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Red, Divided and Blue Fly This Independence Day

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

It seems entirely revealing, if dispiriting, that the days before the July Fourth holiday showed Red America and Blue America pulling apart at an accelerating rate.

Of all of our national holidays, Independence Day is the one most intimately rooted in our common history and shared experience. Yet this year it arrives against a background of polarization, separation, and confrontation in the states and Washington alike. With municipal politics as the occasional exception, the pattern of solidifying agreement within the parties—and widening disagreement between them—is dominating our decisions at every level.

On almost all of our major policy choices, the common thread is that the election of 2012 did not “break the fever” of polarization, as President Obama once hoped it might. Last November, Obama became only the third Democrat in the party’s history to win a majority of the popular vote twice. But congressional Republicans, preponderantly representing the minority that voted against Obama, have conceded almost nothing to his majority—leaving the two sides at a stalemate. Meanwhile, beyond the Beltway, states that lean Democratic and those that lean Republican are separating at a frenetic pace.

Consider a few recent headlines. The Supreme Court decision upholding the lower-court invalidation of California’s Proposition 8 restored gay marriage in the nation’s largest state. It also capped a remarkable 2013 march for gay marriage through blue states, including Delaware, Minnesota, and Rhode Island (with Illinois and New Jersey possibly joining before long). The consensus is solidifying fast enough that 2014 could see several blue-state Republican gubernatorial candidates running on accepting gay-marriage statutes as settled law. Former California Lt. Gov Abel Maldonado, a likely 2014 GOP gubernatorial contender who this week reversed his earlier opposition to support gay marriage, may be an early straw in that breeze.

The story in red states, though, remains very different. Almost all of them have banned gay marriage.

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Same-Sex Couples Flood Immigration Offices For Visas

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Kori Kirkbride didn’t get that immediate feeling of joy and relief when she heard the Supreme Court had struck down the Defense of Marriage Act.

Instead, it hit after she talked to her attorney, and found out that the court’s decision will allow her Polish wife, Kasia Kurzatkowska, to apply for a green card, putting an end to a heart-wrenching seven years in which the two have been periodically separated by immigration laws.

“When we sat with our attorney, it became real,” said Kirkbride, 40, of Walnut Creek, Calif. “Waiting for this decision was like waiting to find out if you are pregnant – your whole life can change if you are. Now, we can have a future and buy a house, and have a child.”

Kirkbride and Kurzatkowska are among an estimated 26,000 same-sex couples in the U.S. with one partner who is not a U.S. citizen. Under the law, a subset of these couples – those who are married or considering marriage – had been prevented from applying for green cards for their spouses or fiances.

In the last decade, some of those non-citizens have been deported, even though they were legally married. Many others have been in a legal limbo, with one partner living undocumented in the United States. Some couples have left the country entirely to be somewhere they can both work and live legally.

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Bert and Ernie Come Out in New Yorker Magazine (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

In the hotly contested debate over whether “Sesame Street” characters Bert and Ernie are homosexual, the iconic puppets have apparently come out of the closet on the latest cover of the New Yorker magazine.

The famous characters are depicted snuggling up together in front of a TV while looking at an image of the Supreme Court justices in their black robes.

“It’s amazing to witness how attitudes on gay rights have evolved in my lifetime,” said Jack Hunter, the artist behind the cover. “This is great for our kids, a moment we can all celebrate.” Hunter calls the image, “Moment of Joy.”

There have long been rumors about the nature of Bert and Ernie’s relationship.

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Obama’s Call for Tolerance of Homosexuality Publicly Rebuked by President of Senegal

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Dave Boyer. A day after the Supreme Court granted victories to same-sex couples in the U.S., President Obama’s visit to Africa got off to a rough start when his call for tolerance of gays on the continent was rebuffed publicly by the president of Senegal, where homosexuality is a crime.

“People should be treated equally,” Mr. Obama said Thursday at a news conference in Dakar, Senegal, on the first full day of his three-nation tour of the continent.

He said that although Africans have a variety of religions and customs and “we have to respect the diversity of views” of people who personally oppose gay rights, the laws of African nations must grant all people equal protection, regardless of sexual orientation.

“I want the African people just to hear what I believe … when it comes to how the state treats people, how the law treats people, I believe that everybody has to be treated equally,” Mr. Obama said.

That view was promptly rejected by Senegal’s President Macky Sall, who was sharing the stage with Mr. Obama. Read more from this story HERE.

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Nancy Pelosi: ‘Thank God’ for gay ‘marriage’ rulings

By Ben Johnson. Among those celebrating the two Supreme Court’s rulings handed down yesterday that favor the homosexual political agenda is former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who told Politico her first reaction was, “Thank God.”

Pelosi, who regularly identifies herself as a “devout” practicing Catholic, said the Deo gratias poured out of her heart the moment she heard that the High Court effectively overturned her home state’s Proposition 8 and invalidated a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) by a 5-4 margin in two cases.

“I was thinking when we were walking over here, ‘I’ll be devastated if it’s anything other than that’ for two reasons,” she said. “For what it means for the lives of people first and foremost, but secondly it’s clearly unconstitutional. I’m glad to hear that the court agrees.”

Another prominent figure who expressed gratitude that DOMA was repealed is the same president that turned the federal marriage bill into settled law for 17 years. President Bill Clinton, who signed DOMA without fanfare or a photo op in a late night ceremony in 1996, said, “By overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, the Court recognized that discrimination towards any group holds us all back in our efforts to form a more perfect union. ”

His wife, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, joined his statement. During her tenure as Secretary of State, Hilary put the promotion of homosexuality at the heart of U.S. foreign policy, a tactic continued by her successor, John Kerry. Read more from this story HERE.

Yes, You Will Be Made to Care

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Photo Credit: au.ibtimes

Photo Credit: au.ibtimes

You will be made to care about gay marriage. You may think it does not affect you or will not affect you or you can support it and leave well enough alone, but you cannot. The secular left and aggressive gay rights activists will not allow you to.

You must either fully embrace it or be shunned. You may think it does not affect your marriage, your life, or anything else, but you will be made to care — you will not be allowed to accept that others can disagree on the issue due to their orthodox faith. The slow march toward the destruction of the marital institution now picks up pace with Anthony Kennedy’s decision in Windsor. What is, at its heart, a tax case, became a vehicle for Kennedy to declare malicious intent on the preservation of marriage.

That’s clear from the decision. In the 90′s, the Defense of Marriage Act was enacted to preserve and recognize the traditional marital structure that the United States had had since its founding. But Anthony Kennedy declared that the purpose was ill will toward gays — ignoring that activists were seeking to upend the order of things as they had been.

This decision will be used to advance on the states. A muddled equal protection message will be used to force accommodations some are not willing to make and some cannot make because of their religion.

Luckily, we have been given time to erect firewalls. The Court’s decision leaves in place the portion of DOMA that allows states to refuse recognition to gay marriages performed in other states. That will fall in the next few years. Once that happens, there will be an even messier culture war designed to treat traditionalism as a noxious notion of a bygone era — the equivalent of Jim Crow.

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Scalia: ‘High-Handed’ Kennedy Has Declared Us ‘Enemies of the Human Race’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Dissenting from this morning’s opinion on the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Antonin Scalia – as expected – holds nothing back.

In a ripping dissent, Scalia says that Justice Anthony Kennedy and his colleagues in the majority have resorted to calling opponents of gay marriage “enemies of the human race.”

But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to con- demn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to “dis- parage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homo- sexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence— indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.

Scalia says that the court’s holding – while limited to the Defense of Marriage Act – is a sure sign that the majority is willing to declare gay marriage a constitutional right.

It takes real cheek for today’s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here—when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority’s moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress’s hateful moral judgment against it. I promise you this: The only thing that will “confine” the Court’s holding is its sense of what it can get away with.

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Limbaugh: ‘Looks Like Doom, Unavoidable Doom’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

In the wake of a string of recent advances for Barack Obama’s left-leaning agenda, radio’s Rush Limbaugh, the top-rated voice on the political right, admitted Wednesday there appears on the surface to be little hope in rescuing America.

“It all looks like doom, unavoidable doom,” Limbaugh lamented.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage as the union between a man and woman to be unconstitutional.

But Limbaugh pointed out that was just one of a number of leftist initiatives moving ahead at full throttle.

“If amnesty happens,” he explained, “seven years from now this gonna be an entirely different country – politically, culturally, linguistically. It’d be different in six months if that happens. But that’s not isolated. Amnesty happens after Obamacare, and Obama’s efforts on climate change and so forth.”

“It looks like we’re headed to one-party rule!” he exclaimed.

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Gay Marriage Rulings Make MSNBC Sad Because They Gut ‘Power Of Federal Government’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Mediaite

Photo Credit: Mediaite

Well, at least she’s consistent.

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry joined anchor Thomas Roberts on Wednesday to react to the Supreme Court’s rulings on the cases relating to gay marriage rights in the United States. Harris-Perry threw cold water on the celebrations ongoing at 30 Rock when she lamented the Court’s decision to not rule in the case against Proposition 8. She said that this ruling, along with other decisions the Court handed down this session, “gut the power of the federal government” and prevent Washington D.C. from declaring gay marriage the law in all 50 states.

“It’s been kind of a rocky week for rulings from the Supreme Court,” Roberts opined.

Harris-Perry agreed and apologized for being the cautious voice in the room and interrupting the “celebratory” atmosphere on MSNBC.

“As much as those of us who are allies of this movement, and those of us how’ve been working hard on the question of marriage equality would like to read this in the broadest sense,” Harris-Perry began. “What they did, all week long – from the beginning to the end of this week so far – is to gut the power of the federal government.”

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Rand Paul: Defense of Marriage Act Defenders are Going to 'Lose that Battle'

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that conservatives fighting to uphold the federal definition of marriage as between one man and one woman are going to “lose that battle.”

Paul suggested in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) that marriage should be defined by the states, rather than federally.

“If we keep it that way, maybe we can still have the discussion go on without making the decision go all the way one way or all the way the other way. Because I think, right now, if we say, ‘Oh, we’re only going to have, we believe in a federally mandated one-man-one-woman marriage,’ we’re going to lose that battle, because the country’s going the other way right now,” he said.

The Supreme Court is currently considering a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

Paul’s comments reflect the opinion shared among many libertarians, that defining marriage should be left up to the states. But conservative activists, and many GOP lawmakers, have defended the act, arguing it protects traditional marriage.

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Pelosi: Opposing DOMA Is Honoring The Constitution (+video)

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday she and President Barack Obama are “honoring the Constitution” by opposing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

“And given a choice I think we would all say we’re honoring, as the president does, the Constitution,” Pelosi said, after she attended the second day of oral arguments before the Supreme Court on two key same sex marriage cases.

“When you pass a bill in the House, as we did with the health care bill, we made it iron clad constitutionally,” the California congresswoman said.

“You have a responsibility to honor the Constitution,” she said. “In fact, we take an oath to do just that, and that is the oath that President Obama is upholding.

“We weigh equities,” Pelosi continued. “Congress passes a bill. It’s questionable in terms of constitutionality. There’s no question about your oath to the Constitution of the United States, and the behavior of the Republicans in the House of Representatives on this subject has been so irresponsible.

Watch video here:

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