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Gay Couples Marry in Arkansas, Most Clerks Sit Out

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

More than 200 gay couples obtained Arkansas marriage licenses Monday after a judge tossed out the state’s 10-year-old same-sex marriage ban, but only at a handful of courthouses as an overwhelming majority of county clerks in this part of the Bible Belt said they first wanted the state Supreme Court to weigh in.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel — who recently announced his personal support for same-sex marriage rights but said he would defend the law — filed paperwork Monday to at least temporarily preserve the ban, which voters approved by a 3-to-1 margin.

In other states that have seen gay-marriage bans overturned, judges either issued stays with their orders or state lawyers sought them with some immediacy. McDaniel’s office requested a stay from the local judge Friday night but had to wait until the full court record was available Monday before going to the state Supreme Court, under the justices’ rules. Justices gave both sides until midday Tuesday to file arguments.

Seventy of the state’s 75 clerks have not granted licenses. A handful of clerks, including one who granted licenses Monday, filed a stay request saying the judge’s decision didn’t address a law that threatens clerks with fines for “wrongful issuance of a marriage license.”

With the weddings Saturday and Monday, Arkansas became the 18th state to allow same-sex marriages, and the first among former states of the Confederacy.

Read more from this story HERE.

It’s Time to Protect Religious Liberty in the Marriage Debate (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

For years, a central argument of those in favor of same-sex marriage has been that all Americans should be free to live and love as they choose; however, does that freedom require the government to coerce those who disagree into celebrating same-sex relationships? A growing number of incidents demonstrates that the redefinition of marriage and state policies on sexual orientation have created a climate of intolerance and intimidation for citizens who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and that sexual relations are properly reserved for marriage.

Now these citizens are facing a new wave of government coercion and discrimination. State laws that create special privileges based on sexual orientation and gender identity are being used to trump fundamental civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion.

Consider the case of Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene Flowers, who is being sued by the state of Washington. In March 2013, she met with long-time customers who asked her to arrange the flowers for their same-sex wedding ceremony. Stutzman felt that she had to decline because of her “relationship with Jesus Christ,” and her belief that marriage is between one man and one woman. While she was happy to sell and arrange flowers for any other occasion (the same-sex couple were happy costumers of hers for nine years), she didn’t want to use her artistic skills to help celebrate a same-sex wedding ceremony.

As Stutzman explains:

I think most artistic people—especially painters—put their hearts into their arrangements. It’s part of them, it’s part of who they are. And I think that’s the same thing with a florist.

A month later, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed suit against Stutzman, contending that she had violated the state’s sexual orientation law. The state of Washington is seeking a $2,000 fine and a court order forcing Barronelle to violate her conscience by using her artistic talents to celebrate a same-sex relationship.

Stutzman is not the only small business owner whose religious liberty is at risk. As we note in a new Backgrounder, “Protecting Religious Liberty in the State Marriage Debate,” she is joined by other families across the country who are being hauled into court for their belief that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

Cake makers, photographers, family bakeries, and adoption agencies, among others, have faced penalties and lawsuits for working in accordance with their faith.

This shouldn’t happen in America. Part of the genius of the American system of government is its commitment to protecting the liberty and First Amendment freedoms of all citizens while respecting their equality before the law. The government protects the freedom of citizens to seek the truth about God, to worship according to their conscience, and to live out their convictions in public life. Likewise, citizens are free to form contracts and other associations according to their own values.

State and federal policy should respect Americans’ ability to live and work in accordance with their beliefs. Even in states where marriage is redefined, government should not coerce individuals and organizations to violate their moral or religious beliefs about marriage. Although Americans are free to live as they choose, no one should demand that government compel others into celebrating their relationship. And Americans should continue to work for laws that reflect the truth about marriage. If marriage is redefined, attempts to marginalize the view of marriage as one man and one woman will only increase.

For citizens like Barronelle Stutzman, the consequences are becoming apparent. Read more about it here.

This article originally appeared at Heritage.com and is re-published in full with the Heritage Foundation’s permission.

Uninstall Firefox: Boycotts Should Be Rare, but Mozilla’s Intolerance Calls for One

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

In 31 years of broadcasting, and 40 years of writing, I have never advocated a boycott of a product.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, when the Left attempted to destroy Chick-fil-A for its owner’s views on same-sex marriage, I suggested on my radio show that the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, stand in front of a Chick-fil-A restaurant while enjoying some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

In that way, I argued, he could show one of the great moral differences between the Right and the Left. Though Ben and Jerry are leftists, we conservatives do not believe that company owners’ views should matter to consumers. We believe that products should speak for themselves. If the ice cream is good, despite whatever repugnance we might feel regarding the views of the makers of that ice cream, we will still purchase it.

The Left doesn’t see things that way. The Left is out to crush individuals and companies with whom it differs. This is especially true today on the issue of same-sex marriage.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pope Francis: ‘The Image of God is the Married Couple: The Man and the Woman’

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Photo Credit: AP / Gabriel Bouys

Photo Credit: AP / Gabriel Bouys

Although the national gay magazine The Advocate named Pope Francis its “Person of the Year” in December 2013, the Pope repeated on Apr. 2 the Catholic Church’s teaching that marriage is reserved for one man and one woman, adding that this is part of “God’s design” and that “the image of God is the married couple: the man and the woman ….”

During his General Audience speech at St. Peter’s Square on Apr. 2, before a crowd estimated at 45,000, Pope Francis first cited Genesis, saying, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them. … Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

“The image of God is the married couple: the man and the woman; not only the man, not only the woman, but both of them together,” said the Pope. “God’s covenant with us is represented in that covenant between man and woman. And this is very beautiful.”

“When a man and a woman celebrate the Sacrament of Matrimony, God as it were ‘is mirrored’ in them; He impresses in them his own features and the indelible character of his love,” said Pope Francis. “Marriage is the icon of God’s love for us.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Bill Maher: “There Is A Gay Mafia — If You Cross Them, You Do Get Whacked”

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Real Clear Politics.

In the online-only “Overtime” portion of his HBO show Real Time, host Bill Maher weighed in on the Mozilla controversy, and did not react in a way that you would think. Maher seemed to disagree with gay rights activists for targeting Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich because of a 2008 donation to support a ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in California.

“Well, and he gave it when President Obama was still against gay marriage. So, I don’t think it’s very fair,” guest panelist fmr. Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) said.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Sammy James Dodds / Flickr

Photo Credit: Sammy James Dodds / Flickr

It’s Complicated: When A CEO’s Personal Position Becomes Public

By Elise Hu.

The Mozilla controversy that played out over the past two weeks bursts with ironies. And this one is perhaps the most prominent: The free speech that Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich spent his life’s work defending and enabling — and an open-Web revolution Eich helped lead — drove his unseating. It raises questions about how a company leader’s personal convictions should be judged.

After a public, pitched debate over whether Eich was fit to lead given his 2008 donation to California’s Proposition 8, which defined marriage as only between a man and a woman, Eich decided for himself that he wasn’t. He resigned Thursday despite many Mozillians who came to his defense, in response to other Mozillians who called for his ouster.

The Web as it is today might not exist without the brilliant technologist Eich. He invented JavaScript, was an early architect of the Web and co-founded Mozilla, the company and foundation behind the popular Internet browser Firefox. His passion for the Web and its users has always been clear. In a late 2013 interview, he described his charge as “working on the Web and working on making sure the user is king or queen of their experience.”

At Mozilla, putting users first, openness and inclusiveness are core to the organization’s beliefs — and operations. Mozilla’s technology is created in public — in stark contrast to its competitors like Microsoft and Google — and as it became clear when Eich was named CEO, its internal debates are quite public, too.

“This is an organization that is extremely transparent, where a number of employees had said, I don’t feel comfortable being led by this person,” says Anil Dash, a technology startup founder and a longtime Mozilla community member. “It’s been polarizing because this seemed in contradiction to a lot of the values of openness that the organization helped create has espoused.”

Read more from this story HERE.

OkCupid Wants Users to Reject Web Browser Over Gay Marriage

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

By Chuck Ross.

The online dating site OkCupid is blocking users of a popular web browser because the company’s new CEO once made a contribution to a ballot initiative against gay marriage.

“Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples,” reads the message which immediately greets visitors using Firefox, the web’s second most popular browser. “We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.”

Eich’s appointment as CEO generated outrage when it was announced last week.

In 2008, Eich donated $1,000 in support of California’s Prop 8, a ballot initiative defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Several members of Mozilla’s board resigned after Eich’s appointment, though it was reported that the exodus may have been unrelated to his stance on gay marriage.

Eich’s backing of the gay marriage ban also caused controversy in 2012 when it first came to light.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

OkCupid protests Firefox over CEO’s anti-same-sex marriage donation

By Heather Kelly.

Dating site OkCupid is calling for its members to ditch Firefox and use another browser to search for love. The company is protesting Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, who supported an anti-same-sex marriage campaign. Firefox is owned by Mozilla.

When OkCupid members navigate to the site on a Firefox browser, they are met with a message encouraging them to use an alternative browser to access the site, including Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and the amusingly misspelled Internet Exploder.

“Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure,” reads the message.

The page points out that 8% of the matches made on OkCupid are between same-sex couples.

Last week, Mozilla promoted Eich, a longtime employee who was previously the company’s chief technology officer, to the position of CEO. The move prompted renewed outrage by third-party developers and employees. Eich donated $1,000 to support Propostion 8 in 2008. The California ballot initiative sought to ban same-sex marriage in the state. The donation was made public in 2012 but Eich held onto his job.

Read more from this story HERE.

Judge Strikes Down Michigan’s Voter-Approved Ban on Gay Marriage

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Michigan’s ban on gay marriage, approved by voters in a landslide in 2004, was scratched from the state constitution by a federal judge who said the ballot box is no defense to a law that tramples the rights of same-sex couples.

Clerks who handle marriage licenses in Michigan’s 83 counties said they would start granting them to gays and lesbians — three as early as Saturday — although Attorney General Bill Schuette asked a higher court Friday to freeze the landmark ruling while an appeal is pursued. It was not known when a federal appeals court in Cincinnati would respond.

Schuette noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in January stepped in and suspended a similar decision that struck down Utah’s gay-marriage ban.

“A stay would serve the public interest by preserving the status quo … while preventing irreparable injury to the state and its citizens,” he said.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman was historic, following a two-week trial that explored attitudes and research about homosexual marriage and households led by same-sex couples. The judge rejected the conclusions of experts hired by the state to defend the rationale behind a constitutional amendment that recognizes marriage only as between a man and a woman.

Read more from this story HERE.

The First, Legal Gay Marriage In Texas? (+video)

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Photo Credit: WNDJudge Carl Ginsberg presided over two ceremonies its participants believe are the first, legal gay marriage in Texas.

Two couples said their “I-do’s” and all four people consider themselves female. But one member of each couple has had their gender changed surgically from male to female.

“On all of my information, it still says male,” said Ashely Boucher. “So, legally I’m still male in the state of Texas. My presentation would suggest otherwise. But my documentation says that I can marry Genevieve no questions asked.

“If you were born male and became female through being transgendered or having a gender reassignment surgery, they consider you to be biologically male,” said UTA political science professor Thomas Marshall.

The couples struggled to find clerks and judges who would cooperate with the marriages trying as many as 17 courts according to one of the participants, Genevieve Jonte.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fed. Judge Misquotes Constitution in Marriage Ruling, ‘All Men’ Are Created Equal? NYT and NBC News Do Too

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Photo Credit: APIn her ruling yesterday that Virginia’s ban against gay marriage was unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen confused language from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, an error that was quoted in a New York Times story but not corrected by the “newspaper of record,” and also was repeated by NBC News and not corrected.

In the first paragraph of her Feb. 13 ruling for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Allen wrote, “Our Constitution declares that ‘all men’ are created equal. Surely this means all of us.” (See edva-ssm-opinion.pdf)

However, the Constitution does not say that; in fact, the words “all men” do not appear as a phrase in the Constitution at all.

The second paragraph in the Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Kentucky Gay Marriage: Judge Says State Must Recognize Gay Marriages Performed in Other States

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Photo Credit: APA federal judge has ruled that Kentucky must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, pointing not only to recent decisions that have struck down bans in other states but also to older rulings on a person’s right to marry.

The state’s ban treated “gay and lesbian persons differently in a way that demeans them,” U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn wrote Wednesday. While the case dealt with out-of-state marriages, it does not require the state to perform same-sex marriages.

Heyburn cited a long line of cases going back to the legalization of mixed-race marriages and mentioned recent same-sex marriage decisions in nine other states, including Hawaii and Utah. But he mainly relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling striking down a section of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, on which Kentucky’s same-sex marriage amendment had been based.

The judge also pointed to older rulings dealing with race and gender, noting that bans on interracial marriage, segregation and restrictions on women had been cited in the past as keys to a more stable society. But courts gradually did away with those restrictions.

“Each of these small steps has led to this place and this time, where the right of same-sex spouses to state-conferred benefits of marriage is virtually compelled,” wrote Heyburn, who took a seat on the federal bench in 1992 after being appointed by President George H.W. Bush with the backing of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, both Republicans.

Read more from this story HERE.