Free Republic

“Putting the paddles on the chest of a divisive issue with absolutely no hope of the outcome he promises is a hallmark of Ted Cruz,” says GOP consultant Rick Wilson acidly, the memory of last year’s doomed “defund” effort firmly in mind. Okay, but the fine print on what Cruz wants to do is interesting. Typically when social conservatives start talking up amendments aimed at gay marriage, they’re thinking of a substantive change — namely, a new law of the land that says marriage involves one man and one woman and no other combination. Once that’s in the Constitution,...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is fast becoming the king of useless fights and empty gestures. First came his destructive government shutdown gambit. Then came his half-baked idea for fighting the Islamic State. Then he set up a showy albeit unnecessary confrontation with a Christian group, managing to be the only one on the right these days magnifying differences between Jews and Christians — unlike, say, Gov. Mike Huckabee, who rallies Christians and Jews to a shared fight against jihadists bent on slaughtering both. And now Cruz is pushing a constitutional amendment to prevent federal courts from vindicating the rights of...

As readers of Public Discourse know, some proponents of homosexual pseudogamy now assert that argument is no longer necessary. We do not argue with segregationists, they say. We ignore them, we scorn them. They are not worth our time. They are mad or wicked. So too our courageous Ryan Anderson, who says that marriage by nature requires a man and a woman.“Shut up,” they explain.I fear that our age is so enslaved to ideology that we can no longer notice what is obvious and natural, or think sensitively about history, or craft analogies that can stand a moment of analysis.Slavery and Segregation: A Peculiar InstitutionConsider...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday slammed the Supreme Court for declining to hear appeals on lower court rulings that overturn same-sex marriage bans, calling the justices’ move “tragic and indefensible.” “By refusing to rule if the States can define marriage, the Supreme Court is abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution,” he said in a statement. “The fact that the Supreme Court Justices, without providing any explanation whatsoever, have permitted lower courts to strike down so many state marriage laws is astonishing.” On Monday, the Supreme Court decided not to hear challenges to lower court rulings on same-sex marriage...

RICHMOND — The Supreme Court on Monday effectively allowed same-sex marriage to go forward in Virginia, deciding not to take up a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriages. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a mandate to remove the last barrier to same-sex marriage in Virginia. The first same-sex marriages were performed in Charlottesville and Richmond shortly after 1 p.m. At the same time, the commonwealth recognized marriages already performed in states as legal. ---snip--- Virginia state Del. Bob Marshall (R-Prince William), co-author of the state’s marriage ban, decried the move...

Add 11 more states to the list where same-sex marriage is legal. Gay marriage supporters have had a lot to cheer over the past two years thanks to a series of landmark rulings that have paved the way for marriage equality in an ever-increasing number of states. But on Monday morning (October 6), it was something the Supreme court didn’t do that will make same-sex marriage the law in the majority of the country. At the start of the new Supreme Court term, the justices announced that they had rejected appeals from five states that were seeking to prohibit same-sex...

The Supreme Court was asked to consider petitions for certiorari in seven separate cases challenging state laws barring legal recognition of same-sex marriage. On Monday morning, SCOTUSBlog reported, the Supreme Court denied all seven petitions. Most commentators have assumed the Supreme Court would take one or more of these cases and (perhaps) conclusively determine whether the federal Constitution bars states from refusing to recognize same-sex marriages under state law. Yet all seven cases below had come out the same way. In all seven, lower courts struck down the challenged state laws, so there was no circuit split. Given the lack...

Billionaire donor Paul Singer held a secret, closed doors meeting with other megadonors to promote same-sex "marriage" within the Republican Party. The Washington Blade reported that Singer and a number of wealthy donors, politicians, and the head of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) met on Thursday to discuss how to swing the GOP in favor of redefining marriage. Relying on four anonymous sources, the Blade found that HRC president Chad Griffin, a Democratic operative, was expected to speak at the event. Prominent Republicans are expected to be in attendance, including former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson, who has led...

he Supreme Court has turned away appeals from five states seeking to prohibit same-sex marriages, paving the way for an immediate expansion of gay and lesbian unions. The justices on Monday did not comment in rejecting appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. The court's order immediately ends delays on marriage in those states. Couples in six other states should be able to get married in short order. That would make same-sex marriage legal in 30 states and the District of Columbia. But the justices have left unresolved for now the question of same-sex marriage nationwide.

NEW YORK (AP) — As same-sex marriage cases cascade through the federal courts, Republican politicians find themselves awkwardly split into three camps. There's a small but growing number who favor legalizing gay marriage, a hard-core faction that continues to denounce it, and a sizable group in between that seems to wish the issue would disappear. At one end of the spectrum, at least eight GOP members of Congress have endorsed same-sex marriage, and two openly gay GOP candidates for the House hope to join them. In Massachusetts, Richard Tisei has run ads featuring his husband. In California, Carl DeMaio ran...

One of the most dispiriting storylines of the Obama era has been that Republicans have largely stood on the sidelines while a major cultural transformation has taken place: The country’s shift on gay rights. Republicans have either put up nominal resistance, or had nothing at all to say, as one change after another has come in rapid succession and majorities have come around on gay marriage. And yet you’d think the GOP cannot forever put off a real intra-party debate over whether the party will evolve culturally along with the rest of the country. That’s why it’s potentially significant that...

The case was brought by 10 same-sex couples who are represented by the ACLU. Missouri must recognize the marriages of same-sex couples that were granted elsewhere, state Judge Dale Youngs ruled on Friday. “[T]o the extent these laws prohibit plaintiffs’ legally contracted marriages from other states from being recognized here, they are wholly irrational, do not rest upon any reasonable basis, and are purely arbitrary,” Youngs wrote. The ruling followed a hearing in September on the case, which was brought by 10 same-sex couples represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. “Missouri has finally recognized our couples’ marriages as being...

I'm not afraid of being on the “wrong side of history” on gay “marriage”; I've been there before. I spent the first part of my life being told that the global triumph of Communism was “inevitable.” “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Among the stratagems employed by the cultural Left to discourage, dispirit, and dissuade the plurality of culturally sane Americans from opposing same-sex “marriage” is the all-encompassing insistence that the fight has already been lost. The phrase of choice is that proponents of traditional marriage...

Every time a new state redefines marriage, the news is full of happy stories of gay and lesbian couples and their new families. But behind those big smiles and sunny photographs are other, more painful stories. These are left to secret, dark places. They are suppressed, and those who would tell them are silenced in the name of “marriage equality.” But I refuse to be silent. I represent one of those real life stories that are kept in the shadows. I have personally felt the pain and devastation wrought by the propaganda that destroys natural families. The Divorce In the fall...

I submit that that prior polls showing support for Gay marriage should be taken with a grain of salt considering the atmosphere of intimidation that exists in the country today. Grand Haven Tribune reports a survey released Monday from the Pew Research Center indicates American support for same-sex marriage could be leveling off after several years of dramatic growth in acceptance of equal rights for gays and lesbians. The study’s authors caution it’s too soon to draw any definitive conclusions. But the new poll released Monday found a 5 percentage point drop since February, from 54 percent to 49 percent,...

Justice Elena Kagan has officiated for the first time at a same-sex wedding, a Maryland ceremony for her former law clerk and his husband. Kagan presided on Sunday over the wedding of former clerk Mitchell Reich and Patrick Pearsall in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Monday that the same-sex ceremony was the first at which Kagan officiated. Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have previously officiated at the wedding of gay and lesbian couples, including at the Supreme Court. Ginsburg most recently performed the wedding of Washington theater...

I wish Pew had provided older numbers to use as a yardstick here. Can’t tell if this has been fairly constant for a few years now or if opinion is starting to move towards gays on public accommodations as well. The fact that more people support compulsion in the name of antidiscrimination than the right of the business owner to refuse for reasons of conscience is newsy, though. Say, wasn’t there another splashy poll by a famous pollster on this subject last year? Yep, sure was — Rasmussen asked a similar question in June 2013 and found, no typo, that...

Tonight in a public question-and-answer session at the University of Minnesota Law School, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the Court did not need to rush into the question of same-sex marriage because the lower courts had not yet disagreed on the issue. Asked whether she thought the Court might take the issue up this Term, Justice Ginsburg noted that all three appellate courts to address the issue so far (the Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth) have struck down state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. She added that we are still awaiting a decision from the Sixth Circuit, which has been...

Eighty legislators from Utah have submitted an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in which the legislators warn the Court that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to the legalization of incestuous and polygamous marriages. The brief comes following the request for a writ of certiorari from both Utah's Attorney General, Sean Reyes, and the plaintiffs in Kitchen v. Herbert, the case that found both both a district court and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of marriage equality in Utah. As Joe.My.God points out, "the brief is signed by 22 of the 29 members of the state...

I was walking through the Fox News building a while ago and a producer introduced me to a young black man by saying, “This is the engineer you’ll be working with tonight.” We shook hands and the engineer said, “I know who you are. Look, I want you to know, I don’t agree with all your beliefs but I respect you for speaking your mind.” I said “Thanks” because we were in a hurry but what I really wanted to say was, “What beliefs? I’m not a Scientologist. I don’t really have ‘beliefs.’ I have opinions based on the information...