Homosexual Marriage Hype: A Social Experiment Without Science Behind It

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Photo Credit: Agence France-Presse

The Supreme Court is hearing two cases this week that represent a challenge to one of the oldest and most fundamental institutions of our civilization. In Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor, the court is being asked to rule that constitutional equal protection requires the government to open marriage to same-sex couples.

The claimed right to same-sex marriage is not in the Constitution or in the court’s precedents, so the court must decide whether to impose a new law making marriage into a new and different institution. The justices are unlikely to take so momentous a step unless they are persuaded that granting this new right to same-sex couples will not harm children or ultimately undermine the health of our society.

A significant number of organizations representing social and behavioral scientists have filed briefs promising the court that there is nothing to worry about. These assurances have no scientific foundation. Same-sex marriage is brand new, and child rearing by same-sex couples remains rare. Even if both phenomena were far more common, large amounts of data collected over decades would be required before any responsible researcher could make meaningful scientific estimates of the long-term effects of redefining marriage.

The conclusions in the research literature typically amount at best to claims that a particular study found “no evidence” of bad effects from child rearing by same-sex couples. One could just as easily say that there is no reliable evidence that such child-rearing practices are beneficial or harmless. And that is the conclusion that should be relevant to the court.

Social-science advocacy organizations, however, have promoted the myth that a lack of evidence, so far, of bad effects implies the nonexistence of such effects. This myth is based on conjecture or faith, not science.

Read more from this story HERE.

Has the President Ever Heard of a “Stay-cation”?

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So Obama finally made it to Israel. It was great. He saw the sights, gave a few talks, toured ancient holy places, and had a few meetings, but no long hours hammering out a budget, no tense negotiations on entitlement reform, or meeting with his now defunct “jobs council” for an all night brainstorming session. It was photo ops and “behind the velvet rope” tours, and of course, fine dining as the royal taster made the journey as well.

All in all, what most of us would call a great working vacation.

And so, after all that, it was of course time for…

Well, another vacation.

Great.

You know, President Bush used to go to Crawford alot..and he took alot of flak in the media for it… But that was his house, and he had it set up like a second White House, with a war room, communications office, etc..so while it was a vacation, it wasn’t a vacation like this guy takes ’em. He invited and met with dignitaries there, and other heads of state, and while they weren’t Jay-Z or Beyonce, they were names some people thought relevant at the time.. Blair, Putin, Et al. So there was a difference.

There was much I disliked about the former president’s time in office. He spent too much, he compromised with disastrous consequence, and he created more government, when what we needed was less.

But he did seem to hold more reverence for the office than its current occupant. He stopped golf altogether after he sent men to war, he attended his own daily security briefs, he didn’t stoop to partisan name calling from his high office. In fact, other than dictators and terrorists, I don’t think I heard the guy say a bad word about anyone while president.

But what distresses me more than this president taking lots of vacations on the taxpayers dime, and not appearing to feel he needs to exert the kind of daily toil to produce results in a process most of us so quaintly refer to as “work”, is while everyone is being told they need to pay more of their “fair share”, or share in the “pain”, this guy and his wife and kids literally go all over the world on these work “free” vacations, on OUR dime.

Do I even need to mention the Golf? Really? Reeaallyy…

So much, for the proletariat.

One of the true marvels of human history, is how the populist left will always elect as its leaders, the absolutely most bourgeois of the bourgeois, to rule over them. I mean, these guys..Stalin, Lennon, Chavez..they really have a taste for the finer things and could care less about, say, inner city crime, unemployment, education, or least of all, whether the “people’s” dollars and resources are spent wisely.

With that in mind, this has to be the most bourgeois American president, at least in my lifetime, that I have ever seen..and I’m finding, not only do I really not like this guy, I’m finding that its actually turning me off to even the IDEA of a president.

If it’s just supposed to be a pompous ass who tells me how greedy I am, how much I cling to my gun and my bibles, and how everyone needs to pitch in, while he closes down country clubs for a million dollars a day to golf with Tiger.. Or he and his wife take separate jets to an environmental conference.. If that’s what the office is, then that’s it. I’m out.

A “Monarch” for the “Oligarchs”? Because make no mistake, this is not just him, it’s the majority of the folks down there in DC right now. Most of them, were they in his shoes, no matter what color their feet or what letter in parentheses by their name, would be treating the job and the trust we put in that office with a similar lack of dignity and respect, as they do their own, right now.

If you think this is hyperbole or satire, then go there. Watch how they work and what that town is about. Harry Reid and Mark Begich have more in common with Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell, than any of them have with their own constituency. How could they? They pass laws they are exempt from, that you and I have to follow. They have a 90+ percent reelection rate. They spend their careers together and the vast majority of their time there in that town, at “court” with the other lords and ladies and courtesans, lording over their fiefdoms and dukedoms, whiling away their days in relative luxury, safe from the repercussions of their action or inaction because of the power they enjoy and the system that keeps them there.

Their kids go to the same schools, they shop at the same shops, live in the same neighborhoods, get the same fringe benefits, and are typically bought and owned, to one degree or another, by the same interests, on the corporate level, and by mirror image political groups on the “non-profit” level (another joke).

The ruling class.

American Royalty.

Every trite little small government slur to describe the state of our elected officials in federal government, and you know what? If you have ever been there, and seen them, behind the rope, away from the cameras, in the little town houses they keep empty by day and fill with pheasant and wine, congressmen and senators, money men and lobbyists and millionaires deal makers, by night.. then you know.

It’s exactly right.

To say the “majesty of the office” has “lost a bit of its luster”, is a bit of an understatement. It is a sad self parody of what we have let happen to this once great nation. The “joke”, as it were, is on us.

The presidency used to mean something. I’m not so sure it does anymore. Judging by the time the current occupant spends actually doing the job..

I’m not the only one that feels that way.

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Dr Walter Campbell is a lifelong Alaskan, former Marine, and physician.

The Argument For “Marriage Equality” Is NOT a Conservative One

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Photo Credit: RedState

This week the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on same California’s Prop 8 and a section of the Defense of Marriage Act which deals with benefits for same sex couples. Same sex marriage is front and center once again and I’ve heard some interesting arguments on how supporting government involvement in defining marriage is a “conservative” ideal. During the Sunday morning talk show circuit, former Bush communications adviser took the moderate position emerging within the GOP against American Values’ Gary Bauer. Nicole Wallace tried to argue that supporting “marriage equality” is a conservative position. No, it is not.

I’ve never understood how anyone who spent the past four-plus years lamenting the size of government could then argue for its increase by inviting it into the discussion of marriage. We complain about government in health care, we complain about government in education, we complain about government regulating soft drink size, but suddenly some of us have no problem with more government in people’s relationships with one another. Marriage is a covenant between a man, woman, and God before God on His terms. It is a religious civil liberty, not a right granted by government. It should never have been regulated by government in the first place, and government shouldn’t have an expanded reach in further regulating it now. There is no allowance constitutionally that invites our government to define the religious covenant of marriage.

I’ve no issue with same sex couples entering into contractual agreements with each other or sharing benefits (the military decisions should be made by those with the credit of service day in and day out, not civilian advocacy groups). Isn’t that the goal of this conflict? If so, to me, that’s an issue separate from marriage. In suing over “marriage” itself one is demanding that God change His definition of the union between a man and a woman. If recognition of status, ease with other contractual obligations, and other issues are the issues, why the need to force people of faith to alter recognition of God’s Word on the matter? The people may bend as reeds to lawfare, but God will not. Frankly, I see no point in being on any side other than God’s on any matter, and God is more small government than any player in the scene.

In suing over marriage one is demanding that others modify their beliefs to accommodate another. Do not people of faith retain their First Amendment liberty of freedom of religion?

California voters in Prop 8 are awaiting to see if elections in their state matter. Advocacy groups vilified Mormons yet according to numerous local media reports based on exit polling data, black and latino communities provided “key support” in the passage of Prop 8. The left had a more difficult time vilifying these voting blocs because it’s harder to ask them for votes later. Despite democracy in our constitutional republic working as it should, voters were sued to have their votes in a taxpayer-paid-for election overturned. The gap in the door will widen for lawsuits if the goal of homogenization isn’t realized. Prop 8 is just the beginning. Do you doubt?

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare: the Last Stake in the Coffin of Individual Liberty and American Prosperity

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Photo Credit: RedState

Although there were many warnings that Obamacare would be a disaster of epic proportions before it became law, today, less than a year from its true implementation, we are seeing the actual consequences begin to materialize.

Millions of jobs will be lost, one small company at a time. People will have a difficult time finding a full time job.Healthcare premiums will be going up. There will be a doctor shortage. Obamacare will become a regulatory anvil around the neck of American prosperity. Luckily though the Obama administration is on the job seeking to ensure that it doesn’t become a “third world experience“. Which, it’s looking like it just might become. And to put a cherry on top, with our practically no existent GDP growth, apparently we can look forward to China overtaking the United States by 2016.

As bad as those things are, it actually gets worse. Your individual liberty is simply going to disappear. Many employees are now going to have to begin reveling to employers their weight, body fat measures, cholesterol levels and more. Pharmacy giant CVS states that all its employees will now have to either quit smoking or enroll in an addiction program by 2014. That is of course because smokers generally have higher healthcare costs than do nonsmokers, and since CVS is paying for that healthcare, they get to make the rules. Don’t like it? Then quit.

But then it’s not only smokers who cost more. Fat people generally cost more than thin people. Does that mean that a company can dictate that employees must be Oreo or Doritos or Coke free by the end of the year or enroll in an addiction program? How about motorcycle riders? They are 5 times more likely to be involved in a traffic accident than are car drivers. Does that mean that companies can tell you what you what kind of vehicle you can drive? How about unmarried women having sex out of wedlock, particularly minority women, where 77% of black births and 53% of Hispanic births are to unwed mothers? Given that sick children inflict an increased financial & healthcare burden on unwed mothers than they do on married mothers, can a company demand that unmarried female employees purchase and utilize birth control? (If so, how would they ensure compliance with usage?) Sure, all of this sounds farfetched, but so too once did the idea of schools telling moms what they can put in their children’s lunchboxes, cities banning Happy Meals and soft drinks and companies actually firing employees for being smokers.

At the end of the day, Obamacare may very well be the last stake in the coffin of individual liberty and American prosperity.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sequester and We’re Still Funding Planned Parenthood?!

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Photo Credit: Fibonacci Blue

When it comes to the latest round of budget cuts, there’s one big problem that should bother everyone: Washington’s continued funding of Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion chain.

First, the facts: Each year, Planned Parenthood receives hundreds of millions of dollars from you, the taxpayer — and the total is rising. This past year, Planned Parenthood got $542 million from the government (i.e., from you and me), which accounts for almost half (45%) of the abortion chain’s budget. Abortions at Planned Parenthood are rising, while other services are falling. And Planned Parenthood recently mandated that all of its affiliates perform abortions, causing at least one affiliate to sever ties with America’s abortion boss.

All this says nothing of the fact that Planned Parenthood is flush with cash, having reported excess revenue of $87.4 million and $1.2 billion in total assets last year. Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s CEO, makes nearly $400,000 a year. And yet the biggest abortion provider in America somehow still calls itself a non-profit.

And what does Planned Parenthood do with this money? The spokespeople for Big Abortion will tell you that there’s no way for public money to go toward abortion, but this is an outright lie. We know that money is fungible; the rent, the staff, the utilities — all of which support abortion procedures, no matter how indirectly — are propped up with our money. Whether we want to or not, we’re all forced to fund the taking of innocent human lives for profit.

Just before the sequester passed, the White House released a document detailing exactly what would get cut. It’s a great resource, and we all should use it to ask some questions.

Read more from this story HERE.

Polygamy (and Much Worse) will Follow Gay Marriage

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Photo Credit: Fibonacci Blue

With the Supreme Court set this week to hear two historic challenges to the traditional definition of marriage, pro-family advocates are charging that legalizing gay marriage would “inevitably” lead to the legalization of polygamy as well.

“No question about it,” Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview Monday afternoon. “If you make the ultimate value a person’s right to express their sexuality with another person and to have that identified as marriage, then how do you keep polygamy from happening?

“How do keep consensual adult siblings from getting married?” he added. “How do you keep a consensual father and adult daughter from getting married? Incest and polygamy will come right after it.”

Land’s conclusion: “You shatter the definition of marriage if you try to expand it to include same-sex marriage.” Land is far from the only social conservative making that argument. The Christian legal organization Liberty Counsel filed a brief with the Supreme Court that states: “Ultimately, there is no principled basis for recognizing a legality of same-sex marriage without simultaneously providing a basis for the legality of consensual polygamy or certain adult incestuous relationships.”

The remarks of Land, a leading social conservative, came in the context of what is expected to be one of the most important weeks in the history of the battle that pro-family forces are waging to preserve the traditional definition of marriage, as the Supreme Court holds two hearings on gay-marriage cases.

Read more from this story HERE.

Court Shouldn’t Rewrite Law On Gay Marriage

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Photo Credit: CNN

“Pediatrics Group Backs Gay Marriage, Saying It Helps Children,” proclaims a headline in The New York Times. But the advocacy group presented no new studies, no new data, to support this claim. And the studies the group cites have been shown to be insufficient to come to this conclusion about same-sex parenting.

Turns out the press release, picked up nationwide, was a PR stunt aimed at influencing the Supreme Court. The nine justices are set to hear oral arguments Tuesday and Wednesday in two cases about the constitutionality of marriage laws.

Today, 41 states define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Marriage is at the center of an intense national debate, a family-by-family, state-by state conversation that CNN substantively encourages by making room for varying perspectives and supplying state-based data. However, CNN risks obscuring that conversation about what marriage is by framing the issue as measurable by an “LGBT rights calculator.”

This writer is for equal rights for all Americans. But no one has the right to redefine marriage. It’s important to future generations that Americans understand what marriage is, why it matters, and the consequences of redefining it. The Supreme Court shouldn’t truncate the debate and redefine marriage by judicial decree to include same-sex relationships.

So what about that release from the American Academy of Pediatrics? Two eminent political scientists, Leon Kass (a professor at University of Chicago) and Harvey Mansfield (a professor at Harvard), filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court cautioning against accepting politicized science: “Claims that science provides support for constitutionalizing a right to same-sex marriage must necessarily rest on ideology. Ideology may be pervasive in the social sciences, especially when controversial policy issues are at stake, but ideology is not science.”

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CBS’s “Amazing Race” Assaults America With Communist Propaganda

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Photo Credit: IrishCentral

Last Sunday the prime time and popular CBS reality show “Amazing Race” found it’s contestants in Vietnam, racing through the streets of Hanoi in the shows hybridized, scavenger hunt, searching for landmarks and clues.

To many of the viewers, this was an opportunity to see an everyday slice of life of a country that used to be our enemy. It was a time to recognize a new era and a time to mend old wounds from a violent time in both countries history.

But instead of a friendly view into a culture and country that is trying to mend ways with America and establish trade relations, it was an opportunity to assault America with communist propaganda….Pure and simple, it was a thumb in the eye to America, aided and abetted by one of the U.S. main stream media channels, CBS.

Insulting to Americans was the enshrined twisted wreckage of an American plane that resulted in the death Americans. This wreckage played a prominent part of the show as each set of contestants had to find a waypoint at the corner of “B-52 Street.”

But to add insult to injury, contestants had to learn a song performed for them by children in front of a portrait of North Vietnam communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Lyrics included: “Vietnam Communist Party is glorious. The light is guiding us to victory.”

This script for this show came straight out of a communist propaganda film, the only thing missing was Jane Fond manning an anti aircraft gun.

Outrage is mounting among Americans and veterans of the Vietnam war over the insensitivity of this show. There are growing calls of a boycott and demands for an apology from CBS as well as the producers.

It’s hard to believe the shows producers couldn’t see they were being used by the Vietnamese to insult America…Even harder to believe CBS didn’t realize what a slap in the face this would be for Americans who lost family members and loved ones during this war.

But what about the contestants on the show? Didn’t it even dawn on them that they were useful idiots in a choreographed propaganda piece used to hurt their country? Why didn’t one of them stand up and refuse to be a part of it?

A shame on CBS, Amazing Race, it’s producers and contestants.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Senate Republicans Willfully And Knowingly Lie To Their Constituents

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Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Last night, having noted the list of Republicans in the Senate who voted to fund Obamacare in yesterday’s Morning Briefing, I went through a series of emails from readers.

Readers from Texas, Kentucky, Utah, South Dakota, and Georgia all had the same story. They’d called the offices of Senators Chambliss, Cornyn, Hatch, Thune, McConnell, and Isakson to object to those senators funding Obamacare. They were all told by these Senate offices that these Senators had voted to defund Obamacare or, in the case of Senator Cornyn’s office, that there had been no vote on defunding Obamacare.

These Senators and their staffs are lying. They voted to fund Obamacare. More troubling, they know they did it.

Yesterday, on the floor of the Senate, Mitch McConnell again said, “Obamacare is a colossal mistake for our country. . . . We need to start all over. This bill needs to be repealed and it needs to be replaced. . . . And anyone who thinks we’ve given up this fight is dead wrong.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Experts To Congress: US Law Should Be Changed to Require Permanent Storage of Billions Of Private Text Messages, Emails

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text messages

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

In a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee Tuesday, a panel of technology law experts called on Congress to pass legislation mandating the long-term retention of every American’s text messages and emails in case of a future criminal investigation.

“Billions of texts are sent every day, and some surely contain key evidence about criminal activity,” said Richard Littlehale of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and a member of the panel in his written statement. “Text messaging often plays a big role in investigations related to domestic violence, stalking, menacing, drug trafficking, and weapons trafficking.”

The hearing was held to discuss potential new provisions of the outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986. The panel’s suggestions included longer retention times of interpersonal electronic messages as well as the creation of and expedited federal access to these databases. Not everyone was pleased with the panel’s recommendations.

“From a consumer privacy perspective, from a network security perspective, let alone the cost perspective of storing the tens of billions of messages that are sent around the various networks … it’s really an unwieldy and unworkable idea,” said a telecommunication executive, providing background information on the proposal.

The executive cited recent worldwide hackings as an example of potential risk to public safety and security when it comes to maintaining such a database.

Read more from this story HERE.