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Australia’s leading gay activist claims that a booklet defending natural marriage by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference clearly breaches an anti-discrimination act. Worse, it exposes “vulnerable children” to “damaging messages”.Rodney Croome, national director of Australian Marriage Equality, is angry that Catholic schools in the state of Tasmania are distributing “Don’t Mess with Marriage”. Archbishop Julian Porteous plans to give 12,000 Tasmanian Catholic school children copies to pass on to their parents.Some teachers were horrified at the prospect of Catholic schools distributing Catholic literature, says Mr Croome: “The Catholic Church has every right to express its views from the pulpit but...

June 23, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- Perhaps as early as Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether America should become the 18th nation in the world to redefine marriage. Most observers expect the Court to strike down laws defining marriage as it can only be -- between a man and a woman.However, no matter what the Court decides, marriage can never change. Furthermore -- for the sake of children, other marriages, people with same-sex attractions, liberty, and society as a whole -- governments have a vested interest in promoting marriage, not abandoning it.As we head into the final...

It's amazing how quickly much of society seems ready to change the definition of an age old institution that has been at the core of its growth and development, without so much as a second thought. No societal institution has been as responsible for the growth and development of every individual, and of society as a whole, as has traditional marriage, the bedrock upon which stable children, stable families and flourishing personal and societal growth spring forth. One must also ask whether we would be equally as unquestioning were someone to suggest changing the other age old definition that is...

The polling results indicate that same-sex marriage will be an important, and likely very divisive, factor in the 2016 U.S. general election New polling data from the Pew Research Center shows very low levels of support for same-sex marriage among Republicans. The Pew Research Center survey, conducted May 12 to 18 among 2,002 adults, found just one-third of Republicans support same-sex marriage, in contrast to 65 percent of Democrats and Independents. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants are dominantly opposed to same-sex marriage, with a 70 percent opposition rate. Other major groups surveyed—including Catholics (38 percent opposed, 56 percent in...

Full title: 'Civil War' And 'Endless Trauma': What Opponents Predict Will Happen If Marriage Equality Is Legalized The Supreme Court will issue its decision this month in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that could affirm that same-sex couples around the country have the constitutional right to marry. Same-sex marriage is already legal in 37 states and the District of Columbia. But in the remaining states, gay couples are prohibited from marrying, and couples who were legally married in other states are barred from having their unions recognized in these non-marriage equality states. If the Supreme Court affirms that same-sex couples...

Canon Jeremy Pemberton argues at Nottingham employment tribunal that Church of England unlawfully revoked his permission to officiateThe first priest to marry his same-sex partner has begun a discrimination case against the Church of England over its withdrawal of his right to officiate as a priest following the union. Canon Jeremy Pemberton, who married Laurence Cunnington in April 2014, had been informed that Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS trust was withdrawing an offer of a job after Bishop Richard Inwood refused him the official licence in the diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. The clergyman, who argues that Inwood unlawfully discriminated against...

Mexico’s supreme court has ruled it is unconstitutional for Mexican states to bar same-sex marriages. But the court’s ruling is considered a “jurisprudential thesis” and does not invalidate any state laws, meaning gay couples denied the right to wed would have to turn to the courts individually. Given the ruling, judges and courts would have to a

MEXICO CITY — His church turned him away, his family discouraged him from a public fight and the government of the state where he lives vowed it would never happen. But it did. Hiram Gonzalez married his boyfriend, Severiano Chavez, last year in the northern state of Chihuahua, which, like most Mexican states, technically allows marriage only between a man and a woman. Mr. Gonzalez and dozens of other gay couples in recent months have, however, found a powerful ally: Mexico’s Supreme Court. In ruling after ruling, the court has said that state laws restricting marriage to heterosexuals are discriminatory....

In parts I, II, III, and IV of this essay, I examined the problem: why Christians face increasing demands to accept same-sex marriage and homosexual sex not as voluntary conduct but as essential components of personal identity, and why the nature of Christian theology would require Christians to renounce their own faith identities to do so. In this final part, I look at the prospects for a solution or, at any rate, an armistice. As I noted at the outset of part I of this series, we do not live in a live-and-let-live society; we live, increasingly, in one in...

June 10, 2015 (Mercatornet) -- Within the month, the nation will receive the opinion of the US Supreme Court as to whether the US Constitution requires all of the states to jettison their domestic laws and sanction same-sex marriage. Numerous federal judges have so ruled, and most states have simply yielded to those federal court decisions. In a few cases, beginning with Vermont and Massachusetts, state courts ruled for same sex marriage, and state officials have accepted passively those decisions as well.Generally, courts have ruled for same-sex marriage using either the “due process clause” or the “equal protection clause” of...

A number of prominent pastors and lay leaders have signed a petition pledging civil disobedience if a U.S. Supreme Court decision redefining marriage to include same-sex couples infringes upon their religious freedom. "Experience and history have shown us that if the government redefines marriage to grant a legal equivalency to same-sex couples, that same government will then enforce such an action with the police power of the State. This will bring about an inevitable collision with religious freedom and conscience rights. The precedent established will leave no room for any limitation on what can constitute such a redefined notion of...

Can gays and Christians co-exist in America? As the saying goes, “Can this marriage be saved?” I still hope the answer is yes. But for now, it is very much up in the air—and the answer is no longer in Christians’ hands. This is a provocative thesis on a sensitive topic, one many of us would rather not face. I had long hoped not to return to writing at any length about this issue, especially not when conservatives are winning so many other arguments these days, and this is one that persuades few people who have not already made up...

They’re not the only group still opposed, of course — senior citizens and white evangelicals also say no to SSM — but they’re the only group that’s under intense partisan pressure to conform that’s still resisting. When Obama announced his support for gay marriage in 2012, at least one poll showed a sea change in black opinion in the aftermath, from 41 percent in favor to 59 percent virtually overnight. One 2012 exit poll found 51 percent support for SSM among blacks versus 41 percent opposition. Pew’s polls over the years have found that black support did increase noticeably...

In the same-sex-marriage case recently argued in the Supreme Court, the petitioners have claimed a “fundamental right to marry” protected by the Constitution and unmoored from biology, the complementarity of the sexes, or the universal understanding of what “marriage” has meant in every culture in human history until the last 15 years. Their most persistent and compelling comparison of their legal situation has been to the laws that once banned interracial marriage in many states, until they were overturned by the Supreme Court 48 years ago in Loving v. Virginia. But a closer look at that precedent reveals that it...

Brittney Griner and Glory Johnson's already complicated love story has now devolved into a series of competing accusations of betrayal and coercion. On Friday, less than a month after saying 'I do' and just one day after the newlywed couple announced they were expecting their first baby together, Ms Griner filed papers to have their marriage annulled. Griner released a statement saying: 'Last Wednesday, Glory and I agreed to either legally separate, get divorced, or annul our marriage. 'I can confirm that today I filed for an annulment. In the week prior to the wedding, I attempted to postpone the...

Few commentators on either side of the ongoing marriage debate would deny that individuals possess a fundamental right to marry. To do so seems ridiculous today. Marital relationships are, as the Supreme Court first affirmed in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923)—albeit in obiter dictum, an aside unnecessary to the decision of the case—an important part of the happiness that individuals have a natural right to pursue. It may be a surprise to modern Americans to realize that the Meyer case represents the first notable appearance of the “right to marry” language in the American political tradition or its antecedents in liberal...

WASHINGTON — Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, addressed concerns that faith-based schools and institutions would be at risk of losing their tax-exempt status for upholding their biblical belief of traditional marriage if the U.S. Supreme Court delivers a pro-gay marriage ruling this month. At a Wednesday press conference held in the senator's Capitol Hill office, Lee, along with prominent members of the evangelical higher education community, voiced concern over comments made in the Supreme Court's oral argument in April by the Obama administration's lead attorney, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. Lee explained that Verrilli, who testified as a friend of the court...

There may be evidence that the government agency in charge of enforcing Oregon anti-discrimination laws colluded against Aaron and Melissa Klein, former owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery, with the pro-LGBT group Basic Rights Oregon. The Daily Signal, the news arm of The Heritage Foundation, exposed the communications contact between officials at the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and Basic Rights Oregon, obtained through a public records request, in their story titled, "Emails Raise Questions of Bias in Case Against Bakers Who Denied Service for Same-Sex Wedding." The communications between the two groups raises questions of the impartiality...

Interesting not only as a prediction of how the country will react to SCOTUS’s looming decision but as a gut-check on how little most people seem to care about procedural niceties, at least on a highly visible issue like SSM. It’s a core conservative belief that major policy changes are more legitimate when they’re passed democratically, signifying the consent of the people, than when they’re handed down by unelected judges. That’s especially true for changes to marriage, which, in the immortal purple prose of Hillary Clinton, can be traced to “the mists of history as one of the founding,...

It is nearly impossible to overstate the evangelistic failure of the Catholic Church in Ireland following that country’s democratic embrace of homosexual marriage – the first nation ever to openly choose such debauchery for itself instead of having it imposed by the courts. Many reasons were offered last week for why this happened on an island nation where roughly 84 percent of the population identifies as Catholic. Among them were the tone-setting decadence of a divorce culture, the priest abuse scandal and the fat, dumb and happy that came with the country’s economic revolution in the 1990s. There is something...