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LJUBLJANA - More than 60 percent of Slovenian voters opposed legalizing gay marriage in a referendum Sunday marked by low turnout, according to near-complete results from the electoral commission. The outcome marked a setback for gay rights activists who had hoped to see the largely Catholic nation become Europe's first ex-communist country to give same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt. With 99.9 percent of ballots counted, 63.48 percent of voters said 'no' to approving the legislation, which already passed in parliament earlier this year. More than 1.7 million people were registered to vote on an issue that has...

July 16, 2015 (BreakPoint) -- The world is leaving us and our values behind. If we don't get with the times, we may soon find ourselves isolated and irrelevant. If you think I'm talking about Christians and the recent Supreme Court decision on same-sex “marriage,” think again. Of course, if you don’t read international and Christian news sources, you probably didn’t know that last week the UN Human Rights Council passed The Protection of the Family resolution. Not surprisingly, the mainstream U. S. media ignored the story. The resolution, approved by a vote of 27 to 14, urges member states...

The Supreme Court decision Friday making homosexual marriage not only legal but giving it a status superior to heterosexual marriage* was ominous (never mind that the lead defendant's name sounded like a rank in the Wehrmacht). In his majority opinion, one which cavalierly overthrew well over 6,000 years of human history in the service of Kennedy's vigorously, if vicariously, twitching nether regions, Kennedy laid out a road map for the eradication of the legal ability to oppose homosexual marriage. This is the key section: “Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue...

June 18, 2015 (ThePublicDiscourse) -- I’m growing weary of being told that I must either support gay marriage or disavow my own marriage. I refer not to anything my wife and I did that would violate the traditional norms of marriage, but to something we had no control over: our ongoing inability to conceive a child. My wife and I, along with all other childless heterosexual couples, often find ourselves presented as exhibit A in the court of public opinion. Our plight has become a standard response to the main reason for traditional marriage, a reason that until lately was...

William Penn once said, "A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably." People of faith that have sincere religious objections to same-sex marriage have every reason to question whether they have a friend in the Governor's office, and, perhaps in certain lawmakers. Recently, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory vetoed SB 2 – Magistrates Recusal for Civil Ceremonies. The bill simply establishes procedures that magistrates may recuse themselves from performing all lawful marriages, based upon a sincerely held religious objection. The same accommodation would be made for assistant register...

Heather Barwick, who was raised by her mother and her mother's lesbian partner, wrote in an essay this week that same-sex "marriage" is not the same as normal marriage between a man and a woman, that the traditional family is best, and that while growing up she "ached every day for a dad." Heather Barwick, who was raised by her mother and her mother's lesbian partner, says "gay marriage" not only redefines marriage but also parenting and that "as a little girl, I so desperately wanted a daddy." (Photo: The Federalist.) Barwick, who is 31 now, married, and has four...

n an interview with Panorama magazine, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, the two men whose business partnership—and one-time romantic partnership—lies behind one of the world's great fashion powerhouses, have declared that “The only family is the traditional one.” “The family is not a fad,” Gabbana told the interviewer. “In it there is a supernatural sense of belonging.” Procreation “must be an act of love.” Children born through artificial insemination or egg donors are “children of chemistry, synthetic children. Uteruses for rent, semen chosen from a catalog,” Dolce said. “The only family is the traditional one. No chemical offsprings and rented...

Uh-oh. Watch the gaystapo come in and attempt to re-educate them. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, founders of the eponymous fashion house, have come out strongly against gay marriage, the notion of gay families, and the use of surrogacy to procreate. The billionaire pair, who used to be romantically linked, gave an interview with the Italian magazine Panorama, in which they said, “The only family is the traditional one. No chemical offspring and rented uterus. Life has a natural flow; there are things that cannot be changed.” They also said, “Procreation must be an act of love.” “I call children...

In a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas excoriated his fellow justices for refusing to temporarily stop enforcement of a federal district judge's ruling that overturned the marriage laws of the state of Alabama and ordered Alabama to recognize as legal "marriages" unions between two people of the same sex. On Jan. 23, U.S. District Judge Callie Granade ruled that Alabama laws limiting marriage to the union of one man and one woman violated the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent the...

George Weigel About a year ago, I suggested to one of the top editors of a major American newspaper that his journal’s coverage of things papal left something to be desired, as it seemed based on the assumption that Pope Francis was some kind of radical wild-man, eager to toss into the garbage bin of history all those aspects of Catholic faith and practice that mainstream western culture finds distasteful. My friend replied, in so many words, look, you know how these media narratives are: they’re like bamboo. Once they get started, there’s no stopping them. They just keep...

A married same-sex couple cannot use a marital statute to block a man's paternity petition for the child he fathered with one of the spouses during the women's marriage, a Family Court judge has determined. Monroe County Family Court Judge Joan Kohout (See Profile) said that while state Domestic Relations Law prohibits discrimination against same-sex married couples, it does not require the court to "ignore the obvious biological differences between husbands and wives." Neither spouse in a male-male marriage can biologically give birth to a baby, and neither spouse in a female-female marriage can be the biological "father," Kohout wrote...

Breaking: Pope to host international conference on complementarity of man and woman By Joshua Mercer Big news, just announced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:Rome, November 3rd, 2014.On November 17-19, 2014, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will host a colloquium in Vatican City, in cooperation with the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, on the subject of the Complementarity of Man and Woman in Marriage. It is a global, interreligious meeting featuring representatives from 14 religious traditions and 23 countries. The colloquium will...

Monday’s decision by the Supreme Court not to take up numerous state appeals regarding same-sex unions pretty much signals that the secular redefinition is here to stay. This is really no surprise given the rather deep confusion about sexuality and marriage in our culture. The polygamists and any number of other groups demanding recognition for their aberrant notions of marriage are sure to follow with all due haste. And what is to stop them, legally, at this point? The word “marriage” is now largely meaningless since, if marriage can mean anything, marriage means nothing, in the linguistic sense. At my...

Parliamentarians in Slovakia enshrined marriage as a “unique bond between a man and a woman” in the country’s Constitution May 4, with 102 National Council members backing the amendment, 18 opposing it, and three abstentions. The amendment was brought to the National Council by the Christian Democrats, and supported by the government, despite the latter being led by the socialist SMER party. A government spokesman told a press conference that the proposal simply upholds the existing situation. “The marriage amendment will not bring about any drastic changes, it only seals in the constitution what is already defined by law,” said...

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has responded that, despite criticism from political leaders in his home state, he will attend the March for Marriage this week, because his position requires him to act as a defender of the Catholic faith. In a letter released today, Cordileone wrote that he is required “as a bishop, to proclaim the truth—the whole truth—about the human person and God’s will for our flourishing ... especially the truth about marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife,” Cordileone wrote. “That is what I will be doing on June 19th.” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone Political figures...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took the lead this week in a high-profile lobbying effort to pressure San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone not to attend the controversial March for Marriage event, which she characterized as "venom masquerading as virtue." Pelosi, who is one of the country's most powerful Catholic politicians, made a passionate appeal to the archbishop in a letter obtained by The Chronicle not to participate in the National Organization for Marriage's June 19 march on the Supreme Court in Washington. Cordileone, who is one of the featured speakers at the event, was a leader in the campaign for...

A priceless vein of God's infinite wisdom and creative beauty can be found marbled throughout the marvelous and myriad differences He established between the two sexes – male and female. Thank you God for blessing us with "the other." "The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him'" (Genesis 2:18). And so He made woman, thereby giving man a chance to think of, do for and partner with his spiritually, sexually, emotionally and physically compatible binary opposite. And she for him. Yet our culture today is more...

Franklin Graham: ‘At Every Turn, the Gay and Lesbian Agenda is Being Pushed by This Administration’ Rev. Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. (AP) (CNSNews.com) – Rev. Franklin Graham, son of world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham, said that “true followers” of Jesus “cannot endorse same-sex marriage” regardless of what President Barack Obama, the Congress, the Supreme Court, or the media say about the issue, adding that marriage was “settled by God Himself” and cannot be modified by man. “True followers of Jesus Christ, whose salvation is based entirely upon God’s Word, cannot endorse same-sex marriage, regardless of what...

Today the Pope spoke during his non-Magisterial, off-the-cuff fervorino at morning Mass in strong terms not just about generic, impersonal “evil”, but about the Enemy of your soul, the Devil.From VR: “We too are tempted, we too are the target of attacks by the devil because the spirit of Evil does not want our holiness, he does not want our Christian witness, he does not want us to be disciples of Christ. And what does the Spirit of Evil do, through his temptations, to distance us from the path of Jesus? The temptation of the devil has three characteristics and...

A Russian lawmaker known for her outspoken support for traditional marriage and the unborn is among the officials listed in new U.S. sanctions against individuals for their alleged contribution to Russia’s unlawful grab of Ukrainian territory. Weeks ago, President Obama announced sanctions aimed at several individuals for their alleged roles in facilitating Russia’s actions. But Yelena Mizulina’s seems out of place on the list. Mizulina is chairwoman of the Russian Duma’s Committee on Family, Women and Children’s Affairs. She was also the lead sponsor of legislation banning Americans from adopting Russian orphans, fearing the children could suffer harm if adopted...