn’t flanked by gunmen; no one looks frightened or enraged. This crowd is laughing and embracing; a few people are weeping, their faces lit with relief and joy. Caption from the Washington Post: “Gay rights supporters celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington after justices ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry, no matter where they live.”

I know which crowd I’d rather be in.

Do you want to fight the Islamic State and the forces of Islamic extremist terrorism? I’ll tell you the best way to send a message to those masked gunmen in Iraq and Syria and to everyone else who gains power by sowing violence and fear. Just keep posting that second set of images. Post them on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and in comments all over the Internet. Send them to your friends and your family. Send them to your pen pal in France and your old roommate in Tunisia. Send them to strangers….

And I still have faith that this dream is the one that will prevail, in the end. That’s the lesson of history: Brutality and fear can keep people down for only so long. The Nazis learned this; the Soviets learned it; the Ku Klux Klan learned it; Pol Pot learned it; the Rwandan génocidaires learned it.One of these days, the Islamic State and al Qaeda will learn it too.

I’m not a big fan of Twitter, but for once there’s a Twitter hashtag worth quoting, though it took my 13-year-old daughter to point it out to me: #LoveWins….

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Obamaism vs The Good Guys

Obamaism is the opposition to everything American and the good guys are standing against it.