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The daughter of former Republican presidential candidate John McCain has celebrated equal marriage arriving in the family’s home state of Arizona. A judge struck down the Arizona’s same-sex marriage ban yesterday, and the state’s attorney general declined to appeal – allowing marriages to begin immediately. Meghan McCain – the daughter of the 2008 Presidential candidate, who had anti-gay Sarah Palin as his running mate – was jubilant at the news. The rights activist – who sits on the board of rights charity GLAAD despite her father’s opposition to equal marriage – tweeted: “Marriage equality is now legal in my home...

The US government announced Friday it would recognize same-sex marriages in seven additional states, after the Supreme Court declined to take up the debate. A total of 26 of the 50 US states, and the capital Washington, now legally recognize gay and lesbian marriages, giving them the same legal rights and federal benefits as married heterosexual couples. "We will not delay in fulfilling our responsibility to afford every eligible couple, whether same-sex or opposite-sex, the full rights and responsibilities to which they are entitled," US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a video message. "With their long-awaited unions, we are...

BOISE - The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order Monday lifting the stay that blocked same-sex marriage from starting in Idaho - effective Wednesday morning. Marriage licenses can legally be issued to same-sex couples statewide starting at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Deborah Ferguson, attorney for the four couples who sued to overturn Idaho’s ban on gay marriage, hadn’t even filed her reply to the state’s latest legal filings when the order came out mid-day Monday. “I guess they kind of knew what we were going to say,” she said. Ferguson filed the case on behalf of four Idaho...

Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear several Appeals Court cases on gay marriages, which resulted in bans on gay marriage being struck down in numerous states across the country. Following the Supreme Court's decision to punt on the issue of gay marriage, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd saw this as a sign that social conservatism was declining and obnoxiously asked "it is time for conservatives to surrender in the culture wars?" After playing a pre-packaged segment on the evolution of social conservatism in the United States, the NBC host did his best to portray social conservatives as...

Friday on PBS's "News Hour," syndicated columnist Mark Shields pointed out, "among young Republicans, 61 percent of Republicans -- young Republicans under the age of 30 are in favor of same sex marriage." New York Times columnist David Brooks "applauded," the GOP for "doing absolutely the right thing in withdrawing" and letting the country have its way. Brooks said "I sort of applaud the minimalism here. Sometimes you let the country have its way and you don't try to determine the shape of the country, you sort of modestly step back and let the country figure out what it believes....

<p>The Supreme Court on Friday night allowed same-sex marriages to begin in Idaho, ending a dramatic week in which the right of gay couples to marry expanded dramatically across the nation.</p> <p>In a one-sentence order, the justices denied a request from Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter (R) to delay the unions so the state could continue its appeals. The court gave no reason for the action nor were there recorded dissents.</p>

Do the states have the right to outlaw same-sex marriage? Not long ago the question would have been seen as absurd. For every state regarded homosexual acts as crimes. Moreover, the laws prohibiting same-sex marriage had all been enacted democratically, by statewide referenda, like Proposition 8 in California, or by Congress or elected state legislatures. But today rogue judges and justices, appointed for life, answerable to no one, instruct a once-democratic republic on what laws we may and may not enact. Last week, the Supreme Court refused to stop federal judges from overturning laws banning same-sex marriage. We are now...

According to the Pew Research Center, half of Americans think business owners should be required to provide their services for same-sex weddings even if doing so violates their religious beliefs. In a September poll from the group, respondents split down the middle on the following question: If a business provides wedding services, such as catering or flowers, should it be allowed to refuse those services to a same-sex couple for religious reasons, or required to provide those services as it would to all other customers? The number saying businesses should be required to provide such services included a majority of...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee threatened to leave the GOP and run for the White House in 2016 as an independent if Republicans “capitulate” and support same-sex marriage. “If the Republicans want to lose guys like me, and a whole bunch of still God-fearing, Bible-believing people, go ahead and just abdicate on this issue—and go ahead and say abortion doesn’t matter, either,” Huckabee told Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, on Wildmon’s “Today’s Issues” radio show. “Because at that point, you lose me; I’m gone.” “I’ll become an independent,” he vowed in an interview on Tuesday. “I’ll start...

Dennis Floyd, left, and Terence Bartholomew are planning to wed. No offense to those couples who rushed to city hall in late June, eager to take advantage of an unexpected federal court ruling that struck down Indiana’s same-sex marriage ban. It’s just that Terence Bartholomew and Dennis Floyd aren’t the spur-of-the-moment, jeans-and-T-shirts, get-hitched-over-the-lunch-hour types. They want a wedding with a capital W. The local couple, who celebrated 22 years together on Sept. 12, were thrilled Monday to hear that the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Indiana’s challenge, effectively ending the state’s temporary hold on same-sex marriage. In other...

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected gay marriage appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin, in essence allowing lower courts to legalize same-sex couples. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), an institution that has vigorously opposed gay marriage for some time now, conceded that the political battle over marriage is over. “As far as the civil law is concerned,” the Mormon Church admitted, “the courts have spoken.” Actually, nothing is over until God says it’s over. At least, this is my understanding of how religion operates. So while I don’t want to accuse Mormons of...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says its doctrine on marriage will remain unchanged despite Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized gay marriage in five states, including Utah, and opened the door for legalization in six more. “As far as the civil law is concerned, the courts have spoken,” the church said in a statement reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision. “Church leaders will continue to encourage our people to be persons of good will toward all, rejecting persecution of any kind based on race, ethnicity, religious belief or nonbelief, and differences in sexual orientation.” In...

Legal momentum for extending U.S. marriage rights to same-sex couples accelerated on Tuesday as a federal appeals court struck down bans on gay matrimony in Idaho and Nevada a day after the U.S. Supreme Court let stand similar rulings for five other states. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled the bans in Idaho and Nevada violated the constitution and cannot be enforced, adding to a growing list of states where same-sex unions are now legal. "Idaho and Nevada's marriage laws, by preventing same-sex couples from marrying and refusing to recognize same-sex marriages celebrated elsewhere, impose...

“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...