Free Republic

Dear Justice Kennedy,June is nigh, and with it will comes your ruling on the most contentious political issue of our time: marriage.I write because I am one of many children with gay parents who believe we should protect marriage. I believe you were right when, during the Proposition 8 deliberations, you said “the voice of those children [of same-sex parents] is important.” I’d like to explain why I think redefining marriage would actually serve to strip these children of their most fundamental rights.It’s very difficult to speak about this subject, because I love my mom. Most of us children...

In the film, "Girl, Interrupted," Winona Ryder plays an 18-year-old who enters a mental institution for what is diagnosed as borderline personality disorder. The year is 1967 and the country is in turmoil over Vietnam and civil rights. While lying on her bed one night and watching TV, she sees a news report about a demonstration. The narrator says something that might apply to today's turmoil: "We live in a time of doubt. The institutions we once trusted no longer seem reliable." As 2014 ends, the stock market is at record highs but our traditional institutions and self-confidence are in...

Less than half (46%) of U.S. kids younger than 18 years of age are living in a home with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage. This is a marked change from 1960, when 73% of children fit this description, and 1980, when 61% did, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of recently-released American Community Survey (ACS) and Decennial Census data. Rapid changes in American family structure have altered the image of who’s gathering for the holidays. While the old “ideal” involved couples marrying young, then starting a family, and staying married till “death do they part”, the...

It’s about generations of young men and women growing up in a society where a father is not an integral part of the family and the price our society pays for that My generation, born in the late 1930s and the 1940s, has witnessed a dramatic change in the role and the rights of women in America. A significant result of the women’s liberation movement is a change in the role of traditional marriage that was reported in early September. “If you count a generation as spanning 20 years,” wrote Terence P. Jeffery, an editor of CNSnews.com, “then approximately 36...

Children Raised in the Intact Biological Family Fare Better by the Vast Majority of Objective Measures Notre Dame University has denied official recognition of a student group promoting policymaking that places primary emphasis on advocacy explicitly for the interests of children in considerations about so-called “Gay Marriage”. The quest for recognition by Students for Child-Oriented Policy (SCOP), was rejected in an April 30 letter from the university’s Student Activities Office. In evaluating a proposal, approval is based on several things.…There was not a need for another similar-type club. The Club Coordination Council SCOP’s Notre Dame Marriage Petition cites Pope Francis...

The traditional family is dead, so we've been informed. It's been replaced by blended families, cohabitation, single-parent families, and, if the latest scientific controversy regarding mitochondrial DNA pans out, multiple biological parents for a single child. It's not wrong to declare that the face of the American family is changing (even if most of the changes have been for the worse), but it may be overwrought. The only way to sing a dirge for the "traditional" family is to define it exceedingly narrowly -- and even then, it's not dead, just diminished. If you define "traditional" as a father working...

Stay-at-home mums cooking lunch for the children while dads earn the money—Germans’ opinions on gender roles are more conservative today than they were in the 1990s, a survey revealed on Monday. Today just under half of women (48 percent) could imagine their husband taking a step back in his career to enable them to further their own, the Tagesspiegel reported. Back in 1993, the number was 54 percent who thought such a thing likely. Men have also hardened their views, with today 40 percent said they could see themselves putting a dent in their career to help their partners, while...

Northern Ireland health minister Edwin Poots has insisted his controversial opposition to gay adoption is entirely natural. Man and woman should raise children, the senior Democratic Unionist said. The minister has tried to challenge an appeal court’s decision that paved the way for gay and lesbian couples to adopt children in the region. That bid was thrown out by the UK’s highest court, the Supreme Court. …

Revolutions are often sparked by an unexpected shock to an already-weakened regime. As commentators in France remark not only on the crisis engulfing François Hollande’s government but also on the apparent death rattle of the country’s entire political system, it could be that his flagship policy of legalizing gay marriage—or rather, the gigantic public reaction against it, unique in Europe—will be the last straw that breaks the Fifth Republic’s back. … (T)he deeper explanation for the strength of feeling lies in the fact that, in French law, marriage is indissociable from the right to start a family. There is currently...

Same-sex marriage is probably inevitable in America whatever the Supreme Court decides. That's because the public is clearly leaning that way. That the court is even being asked to impose a sweeping social change on the nation is illustrative of another lost battle -- the idea that the Supreme Court is not a super-legislature and that nine robed lawyers ought to refrain from imposing their policy preferences on the whole nation. Even two liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, have from time to time expressed caution about the Court imposing its will on matters better left up to...

TH: Good evening, and welcome to The Thinking Housewife. My guest tonight is the eminently fictitious Ellie Forthnaught, founder and sole proprietor of an interesting new venture in education, the New Wave Academy for Women. Welcome, Mrs. Forthnaught. Mrs. F: Thank you. Thrilled to be here. TH: Mrs. Forthnaught, – may we call you Ellie? Mrs. F: No, no. Please call me Andy. That’s what all my friends call me. TH: Fine then, Andy. Tell us about this idea of yours. I understand you intend to revolutionize women’s higher education in America. Mrs. F: Oh well, I’m no revolutionary really,...

The Australian Medical Association has distanced itself from a statement made by a group of doctors who say heterosexual marriage is better for children. Around 150 medical practitioners from the group Doctors For The Family have signed a submission to the Senate inquiry into marriage equality opposing same-sex marriage. The group says it believes heterosexual marriage is healthier for children. Doctors for the Family's convener Lachlan Dunjey has told ABC News Radio the group is concerned about the health consequences for children of gay marriages. "It's well proven that children who grow up with a mother and a father in...

It's a cool night in early October when about 200 members of the Class of 1959 from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, nearly a third of the class, gather for our 50th reunion. Washington-Lee has received some attention over the years as the alma mater of entertainers Shirley MacLaine, Warren Beatty and Sandra Bullock. No one in our class achieved that kind of fame. We turned out a number of physicists, pastors, businessmen, teachers and career servicemen; one lobster fisherman, one sheep farmer, one felon (pederasty); a few professors, a handful of writers (including Tom DeBaggio, a local herbalist, who...

Entitlements, Social Problems and the FamilyINDEPENDENT AMERICAN MOVEMENT FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RESTORATION This essay is by Steven Thayn, a 2nd term legislator in the Idaho State Legislature from the 11th District. It is a thesis about how current government entitlement programs do not encourage independent living or the formation of stable families, but instead increase social problems, add to our tax burden, and decrease our standard of living. It documents the truth of that statement and introduces a solution through the family and establishing it as the primary delivery mechanism of social relief within society. I urge all citizens and...

If Ward and June Cleaver had divorced, Beaver and Wally would have faced a bleak future and cost the government a bundle to boot. Such a concept has become more scarce these days. That is, a lot more people are divorcing. A report released this week by the Ottawa-based Institute of Marriage and Family reveals that 92 per cent of Canadian families had two parents in 1961 compared to 69 per cent in 2006. It might be none of our business how individuals handle their own marriages, suggests the report, if it weren't for the financial costs being imposed on...

In their efforts to improve the situation of women around the globe, a handful in the international community believe there should be no honoring of motherhood in public policy since motherhood "traps" women in lowly domestic endeavors instead of using their talents in the workforce.

I wasn't a Michelle hater before the election. I thought her critics went over the top, with their charges of everything from race-related thought-crimes to terrorist-coddling tendencies. Now, however, I find myself on the verge of gagging at the Michelle-worship that has seized America. My problem is mostly not with Michelle per se. After all, she has to get on with the business of being a First Wife, interviews, photo ops and all. It's with the way that this country, which supposedly voted for change, now suddenly worships the 1950s, pre-Betty Freidan, Leave It To Beaver family ideal. Had Howard...

Between 1991 and 2006, the numbers of unfaithful wives under 30 increased by 20% and husbands by a whopping 45%. These numbers come from a study conducted by David Atkins of the University of Washington Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors. ... Since 1950, the age of first marriage has risen to 25 from 20 for women and to 27 from 22 for men. "It's more common for people to be hooking up or having relationships with multiple partners" before marriage, says Prof. Laumann. Even young people who engage in monogamous relationships before marriage may be hurting...

And for the last several days, my jaw dropped to note the partisan pandering on both sides of the aisle, first as prominent liberal feminist women suddenly discover that a woman actually should stay home and raise a family, but second--and far more disappointing to me--as conservatives and Republicans suddenly endorse the fictional notions that 1) a woman can do it all and working women are good at raising a family--nix on both; and 2) it's not a problem that a man quit his job and subvert his life to raise the family in submission to the ambitions of his...

Clinton: Iowa a "special burden" for campaign BY GLENN THRUSH October 24, 2007 WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton is adopting a unique strategy to tamp down expectations she'll win the Iowa caucuses - suggesting that sexism will create a glass ceiling in the Hawkeye State. In an interview with The Des Moines Register, Clinton singled out Iowa and Mississippi as two states that have never elected top officials who are women. She called Iowa a "special burden" for her campaign and said it was her "hardest" state. "I was shocked when I learned Iowa and Mississippi have never elected a...