247,331 in one state say NO to homosexual marriage
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247,331. That's the number of signatures people in the state of Washington turned in opposing gay marriage and asking for the right to vote.
The news this week from Washington State is huge. R-74, a measure overturning gay marriage, will be on the ballot this November.
247,331 is a huge number of people in a small state like Washington.
Groundbreaking. Record-breaking. Historic.
To see just how many people and how big a wave, watch this video:
Our own Thomas Peters was asked by CNS news if the "momentum" can be sustained.
"I don't think there's much question about being able to keep up energy," Peters said. "It's actually more time for us to organize."
More evidence of the big momentum for marriage: a shocking new poll from North Carolina by Public Policy Polling (a Democratic polling firm) shows a huge drop in Pres. Obama’s support among African-Americans, asBusiness Insider reports.
Back in 2008, Pres. Obama won North Carolina, a key swing state, by just 14,000 votes with 95 percent of the black vote. Today, just a month after Pres. Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, the President's support among black voters has dropped to just 76 percent. Twenty percent of black voters say they will vote for Mitt Romney and another 4 percent aren't yet sure how they will vote.
NOM's own political guru Frank Schubert (who led marriage to victory in California, Maine and North Carolina) took up this issue when Pres. Obama endorsed gay marriage last month:
"As the Cheerleader-in-Chief for gay marriage, President Obama will now have to return to North Carolina – and Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Colorado and Nevada – and explain why his administration is actively undermining the overwhelming votes they cast in support of traditional marriage, and in opposition to same-sex marriage. This will be especially difficult for Obama when talking with African Americans, who oppose gay marriage by a two-to-one margin."
A group of African American pastors is calling on our President to "evolve again" on marriage. (Rev. William Owens, who heads that group, also helps NOM with outreach to black churches). And in Iowa, NAACP national board member Rev. Keith Ratliff Sr. resigned after that organization formally endorsed gay marriage.
The Atlanta Black Star reports that the decision of the NAACP national board to endorse same-sex marriage has caused not only a national board member (Rev. Ratliff) to resign, but it also has caused division within state and local chapters.
I'm sad to say General Mills, the beloved breakfast company, just endorsed gay marriage, opposing Minnesota's one-sentence marriage amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
Earlier this week, NOM's Corporate Fairness Project director Jonathan Baker went on Minnesota TV to explain why corporations have no business redefining marriage:
Corporations don't normally endorse things like abortion "rights." Corporations don't normally wade into culture war issues at all. They know that not only their customers, but also their employees and vendors, all have different views on these crucial issues.
One thing we know: gay marriage is not particularly good for business.
Yahoo! just posted a report from Kiplinger that lists the top 8 U.S. cities for future job growth.
Kiplinger says these cities are "poised to become job-creating machines in the years ahead."
ALL of these cities exist in states that have recently passed marriage amendments.
- Nashville, TN
- San Antonio, TX
- Orlando, FL
- Raleigh, NC (just last month!)
- Portland, OR
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Phoenix, AZ
- Atlanta, GA
The gay marriage movement believes it can make up stories and get other people to believe they are true. But the data keeps contradicting them.
The amazing thing about marriage is that it transcends ordinary politics. It crosses divides of race, creed and even, for at least one Mormon man who writes "I'm a Gay Mormon, Happily Married with Three Kids"—sexual orientation.
He reports on all the questions he's asked by a culture that increasingly teaches that people like him not only don't exist, but they shouldn't exist.
Why do you not choose to be "true to yourself" and live the gay lifestyle?
First of all, I understand that when people refer to a "gay lifestyle" they are talking about a lifestyle that includes gay romantic and sexual relationships. But I want to point out that because I am gay, any lifestyle I choose is technically a "gay lifestyle." Mine just looks different than other gay peoples'. My hope is that other gay people will be as accepting of my choices as they hope others would be of their choices.
He goes on to say that people do have the power to choose the way they live their life and this always involves sacrifice, of one kind or another:
One of the sad truths about being homosexual is that no matter what you decide for your future, you have to sacrifice something. It's very sad, but it is true. I think this is true of life in general as well. If you decide to be a doctor, you give up any of the myriad of other things you could have chosen. But with homosexuality, the choices seem to be a little bit more mutually exclusive. If you are Mormon and you choose to live your religion, you are sacrificing the ability to have a romantic relationship with a same-sex partner. If you choose a same-sex partner, you are sacrificing the ability to have a biological family with the one you love. And so on. No matter what path you choose, if you are gay you are giving up something basic, and sometimes various things that are very basic. I chose not to "live the gay lifestyle," as it were, because I found that what I would have to give up to do so wasn't worth the sacrifice for me.
Traditionally Christians have understood the virtue of chastity as the ultimate expression of human freedom. Our sexual desires do not need to define who we are. We can choose.
Now, channeling lust or eros is difficult. This one young man benefited, he testifies, from a lifetime's experience in practicing chastity, in learning to tame passion and subordinate it to an ideal.
That's what freedom means, not being buffeted by desire, but becoming, through practice and hard work, the masters of our fate—for most of us that means by the grace of God.
We seldom see this vision reflected in our desire-driven culture. Kudos to this man—and his wife—for their courage in "coming out" in the public square.
Kudos as well to the Social Science Journal for having the courage of its scientific convictions in publishing two new studies that call into question a related desire-driven orthodoxy: sciences have "proven" that the natural family has no advantages for children. There are "no differences" between children with a gay parent and other children, we were told.
Judge Walker, as you will recall, ruled as much in striking down Prop 8: the scientific evidence is so overwhelming that only an irrational hateful person could vote for marriage on the grounds the ideal for a child is a married mom and dad, he claimed.
One new study by Prof. Loren Marks, takes a hard look at the scientific basis for the APA's repeated claims that science has proven that having gay parents makes "no difference" to a child. He concludes that the existing body of scientific research is amazingly weak: small samples, few comparison groups, few outcome measures studied, and, most importantly of all, the data is not nationally representative. It's not based on a random sample.
From a scientific point of view that's a flaw that cannot be overcome. Without a random sample, you simply cannot say whether the children with gay parents you are studying are typical of all such children or self-selected outliers.
That's why the second new study is so significant. The New Family Structures Survey is the first new survey of young adults that is large, nationally representative, and looked at more than 40 varied outcome measures, from the chance a young adult has been arrested, is unemployed, is depressed or suicidal, has relationship problems, or has had multiple sex partners, to how good he or she felt about their family growing up, and whether he or she was sexually abused. On 25 of these 40 outcomes, adult children who reported that one of their parents had had a same-sex romance during their childhood, fared worse.
Overall, 1.7 percent of all American adults between the ages of 18-39 reported either their mom or their dad had a gay romance. Very few of them lived with their fathers during that time. 91 percent lived with their mothers while she had this romantic relationship. But most of these relationships turned out to be fleeting.
The researchers interviewed more than 15,000 people and found just two young adults who had been raised from birth by two moms.
This tells me something really important: gay marriage is not about helping children. The "Modern Family" we see on TV and relayed in the media is vanishingly rare. We aren't seriously contemplating gay marriage because it will protect the children.
Does this new study prove gay parents harm their children? No. Does it tell us how children fare, on average, when raised by two moms from birth? No. We still can't say that from scientific evidence because we don't have good data.
But together these two studies do tell us Judge Walker was wrong. They show us the claim that science has disproven and ruled out of court the idea that children need a mom and dad is just bogus. The attacks on these studies and their authors will continue—because attack, attack, attack people who disagree is what the gay marriage movement does at this point.
Look, I'm an activist, not a social scientist. But I respect the scientific enterprise enough to wish for open, robust scientific debate unmarred by fear or favor.
After all, in the end I know this: truth and love will prevail over lies and hatred.
God bless you for your courage and thank you for your prayers and your fellowship in these great battles. They mean more to me than you will ever know.
