Brutally Honest

"This widespread change of heart is built on a reflexive but misplaced sense of compassion..."

Charles Lehardy is going against the tide:

A relationship between any two people, whether they are hetero- or homosexual, having as its purpose the mutual expression of love and affection can take many forms and does not require any legal framework whatsoever for its support and encouragement. To any extent two individuals desire, they may formalize their relationship with binding legal agreements that include the combining and sharing of their wealth and assets. Or, as so many who cohabit well know, couples without such agreements are free to leave everything as loose and whimsical as their hearts desire. Love and the expression of love does not need the social institution of marriage to thrive.

But marriage is not principally about love, though love is unquestionably crucial to its success. The institution of marriage is society's way of demonstrating its commitment to future generations by creating a safehouse for procreation and child rearing.

This is why marriage includes public vows of commitment, in which the couple and those who witness the ceremony pledge to support and safeguard this relationship for life. This is also why marriage has historically been established and sanctioned by the church, where a commitment is made before God to faithfulness and sexual fruitfulness, just as the first couple, Adam and Eve, were joined together by God to love and support each other, and to enjoy sexual intimacy aimed at producing children to populate God's earth.

The fact that not all marriages produce children only underlines and highlights the fact that children are the normal and expected result of every marriage. That same-sex "marriage" is a non-sequitur can be shown quite simply: if everyone married someone of the same sex, life on earth would quickly die out. Same-sex marriage is a corruption of a long-held societal norm and a distortion of the fundamental design and intent of the marital commitment.

Americans have generous hearts. The shift in opinion in light of the gay rights media blitz of the past decades is proof of the generous, but entirely emotional (read: irrational), response to the heartfelt pleas of those who have chosen to embrace their homosexual desires in very public ways. This widespread change of heart is built on a reflexive but misplaced sense of compassion among heterosexuals for a very vocal homosexual minority. It represents a complete failure to consider the damage that will result from changing marriage into something it was never meant to be.

Liberalized divorce laws have already done terrible harm to children and the stable, nurturing environment that the two-parent family was intended to provide. Study after study confirms that children of single-parent families do worse on a wide range of metrics than their peers in two-parent, heterosexual families.

Our societal understanding of marriage has already been damaged by high levels of divorce and children born to unmarried, cohabiting couples. If we further erode the cultural understanding of marriage's procreative roots by including a non-procreative set of relationships under the same umbrella, marriage will ultimately cease to mean anything at all. Same-sex marriage will be one more cultural message to young men and women that we are not really serious about creating and parenting the next generation.

Read the whole thing and walk away a better person.

If Mr. Lehardy is not a regular stop on your tour of the blogosphere, he needs to become one.

It's really that simple.

‘Which Parent Do I Not Need: Mom or Dad?’

And a child will lead them... them who have ears:

Minnesota state legislators considering a same-sex marriage bill for the state did not have an answer to an 11-year-old girl’s question on which parent is not needed.

“Since every child needs a mom and a dad to be born, I don’t think we can change that children need a mom and a dad. I believe God made it that way,” Grace Evans, 11, said before the Minnesota House Committee on Civil Law last week. “I know some disagree, but I want to ask you this question: Which parent do I not need – my mom or my dad?”

She paused for eight seconds as the legislators on the committee sat silent.

Evans then said, “I’ll ask again, which parent do I not need – my mom or my dad?” She paused again, this time for 13 seconds of silence from state lawmakers.

Evans concluded, saying, “I hope that you can see that every child needs a mom and a dad. Please don’t change your law on marriage to say otherwise.”

Nevertheless, the House committee voted in favor of the gay marriage bill and sent it to the full House. A similar bill is also before the state Senate.

There's video of the young gal's speech at the link.

It's poignantly cutting.

Pray for her for you know she will be pilloried by the self-described tolerant and open-minded.

Murph The Protector

Guest posted by tim, The Godless Heathen

Needs plans for tonight? Look no further than a documentary about a true American hero - Navy Seal LT. Michael Murphy.

Check listings here for a theater near you.

More at Blackfive.

That is all. You’re welcome.

I don't either... do you?

Maybe somebody could explain it to us...

H/T to CMR.

"... is power worth your self-respect?"

John McCain's service to his country as a member of the military is to be commended.  Each of us ought to be grateful and I'm sure I speak for many when I say thank you Mr. McCain for your sacrifice.

However...

John McCain serves no one now but himself.  This was more than apparent when last week he decided to publicly rebuke Rand Paul.

Someone has written a letter to the Senator that returns the favor and that letter speaks for me:

We are taught history, or I as well as many other history teachers have said a thousand times before, because “those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” It seems that either you do not know history, or choose to ignore it for your own political reasons. As a teacher, I must say your recent comments in regards to Rand Paul are disturbing. Your thoughtlessness and fecklessness in regards to Rand Paul’s attempt to protect American rights shows an utter disregard for the realities and lessons of history.

Within democratic and parliamentary governments freedom is taken away slowly, piece by piece. Many Armenians in the Ottoman Empire thought that the legislations they were seeing were just what the Young Turks claimed. Unfortunately for them, the Young Turks continued to pass laws, first gun registration, then gun control and then confiscation. It ended in Genocide. Gun control laws were used to disarm the Armenians before killing them, not for the reasons the government claimed. Laws can be used however, and to be historically truthful, politicians are the most amoral demographic to ever exist in history. It is either utter ignorance on your part to claim Paul’s stand was “ridiculous,” or you would like to have the same leeway to abuse the people you were sworn to protect. I would hope you are just ignorant.

Forcing the Administration to say un-equivocally that killing American’s by drone without due process on American soil is both unconstitutional and that they would not do it was very important. The fact that it took a filibuster should be a massive red flag, a flag that you choose not see because of the relationship you wish to develop with the president. Maybe you should take a look back at a real Republican Calvin Coolidge, would he care about having dinner with an individual who insults, degrades and abuses them? This president has certainly done that to you, is power worth your self-respect? Being in the most amoral demographic, I hoped you were special, yet you have proven yourself to have no self-respect, no scruples, dining at a fancy restaurant, hoping some of the presidents pop culture appeal might rub off on you, while real men and women make real stands. Your behavior is disgraceful, arrogant and ignorant. I think the only right thing left for you to do is retire. You are everything that is wrong in politics. Both Rand Paul and code pink agree, and I take joy in that, we saw some of the true American spirit during that filibuster, and all you saw was a threat to your power and influence. Do the moral thing, and leave politics.

Yes.  The moral thing.

We need more who will do the moral thing and leave politics.

Many more.

McCain should lead the way.

"When you work in the sewer, expect to get stinky."

That, in an email from Rusty Shackleford, describing this situation a Reuters editor now finds himself in:

The fact that a Reuters journalist has terrorist sympathies? Doesn't surprise me a bit.

The fact that the federal government indicted him? That's the shocking part.

You'll notice that the indictment cites [Matthew] Keys as a former employee at a Sacramento TV station. After he left, he got a gig at Reuters. Where, as of this writing, he still has a gig.

...

But the real funny part here? So, Keys helps the Anonymous thugs hack some websites. And what does he get in return for his help? They out him...

Read the whole thing.

Apt and fitting turn of events wouldn't you say?

Atheism explained

Guest posted by tim, The Godless Heathen

Even I have to admit this is pretty good.

Swiped from AmericanDigest. 

The Pope's unspoken farewell homily

The Anchoress takes to a new venue to bring us Godly wisdom:

Whatever his departure meant to the rest of the world, it said to Americans and their ideals, "no one is irreplaceable; power isn't everything; not everything is your choice; sometimes bread cast upon the waters comes back soggy."

"Well", some might think, "thanks a lot, Papa, for that encouraging message."

In fact, Americans should be encouraged by it. There still resides within us the Calvinistic work ethic, the notion that one deserves because one has earned, and that one's worth is all tied up in those earnings. We feel driven to "push it" (whether it be a job, a relationship, a policy, a bottom line) from one goal to the next. There is a constant sense of striving to earn more, do more, own more, than the next guy. It is a mindset that has parents of not-yet-newborns fighting for a spot at the "best" pre-schools; parents of 13-year-olds pestering them about their eventual college essays. It is a culture that celebrates the "winner", ignores the "loser" and encourages the weird Kardashian life goal of pursuing fame for its own sake.

Still, we continue to push the limits: our powerful until they are only corrupt, our daring athletes until they are only doping apes, our rich until they are ridiculous.

All of this continual advancing doesn't leave us happy and fulfilled. This is what Jesus meant when he said "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Luke 12:34), the life of endless pursuit, ungrounded by something larger than the self, brings us only to the sort of futile emptiness that wreaks havoc on our souls and provides so much fodder for so many gossipy headlines.

And this is where Benedict's lesson comes in, because today, as he entered Castel Gandolfo, and called himself "no longer the pope … just a pilgrim", he put the lie to many American ideas and illusions and instead offered encouragement we should take to heart – particularly as our economy shudders and our leadership continues to spar rather than lead.

To those who are out of work or worried about their jobs, Benedict's move says, "what you do does not define who you are." To those experiencing "downward mobility" it says: "your trappings make you less free; do not be afraid to shed them." To those who feel like choices have disappeared, it says: "when someone else chooses for you, what you make of it is your own."

To those whose efforts are deemed inadequate by others, it says: "don't judge yourself." To those living through rejection, scorn or bullying, it says: "there is a higher and unconditional love waiting for a chance to embrace you." To lives turbulent and overly busy it says: "prayer can be peaceful productivity."

For Americans these are radically countercultural messages, and if we take them to heart, we may find that Benedict's legacy to us is a path he has culled by his own example, one that puts us on an escape route from relentless doing, to the treasure of being.

That's a beautiful, inspiring, hopeful message.

It's a Gospel message.

Thanks Elizabeth.

Obama's Organizing for Action nonprofit co-opted

I find this sweetly apt:

At the beginning of the year, President Barack Obama's new 501(c)4 political nonprofit, Organizing For Action, was launched with all the usual bells and whistles. But the tech wizards at OFA forgot one important rule in today's Internet world: Register all the iterations of your website address before someone else does. 

Now Obama's team is filing complaints against the folks smart enough to get the addresses before he did.

As Obama's OFA made its debut, no one in his purportedly Internet-savvy campaign had obtained the corresponding .com, .net, .org or .us sites, nor did OFA register other names that are close to its official one, as is the sensible practice. In the case of the .net address, a fellow named Derek Bovard had already registered the .net address by the time Obama's team took notice.

Bovard has routed his new site to the homepage of the National Rifle Association.

So, whenever anyone goes to www.organizingforaction.net they end up seeing the homepage of the NRA.

Naturally, Obama and his fellow community organizers were furious. So furious, in fact, that they have replied by filing complaints against Bovard--and, apparently, a variety of other people who had registered domain names that OFA now wants. 

Obama's group filed the complaints with the authority that governs website domain addresses, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The complaints were filed under Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) rules. Obama's case number is 1483257 and was filed on Feb 6. UDRP cases are usually decided within one to two months after first filing.

Bovard told Breitbart that he feels he has a solid case that he owns the .net address fair, square, and legally.

"We have been granted 'Service Mark' #85838531 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the website as 'Providing an on-line website featuring information on the United States Constitution and Conservative values' and we were also the first to use it in 'commerce.' So I don't believe they have any valid legal ground to stand on in regards to this website name. Before purchasing this site I had checked TESS (Trademark Electronic Search System) for any existing Trademarks or Service Marks and found none. I also searched for any existing companies called Organizing for Action and found none. So I bought it, legally."

Ya gotta love it.

"Stupid. Pointless. Menacing. That's what I thought of Christians and their god Jesus..."

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield's story of conversion seems most appropriate as the season of Lent begins:

The word Jesus stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no matter how hard I choked, I couldn't hack it out. Those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. As a university professor, I tired of students who seemed to believe that "knowing Jesus" meant knowing little else. Christians in particular were bad readers, always seizing opportunities to insert a Bible verse into a conversation with the same point as a punctuation mark: to end it rather than deepen it.

Stupid. Pointless. Menacing. That's what I thought of Christians and their god Jesus, who in paintings looked as powerful as a Breck Shampoo commercial model.

As a professor of English and women's studies, on the track to becoming a tenured radical, I cared about morality, justice, and compassion. Fervent for the worldviews of Freud, Hegel, Marx, and Darwin, I strove to stand with the disempowered. I valued morality. And I probably could have stomached Jesus and his band of warriors if it weren't for how other cultural forces buttressed the Christian Right. Pat Robertson's quip from the 1992 Republican National Convention pushed me over the edge: "Feminism," he sneered, "encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians." Indeed. The surround sound of Christian dogma comingling with Republican politics demanded my attention.

After my tenure book was published, I used my post to advance the understandable allegiances of a leftist lesbian professor. My life was happy, meaningful, and full. My partner and I shared many vital interests: aids activism, children's health and literacy, Golden Retriever rescue, our Unitarian Universalist church, to name a few. Even if you believed the ghost stories promulgated by Robertson and his ilk, it was hard to argue that my partner and I were anything but good citizens and caregivers. The GLBT community values hospitality and applies it with skill, sacrifice, and integrity.

I began researching the Religious Right and their politics of hatred against queers like me. To do this, I would need to read the one book that had, in my estimation, gotten so many people off track: the Bible. While on the lookout for some Bible scholar to aid me in my research, I launched my first attack on the unholy trinity of Jesus, Republican politics, and patriarchy, in the form of an article in the local newspaper about Promise Keepers. It was 1997.

he article generated many rejoinders, so many that I kept a Xerox box on each side of my desk: one for hate mail, one for fan mail. But one letter I received defied my filing system. It was from the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. It was a kind and inquiring letter. Ken Smith encouraged me to explore the kind of questions I admire: How did you arrive at your interpretations? How do you know you are right? Do you believe in God? Ken didn't argue with my article; rather, he asked me to defend the presuppositions that undergirded it. I didn't know how to respond to it, so I threw it away.

Later that night, I fished it out of the recycling bin and put it back on my desk, where it stared at me for a week, confronting me with the worldview divide that demanded a response. As a postmodern intellectual, I operated from a historical materialist worldview, but Christianity is a supernatural worldview. Ken's letter punctured the integrity of my research project without him knowing it.

Friends with the Enemy

With the letter, Ken initiated two years of bringing the church to me, a heathen. Oh, I had seen my share of Bible verses on placards at Gay Pride marches. That Christians who mocked me on Gay Pride Day were happy that I and everyone I loved were going to hell was clear as blue sky. That is not what Ken did. He did not mock. He engaged. So when his letter invited me to get together for dinner, I accepted. My motives at the time were straightforward: Surely this will be good for my research.

Something else happened.

Something beautiful.

Read the rest.