Anglican Mainstream

From C4M

In a move that has attracted criticism from all sides, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is investigating some websites that carry C4M advertising.

Apparently, some people think it is “offensive” to advertise a campaign that simply wants to uphold the current law on marriage.

If supporting the current law is “offensive”, what would happen to supporters of traditional marriage if the law on marriage is changed?

[...]  But on another level, it is a troubling sign of what may happen if marriage is redefined. Will the authorities pounce on every utterance in support of traditional marriage?

Will activists demand punitive action every time someone thoughtlessly uses the deeply offensive, heterosexist phrase “husband and wife”?

Yes, the ASA has lost all sense perspective. But a loss of perspective is what happens when ordinary people are ignored.

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Hat Tip: Chelmsford FCA

Watch The Great Marriage Debate from Gunnersbury Baptist Church. 

Should marriage be redefined to include same sex couples?

Speaking for the motion is Liberal Democrat Adrian Trett, Chair of LibDem LGBT Group  

Speaking against is the Revd David Robertson, Minister of St Peter's Free Church, Dundee.

A fairly lengthy but excellent well-conducted debate, and well worth watching here

By Steve Fountain, CitizenLink

More than a quarter of voters say they are now less likely to vote for President Obama in November because of his support for same-sex marriage, according to a Gallup poll taken after the president’s announcement Wednesday.

Some leaders in the conservative movement say seven states that supported Obama in 2008 are now back in play due to eroding support for the president’s policies and the clear distinction between him and Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican challenger, on the marriage issue.

“This particular issue is a Christmas gift to the Romney campaign and the GOP,” said former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, president of American Values, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. “But it is possible for them to turn it into a lump of coal if they don’t handle it correctly.”

Bauer applauded Romney for reaffirming his support for marriage in a speech at Liberty University Saturday. He said Romney should continue to state his position often on the campaign trail.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said voters who consider same-sex marriage the top issue now “have a clear choice” in November.

While Gallup shows 54 percent of Americans now believe same-sex relationships are “morally acceptable,” only 50 percent favor same-sex marriage — 3 percent less than last year.

Read here

By John-Henry Westen, LifeSite News

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) today released a pastoral letter on freedom of conscience and religion. Issued by the CCCB Permanent Council, the letter expresses concern about an “aggressive relativism” in Canada that seeks to relegate religion to the private sphere.

By Carolyn Moynihan, MercatorNet

A senior mental health professional in Australia is being hauled over the coals for signing a submission opposing same-sex marriage. A federal Senate inquiry was receiving submissions on the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010 up until April 2, and Professor Kuravilla George, Deputy Chief Psychiatrist of the state of Victoria and on the board of the state Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, signed one from the group Doctors for the Family, along with 149 other doctors.

The submission, headed by Perth GP Dr Lachlan Dunjey, was motivated by concern for the health of children growing up in same-sex headed households, reports ABC News Radio.

"It's well proven that children who grow up with a mother and a father in a biological mother-and-father family do better than children who don't have the opportunity to grow up in that kind of family," he said.

But the Australian Medical Association president has contradicted the group’s claim, saying, "There is a growing body of evidence that says there's no difference in their psychological development, their general health, their sexual orientation." Dr Steve Hambleton says the opinions expressed by Doctors for the Family do not reflect the views of the wider medical community.

Read here

by Brian Camenker, Mass Resistance (published in 2008)

It's far worse than most people realize

By Tim Stanley, Telegraph

[...]  The pattern of missing the wood for the trees has been consistent (it started when Obama wrote a memoir that everybody loved but nobody read) and it continues with his “endorsement” of gay marriage. The talk is all about how incredibly brave he is, not what his support actually means for gays and lesbians or why he waited until this moment to offer it. Conversely, the news that schoolboy Mitt Romney might have once said something nasty to someone who might have been gay has turned him into a rampaging homophobe. Yet again, style has eclipsed substance.

What was the gay marriage endorsement really all about? Ignore the timelines about Joe Biden being a loudmouth and follow the money instead. On Monday, the day before the North Carolina vote, the Hollywood Reporter reported that the marriage question was hurting Obama among west coast donors. “It's safe to say that the longer Obama waits on the issue, the more frustrated the [movie] community will grow with him. Perhaps it won't cost him their votes, but it might slow the flow of cash and public rally appearances. That concern doesn't end with Hollywood … One in six of Obama's so-called bundlers – people who raise money in great stacks for the president's campaign – is gay, giving the issue great importance in his fiscal game.”

So on Monday, Obama was losing dollars on the Hollywood fundraising circuit. On Wednesday, he endorsed gay marriage. On Thursday, he flew to Hollywood for a fundraiser, where 150 donors paid $40,000 each to meet the Prez at the home of George Clooney. Coincidence?

Read here

By Stephen Gray, Pink News

Of the members of Parliament to have made early public statements on marriage equality, those who are likely in principle to vote for the government’s proposals to allow gay couples to marry outnumber opponents three to one.

According to website of the Coalition for Equal Marriage, which has begun tracking the statements of MPs regarding the government’s proposals to open up civil marriage to gay and straight couples equally, those members making an early declaration of support roundly outstrip the opposition.

Today, 107 of 650 MPs have made their support for such a move known, compared with 36 who have indicated at this stage that they will vote against it.

Read here

By James Chapman, Mailonline

Tory Cabinet ministers warned Liberal Democrat colleagues yesterday that gay marriage and Lords reform cannot be priorities, amid growing signs that senior Coalition partners are flexing their muscles in the wake of poor local election results.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond – increasingly tipped as a future Chancellor – became the most senior member of the Government to suggest plans to allow gay couples to marry should be shelved.

And he echoed David Cameron’s warning last week that the Coalition must not become ‘bogged down’ on House of Lords reform, saying it should only proceed if legislation can go through Parliament relatively easily.
 
Conservative Party chairman Baroness Warsi also said Lords reform was not a priority, saying not one voter had raised the issue on the doorstep with her in the last six months.

Mr Hammond told the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme that proposals to legalise gay marriage should be delayed to ensure ministers focus on ‘the things that matter’.

Read here

Read also:  Philip Hammond says gay marriage and Lords reform aren't deliverable, as he prepares for a balanced MoD budget by Matthew Barrett, Conservative Home

By Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

By Simon Walters, Mailonline

Two Ministers in the Coalition clashed last night over David Cameron’s plan to allow gay marriages.

Tim Loughton, Tory Minister for Children and Families, came under fire from Liberal Democrat partners after he said he was totally opposed to same-sex marriage and that the Prime Minister would do better to focus on getting Britain out of recession.

Lib Dem Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone immediately slapped him down, saying: ‘Our consultation on equal marriage is about how to do this, not whether. Both Coalition parties have made clear we are committed to legislate by 2015.’

Ms Featherstone intervened after Mr Loughton wrote to a constituent saying: ‘For me, marriage as a religious institution cannot be anything other than between a man and a woman, and particularly when all the rights and responsibilities of marriage are available to non-heterosexual couples through civil partnerships.’

Read here

From Pink News

Students at the University of Wolverhampton who launched an 8,500-strong petition in favour of marriage equality for gay and straight couples will be holding an awareness day next week.

Representatives of the LGBT+ Society will be encouraging students to sign the petition at the City Campus Students’ Union on Tuesday 15 May.

Equal marriage advocated will be at the City Campus Students’ Union space encouraging students to sign the online petition, supported by the University of Wolverhampton Students’ Union.

Read here

From The Christian Institute

Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, has refused to say whether Scotland will redefine marriage while responses to the public consultation are still being analysed.

And it emerged that the consultation on an independence referendum received less than one third of the level of responses that the consultation on redefining marriage received.

Alex Salmond made the comments yesterday as he responded to a question from Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie, at First Minister’s Question Time.

Read here

By John Bingham, Telegraph

Thousands of responses to Government’s gay marriage consultation from opponents of the proposal have been blocked by a Home Office IT system, it emerged last night

Messages from people who tried to register their views using a link from the website of the Coalition For Marriage, which campaigns against same-sex weddings, have been automatically rejected as spam by Government anti-hacking software.

It is thought that just over 4,100 responses sent via the campaign site were rejected in the last few days – just over 40 per cent of the total.

The Home Office last night blamed an “IT glitch” which it said had now been rectified and insisted that the responses had not been lost.

It is thought that the sheer number of messages passing from one source activated software designed to detect spam emails.

But it represents an acute embarrassment for the Home Office amid claims from opponents that the consultation is a “sham”.

Although the official consultation document published in March provides an opportunity for opponents to register their opposition, it makes clear that the issue is “how not whether” the change is introduced.

It also warns that the Government will take into account the various points raised in the consultation but “not the number of responses received”.

Read here

By Robert R Reilly, MercatorNet

By Fraser Nelson, Telegraph

Strictly speaking, it ought not to matter what Barack Obama thinks about gay marriage. The American president doesn’t have the power to tell registrars whom they should categorise as husband or wife. Half a dozen American states have gone ahead and legalised gay marriage, and more may do so. But when the president announced this week that he is now in favour of same-sex marriage, it wasn’t about changing the law. It was all about the culture wars that define and electrify American politics, fire up voters and talk-radio shows, and have had, until recently, no real equivalent in Britain.

While gay marriage was being endorsed in the White House, it was being quietly shelved in Westminster. There was no mention of it in the Queen’s Speech; nor is there likely to be in future. Officially, the consultation is still ongoing, and the Prime Minister is enthusiastically in favour. But he has been told by his ministers and MPs that the effect on party morale has been devastating. Not so much because they care about a largely irrelevant piece of legislation that would change almost nothing in a country where gay weddings are already commonplace. The Tory troops simply feel this is an insult too far.

Read here

By Michael Kirke, MercatorNet

As was widely anticipated, President Obama’s “evolution” on the marriage question has now reached its final resting place in the gay lobby camp. But the political consequences are not so clear and the electoral rout which the other convert to the redefinition of marriage cause, Britain’s David Cameron, experienced at the polls last week might be worrying him. But really, given his imprisonment – not necessarily an unwilling confinement – by the ultra liberal caucus, he had little choice as to which side of the fence he was ultimately going to choose.

Political observers in Britain are already speculating that the coalition government there, following the disastrous showing in last week’s nation-wide local elections, rewrote the content of yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, the speech written by the Prime Minister but read by the Queen to Parliament and outlining the forthcoming legislative plans. “Gay marriage” was not mentioned in the speech.

However, it does not mean the plan has been abandoned. The Chancellor, George Osborne, said the “reform” plans were being postponed in favour of “the things that really matter” to voters, namely the economy. Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone assured the gay lobby that there will be “no U-turn,” saying it will be brought in as promised by 2015. The are proceeding with their strange consultation. “There was never any plan to include equal civil marriage in this year’s Queen’s Speech. Our consultation is still ongoing and it’s important we listen to people’s views.” People are not being consulted as to whether or not they want marriage redefined, just about how they want it redefined.

Read here

From Cranmer

His Grace has noticed something: when right-wingers quote Jesus or other verses of Scripture in defence of the traditional view of marriage as a union of one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation , they are increasingly cast as religious wing-nuts and homophobic bigots. But when left-wingers invoke Scripture or Christ to the cause of same-sex union, there is a veritable frenzy of enlightened jubilation that they have grasped profound truth and seen the light. Those believers who once walked exclusively in the heterosexual valley of the shadow of death have found true comfort in the gay staff of righteousness; those who once insisted on blind gender complementarity can now see; those who were lame in arguing for mothers and fathers can run a marathon of rainbow joy that one may have two fathers (or mothers). When the antediluvian heterosexual-marriage bigots repent of their medieval myopia, the angels weep for joy and all the heavenly host rejoices.

Yesterday, President Obama declared himself a supporter of same-sex marriage. He announced:

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By Rod Dreher, The American Conservative

By Ben Johnson, LifeSite News

President Barack Obama has flip-flopped on gay “marriage” for the second time, endorsing same-sex marriage in an interview today, in which he said his decision was motivated in part by his Christian faith and his belief in the Golden Rule.