Jordan Lorence on the lawsuit to legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota

Jordan Lorence discusses the lawsuit to legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota and points out that marriage between a man and a woman is the norm for all societies - Christian or not. Recently, upon the request of the Hennepin County Attorney, the state of Minnesota was added to the lawsuit.

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Perspectives: Gay men only

Perspectives: Gay men only
by Judith Roback Morse
Excerpts

“Kids Do as Well with Same Sex Parents,” the headlines screamed. I crossed swords with Judith Stacey, one of the authors of this most recent study, at a debate at Bowling Green State a few years ago. I asked her point blank if she believed men and women were completely interchangeable as parents. In front of that very friendly audience, she said absolutely: the gender of parents doesn’t matter. And so she says now, in this new article the media loved. But midway through the article, her argument shifts from a “no difference” argument to my favorite definition of feminism: men and women are identical, except women are better."

"Let’s see now. We’ve shown that women are better parents than men. We have shown that gay men parent more like women than like heterosexual men. Therefore, it stands to reason that gay men are better parents than straight men, perhaps even including the child’s own father."

"Same sex marriage is being sold to the public as a small change, with “marriage equality” as the only important issue. I believe there is much more at stake in redefining the law and the culture surrounding marriage and parenthood."

This article supposedly showing that “kids do fine” with lesbian parents, has proven my point for me. The drive for same sex marriage will marginalize men from the family, and lead to the belief that the only good man is a gay man."

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Daddy was only a donor

Excerpts for an excellent article in the June 18 Wall Street Journal.

Daddy was only a donor
A new study paints a troubling portrait of children conceived by single mothers who choose insemination.
by W. Bradford Wilcox

"In 'The Switch,' coming later this summer, Jennifer Aniston plays an attractive 40-year-old professional who has given up on finding Mr. Right for marriage and decides instead to move straight on to motherhood with a donor father.

"Hollywood is not the only industry peddling the story line that flesh-and-blood fathers are an optional accessory in today's families. Plenty of academics—from New York University sociologist Judith Stacey to Cornell psychologist Peggy Drexler—also have been arguing that mothers can do just as well raising children with donor fathers as they can with real ones.

"In her book, "Raising Boys Without Men," for instance, Ms. Drexler claims that "maverick moms," including single women who rely on donor insemination, are just as successful raising boys as mothers who opt for the older model of marriage and motherhood. All that is needed for parental success, according to Ms. Drexler, is a "caring and supportive" model of mothering.

"That view ran into some major trouble this month, with the release of the report, "My Daddy's Name is Donor," by the Commission on Parenthood's Future...

"The study, which was co-authored by Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval Glenn and Karen Clark, paints a troubling portrait of the children conceived by single mothers who chose donor insemination. Young adults with maverick moms and donor dads report a sense of confusion, loss and distress about their origins and identity, and about their inability to relate to their biological father and to his kin.

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With a lawsuit to legalize homosexual marriage looming, will marriage become an issue in the Minnesota attorney general race?

With a lawsuit to legalize homosexual marriage looming, will marriage become an issue in the Minnesota attorney general race?

The Hill
by Share D'Aprile

"One campaign arena where the issue does loom large in 2010, according to Freedom to Marry's communication director Sean Eldridge -- attorney general races across the country. In the wake of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley's lawsuit over DOMA, activists are injecting the issue into other AG campaigns, looking for candidates who will pledge to pursue similar lawsuits. In New York state's Democratic primary for attorney general, the leading candidates have already pledged to challenge the federal government on DOMA if elected.

We want to see this issue come up in every AG race across the country, "Eldridge said. "What's happening in California is just one of many instances this year where the marriage equiality issue is going to be out there. I think politicians and voters are paying attention."

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Legalization of homosexual "marriage" likely in 2011 with DFL governor

Minnesota Independent agrees...legalization of homosexual marriage is likely if Minnesotan’s elect a pro-homosexual marriage governor.

“Same-sex marriage advocates think 2010 is their best chance yet to realize equality for gay and lesbian people. But a key factor will be who ends up occupying the governor’s mansion after Tim Pawlenty moves out — and whether he or she supports Minnesota joining the five other states and Washington, DC., that allow same-sex couples to wed.”

Rep. Tom Emmer – the only candidate who will protect marriage as between one man and one woman and supports the peoples right to vote on a marriage amendment. “I believe marriage is the union between one man and one woman,” he says on his campaign website. “As a legislator, I have consistently supported the constitutional marriage amendment that protects traditional marriage.”

Monica Meyer of OutFront Minnesota couldn’t make it any plainer, “…with a LGBT friendly legislature, finding a LGBT-supportive governor to replace Pawlenty is important.

“In the past few years, the majority of the Minnesota Legislature has voted in favor of legislation to help address some of the discrimination LGBT people and their families face,” she said. “In fact, OutFront Minnesota had six bills passed by a Legislature hopeful about addressing the bullying LGBT and others face in our schools, ending the unequal treatment some state employees face because they are not allowed to provide health care to their domestic partners and children and tackling other areas of discrimination in our state laws, but all of those bills were vetoed by our Republican Governor, Tim Pawlenty.”

There is a lot of spin in this article, however, gay activists agree that electing a pro-homosexual marriage governor in November is critical to legalizing homosexual marriage in the 2011 legislative session.

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Another example of government suppressing the truth

The following commentary from Mark Earley at BreakPoint provides another example government using its power to suppress the truth, this time about crisis pregnancy centers' efforts to provide alternatives to abortion.

Sign of the Times - Free Speech and Crisis Pregnancy Centers

"First exclude religious people from democratic polity and then do democracy with the folks who remain."

Maggie Gallagher: Ted Olson’s Answers to Judge Walker’s Question About Religion at Prop 8 trial

Posted by Maggie on Wednesday, June 16th at 9:29am

Judge Walker asked:

If the evidence of the involvement of the LDS and Roman Catholic churches and evangelical ministers supports a finding that Proposition 8 was an attempt to enforce private morality, what is the import of that finding?

Olson and Boies respond:

The evidence at trial established that the LDS and Roman Catholic churches played an instrumental role in the passage of Prop. 8. See, e.g., Segura, Tr. 1609:12-1610:6 (The coalition between the Catholic Church and the LDS Church against a minority group was “unprecedented.”); Case3:09-cv-02292-VRW Document686 Filed06/15/10 Page16 of 44

. . . They produced and funded campaign messages in support of Prop. 8, which stated and implied that same-sex relationships are immoral. See Doc # 608-1 at 250- 68 (PFFs 287-93). Moral disapproval of gay and lesbian individuals, however, is not a legitimate government interest. See Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 577 (“the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice”); see also Response to Question A.2, supra. Indeed, the Supreme Court “acknowledged” in Lawrence that, “for centuries[,] there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. The condemnation has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable behavior, and respect for the traditional family. For many persons these are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus determine the course of their lives.” 539 U.S. at 571. “These considerations,” however, did “not answer the question before” the Court in Lawrence. Id. “Our obligation,” the Court explained, “is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

Because Prop. 8 was an attempt to enforce private moral beliefs about a disfavored minority—and does not further any legitimate state interest—it is unconstitutional.

Translation: Religous Americans with traditional views of marriage and/or sexual morality have no right to organize or vote to advance their beliefs. The value of "equality" can be imposed by the people who believe that same-sex unions are marriages, but the idea that marriage is a union of male and female because children should have the love and care of their mom and dad is VERBOTEN.

Of all the ideas Olson is advancing, this is the most radical: First exclude religious people from democratic polity and then do democracy with the folks who remain.

Plaintiffs add Minnesota as defendant in lawsuit to legalize same-sex marriage

Gay marriage plaintiffs name Minnesota as defendant in lawsuit
AP Story

MINNEAPOLIS - Three gay couples suing to overturn Minnesota's gay marriage ban added the state as a defendant Tuesday, hours after Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit for not doing so.

The lawsuit, filed last month in Hennepin County, had named as its defendant the official who issues marriages licenses in that county. Freeman complained the state should be the main defendant, because gay marriage is prohibited under state law.

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Lesbian parenting and the problem with public information

A recent study on lesbian parenting is drawing fire as it doesn't seem to stand up to academic scrutiny.

"A recent and widely reported news story, headlined "Kids of lesbians have fewer behavioral problems, study suggests," reported that "A nearly 25-year study concluded that children raised in lesbian households were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers."

The conclusion does not strike me as particularly surprising. In our society and many others, mothers play a larger role in child rearing than fathers, so it would not be surprising if children with two mothers did, on average, better than children with a mother and a father. Reading the story, however, I concluded that it did not actually give me much reason to believe in its conclusion—for two related reasons."

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Minnesota and it's marriage law

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) hopes to intervene in a lawsuit filed in Minnesota state court to overturn that state's law on marriage.

The Minnesota law currently defines marriage as between one man and one woman, and ADF senior counsel Jordan Lorence is teaming with the Minnesota Family Council in asking the court to reject the lawsuit.

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Societies suffer or collapse when they reject traditional marriage

Jordan Lorence, who is a native Minnesotan and lived in the Lake Minnetonka, Mound area and graduated the University of Minnesota Law School, said he was excited to join forces with MFC and bring ADF’s national expertise to aid in our local effort to defeat the lawsuit filed in Hennepin County to strike down our Defense of Marriage laws.

The ADF has participated in similar battles across the country including Proposition 8 in California.

Lorence said “this case is mangling and contorting the state constitution in ways that know one has interpreted it to mean that there is a right of every individual define marriage any way that he or she wants and to force the state, and everyone else in the state to accept that definition.”

That will result in chaos. That is not marriage equality it’s marriage demolition,” and it’s judicial activism that the court should reject.

In fact, the Minnesota Supreme Court had one of the first cases like this, Baker v. Nelson, back in 1971 and the State Supreme Court unanimously rejected it “and I expect the State Supreme Court or one of the lower courts to reject it again.”

“When you put men and women in society they eventually produce children. And society has to figure out what to do with them [the children]. If they allow anyone to do what they want you end up with irresponsible men, exploiting women and neglecting children. You don’t sustain a society from generation to generation with this self-oriented model of sexuality and marriage.”

Consequently, “societies have to come to the conclusions that their needs to be a societal orienting of this eventual production of children into a stable relationship of the father and the mother to raise the children that they produce. It is a lifelong commitment; it is sexually exclusive between the people and monogamous. This is the best environment for raising children."

He also noted that when societies have experimented with this orientation, they have suffered or collapsed.

MFC and ADF intervene in lawsuit to legalize homosexual "marriage"

Notice to intervene in lawsuit seeking to overturn Minnesota’s marriage law is filed by group seeking to protect marriage

Group was instrumental in passage of Minnesota’s Defense of Marriage law in 1997 and wants to ensure it is strongly defended in the courts.

MINNEAPOLIS – Tom Prichard, President of the Minnesota Family Council today announced the filing of a notice of intervention in a lawsuit seeking to overturn Minnesota’s marriage law.

“We’re filing this notice to intervene to ensure Minnesota’s marriage law is vigorously defended in the courts. We are being assisted in this effort by the Alliance Defense Fund, the national expert in defending marriage laws across the country. We believe it’s absolutely vital that all the necessary arguments are made to uphold Minnesota’s marriage law,” said Prichard.

An intervention in a lawsuit occurs when a person or group, which has a particular interest in the outcome of a case, petitions the court to become a party to the lawsuit. The intervening party is then allowed to make arguments defending their interests.

“We want to assist the Hennepin County attorney with all the legal resources they need to strongly defend the law in court,” added Prichard. “This is the first time a lawsuit has sought to challenge Minnesota’s marriage law under the Minnesota Constitution. Neither the county attorney nor the state’s attorney general have ever been called upon to defend the constitutional basis for our state’s marriage law. We want to ensure that all the necessary legal resources are available to see that is accomplished.”

“We at the MFC have a unique interest in the outcome of this lawsuit. We were the principle initiators and lobbyists for the Minnesota Defense of Marriage legislation when it was passed in 1997. We are involved in efforts to protect the institution of marriage through a state constitutional amendment. We’ve worked to strengthen marriages through divorce reform legislation and marriage strengthening initiatives. And of course, our constituents strongly support defending marriage. Over 100,000 Minnesotans signed our marriage protection petition calling for passage of state marriage amendment,” concluded Prichard.

Alliance Defense Fund and MFC submit request to intervene to defend marriage

Image via Wikipedi

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence will join members of the Minnesota Family Council in a press conference Thursday at the Minnesota State Capitol to announce their intention to submit a request to intervene to defend marriage against a legal attack filed in state court.biblenewstoday.disciplerob.com, Bible News Today, Jun 2010