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On August 12, Friends of the Ruth Institute gathered at the Renaissance Hotel at the LA airport to hear Miriam Grossman, MD, kick off our second annual Gala Dinner and Student Leadership conference. Unbeknownst to us, some of our Friends with Wrong Ideas have been following our newsletter and/or website. I got a call from the hotel the morning of the event, telling us that LAPD had informed them to expect protestors at our Gala Dinner! We engaged extra security for our event, and LAPD did a great job keeping the handful of protesters off the hotel property.
As luck would have it, Judge Walker had released another one of his ridiculous rulings that morning. This time, Judge Walker held that same sex marriages should begin even though Prop 8 supporters plan to appeal his overturn of Prop 8. He gave the defenders of Prop 8 less than a week to file their appeal before the state should start issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. (Watch my video statement about the overturn of Prop 8.)
But the good news was that our Friends with Wrong Ideas had sent out a press release to every media outlet in LA, telling them about their protest of our dinner. So the combination of another Random Walker Ruling and the protestors’ news releases meant that I got interviews with 4 different media outlets. We got a ton of free publicity for Dr. Grossman’s talk on “Truths That Cannot be Told: How Ideology Trumps Biology in Sex Ed.” Ideologues showed up to protest our private event! I had the opportunity to spend about a half hour educating TV broadcasters about natural marriage. I could tell that they had never heard most of my arguments before, and that they were surprised I even had any arguments.
Wow! Thanks FREEPWI’s! (That’s Friends Protesting with Wrong Ideas. See my blog post “Welcome to PEEPWIS!" Peeps With Wrong Ideas!)
We were on these news outlets in the greater Los Angeles area: NBC, KNX1070 (CBS), FOX News 11 and
KTLA. Unfortunately, this all caught us by surprise and we were unable to snag the contact info for the reporters. If any of you caught us on the news, and had the presence of mind to record, please send it in to us! We would love to add this material to our media pages.
And thanks for your continued financial contributions. Your support makes it possible for me to engage the media and take advantage of these opportunities.
Speaking of our media pages, we will soon have the lectures from our Student Leadership conference, “It Takes a Family to Raise a Village” up on our podcast page. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast series, so you don’t miss any of these exciting lectures!
Speaking of the It Takes a Family to Raise a Village conference: what a great bunch of students! Each and every one of these 30 students was hand-picked to participate in this exciting seminar-style conference. They came from across the country and around the world: we had a priest from Nigeria who is studying in Rome, and a young lady who is studying law in Argentina! We had students from universities representing the major faith groups: Brigham Young University, Houston Baptist University, Belmont Abbey College, and the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome.
They all came to learn more about how they could become Marriage Champions on their own campuses. One student told us how we had helped him overcome his doubts and reticence about the issue: “Overall a great experience! The environment...the confidence level of those speaking, the experience, the degree of knowledge, speaking ability, created a… clear conceptual understanding that seemed to shine a light in (my) darkest places of doubt.” Another told us how much he cherished the new friendships he had made. The most common complaint we heard was, “I wish the conference could have been longer, so we could have gotten to know each other better.”
These friendships, this confidence: these are the gifts you are helping us give to the next generation. Thank you for your continued support. Please consider your most generous contribution today.
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