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Slate: 'Marriage Equality' Includes Polygamy

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As a lawyer in the same-sex marriage litigation at the Supreme Court who has spent a couple years working through all the implications of declaring a constitutional right to gay marriage, it became clear that such a declaration would also mean there is a right to polygamy. When I previously explained these reasons, gay marriage supporters said the country would never go there. Well, now the far-left magazine Slate has come out with a full-throated endorsement of polygamous marriage.

For thousands of years, Western Civilization has always recognized three elements to marriage. It is the union of (1) two consenting adults, (2) of opposite sex, (3) who are not close blood relatives. Gay marriage advocates say the second element can be jettisoned. I’ve always asked why those same people say the first element cannot be touched.

Slate believes, “Legalized polygamy in the United States is the constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive choice.”

They’re wrong on all counts. On the constitutional issue, for liberties not found in the text of the Constitution (where marriage is never mentioned once), the Supreme Court has held a fundamental right is one that is “deeply rooted in the history and traditions” of the American people. Marriage of one man and one woman satisfy this test, which is why the Court held in the 1878 case Reynolds v. U.S. that there is no constitutional right to polygamy. It’s also why there is no right to gay marriage but why laws against marriage between different racial groups are clearly unconstitutional.

Slate elaborates on their reasoning:

The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less “correct” than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority—a tiny minority, in fact—freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us.

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State Sues Florist Over Refusing Service for Gay Wedding

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Photo Credit: DeanieMichelleEvents

The state attorney general has filed a lawsuit in Benton County Superior Court against a Richland florist who refused to provide flowers for the wedding of longtime gay customers, citing her religious opposition to same-sex marriage.

The state’s suit against Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts, came just days after the Attorney General’s Office wrote to ask that Stutzman reconsider her position and agree to comply with the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

“Under the Consumer Protection Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against customers on the basis of sexual orientation,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. “If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same-sex couples the same product or service.”

JD Bristol, attorney for Arlene’s, said his client has many customers and employees who are gay and the claim that she is “discriminating on the basis on sexual orientation is nonsense.”

“This is about gay marriage, it’s not about a person being gay,” Bristol said. “She has a conscientious objection to homosexual marriage, not homosexuality. It violates her conscience.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Gay Marriage Champion Bill O'Reilly Given $10,000 Challenge to Fairly Debate Issue

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A ministry is putting up $10,000 to challenge Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, regularly the top-rated show on cable television, for a debate over his description of Christians who follow the Bible as, well, “Bible-thumpers.”

Rev. Bill Keller, whose has created the Live Prayer presence on the web, and previously has been a guest on Fox shows such as O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Neal Cavuto, told WND he’s putting up $10,000 and challenging O’Reilly to do the same.

Then there would be a six-minute debate over homosexual “marriage” on O’Reilly’s show – O’Reilly talking for three minutes, then Keller making the biblical argument against homosexual “marriage” for three minutes. O’Reilly’s audience would determine the winner and the sum would go to a charity of that person’s choice.

“O’Reilly says that those who support God’s plan for marriage lose the argument because all they can do is ‘thump the Bible.’ Let him put his money where his mouth is. We will each put up $10,000 to the charity of our choice, he can make his case for gay marriage, and I will ONLY use the Bible to make the case for traditional marriage,” Keller said.

O’Reilly had originally said on his own program,””The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. That’s where the compelling argument is. ‘We’re Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else.’ That is a compelling argument, and to deny that, you gotta have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible.”

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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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Another RINO Embraces Gay Marriage

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Sen. Mark Kirk bucked most of his fellow Republicans on Tuesday, becoming the second GOP senator to publicly endorse same-sex marriages…

“When I climbed the Capitol steps in January, I promised myself that I would return to the Senate with an open mind and greater respect for others,” The Illinois senator said in a statement. “Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage…”

Read more from this story HERE.

Read about Alaska’s Senator Murkowski’s “evolving” homosexual marriage views HERE.

Krauthammer: Gay Marriage Cases May Presage ‘Assault On Religion’

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On this weekend’s broadcast of “Inside Washington,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said the two gay marriage cases currently before the Supreme Court could lead to an all-out assault on religion in the United States…

“It gets really sticky,” Krauthammer said. “If the court were to decide that to deny same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, then you got Georgetown University – a Jesuit university [that offers] married student housing. It’s a Catholic University. So [when] it says it’s only going to allow heterosexuals, it will get sued. This will become an assault on religion. And the religions, which I think are sincere in their beliefs, are going to be under assault and under attack.”

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Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer Threaten To Leave GOP Over Gay Marriage (+video)

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Photo Credit: On Top Mag

Social conservatives Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer are threatening to leave the Republican Party if it softens its stance against gay marriage.

After the Republican National Committee (RNC) released a report which called for less vocal opposition to gay rights, several conservatives reacted angrily.

“The vast majority of the GOP base believes that marriage is a non-negotiable plank of the national platform,” said Perkins, president of the Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC). “If the RNC abandons marriage, evangelicals will either sit the elections out completely, or move to create a third party. Either option puts Republicans on the path to a permanent minority.”
In an interview with Newsmax, Huckabee, a former GOP candidate for president, said the GOP risks alienating its base over the issue.

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The Death of the Family: Delusion and Parochialism About Marriage

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Photo Credit: National Review

Gay marriage? It came up at dinner Down Under this time last year, and the prominent Aussie politician on my right said matter-of-factly, “It’s not about expanding marriage, it’s about destroying marriage.”

That would be the most obvious explanation as to why the same societal groups who assured us in the Seventies that marriage was either (a) a “meaningless piece of paper” or (b) institutionalized rape are now insisting it’s a universal human right. They’ve figured out what, say, terrorist-turned-educator Bill Ayers did — that, when it comes to destroying core civilizational institutions, trying to blow them up is less effective than hollowing them out from within.

On the other hand, there are those who argue it’s a victory for the powerful undertow of bourgeois values over the surface ripples of sexual transgressiveness: Gays will now be as drearily suburban as the rest of us. A couple of years back, I saw a picture in the paper of two chubby old queens tying the knot at City Hall in Vancouver, and the thought occurred that Western liberalism had finally succeeded in boring all the fun out of homosexuality.

Which of these alternative scenarios — the demolition of marriage or the taming of the gay — will come to pass? Most likely, both. In the upper echelons of society, our elites practice what they don’t preach. Scrupulously nonjudgmental about everything except traditional Christian morality, they nevertheless lead lives in which, as Charles Murray documents in his book Coming Apart, marriage is still expected to be a lifelong commitment. It is easy to see moneyed gay newlyweds moving into such enclaves, and making a go of it. As the Most Reverend Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said just before his enthronement the other day, “You see gay relationships that are just stunning in the quality of the relationship.” “Stunning”: What a fabulous endorsement! But, amongst the type of gay couple that gets to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he’s probably right.

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Mark Steyn: Ted Olson ‘Lazy,’ Interracial Marriage Laws Irrelevant to Same-Sex Debate

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On Hugh Hewitt’s Thursday night radio program, National Review columnist Mark Steyn said former Solicitor General Ted Olson is fundamentally wrong to cite the landmark 1967 Loving v. Virginia case — which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage — as evidence that gay marriage should be legal, because that case fundamentally understood marriage as the union of a man and a woman…

Steyn, author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” said that unlike laws prohibiting same-sex marriage, restrictions on interracial marriage ran flatly contrary to that generations-old, traditional conception of marriage.

“Ted Olson said, well, you know, once upon a time, we banned interracial marriage, so this is exactly the same as Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that struck down interracial marriage,” Steyn said. ”Justice [Anthony] Kennedy said, … ’What are you on about?’ … Interracial marriage is basically an invention of 19th-century America that was at odds with existing common law marriage, as it had been for hundreds of years.”

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Rush Limbaugh Says Homosexual Marriage ‘Is Lost’ For Social Conservatives, ‘It is Now Inevitable’ (+video)

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Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is throwing in the towel on the issue of gay marriage. He said “it is now inevitable” that “the issue is lost” for social conservatives…

Many people who oppose gay marriage have “no animosity” towards gay people at all but want to preserve their values, Limbaugh explained. He went on to say that it appears gay marriage will be legalized at the federal level in the future.

Watch video here:

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