UPDATE: Pam Byrnes’ Quixotic Quest to Overturn Michigan’s “Proposal 8″

Here we go.  Thanks Pam Byrnes!  Of course, it has to be our fine Ann Arbor area state reps who once again lead the way into the type of chaos and contention visited upon California until Proposition 8 was upheld….  It’s great to see our legislators working hard to stir up trouble and spend more of the state’s bountiful financial resources on stuff we don’t need….  Pam, this is settled law in Michigan, and the 30 or so other states where the voters have actually had the opportunity to vote on the subject.  Please don’t re-open this can of worms….

Breaking News! – California Marriage Amendment Upheld

From Preserving Marriage for Califronia’s Future:

The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will…

The Subprime Marriage Crisis

This piece came across the Designated Conservative’s RSS Feed recently from “Sixteen Small Stones” (excerpt below – click here to read the whole piece).  The author draws a striking parallel between the financial mess the country is in and the oncoming family and marriage train wreck:

An analogy between same-sex marriage and the credit crisis

by J. Max Wilson

In order to draw my analogy, it is important to first look at how this economic crisis came about. As usual, even experts disagree about some of the roots of the crisis, and like the Great Depression, I am sure that they will be arguing about them for decades to come. However, most of the explanations I have seen point to the Housing Market Bubble , Subprime Mortgages and Mortgage Backed Securities as the crux of the crisis.

(T)he credit crisis was incubating for a long time before it actually hit. Laws and policies enacted nearly a decade ago, if not more, did not bear fruit until this last year.

A decade ago I was…

HR 1913 CONGRESSIONAL INSANITY UPDATE: Hating, Harassing, Thought-Control, Intimidation, and, Speech-Chilling

HR 1913 CONGRESSIONAL INSANITY UPDATE:

Hat tip to Atlas Shrugs, quoting U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., a “hate crimes” supporter, as saying:

This bill addresses our resolve to end violence based on prejudice and to guarantee that all Americans regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability or all of these ‘Philias’ and fetishes and ‘ism’s’ that were put forward need not live in fear because of who they are. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this rule…”

ORIGINAL POST:

David Limbaugh recently penned an excellent piece on the machinations of radical homosexual activists entitled “Distorting the Word ‘Hate.’”  Here’s an excerpt (click here to read the whole piece):

Homosexual activists aren’t easily deterred. Unable to persuade even the people of

Wir sind alle Mormonen (We are all Mormons)

The whole anti-Proposition 8 protest thuggery aimed at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has seemed to me to be misguided at best. The following article (WE ALL ARE MORMONS….by Rabbi Shifren) sums it up best, especially with the harkening back to previous totalitarian thuggery cultural references.

My first thought upon reading it was of President Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech at the Wall in West Berlin, which expressed solidarity with the German people facing down Soviet and East German thuggery. Now, don’t get me wrong; I don’t view Latter Day Saints as any kind of an oppressed people. However, those scenes outside the Los Angeles Temple and the attacks on Christians in San Francisco should be troubling for all Christians. They are for me….

WE ALL ARE MORMONS….by Rabbi Shifren

We are living in an era of insanity! Witness the latest attempt to remake the nature of our country, founded and established on certain principles that have been the envy of the entire world. The latest assault on our country and its values comes in the form of vicious and criminal violence against the Mormon church in Westwood, California

Interesting how the selective self-righteous indignation on the part of the radical Gay activists is played out here: they bewail the blow to freedom and justice! But I thought we just had elections, where the majority of Californians expressed their views in a free and open manner. Are we not a nation of laws? Dare we relive the McCarthy era, where Americans were harassed and threatened with the loss of their jobs for believing in a certain way? If the Gay radicals should have their way, untold numbers of Americans would live under the threat of the Gay-Lesbian “thought police,” where individuals that reject the Gay lifestyle would be sought out and have sanctions brought against them.

It’s bad enough for those working in the entertainment industry here in Los Angeles, where a fog of political correctness and a bending over backwards to accommodate, even promote Gay lifestyle is in full gear. Let none dare say that this type of activity is anathema to our country, our morality, and the debauchery of our young people.

Let it be stated unequivocally: The radical Gay attack on the Mormons is the shot over the bow against the United States of America. There was a time when what a man did in his bedroom was sanctified between himself and G-d. Now we are being served an “in-your-face” smorgasbord of smut and licentiousness as being between people who only “want their civil rights.”

Hogwash! We are dealing with the equivalent of a moral takeover of the country that has as its bedrock a belief in G-d and His promise for humanity. They don’t want civil rights! What they desire is quasi Gay/Lesbian hegemony, where a huge “bookburning,” reminiscent of the Nazis, will purge any remnants of the “Christian, White, mainstream America” that has given ALL AMERICANS the most profound scope of freedom, liberty, and justice that Mankind has yet to experience.

People have perhaps wondered: why the Mormons? Answer: they are a small, yet vocal Christian minority. They have been selected by the mobs as vulnerable, a group that might not have such massive support among America’s Christians.

We who are friends of the Mormons, their patriotism, their family values, will not falter in our continued support of these dear Americans. Let us recall the Christian minister Niemoller, whose admonition during those dark years of Nazi Germany moved us to our core:

“When they came for the gypsies, I said nothing, because I wasn’t a gypsy. When they came for the homosexuals, I said nothing, because I wasn’t a homosexual. When they came for the Jews, I said nothing, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I said nothing, because I wasn’t a Catholic……then they came for me, and there was no one left to defend me.”

My fellow Americans, in the coming battle for the heart and soul of America and everything we cherish, may this call to arms be the mantra of every concerned patriot:

“WE ALL ARE MORMONS!”

=====================================
Rabbi Nachum Shifren
Lecturer and Author, “Kill Your Teacher: An Expose of Corruption and Racism in LA Schools” & “Surfing Rabbi: A Kabbalistic Quest for the Soul”
http://www.surfingrabbi.com

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Trust in democracy?

The most important and lasting civil rights-related changes in the U.S. have come through either direct votes of the people, or through their representatives in state legislatures or the U.S. Congress.  Examples include the Civil War-era constitutional amendments and Civil Rights Act of 1871, women’s sufferage (19th amendment), Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc.  

What offends me as an American and a voter is when unelected judges short-circuit democracy with rulings like the one in California back in May.  When judges legislate from the bench we are as likely to get a Dred Scott-like decision as we are a Brown v. Board of Education one.  Anything that has to go through the scrutiny of a public vote or legislative action is more likely to stand the test of time.  

I trust the people and our elected representatives far more than I trust our Supreme Court to make good law and public policy.

For me, legislating from the bench occurs where justices move beyond interpretation of the law by putting their finger into the air of public opinion to test which way the winds of popular culture are blowing.  One of the worst recent examples of this was the US Supreme Court’s Kelo v. City of New London decision involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another for economic development purposes.  On the US Supreme Court, the main finger-wavers seem to be Justices Souter, Kennedy, and Ginsberg.

The Kelo decision went far beyond interpretation of law into setting public policy better left to state legislatures.  The resulting public outcry led to a rash of state constitutional amendments and new laws that effectively repudiated the Kelo decision.  Rather than ease redevelopment in older cities (a public policy choice and the obvious intent of the court majority), Kelo had the effect of actually making it far more difficult and expensive for older communities to redevelop problem areas.

The success of Proposition 8 shows that the California Supreme Court overreached back in May and was slapped down by the voters – just as President Jackson once slapped down Chief Justice Marshall (not Jackson’s best moment, but a good example of the effective limits of judicial authority).  In the wake of the disastrous Dred Scott decision, it took two decades and the patient work of a new generation of justices to rebuild the Supreme Court’s moral authority.  These ought to be warning signs for justices who may consider themselves to be some kind of super-legislature to humble themselves a bit and stick to the law.

If gay marriage is good public policy, then proponents ought to be able to marshall good arguments and enough supporters to defeat Proposition 8 (or the similar laws and referendums passed in 29 other states).  That they weren’t able to in a Democrat landslide election says a great deal about whether or not gay marriage should be the law of the land.

California Proposition 8 and the teachings of Jesus Christ

With friends and family in California, I watched the recent election battle over Proposition 8 with interest.  However, we humans are complicated creatures, so I suspect that for many people (not just me) opinions and feelings about gay marriage are complicated too:

1.  As a Christian, I believe that marriage is an eternal institution established by God to be between one man and one woman, and that no government can legitimately alter that.  I supported Michigan’s 2004 constitutional amendment and favored passage of Proposition 8 this year.

2.  As an American, I believe in democracy and the supremacy of the people.  In the U.S., laws are established by the people (through referendums like this one) and through the people’s elected representatives in Congress and state legislatures.  The liberal activism of the California Supreme Court offends me.  It is not the place of the judiciary to make laws, and it is certainly not the place of a judge to stick his or her finger in the proverbial winds of culture to decide cases.  The law is the law.  It is the role of judges to enforce the law, administer justice impartially, and limit interpretation of the law to those instances where the intent of the legislature is unclear from the text and where a law may violate Constitutional limitations on government power.

3.  As a person with a close family member living a homosexual lifestyle, I was happy to receive word that he and his long-term domestic partner had decided to marry in San Francisco.  Long ago I welcomed his partner in as part of the family, and I love my family member no less because of his lifestyle choices.  I’m glad that they have chosen to take this step to further their commitment to one another.

I don’t find any contradictions in these seemingly conflicting ideas.  As a complicated human being, I can hold these apparently opposing beliefs simultaneously, because they are all grounded in the Gospel of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ taught that we must abhor sin, but love the sinner.  He taught that we all sin, and we all can be forgiven of our sins if we repent and come unto Him.  It is through our behavior that we sin, not our feelings.  We all are tempted to sin (including those that have feelings of same sex attraction) – to be tempted is not the same as sinning.  We sin when we give into temptation, including homosexual sex.

I am a Christian, and I work to keep His commandments and follow His example.  I believe that as the United States keeps close to the intent of our Founding Fathers, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, we will prosper as a country.  We are at heart a Christian nation founded on Christian principles.  When we fall away from those principles as a nation, we will fail.  Being a Christian nation does not mean an autocratic theocracy, but it also does not mean that we should accept the redefinition of sin into virtue.

I love my family member who is living a gay lifestyle, I could not forsake him anymore than I could cut off my right arm.  He knows my beliefs and I know his, and because we love and respect one another we have a good relationship.  My love for him and my happiness for his decision to marry does not change my belief that these gay marriage court decisions are undermining the foundations of our constitutional democracy and damaging our American culture.  I accept the will of the people who elected Barack Obama our next President, and those protesting the approval of Proposition 8 should accept the will of the majority there too.  

Apparently the large majority of voters in California still agree with my view.  After all, in the year of Obamamania, gay marriage proponents had the best chance they may ever have to succeed, and they came up short.