Michigan Speaker says legalizing SSM will help stimulate the MI economy

Speaker Byrnes is using Same Sex Marriage in the hopes to increase Michigans poor economy. Young people want to live in progressive cities that allow Same Sex Marriage. Her platform: it will be best for Michigan’s economy to legalize Same Sex marriage so that young people will move Michigan cities!

This article found at Detriot New.com

Speaker Pro Tempore Pam Byrnes, D-Lyndon Township, introduced a resolution to amend the state constitution to allow same-sex marriage. Voters instituted the ban in 2004, when they approved Proposal 2. read the rest of this article here...

ITAF Alumni Kendal Christensen writes on Same Sex Unions

In August the Ruth Institute held its first student conference, where students came from schools all over the United States and Mexico to participate in a long weekend of lectures and discussion. Kendal Christensen, BYU undergrad, was one of these students. Read his well thought out argument for traditional marriage! Bravo Kendal!!!!!

This article first appears on the Love and Fidelity blog here: http://www.loveandfidelity.org/blog/
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“Though I agree with proponents of gay marriage that “our nation was founded on the principle that all people should be treated equally,”[1] I profoundly disagree that extending the word “marriage” to include gay couples is only about “equality, freedom, and fairness, for all.”[2] The implications surrounding a redefinition of marriage go much deeper than merely “extending freedom” to everyone. The reasons I support the institution of marriage as only an association between one man and one woman—are (1) the intrinsic one-sidedness to redefining marriage and (2) the far-reaching consequences of such a redefinition. read the rest of this article...

Assumed truth

TAKEN FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT GEORGE ON PUBLIC DISCOURSE

PD: It seems clear that elite opinion these days is virtually unanimous in supporting the redefinition of marriage. That view is now the unquestioned orthodoxy in Hollywood and among mainstream journalists, college and university professors, and the like. Many young people embrace it. How did that happen?

George: The movement to redefine marriage is part of a larger movement to entrench and extend the sexual revolution that got into full-swing in the mid-1960s. This movement wields extraordinary cultural power. Its hegemony in the elite sector of the culture enables its proponents to transmit its ideological tenets through television shows, movies, newspapers and magazines, popular music, colleges and universities, high schools, middle schools, and, increasingly, even elementary schools. Many people today, especially younger people, take these tenets for granted. They usually go unquestioned. I find in talking to students that when I raise questions about their assumptions about the legitimacy of non-marital sexual cohabitation, their first surprise is the recognition that they were making assumptions; their second surprise is that there are grounds for questioning those assumptions. Of course, only a fraction of college students ever encounter professors who question these assumptions.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE

What would you do as a 5th grader????

It's high time that schools took anti-bullying measures more seriously. We just never thought that would include requiring fifth-graders to recite the meaning of each letter in LGBT.In attempting to discourage taunting of gay students, the Alameda Unified School District turned what should be a basic lesson on treating others kindly into a primer on sexual identity. Its new anti-bullying curriculum for kindergartners through fifth-graders will begin in the fall and focus solely on gay and lesbian issues -- as if harassment based on race, religion or failure to wear cool clothes were nonexistent. Parents who might object cannot opt their children out of it. It's a heavy-handed approach to take with students at a tender age.

School officials defended the new curriculum as a necessity after some of the younger students used derogatory words about gay people. No two ways about it, such behavior must stop. Childhood cruelty can make school a matter of daily dread for its victims, and gay and lesbian students, along with the children of same-sex couples, have been particularly singled out.


read the rest: http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-ed-alameda19-2009jun19,0,6964133.story?track=rss

Bravo! Miss California stands up for marriage

Miss North Carolina Kristen Dalton was crowned Miss USA on Sunday, but the big story to come out of the normally politics-free telecast was Miss California's comments regarding gay marriage.

When asked by judge Perez Hilton, an openly gay gossip blogger, whether she believed in gay marriage, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, said "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."

Read the rest here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517137,00.html

Fathers Shoved Aside

I predicted that same sex marriage would further marginalize men from the family, and would result in the state determining, not just recording parentage. A report from the UK illustrates that I was not hyperventillating, but in fact, very sober-minded about this issue:

Single women having IVF will be able to name anyone they like as their baby's father on the birth certificate.
New regulations mean that a mother could nominate another woman to be her child's 'father'.
The 'father' does not need to be genetically related to the baby, nor be in any sort of romantic relationship with the mother.

This mean that "father" is strictly a legal term, not a name for a biological reality that exists independently of the state and its laws.

This raises the spectre of a legal minefield in which female 'fathers' will fight for visitation rights and be chased for child support payments if their fragile relationship with the mother breaks down.
The changes, due to come in on April 6, will apply to many of the 2,000 women a year who have IVF using sperm from anonymous donors.
The regulations are part of the controversial Embryology Bill passed by Parliament last year. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said they will give lesbian couples in civil partnerships who undergo IVF the same rights as married heterosexual couples.

An unmarried man whose girlfriend has fertility treatment will also find it easier to claim full parental rights.

The new rules state: 'The women receiving treatment with donor sperm (or embryos created with donor sperm) can consent to any man or woman being the father or second parent.' The only exemption is close blood relatives.

Critics said the change would lead to the role of father being downgraded to the one of godfather and warned that the child would be the one to lose out.

So, what do you think? Does it matter to you that a mother can essentially make up the father of her child? How would you feel as the child in a situation like this?
Let us hear from you!
I discuss this issue in Session 3, "Same Sex Marriage and the End of Gender" of my 4 part series, Same Sex Marriage Affects Everyone.
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Young Conservatives Misled on Homosexuality

A pro-family activist believes there is a huge battle looming between libertarians and social conservatives in the Republican Party. He says this battle was highlighted by a survey he conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, regarding the homosexual agenda.

More than half of the nearly 9,000 conservative activists at CPAC last week in Washington were under the age of 22. Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, says most of the young people he surveyed at CPAC were against the legalization of same-sex "marriage," but notes there was a lot of confusion about the issue of homosexual civil unions.

"Some people thought civil unions were just something you have to give the gay activists," he points out. "Others thought it was a real compromise and didn't realize how close it was to same-sex marriage and how it actually advances the same-sex marriage agenda."

LaBarbera believes many young conservatives are being taught to think of homosexuality as a civil rights issue.

Read the rest...


QUESTION:
What are your thoughts of your generations understand of homosexuality?