Video: Dave Strohmaier campaigns for Congress and monogender marriage in MO

Running for Congress in Montana, Dave Strohmaier believes so strongly in gender segregation in marriage, it's the theme of his campaign ad.

Strohmaier points out, "It sure does annoy Republicans."  The GOP supports pro-gender marriage.

Transcript:

Strohmaier:  It's a blessing when two people in love marry.  Any two people.  How dare the government tell us who can and cannot marry? 

Spectator:  We're with you on that one, Dave! 

Strohmaier:  In Congress I'll protect everyone's right to liberty and happiness and I'll support marriage equality.  And you know what?  It sure does annoy Republicans.
I'm Save Strohmaier and you can tell every Republican you know that I approve this message.

How about a child's liberty to have a relationship with both a mother and a father?  How is intentionally depriving a child of his father "equality"?  How about a child's right to happiness?   

Will same-sex marriage unify Christians, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims in UK?

Will Christians, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims rally together to defend pro-gender marriage in the United Kingdom? 

The Telegraph reports:

Archbishop Antonio Mennini, the Apostolic Nuncio, called for closer co-operation with other faiths as well as Christian denominations to put pressure on the Government over its plans to allow same-sex couples to marry. 

 In an address to Catholic bishops from England and Wales, he echoed the recent comments of Pope Benedict who said the Church faced “powerful political and cultural currents” in favour of redefining marriage. 

 His comments come after a series of high-level interventions by some Muslim and Jewish leaders last month after the Equalities Minister, Lynne Featherstone, launched a national consultation on how same-sex marriage might be introduced. 

 Speaking in London yesterday the second most senior active Catholic cleric in England and Wales, Archbishop Peter Smith, of Southwark, said there had been no “formal” contact with Jewish groups to form a united front on the subject of marriage. 

But he said: “We will work with anyone who agrees with us that to redefine marriage is not a good thing for society and will lead to more confusion.” 

 Archbishop Smith added: “We are working as best we can with all sorts of different faith groups, the Church of England is very much along the same lines as ourselves on this. 

the Archbishop said: “It is particularly difficult for the Church of England because of all the legal ramifications of it.  

“There are something like 3,000 mentions of marriage in various statutes and it is quite clear that the Government has not thought through the implications of the changes they are proposing.”  

He also defended the right of Catholic schools to promote the Church’s position on marriage following accusations of “political indoctrination” from secular and humanist campaigners.

New York Times calls defending gender integration in marriage ‘depressing’

New York Times editor Andrew Rosenthal called North Carolina’s Amendment One, which defends pro-gender marriage, “depressing.”

Commenting on the president’s campaign in North Carolina, Rosenthal noted that Obama failed to even mention the imminent vote on gender-integrated marriage:

From The New York Times:

[North Carolina] residents will be voting in two weeks on one of the most depressing ballot initiatives of the year. 

The proposal, called Amendment One, would ban not only same-sex marriages, but also civil unions. It’s causing a huge commotion in North Carolina. 

Mr. Obama never mentioned it. 

The president has made some effort to end officially sanctioned discrimination against gay couples, one of the last remaining formal barriers to true equal rights. His administration has stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits federal recognition of same-sex unions. 

Yet he still refuses to come out in support of marriage equality, claiming that his position is “evolving.” His silence on Amendment One this afternoon, and on gay marriage throughout his presidency, may keep his campaign managers happy, but hardly reflects the “yes we can” attitude that got him elected.

No doubt President Obama has noticed the wedge between African American voters and same-gender couples.  If the president comes out in favor of gender-segregated marriage, would he lose the black vote?

Video: Daniel Glowacki kicked out of class for his religious view on homosexual lifestyle

"He said that we lost our right to free speech once we stepped inside his classroom."


Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance interviewed 14-year-old Michigan student Daniel Glowacki who was kicked out of his economics class because of his religious beliefs about homosexual behavior.  His teacher, Jay McDowell called him a "racist" and a "bigot."  McDowell also said that if Glowacki really was a Catholic he would be at a Catholic school instead of a public school.

Daniel Glowacki's testimony begins at :55.  His testimony:


"Everything started out as a normal day.  You know, we're walking into class and as Mr. McDowell walked in he had this other girl behind him, Danielle Peterson walked in, too.  And as she was walking in he noticed she was wearing her Confederate flag belt buckle and he's made her take it off before, but it's never a big deal and today he made her take it off and leave it outside in the hallway.


He started explaining that he's wearing a purple shirt that said "Tyler's Army" on it.  As he was doing that, I raised my hand and I asked what the difference was between him wearing a purple shirt and explaining that to us but Danielle couldn't wear her rebel flag belt buckle.


He asked me if I was really against the homosexual lifestyle and I told him the homosexual lifestyle was against my Catholic religion.  He was saying like that if I didn't support the homosexual lifestyle that I could leave his classroom because that's what he believed in and that's the way his classroom was run.


And he said that we lost our right to free speech once we stepped inside his classroom.  So I just quietly grabbed my backpack and got up and left.  And as I was walking out into the hallway, he came running out after me calling me a racist and a bigot and ... he's gonna get me suspended for bullying and harassment against gays.  


When he started yelling at me I was just like, kind of in shock.  I didn't know how to react to it.


I didn't think it was gonna go past that classroom."

President Obama says women shouldn’t ‘be excluded from anything’ except marriages

Of course President Obama wants women to vote for him.  And as Politico notes, “No issue is proving too tiny for Obama and his team as they seek an edge with female voters.”

For example, the president made a point of criticizing the Augusta National Golf Club for excluding women.  White House press secretary Jay Carney reported that the President’s “personal opinion is that women should be admitted to the club… It’s kind of long past the time when women should be excluded from anything.”

And afraid of losing the stay-at-home-mom-vote, Obama wasted no time distancing himself from supporter Hilary Rosen who complained that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann, who raised five boys, “never worked a day in her life." 

To woo women’s votes, the White House issued a 65-page report full of reasons they think women should vote for Obama.  These range from private places at  work for nursing mothers to express  breastmilk, to the requirement that medical device manufacturers “take gender differences into account as they develop new products.”

Mitt Romney is taking a more generic economic approach.

From Politico:

 “Women are pocketbook issue voters,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in an email. “Gov. Romney is reaching out to women everyday by talking about the economy, gas prices, unemployment and the household budget squeeze that Americans are faced with. Mothers care about the America their children will grow up in and don’t want to see massive debt passed on to their grandchildren.” 

The contrast to Obama couldn’t be starker.

Politico reports that Obama catered to women by using one of their own slogans:

“'Women are not an interest group. You shouldn’t be treated that way.’ But he made that declaration at an event aimed squarely at women: the White House Forum on Women and the Economy.”

Obama says women shouldn’t be treated like an interest group, and yet that’s exactly how he treats them. 

Obama’s administration “ensured that medical device manufacturers take gender differences into account as they develop new products.”  But they have no such regard for gender differences in new marriages for same-sex couples.

Obama says women shouldn’t be “excluded from anything” and yet he refuses to defend their inclusion in the most foundational institution in the country:  marriage.  He made the executive decision not to support the federal law, which ensures a woman in every marriage:  the Defense of Marriage Act.  And Obama even went so far as to publicly announce his opposition to North Carolina’s Amendment One, which bans gender-segregation in marriage.

Golf clubs need women more than children do?


Instead of treating them like different voting blocs, Obama could use a more holistic and balanced approach to men and women and their marriages. 

Why does media call pro-gender measure 'anti-gay'?

"Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.”  Amendment 1, North Carolina

When it votes on Amendment One in two weeks, North Carolina will decide whether or not to uphold gender integration in marriage.  This pro-gender bill would ensure gender-diversity in families.  Rather than intentionally depriving children of either their mother or father, this measure would ensure that children have both.

However, opponents call this pro-gender language “anti-gay.”  For example, the Washington Post’s Amy Gardner called Amendment 1 “one of the toughest anti-gay measures in the country.”

Why is pro-gender language called anti-gay?

Isn’t it more accurate to consider pro-gay measures as anti-gender?

Genderqueer more likely to be unemployed, assaulted, harassed

An LGBT advocacy group reports that people who self-identify as genderqueer suffer more unemployment, physical assaults, and harassment. 

From the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

The study, A Gender Not Listed Here:  Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and OtherWise in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, was just published by the LGBTQ Policy Journal at the Harvard Kennedy School. It examines the experiences of genderqueer individuals and others who clearly identified as neither a man nor a woman.

 

 A Gender Not Listed Here found that, when compared to transgender-identified respondents surveyed in Injustice at Every Turn, genderqueer respondents said they were more likely to be unemployed (76 percent vs. 56 percent); suffer physical assaults (32 percent vs. 25 percent); experience harassment by law enforcement (31 percent vs. 21 percent); and forgo healthcare treatment due to fear of discrimination (36 percent to 27 percent). There were other measures in which transgender respondents suffered higher levels of discrimination or harassment.


This report highlights how important gender is not just to individuals, but to society as well as well as the negative effects of gender confusion.

Gender matters.

Will Washington vote for pro-gender or anti-gender marriage?

“People will support civil unions and all the rights up to when you call it marriage. For whatever reason that term tilts the scale the other way.”  Pollster Stuart Elway

Washington state is getting ready for a battle for marriage.  Its law allowing gender-segregated couples to marry is on hold until the referendum vote in November.

The pro-gender side is confident that people will uphold marriage between one man and one woman.

HeraldNet reports deputy campaign manager for Preserve Marriage Washington Christopher Plante said, “Every time people have had a chance to vote on marriage, they've stood for defining it as between a man and a woman."  Plante acknowledged, "We have our work cut out for us,” but he added, "We're confident people of Washington will understand by election time that R-74 is about the definition of marriage."

Freedom to Marry President Evan Wolfson disagreed: 

"This is not about defining marriage. This is about ending an exclusion from marriage for gay couples," he said. "Marriage is still going to be marriage just more people are going to be able to do it."

Wrong, Wolfson.  This has everything to do with redefining marriage.  And it isn’t just redefining it for monogender couples.  If same-sex marriage passes, marriage will get redefined in sex education classes.  It will get redefined for businesses such as photographers, hotels, and caterers who believe pro-gender marriage is better for children.  Laws, schools, society will change.  Pro-gender marriage supporters will get sued.

Besides, people with same-sex attraction can already marry in all 50 states.  They can choose whether or not to marry someone of the opposite gender.  Legalizing gender-segregated marriage in order to cater to gender-intolerance is shortsighted and close-minded.  This is a much bigger issue than homosexuality; this is about gender diversity in married couples. 

Gender matters to families, children, and our future.

UK: Helping patients overcome unwanted same-sex attraction is 'ethical offense'

Lifesitenews reports a disturbing close-minded mentality in the United Kingdom regarding therapy for people with unwanted same-sex attraction: 

While most medical ethics throughout the western world has adopted the primacy of patient autonomy as its guiding principle, the psychiatric and psychological professions in the UK are becoming increasingly authoritarian in matters of sexuality, according to one would-be therapist. 

Recently published professional guidelines in the UK say it is an “ethical offense” to either offer to help a client overcome homosexual temptations and feelings, or to accede to a request to do so from a client. 

“I would agree that the focus is no longer on autonomy” in ethics in psychotherapy, said Dr. Michael Davidson, PhD, Director of the Core Issues Trust. In Britain’s main psychotherapeutic organisations, “the person-centred approach is not being respected,” he said.

The problem with offering therapy to a patient with unwanted same-sex attraction?  According to the UKCP, how can you treat something that isn’t an illness?

“It is exploitative for a psychotherapist to offer treatment that might ‘cure’ or ‘reduce’ same sex attraction as to do so would be offering a treatment for which there is no illness.

Is fertility an illness?  Doctors regularly prescribe birth control and perform sterilizations.

Is being male a disease?  Lack of illness does not stop doctors from performing gender reassignment surgery. 

“It is exploitative to offer treatment to reduce same sex attraction when various studies bring into question whether such treatments change a person’s sexuality.”

But treating transgender-feeling people to a whole new gender is ethical? Case studies call into question whether such treatments can actually successfully change a person’s gender.  So why isn’t it “exploitative” to attempt it?

Why are gay rights activists anti-gender?