CATO has submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in which it makes the case that the 14th Amendment prohibits states from denying anyone the right to marry, regardless of gender.
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Marriage
Democrat Contradictions – Out Of State Influence in Local Elections
Democrats in New Hampshire take a lot of money from outside the state. Don’t take my word for it, just go look it up. Millions and Millions. They use candidates, campaign committees, so-called non-profits, and even have super wealthy out of state special interest donors making personal donations here and there to move money around the campaign finance camp fire, often right into the state Democrat party coffer, then back out to your local races.
No one should be surprised or even taken aback at this because it is all part of the business of politics, every party does some of this, it is all perfectly legal, and everything was fine up until the point when the New Hampshire Democrat party decided to make it a recurring campaign issue against Republicans. It wasn’t Democrats who were affected by objects of out of state money and influence, just the Republicans.
Democrats are clearly guilty of hypocrisy on the issue (no surprise there), but whenever they start a narrative like this it is usually because they are doing something else that might be worse, that they need you to be distracted from. And guess what? They were.
Tolerance
Two Massachusetts Gay Groups will not be participating in the Nashua Pride Fest this Saturday because the Nashua Chick-fil-A is providing 200 chicken sandwiches to the event.
The groups claim that by accepting the donated food event organizers are promoting the Chik-fil-A brand, even though the owner of the local restaurant supports Gay Pride events and homosexual causes.
Question: Isn’t that judging the guy by the wrapper and not based on who he really is as a person and what he can contribute?
whisper/ “hypocrisy.”
‘Properties’ of Marriage
Marriage is always a great topic to visit in New Hampshire. It irritates so many people on so many sides. But if we ever put it to a vote of citizens, New Hampshire would join the ranks of every other state to define “marriage” as a union between one man and one woman. Which is why the left would never want to allow that. And bigotry or inequality has nothing to do with it. And it certainly has nothing to do with love.
Love, as it turns out, is not a state’s interest. There is no ministry of love. No state department of love. No state director of love. And no one in their right mind would want the State organizing, defining, taxing or regulating it. Love is not a state’s interest.
And the idea that you “can’t help who you fall in love with” is total rubbish. Of course, you can. I haven’t fallen in love with anyone since I got married 18 years ago unless I count falling more in love with my wife. People fall in and out of love all the time. They can help it. So what the gay marriage lobby means to suggest by this is that sex is love and that you can’t help who whom you want to have sex. But neither of those things is true either.
Maybe We Should Call Them “Lefts?”
Former John Edwards supporter and leader of what used to be NH Freedom to Marry, director Mo Baxley, is having a rough November. Maybe not as rough as denying to herself and her credibility for what must have felt like years, that Edwards was not in fact the total scum bag he turned out to be; but then having your out-of-state sugar daddy cut your funding (after whining about other groups out of state funding), and having them give it to some other group to do what you thought you were doing, well that’s just got to hurt.
Or maybe not. The facade fell as fast as the paycheck so maybe we’re looking at the total package. A hypocrite who liked to insist that people denounce her definition of hate, racism, or bigotry or be marked as complicit in it, but who never once held her Democrat accomplices to the same standard.
A recent case in point? Taylor Garrett, Republican, Christian, Homosexual, assaulted in what is being described as a hate crime against a gay man. (…)
JP Marzullo Comes Out of the Closet?
Note to the world: even if one of my three children turns out to be a homosexual–and no I will not love or care for them any less if they do–I still would not publicly prostitute myself and my principles to the progressive agenda. NHGOP Area 3 Vice Chair J.P. Marzullo, on the other hand, does not have a problem with that. And it is not so much the topic that suggests a progressive thread in the fabric of his otherwise pro-liberty, family values life, as it is the way in he attempts to make his argument.
The vehicle is a November 1st editorial in the Concord monitor in which Marzullo pokes at our ‘Tiny Tim’ gland, pleading with New Hampshire Republican legislators to vote against any change in New Hampshire’s current homosexual marriage law. And like any seasoned social justice Democrat, we get both barrels from the empathy gun. How God was showing him his own personal need to be more understanding and tolerant nineteen years ago. He provides suicide estimates for gay teenagers (I have no idea why). He fingers divorce as a greater danger to the family than Gay marriage (without reminding you that similar left wing social engineering and meddling in ‘marriage’ is almost entirely responsible for the divorce problem). We even get the ‘Gay Americans are legal citizens and productive members of society who fight in the military" routine.
Democrat Chairman Ray Buckley could have wrote this. So has JP come out of the progressive closet?
Progressives: Never wasting a chance to force us all to be “better” (as opposed to persuasion)
OK, I admit it – this may not be a stellar post. Am fighting a bit of writer’s block, I’ve finally determined that the only therapy for this is to start typing and what ever keys my fingertips tap will be it. I appreciate your indulgence…
Homosexual marriage – the Progressives are always trying to force us to evolve to a higher state. They self-righteously have decided that since they all are much smarter and more "moral" than the rest of us, they have the right to force their beliefs upon rest of us. In this regard, ANY attempt to rebel against this forcing of an attitude is immediately met with screams of "anti-gay" or "homophobe" or "intolerance" or "anti-equality" simply for upholding the traditional definition that marriage is between a man and a woman.
I wrote a post on disagreeing with an implicit debasing of marriage (no, "what if you’re not compatible in bed") and listed what I thought were some requirements for a long lasting marriage. Of COURSE, a comment came in that decided that I needed to be "re-edumacated":
So, will you be supporting marriage equality next year (or this fall) when the repeal bills are considered by the General Court?
Once again, never wasting an opportunity to go from Point A to Point … somewhere regardless of the original intent. Always the "push" and in seemingly every area of culture. Including children. After all, it was an NEA teacher speaking at a UN conference said:
We must teach our children at a very young age that the male, female and intersex comes with the presence of genitalia and no further expectation…The same could be true of our sexual orientation. Homophobia exists when those stocked in the binary box of strictly hetero, find themselves slipping out of that role that religion and family promote.
A lot of people reacted very negatively to that – people expect schools to teach the basics of math, reading, writing, history, and the like and not be platforms for Progressives to view a their private platforms for social engineering. How DARE Parents believe their that children are theirs to bring up according to their notions of morality – they are wrong and we will teach their children otherwise.
Given that penchant for Progressives to have quotas established for their special identity victim groups for everything, I was not surprised at the latest news earlier this week: a petition by Lair Scott at Change.org was demanding Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie had to become gay simply because it fit their quota / agenda purposes:
Not really a great foundation for a long lasting marriage…
TMEW and I just celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary so I think that we might have a bit of experience of what makes a marriage work, mostly. And yes, mostly can be the operative word as sometimes marriages hit spots when they don’t work for one reason or another. Arguments, fiscal issues, relationship problems, work demands, and health situations (not to mention kids) are all the common ones – and sometimes, uncommon manifestations of each and if you have the same last name as I, Murphy’s Laws can often have them pop up several at a like the carny Whack-a-Mole game.
Yet, when we realized that we were "meant to be", what I heard at lunch time (as TMEW was parsing through "her" programs that had been DVR’d) on one of those "Entertainment Celebrity worship programs" just had my jaw dropping:
"You gotta live together and you have to sleep together [before the wedding]," Coco tells me, "If you don’t sleep together, what if you’re not compatible in bed or you don’t like what they do?"
Look, that’s not to say that sex is isn’t important or that physical attraction doesn’t play into the calculus, but if that is what you are going to base a marriage on, well, I posit it will be rather unlikely that you will see #30. I may be old fashioned (certainly I come at this from a conservative Evangelical perspective) but doing a "trial run" was never something we even contemplated.
While it may differ from couple to couple, here’s what I have trained myself to keep forefront:
Angry Shrew? Or Unjustly Treated Mother?
“Ah, yes, divorce … From the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.” -Robin Williams
An acrimonious divorce where children are involved nearly always devolves into a test of wills between the litigants, who were once husband and wife. Statistically, the woman in such cases prevail a majority of time. And of those times where the court battle is disposed of in family court, the acrimony has often risen to a level where it simply isn’t sufficient for one party to prevail over the other. There must be some form of scorched earth brought to bear.
In many cases, a prevailing parent, will seek child support orders and awards that financially disadvantage the losing spouse. Allegations will often follow questioning the suitability or fitness of a parent. Invariably, it isn’t enough to simply prevail on the point of law. One must simply crush the other, financially and emotionally, alienating the children by building a wall between the non-custodial parent and the minor children. An extreme environment of discomfort and stress is built around visitation exercises, many simply give up, emotionally exhausted over their children’s animosity toward them. The custodial spouse later charges inattentiveness for lack of consistency in the visitation schedule. This is probably one of the most ugliest facets of life anybody could be forced to endure. The family courts, charged with mediating these issues, often makes them far worse.
Today, the Union Leader‘s Nancy West treats us to the sordid tale of Cheryl Ann Maher, a mother seeking to regain custody of her minor children. The father, Dr. Eric Lee Knight presently has physical custody. Following a visit with the minor children, Ms. Maher was to return the children no later than 5:00 PM on March 13, in keeping with the parenting plan. She did not. She spirited them off, instead to a hotel in Salem, telling the UL her, “Ex-husband withheld medicine from one of the twin daughters for cold-like symptoms and fails to provide adequate services for the twins’ autism.”
The Right To Your Money: Nothing ‘Fair’ About It.
The Granite State Fair Tax Coalition, discovering that it’s "percentage of income model" argument against property taxes really applies to all things, and that lower income people pay a higher percentage of their income on everything, (a problem resolved through hard work and perseverance to which we apparently do not have a right) has announced that it is looking for a way to make "Rich BastardsTM" pay more for everything.
One example?
How about Marriage. Now that we’ve determined that Marriage is a civil right, (unless you are too young, too closely related, are already married, to uncivil to be or stay married, or want to remain single) why does a decent wedding (or any wedding) have to cost low income workers as much as 100% of their annual income while "Rich BastardsTM" only have to pay 25% to as little as 2% of theirs? The answer is of course a Statewide wedding tax on higher income wage earners to subsidize the constitutionally protected right of marriage–because you can’t help who you fall in love with.
The plan could create a State Bureau of Weddings and Funerals, staffed by at least a dozen bureaucrats, (with taxpayer supported wages, benefits, pensions, office space, paid vacations, supplies, and protest signs that actually come with sick notes attached; for days when they need to go the State House and make demands of the taxpayers elected-officials on matters of workers rights etc,). These fine individuals would be charged with handling questions and processing the paperwork and fees related to the weddings and funerals tax placed upon job creators, and the Rich Bastard population in general, (“Rich” to be defined by the collectors of the tax based on their perception of revenue needed) for the distribution of said revenues to those less fortunate seeking lavish weddings that have nothing to do with love, everything to do with impressing people whom you never see, and who are really just there for the free meal, and with any luck, an open bar.
One potential issue to the new Bureau’s mandate, however, is the rights of single people who would not benefit from the tax, or maybe this is just a rhetorical device on my part to segue into my next sarcastic rant.
Another Plague On Marriage (and the culture..?)
Pornography is an addiction. The pleasure derived from it is neurochemical, no different than any other pharmaceutical high. Men are particularly susceptible. And the culture continues to shift towards a society where porn is like aspirin.
Maryland Can’t Pass Same Sex Marriage
Tim Gill won’t be happy. He and Political Outgiving have been pouring money into Maryland and the pockets of its governor, Martin O’Malley, O’Malley was one of Tim Gill’s special guests at last years secret gathering along with our own governor John Lynch. The goal was, as it was in New Hampshire, to buy up local politicians at the state house level and ensure the governor of finanaical support to pass same sex marriage.
Reuters Headline: What The?
Reuters is referring to DOMA, the defense of marriage act, which is not an anti-gay marriage law. It does not prevent a state from passing a same sex marriage law. It is a federal law that allows states to define marriage for themselves and does not require them to recognize any form of marriage which the majority of that states residents may object to.
If “Reproductive Rights” means…
Word games are fun so let’s play some…
If by “reproductive rights” the left means that a woman has the right to destroy a person just because it is still in her womb…
Straight? Republicans Want To Meddle In Your Marriage, Too
That is the title of Kathy Sullivan’s most recent contribution to the Union Leader. "Straight? Republicans Want To Meddle In Your Marriage, Too." And I must confess that my initial reaction after trying to wade through her editorial and then through HB 569 to see if she was just making stuff up again was, "what the hell is this bill?"
And then it dawned on me. (or maybe the coffee kicked in.)
The sole purpose of HB 569 is to preserve existing civil unions and Marriages while removing the State almost entirely from the business of marriage altogether. HB 569 does not dissolve your marriage, it simply (well, not simply) re-defines the state’s role in the decision of any two legally eligible persons to form a domestic contract, with or without a religious ceremony referred to as a marriage.
It’s like a union between "State" and "none of your damn business."
A civil dispute: “…and in this cornah….” –
Guest Post by Robert Jursik – a refutation of Steve’s post:
Rare it is that I would find myself on the contrary side of anything in GraniteGrok, populated as it is with genuine New Hampshire Patriots always ready to contend for individual freedom. Nor would I expect to argue against the formidable Steve MacDonald, with whom I have been happy to rhetorically stand elbow-to-elbow in the grand work of re-claiming limited government for all. Yet, here we are, diverging at last over the question of marriage, and the state’s authority to regulate it.
Steve expresses support for HB 569, a proposed statute sponsored by nine libertarian-leaning Republican State Reps that would accept the term "domestic union" as the legal equivalent of marriage. It would attempt to deftly avoid the question of extending state recognition of homosexual marriages by removing government authority over the topic altogether. His claim is that "HB 569 creates real marriage equality and removes any state-based religious prejudice." However, it does no such thing and it deserves rejection.
To assert that HB 569 "removes state-based religious prejudice" is to presume that current government regulation of marriage is mired in it. Yet, New Hampshire – along with every other state in the union – has certified Justices of the Peace to perform marriage ceremonies outside of any religious construct and has also permitted judges to do the same. To participate in religious marital ceremonies is and always has been the prerogative of the parties and has never been a required ingredient in state regulation.
Nonetheless, the state has always insisted that marital…
In response to Kathleen Sullivan’s recent Op-Ed column
Guest Post by Dan Kanna:
Kathy Sullivan talks a great line about separation of powers and gay rights; but what is she really talking about? Whose power is she in favor of separating?
She correctly notes that we have 3 branches of power in the State government; but fails to mention that we have a compound republic (one with many parts), so the balance of power extends not just horizontally at the State level but vertically between the State, Federal, and local governments. This is called Federalism, and is the foundation of the Constitution for the United States of America.
The State Legislative and Executive branches are elected by the people whereas the Judicial branch is not. She would have us believe that all authority on the State Constitution should reside in the Judicial branch; an unelected and unaccountable branch of the State government where we the voters have zero input. Considering the Democrat party is also opposed to State sovereignty and wholeheartedly believes that we should be at the mercy of our Federal masters in Washington D.C., it seems to me that she is in favor of a separation of powers from the people of New Hampshire both horizontally and vertically. Who do the Democrats represent? Certainly not the voters of New Hampshire.
We as a people should start thinking in terms of this vertical balance of power; consider that New Hampshire has…
Why Just One?
Question: If refusing to let one man “marry” another man violates his or their ‘civil rights’ then why is it not a violation of said same civil rights to then refuse to let one or both of them marry a second, third or forth man?
National Organization for Marriage Quotes The Grok
Brian Brown, the President of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), just released his post election update and Granite Grok is both mentioned and quoted. Gov. John Lynch narrowly survived our "Lynch Lied" campaign, but thanks to the huge veto-proof majorities in the new New Hampshire senate and house, he will be the lamest of … Read more