Paul Ryan applause line: ‘Our rights come from nature and God not government’

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate on Saturday morning.  A seven-term congressman from Wisconsin, Ryan spoke to supporters in Norfolk, VA in front of the USS Wisconsin.

Ryan’s biggest applause line was when he clarified the American principle that “Our rights come from nature and God, not government.”

Ryan went on to say:  “We promise equal opportunity, not equal outcome."

Ryan assured the crowd:  “We won’t replace our founding principles, we will reapply them . . . We can turn this around.  But it will take leadership.  And the courage to tell you the truth.”

These founding principles can be applied to fiscal issues such as welfare reform and foreign debt, but they also are pertinent to social issues such as health care and marriage.  Ryan’s position that rights and principles are our birthright, not goodies passed out by government, is welcomed by advocates of pro-gender marriage.

The LGBT community has worked to force gender-segregated marriage in states through the courts rather than through legislatures, which are accountable to popular opinion.  Is that about to change?

A federal judge in Hawaii ruled that changing marriage to include monogender couples is so transformative that it shouldn’t be done through the court system, instead it should be enacted by a “democratically elected legislature or the people through a constitutional amendment." 

People with same-sex attraction already have the “equal opportunity” to marry as heterosexuals.  Their quest to impose anti-gender marriage on America will not lead equality, but to gender-segregation and more splintered minorities, and children will be taught that sexual diversity is more important than gender diversity in marriage.

Will Democratic Party officially decide that sexual orientation trumps gender diversity in marriage?

Draft language of the Democratic platform supports gender-segregated marriage, calling it ‘marriage equality.’

Before gender-segregation is officially endorsed by the Democratic Party, the working draft needs to be approved by both the Platform Committee which meets this weekend in Detroit, and by delegates at the convention in Charlotte, NC in September.

Buzzfeed posted the draft language in question:

We support the right of all families to have equal respect, responsibilities, and protections under the law. We support marriage equality and support the movement to secure equal treatment under law for same-sex couples. We also support the freedom of churches and religious entities to decide how to administer marriage as a religious sacrament without government interference.

 

 We oppose discriminatory federal and state constitutional amendments and other attempts to deny equal protection of the laws to committed same-sex couples who seek the same respect and responsibilities as other married couples. We support the full repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act.

Democrats must decide which it "respects" more in a marriage:  same-sex attraction or gender?  Special rights to redefine marriage for adults with same-sex attraction or a gender-integrated home with a mother and a father for children?  

Democrats have until September to decide whether to endorse sexual diversity or gender diversity in marriage.

And then Americans will make their choice in November.

‘We had a sergeant who has been transferred because he brought a Chick-fil-A sandwich to work’

Fox News:

A controversy surrounding Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day has come to light at Dallas police headquarters. 

Dallas Police Association President Ron Pinkston said Sgt. Mark Johnson of the Southeast Patrol Division brought a Chick-fil-A sandwich to the briefing room last Wednesday. 

It was the same day thousands of people across the country went to the restaurant chain as part of an effort to show support for the CEO's stand against gay marriage. 

Two lesbian officers filed complaints against the sergeant. They said his comments and actions left them embarrassed and humiliated. 

Sgt. Johnson, who has been with the department for 12 years, was transferred. The internal affairs department is investigating the complaints. 

"The bottom line is we had a sergeant who has been transferred because he brought a Chick-fil-A sandwich to work. And he was transferred without due process," Pinkston said. 

What gay rights activists don’t want you to read: Vital testimony from man raised by two moms

Writer and assistant professor of English, Robert Lopez was raised by his mother and her female partner.  His story about growing up without the gender cues most of us take for granted is vitally important and especially relevant now as America debates whether or not same-sex marriage benefits children.

Lopez relates his journey from his “lesbian mom’s trailer,” to college, to the “gay underworld,” to cleaning out the Bronx apartments where men died of AIDS, to marriage to a woman and his commitment to “concern myself first and foremost with my children’s needs, not my sexual desires.”

Lopez says most people with same-sex attraction “don’t realize what a blessing it was to be reared in a traditional home” where gender mores were learned naturally.

This story is a must-read.  Lopez writes with wisdom, passion, and poetry.  He has first-hand experience of growing up in gender confusion.

As America debates pro-gender marriage versus anti-gender marriage, it is crucial to remember it is not just about sexual orientation.  Marriage is about gender, where biology and sociology intersect.

Excerpts from The Public Discourse:

After my mother’s partner’s children had left for college, she moved into our house in town. I lived with both of them for the brief time before my mother died at the age of 53. I was 19. In other words, I was the only child who experienced life under “gay parenting” as that term is understood today. 

Quite simply, growing up with gay parents was very difficult, and not because of prejudice from neighbors. People in our community didn’t really know what was going on in the house. To most outside observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school with straight A’s. 

Inside, however, I was confused. When your home life is so drastically different from everyone around you, in a fundamental way striking at basic physical relations, you grow up weird. I have no mental health disorders or biological conditions. I just grew up in a house so unusual that I was destined to exist as a social outcast. 

My peers learned all the unwritten rules of decorum and body language in their homes; they understood what was appropriate to say in certain settings and what wasn’t; they learned both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine social mechanisms. 

Even if my peers’ parents were divorced, and many of them were, they still grew up seeing male and female social models. They learned, typically, how to be bold and unflinching from male figures and how to write thank-you cards and be sensitive from female figures. These are stereotypes, of course, but stereotypes come in handy when you inevitably leave the safety of your lesbian mom’s trailer and have to work and survive in a world where everybody thinks in stereotypical terms, even gays. 

I had no male figure at all to follow, and my mother and her partner were both unlike traditional fathers or traditional mothers. As a result, I had very few recognizable social cues to offer potential male or female friends . . . Gay people who grew up in straight parents’ households may have struggled with their sexual orientation; but when it came to the vast social universe of adaptations not dealing with sexuality—how to act, how to speak, how to behave—they had the advantage of learning at home. Many gays don’t realize what a blessing it was to be reared in a traditional home. 

Life is hard when you are strange. 

When I got to college, I set off everyone’s “gaydar” and the campus LGBT group quickly descended upon me to tell me it was 100-percent certain I must be a homosexual. When I came out as bisexual, they told everyone I was lying and just wasn’t ready to come out of the closet as gay yet. Frightened and traumatized by my mother’s death, I dropped out of college in 1990 and fell in with what can only be called the gay underworld. Terrible things happened to me there. I am a bisexual Latino intellectual, raised by a lesbian, who experienced poverty in the Bronx as a young adult. I’m perceptive enough to notice that liberal social policies don’t actually help people in those conditions. Especially damning is the liberal attitude that we shouldn’t be judgmental about sex. In the Bronx gay world, I cleaned out enough apartments of men who’d died of AIDS to understand that resistance to sexual temptation is central to any kind of humane society. Forty-one years I’d lived, and nobody—least of all gay activists—had wanted me to speak honestly about the complicated gay threads of my life. If for no other reason than this, Mark Regnerus deserves tremendous credit—and the gay community ought to be crediting him rather than trying to silence him.

How ironic that gay rights activists that encourage kids to come Outright and who sponsor the Day of Silence to combat prejudice are now trying to silence scientific inquiries such as the Regnerus study and people with street cred such as Robert Lopez.

Do yourself a favor and read Lopez’ entire gripping story at The Public Discourse.

Defend pro-gender marriage.

What's wrong with this Chick-fil-A headline?

Here’s the headline that the Los Angeles Times ran:

Is Chick-fil-A anti-gay marriage? 'Guilty as charged,' leader says

Granted, it’s catchy and controversial.  But is it accurate?

At first glance, it looks as though Chick-fil-A leader Dan Cathy is “anti-gay.”  You have to look closer to see that it reads “anti-gay marriage.”

And even then, to get the full picture, you have to click on the link to the original interview to discover Chick-fil-A leader Dan Cathy was admitting to being “guilty” of being pro-family.

But many in the gay rights community and their friends in media automatically assume that if you support marriage between one man and one woman (pro-gender marriage), then you are anti-gay. 

That is a false assumption.  We can support pro-gender marriage, and still love our friends and relatives who have same-sex attraction.   We can oppose anti-gender marriage and simultaneously treat with dignity and respect, people who identify as LGBT.  These are not mutually exclusive concepts. 

If only the media could open their minds to the possibility.

How different would America’s reaction have been if the headline asked:

Is Chick-fil-A pro-family? 'Guilty as charged,' leader says

Faux homophobia: Joseph Baken filed fake gay bashing report

From Missoula Independent:  

UPDATE: Joseph Baken pleaded guilty this afternoon in Missoula Municipal Court to charges of filing a false police report. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail and a $300 fine. The jail time was suspended.

Law enforcement says that a 22-year-old man who reported he was the victim of an alleged hate crime in Missoula during the early morning hours of August 5 fabricated the story.

“We have new information that we’re following up on,” said a source inside the Missoula Police Department.

The young man, Joseph Baken, from Billings, reported to the MPD that he was celebrating his birthday downtown at the Missoula Club and, after inquiring about where he could find a gay bar, was beaten up by three men. In the hours after the alleged incident, social media site comments decried homophobic violence and called for protests.

However, the Missoula Independent and MPD obtained video footage that shows Baken doing a backflip on Higgins Avenue and sustaining the injuries, lacerations to his face, that have been depicted on social media sites, during the landing.

Huff Po has pictures.

Is this a new trend?  Blame imaginary bigots for your mistakes?

Hawaii federal judge defends pro-gender marriage

In a victory for pro-gender marriage, U.S. District Court Judge Alan C. Kay sides with gender-integration.  Judge Kay says redefining marriage is a “divisive social issue” which should be voted on by the people, not mandated by courts. 

Seattle pi: 

A federal judge ruled Wednesday against two Hawaii women who want to get married instead of enter into a civil union, handing a victory to opponents of gay marriage in a state that's been at the forefront of the issue. 

U.S. District Court Judge Alan C. Kay’s 120-page ruling sides with Hawaii Health Director Loretta Fuddy and Hawaii Family Forum, a Christian group that was allowed to intervene in the case. 

 "Accordingly, Hawaii's marriage laws are not unconstitutional," the ruling states. "Nationwide, citizens are engaged in a robust debate over this divisive social issue. If the traditional institution of marriage is to be reconstructed, as sought by the plaintiffs, it should be done by a democratically elected legislature or the people through a constitutional amendment," and not through the courts.

'Tastes Like Hate’ graffiti on Chick-fil-A was ‘meant to further a discussion about tolerance and acceptance’

Really?

Although Manny Castro admitted to Huffington Post that he was the one who painted “Tastes Like Hate” on a Torrance, California Chick-fil-A restaurant, no arrests have been made.

Huffington Post has the exclusive from Castro:

My statement painted on the side of the Chik-Fil-A in Torrance was not born out of hate. It was born out of frustration. It was meant to further a discussion about tolerance and acceptance. My Facebook wall was simply not large enough to do this.

So the graffiti is Facebook’s fault for not being big enough?

And vandalism is redefined as a “discussion about tolerance and acceptance”?

And “Tastes Like Hate” wasn’t "born out of hate"? 

Hey Manny:  Your excuse “Tastes Like Bull”

Hey same-sex marriage activists: use gender model not race

“On gay rights, we have seen a push to use race rather than gender as a model.”  Cathy Young

Following the outcry over Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy's support for pro-gender marriage, feminist writer Cathy Young suggests that gender, not race, is the better model for gay rights activists to follow.

From Newsday:

The uproar over Chick-fil-A, the fried-chicken chain that faces boycotts and threats of license denial over its conservative Christian owners' opposition to same-sex marriage, highlights a remarkable fact: in one generation, the stigma against homosexuality has been replaced by a stigma against anti-gay prejudice. 

 These gains in gay rights are a victory for human rights. But we run the risk of going too far in slapping the "bigotry" label on all conservative sexual attitudes -- and, in the process, deepening cultural divisions and stifling legitimate discussion of social issues. 

 Feminism provides for an interesting comparison. While America has made huge strides toward equality between the sexes, we have been able to accommodate the fact that a large segment of society espouses some degree of gender conservatism. About 35 percent of Americans still agree that it's best for everyone if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the family.  Except in rarefied feminist and academic circles, people who support some traditional distinctions between men and women have not been automatically branded bigots...  

 This is in stark contrast to the way society and law have treated race. There is no such thing as a benign racial distinction. A religious denomination that maintained an all-white clergy would be regarded as a marginal hate group, in contrast to mainstream churches that reserve the priesthood or ministry to men. 

 Yet on gay rights, we have seen a push to use race rather than gender as a model… Is this radical approach a ticket to progress? Not necessarily.

Besides, same-sex marriage is precisely all about gender and how important it is in a marriage and for children.  Either you believe gender-integrated marriage is better for children or you support gender-segregation in marriage.

When a large segment of the population finds that its cultural values are being not only displaced but stigmatized and stifled, its opposition to social change is likely to become more bitter. Religious groups may see justification for fears that even civil same-sex marriage will infringe on their freedom of conscience… 

 I am a pro-choice feminist who welcomes the last half-century's transformation in gender roles. I also believe abortion and gender issues should remain topics on which good people can disagree -- as they can about same-sex marriage. . . Tolerance really does cut both ways.

Where is the tolerance in the push for same-sex marriage? 

Ragu's funniest commercial: Parent's bedroom

From Ragu's Long Day of Childhood series:

“Parents in bed, but it’s just 8 o’clock . . . that’s why they taught you--you should always knock.”  

Parents:  don't forget to lock your door!

80% disagree with Equality Illinois petition to discriminate against Chick-fil-A

Director of public policy for Equality Illinois, Randy Hannig calls on businesses and organizations to discriminate against and ostracize Chick-fil-A because its president defends gender-integrated marriage.  It appears that Hannig considers supporting pro-gender marriage homophobic.

From Hannig’s commentary in USA Today: 

Company President Dan Cathy clarified Chick-fil-A's views of gay and lesbian Americans, shedding light on its multimillion dollar donations to groups that actively seek to influence government leaders and the public to take away rights from gay and lesbian individuals. He exercised his freedom of speech, and we're glad he did. But his supporters do not want us and millions of fair-minded Americans to exercise ours.

What exactly has Cathy done to obstruct people with same-sex attraction from exercising their right to free speech?  Hannig fails to cite an example.

We have absolutely no problem with Chick-fil-A achieving the American dream by building a successful business. The company invests its earnings to advance its values. As we learned, Chick-fil-A believes that loving, committed gay and lesbian couples, including those raising children, should not be entitled to the dignity, respect and protections that come with marriage. The company is using its dollars to shape public and political discourse by funding organizations that promote homophobia in the U.S. and abroad.

Cathy did not speak out against homosexuality.  In fact, his company has a policy of treating all people with respect, regardless of their sexual orientation.  Not only do they serve people with same-sex attraction, they provide jobs for them as well.  Cathy simply defended gender-integrated marriage which he called the "biblical definition."  That is not homophobia; that is pro-gender.

In a petition, Equality Illinois is urging socially responsible business and institutional leaders across the country to challenge Chick-fil-A's discriminatory practices and end all relationships that enable the Chick-fil-A brand to operate on their premises.

We urge mall owners who rent space to Chick-fil-A to look deeply at the hateful organizations the company supports. We ask university officials to reconsider accommodating a business that ostracizes a large segment of their student body.

Large segment?  Exactly how many students are in a gender-segregated marriage?  Or raised by same-gender parents?  Show us the numbers.

Hannig is throwing around words such as “homophobia” and “hateful.”  He wants gender-segregated couples to have the right to redefine marriage and he calls those special rights “Equality.”  How is segregation equal?  Why does he believe gender-integrated marriage is hateful and homophobic?  Why does he think social justice lies in ostracizing a company that employs people with same-sex attraction?

Fortunately Americans see through Hannig’s stereotyping and prejudiced attitude against Chick-fil-A.  Out of 5,723 people who rated his commentary, 80% strongly disagree.

The voting results so far:  9% strongly agree with Hannig, 3% agree, 1% don't know, 7% disagree, and a whopping 80% strongly disagree.

Click to read Hannig’s letter in entirety and cast your vote.

Beyond Chick-fil-A: Seeking more than 'biblical definition' of family

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit.”  Dan Cathy, CEO Chick-fil-A

Those were the words heard round the world that triggered a firestorm of protests, boycotts, buycotts, bullies, kiss-ins, political threats, and public scoldings, and an Appreciation Day as people twittered and tweeted, bought and fought, on both sides of the definition of marriage.

Marriage

A decade ago you could simply say “married” and everybody and his gay brother knew you were talking about a husband and wife.  No more.  I live in Vermont, which is one of the six states that legalized monogender marriage. When a couple marries, you have no idea what gender they are.  It could be one of three distinct compositions:  male-male, female-female, or male-female.

Biblical definition

To clarify, some people such as Chick-fil-A chief Dan Cathy specifically refer to marriage as the “biblical definition of the family unit.”  Besides being periphrastic, merely mentioning the word “bible” sets some people’s teeth on edge.  They begin using religion or freedom-from-religion reasons to oppose the idea that marriage describes one man and one woman.  In particular, pro-homosexual advocates don’t like it:  they feel as if Christianity is being shoved down their throats. 

However, this is much more global than Christianity.  Marriage permeates all religions:  Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Christian.  And this affects secular people as well.  Atheists marry. 

Marriage is not just a religious issue; this is about our bodies, our very gender. What culture does not recognize the special union between men and women that begets children?

And everyone has a vested interest in what we teach children in public schools.  We want everyone to support marriage no matter what their religious affiliation is or isn’t.

Traditional marriage

Remember the song from Fiddler on the Roof: Tradition . . . tradition!  As Tevye discovered, simply chanting “tradition” does not ensure the next generation will actually embrace it.  In fact, an important question to ask is:  Does calling it “traditional marriage” actually alienate more young people than persuade them to defend it?

Wouldn’t it be instructive to be able to discuss marriage with people on both sides without name-calling and without references to the Bible? 

In their quest to redefine marriage, the pro-homosexual side came up with civil unions (remember those?), gay marriage, same-sex marriage, marriage equality, and now back to gay marriage.  They’ve done surveys to pinpoint the best-selling way to frame the debate. 

In turn, we need terminology that is clear and positive to describe marriage between one man and one woman.

How about these?

Pro-gender marriage 

Pro:  This highlights the gender issue--that regardless of whether someone has same-sex attraction or not, marriage is for complementary sexes.  See the remarkable story of Josh Weed and his spouse for an extraordinary example.

Con:  will calling the union of two men an “anti-gender marriage” alienate the very voters we want to persuade?

Gender-integrated marriage

Pro:  This is clear and positive and highlights the gender-diversity inherent in marriage. 

Con:  Long-winded.

Organic marriage 

Pro:  This label could appeal to the crunchy granola crowd, to environmentalists, and to college students (i.e., 98% of the population at the University of Vermont).  My dictionary points out that organic chemistry is the study of compounds of biological origin and related to living matter (babies!)  No artificial agents (test tubes, sperm donors, surrogate mothers).  Relating to a bodily organ (the male and female sex organs).   “Denoting a relation between elements of something such that they fit together harmoniously as necessary parts of a whole” (complementary genders, both a mother and father). 

Con:  Will Grandma know what we’re talking about?

What’s your opinion?  Is it best to stick with the one word “marriage,” or qualify it with traditional, biblical definition, pro-gender, gender-integrated, or organic? 

Challenge

Can you come up with a better brand that will appeal to liberals and young people?