Posted on 08/05/2013 2:47:03 PM PDT by Kazan
CLEVELAND, August 5, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an unprecedented move on July 17th, the National Right to Life Committee (NRTL) chose to support Senator Rob Portman's newly expressed support of gay marriage and to withdraw support from one of the most effective prolife organizations in the country, Cleveland Right to Life (CRTL).
In a letter dated July 17, 2013, the president of National Right to Life, Carol Tobias, informed CRTL President, Molly Smith, that because of their recent addition of support for traditional marriage and the family to its Mission Statement, AND because of CRTL criticism of Senator Portman, that CRTL would no longer be considered an Affiliate of NRTL. "This letter, which was received well after the date on the letter, came without even a phone call or email from the NRTL organization," noted Molly Smith. "In fact, we have become aware that copies of the letter were forwarded to Ohio prolife organizations from Senator Portman's office before I had the opportunity to read it myself," added Smith. CRTL can only surmise from these facts that there was significant coordination between NRTL and Senator Portman's office on this and that the Senator asked for NRTL to take this action against one of the most active and effective local prolife organizations in the country.
"This entire salvo was the result of CRTL adding the marriage/family issue to its Mission Statement recently because the traditional family with a mother and a father is an inherent right of every child," notes Jerry C. Cirino, CRTL Board member. "We know it is not only important to protect the rights of a child to be born...we should also care about the child after they are born," continued Cirino. "This is about supporting the family in America and any politician, including Portman, who supports the break-up of the American family and supports the denial of a mother and father for children has forfeited the right of support and endorsement of the prolife movement, concluded Cirino.
CRTL has noted that since their recent announcement they have received tremendous grassroots support and new financial contributions for their efforts. "We have had expressions of support from politicians around Ohio, many of whom have shown an interest in running against Republicans who do not steadfastly support the family and traditional marriage," noted Smith. She also encouraged other local, state and national groups to contact them for information about the improved prolife mission statement. Other Right to Life, organizations in Ohio are also considering joining CRTL and Lake County Right to Life in modifying their Mission Statements. CRTL has also noted that the organization has never had a direct affiliation with NRTL, only a tiered relationship that is maintained through the state organization, Ohio Right to Life (ORTL) and as CRTL remains an Affiliate in good standing of Ohio Right to Life the national organization's action is puzzling to say the least. CRTL has not changed its focus and will continue the fight for legal protection for all human life especially for the unborn, the family, the elderly and the infirm.
Cleveland Right to Life is an autonomous organization that cooperates with local, state and national organizations to protect and defend all human life from conception till natural death and to work with other Right to Life affiliates around the state to spread the Gospel of Life.
I realize that conservatives support a lot of positions that are interlinked at very deep levels. I realize that those coming from a conservative, especially Christian, background see all of the linkages that you see.
However in order to get movement on issues we need to get support from some liberals and a lot of moderates. I believe this is happening on abortion. Unfortunately it does not appear to be happening with regard to "gay marriage".
One of the "arguments" against the "religious right" is that we supposedly get some sort of sick satisfaction out of telling people what to do. Us telling people who can marry and who can't is lumped in with us telling people what they can do with their fetus. And yes, I know it's not really you or me but God saying what is right and wrong. But not to these moral illiterates.
In a perverse way the "religious right" position on "gay marriage" is counterproductive in the fight against abortion. I'm sorry that that is the case, but that's how I see it.
And, BTW, I am in general a fool, but I'm trying to get a bit wiser each day with help from my fellow Freepers.
Cleveland Right to Life would be welcomed by Judy Brown and the actually principled American Life League which would thoroughly agree with Cleveland RTL's stand in support of marriage (one man, one woman, no household pets or barnyard animals or space aliens or third parties).
bayb that org is defunct.
it is now a facebook page run out of the national office.
I have a strong hunch that there is more to this story than meets the eye.
Serious Equal Protection for Posterity, Personhood, Abolitionist Christians are winning the debate throughout the country, making it increasingly difficult for the compromised NRTL apparatus, which is really nothing more than a fundraising, vote-gathering satellite of the GOP establishment, to function and operate as they once did.
I’ll bet that there are leaders within the Cleveland group who have grown weary of the utter compromise of principle that NRTL enforces constantly, whose consciences have been pricked by the moral, constitutional, and legal arguments against that unbiblical compromise.
And by the way, more and more Christians are coming to an understanding that the constitutionally-required protection of innocent life and the preservation of the nuclear, natural family are intimately connected.
In summary, stay tuned for the further crumbling of the NRTL empire.
You mean the national organization maintains a website and solicits donations for a chapter that doesn’t exist?
Especially when the national chapter lets a homosexual activist release the national chapter’s letter to all the other Ohio chapters before anyone has even notified the “offending” chapter. Why would they put any homosexual activist in charge of distributing their interoffice correspondence, much less the very homosexual activist at heart of their disagreement?
Here’s a tip on how you can become a better person. Stand up for what you know is right, and don’t water down your beliefs to appease those who will never agree anyway.
“You mean the national organization maintains a website and solicits donations for a chapter that doesn’t exist?”
yep
what is their street address?
Is there still a "Pro-Life" Council of CT? Does it DO anything other than gull contributors and provide paychecks to Regina's children? Most of its former presidents including former and hopefully future State Senator Len Suzio have refused continued involvement with "PL"CC.
It is not so much that NRTLC are "bad guys" as it is that they are gutless wonders who talk a good game, collect the contributions and try never to offend anyone.
The former affiliate of NRTLC in Connecticut is the Connecticut Right to Life Corporation. It still exists and even thrives in some parts of Connecticut. However, the Connecticut Right to Life Corporation just had to be purged by the spineless at NRTLC because it is a thoroughly principled organization which makes the national group verrrrry uncomfortable. Connecticut Right to Life Corporation has long been proudly affiliated with Judy Brown and the American Life League.
What all this means is that it is time to move on from National Right to Life which is a spaghetti-spined group totally unwilling to stand on principle. Nellie Gray has died (God rest her soul) but her annual Right to Life March lives on and thrives. Judie Brown's American Life League likewise. NRTLC not so much because it has forgotten its original purpose and redoubled its ineffective efforts. Right to Lifers deserve more than NRTLC is willing to give.
Also, I absolutely refused to vote for the baby-killing Romney last year (see and never forget Romneycare's provisions on the subject, watch what Mittler did and not what he says) and won't vote for such a candidate ever again at any level (including Illinois's Nancyboy Kirk).
Rob Portman is also well worthy of being divorced by anyone who cares about keeping "our country from going down fast." The tragic fact that Portman's Yalie son has been induced to "come out of the closet" on his preference for "sex" with other men is now being translated by Senator Portman into a national agenda for perversion (using the pathetic GOP as his vehicle). When otherwise meekly conservative senators are willing to adopt the queer agenda, that is what makes America go down fast (no pun intended).
Next we will be hearing that we owe an apology to Lowell Weicker for our being too narrow-minded to see that he may have been a smidgeon better that Mittler or Obozo in the current era.
I appreciate that you range over much of the Godforsaken Northeast helping some decent candidates and some others who are simply not Demonrats against some very reprehensible Demonrat candidates. There is certainly a place for such efforts.
Nonetheless, the highest priority ought to be placed on the rebuilding of the conservative movement and National Right to Life has become sooooo compromised for soooooo long that it is no longer at all useful to that purpose.
Did not many of NRTLC's "leaders" including their attorney James Bopp endorse Mittler? That means what necessarily is an endorsement of Romneycare which seemed to have been even worse than Obozocare on abortion and means endorsing Romney's aggressive pursuit of a "gay marriage" agenda, threatening local town clerks with state litigation against them if they did not comply with Romney's nefarious demands. NRLTC is part of the problem not part of the solution.
How can there be a revival if the very organizations which claim to be part of the solution prove to be cowardly, spineless wimps, who say much but accomplish very little. NRTLC is a great false front to gull the gullible into hallucinating that it is "working every day to keep our country from going down fast." NRTLC does NOTHING creative, NOTHING effective, nothing notably successful but is quite willing to take public relations credit for NRTLC whenever something worthwhile is accomplished by others. Heritage Foundation, Jim DeMint's Senate Conservative PAC, American Life League, the Knights of Columbus, the Thomas More Legal Society, and many other organizations resisting the craven lethargy of NRTLC do more on any given day than NRTLC does in a year or a decade.
That is why NRLTC is useless, not necessarily bad guys, but useless. Same old, same old, DO NOTHING but preen for the press and lame stream media as something they lack the guts to be, rinse and repeat ad infinitum ad nauseam. NRTLC's major goal is inoffensiveness and its major result is NOTHING.
In 40 years of pro-life commitment, I have never "married" NRTLC. Therefore, divorce is not necessary or even possible. In real life, I don't have to divorce Madonna or Hillary for the same reason. I had some reservations (not unlike your own) about Connecticut Right to Life Corporation and resisted it for some years but, as Ronaldus Maximus said in a different context, it has long since been a "time for choosing." If Connecticut Right To Life Corporation and American Life League are not perfect, each is near infinitely more perfect than the utterly useless Pro-Life Council of Connecticut and equally useless National Right to Life Corporation.
Fortunately, Ohio is Judy Brown's home turf. The wronged Cleveland group will find a new and more effective and congenial home with her American Life League. They can work in their home state to destroy their polo club, social revolutionary, money issue-obsesses, fashionable supporter of fudgepacking masquerading as "marriage" disgrace of a US Senator, Robert Portman. It is the Portmans who fuel the general public's impression of the GOP as a party of brainless and unprincipled privilege.
You are flat out wrong on this general issue of NRTLC, but God bless you and yours.
Kansas58:
Although you apparently don't come from Connecticut, I thought you might benefit from the foregoing. I understand the concept of a single issue organization but National Right to Life Committee is practically a "no issue" organization other than their press releases and media appearances. There is nothing wrong with the single issue being Judaeo-Christian morality. NRTLC apparently has a foolish by-law, foolishly applied to an effective local group. Given NRTLC's utter ineffectiveness, I celebrate that the Cleveland group refused meek amoral submission to Senator Portman or NRTLC. Now, may the Cleveland group's newfound freedom be a model for whatever local affiliates of NRTLC retain any principles at all! Let a thousand flowers bloom by detaching themselves from NRTLC and recovering their integrity.
My skin in this game is that, as an attorney, I represented 1100 people arrested in numerous direct actions against Connecticut abortion mills, entering those mills, occupying them, de-sterilizing their instruments, breaking eggs and pouring them into the suction machines, forcing the machines to be torn down and reconstructed by engineers or tech personnel to be fit for their nefarious uses. Most were charged with felonies such as burglary and resisting arrest and felony criminal mischief. Via their courageous witness and militancy more than any effort of mine, all felony charges went away, all but 30 were convicted of NOTHING. Most of the 30 were convicted of infractions (legally the equivalent of a parking ticket). Most of those refused to pay any fines. The state gave up.
What did NRTLC DO and what did its Connecticut affiliate PLCC DO in response to many thousands of arrests of this sort all over Connecticut? NOTHING. They might not be invited to the fashionable cocktail parties of our opponents in state capitols and in DC! They might be accused of radicalism for ACTING as though they believed their own phony rhetoric. One of my first clients was then a quite principled young law student who later abandoned his principles and became a national bureaucrat of NRTLC.
Just in case you are tempted to imagine me a wild-eyed radical or that I don't understand Kansas or something, I went to Wichita with clients when they were before federal judge Pat Kelly on federal felonies for besieging Killer Tiller's mill in Wichita.
Magnificently pro-life Democrat Joan Finney was governor at the time and had the guts to address a Rescue rally at a major facility at Wichita State (IIRC). For all of his bad reputation with pro-lifers, Pat Kelly spent the better part of the week with me in his chambers while negotiations dragged on. I provided him with cigarettes and he offered to drive me to and from my hotel.
Whatever his reputation, I found him to be liberal but a thoroughly decent guy. I watched him threaten the US attorney (some useless Dole appointee Lee Daniels(?), a brain dead Pillsbury Dough Boy who bragged about getting 1/3 of the vote in a run for Congress from Wichita) that he should remember that all of that US Attorney's criminal cases of all sorts would be heard by Kelly and that the US Attorney did not want to fail to achieve a settlement with the Rescuers no matter how embarrassing to the US Attorney.
Technically I was a tourist and the clients were representing themselves with me being available to give advice only. The pro-lifers of Wichita were, quite unlike NRTLC, magnificently supportive of the Rescuers.
55 million sliced, diced and hamburgerized babies on NRTLC's watch and NRTLC still places a higher premium on their reputation for wimpy moderation and ability to go along to get along than on the babies' lives! If you like them, you can have them.
I apologize for not pinging you previously. Your superb posts on this thread led me to your magnificent home page which ought to be read by every actual pro-lifer here. It is a masterpiece.
Good principle makes good politics. Lack of principle is what makes the mess we are living in. Had enough? Try consistent principle.
The Chapter in Cleveland is no doubt proud to have broken the rules and justly proud to no longer be listed as an “affiliate” of NRTLC. Now the Cleveland chapter can ravage the pro-perversion trashbag Robert Portman with no further insolent interference by the NRTLC poohbahs who value their reputation for compliant spineless “moderation” above all else. NRTLC has earned that reputation, deserved that reputation and can wallow in that reputation. Cleveland pro-lifers will be free to get the job done without worrying about NRTLC’s tender and spineless sensibilities.
Consider yourself quoted.
Nobody is stopping homosexuals from shacking up in whatever arrangement consenting adults desire. There is not even any desire to prohibit homosexuals from having their union sanctified by whatever priestess, shamans, witch doctors they can find.
The homosexual marriage assault is an assault on freedom of conscience, an attempt to make others accept, and even fund, something they find abhorrent.
If you're worried about strategy, perhaps start by not echoing the perverse characterization of the issue used by people who lie.
God bless you and yours.
But if they want to be as effective as possible at eliminating abortion then they should stick to true right-to-life issues and let those organizations fighting gay marriage carry that message forward.
1. Full support of the 2nd amendment
2. Complete opposition to abortion
3. Complete opposition to gay marriage
4. Support for property rights
5. Support for a republican (rather than pure democratic) government
6. Support for three divided branches of government that limit themselves to the powers listed in the Constitution
So if I follow your logic (or lack thereof) every organization should support all of these all the time in everything they do along with a host of other principles or else they are being inconsistent.
I can see individual people supporting all of the principles above, but organizations need to have a focus in order to be successful. We as individuals can join and support many organizations with different focuses, but each of those organizations has to have a particular focus in order to be successful.
Looks like the source has undated their story:
Editor’s Note: The following story is an updated version published on August 6th.
CLEVELAND, August 5, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a July 17th letter, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) told Cleveland Right to Life (CRTL) that they must disassociate from the national group over CRTL’s criticism of Senator Rob Portman’s support for homosexual ‘marriage’, since the Senator has voted for pro-life legislation and is a sponsor of an NRLC-backed bill. The letter was also critical of CRTL having added support for traditional marriage and the family to its Mission Statement.
U.S. Senator Rob Portman
“By these actions, Cleveland Right to Life has violated National Right to Life policy, causing the chapter to disaffiliate itself from NRLC,” said the letter signed by NRLC President Carol Tobias. “We respectfully insist that you remove from your website the claim that you are affiliated with NRLC, and from this point forward, cease and desist from any representation that ‘Cleveland Right to Life’ is affiliated with the National Right to Life Committee.”
The cease and desist letter came as a shock to CRTL and according to President Molly Smith, was issued without a phone call or email from NRLC. Smith also suspects some collusion with Senator Portman in the affair since she said, “copies of the letter were forwarded to Ohio prolife organizations from Senator Portman’s office before I had the opportunity to read it myself.”
Despite the letter, CRTL is standing by its new mission statement. “This entire salvo was the result of CRTL adding the marriage/family issue to its Mission Statement recently because the traditional family with a mother and a father is an inherent right of every child,” said Jerry C. Cirino, CRTL Board member. “We know it is not only important to protect the rights of a child to be born...we should also care about the child after they are born,” he added. “This is about supporting the family in America and any politician, including Portman, who supports the break-up of the American family and supports the denial of a mother and father for children has forfeited the right of support and endorsement of the prolife movement,” concluded Cirino.
NRLC officials were not available for comment on this story.
However, their letter to CRTL explains that NRLC has been a single issue organization since its inception, “to protect the right to life of innocent human beings, including those jeopardized by legal abortion, by euthanasia, and by assisted suicide.”
NRCL’s letter also cited CRTL as violating the national group’s policy by having “issued public criticisms of and implicit political threats against a U.S. Senator who has supported the right-to-life position on every vote that has come before the Senate, and who is a sponsor of major NRLC-backed bills — because the chapter disagrees with his position on a non-right-to-life issue.”
It's members can say those thing when acting as members of Focus on the Family or other similar organizations.
Personally I don't support civil unions or the official recognition of people who just live together.
People should get married in order to get any benefits from government, and only one man and one woman should be allowed to get married.
But this is not something that the NRTL should spend a second on.
Sadly, they are not even at all effective at eliminating abortion. In fact, that isn't even their stated purpose any more.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.