Peaceful Marriage Demonstrators Assaulted

From LifeSiteNews

Demonstrators with the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP) were assaulted yesterday in Warwick, Rhode Island, as they peacefully held signs in support of traditional marriage.

"We were at a busy intersection, getting strong support for traditional marriage," recounted Volunteer Rex Teodosio. "Three women approached us - one threw mayonnaise, while the other two grappled with our photographer.

"Then we were sprayed with mace. Finally, a burly woman got out of a car and punched our photographer in the face. They shouted obscenities the whole time."

Teodosio said the group was able to get the license plate number of the second car, and file a police report. The first car's license plate had been covered with a shirt.

The group says that pro-homosexual individuals have thrown water bottles, pesticide, rotten eggs and soda at TFP volunteers. But, they say, this is the first time the Catholic group was pepper-sprayed and physically attacked.

TFP said that police at Warwick station responded promptly and have opened a case. Pictures and video footage of the assault are helping the investigation.

"So much for tolerance," said TFP member Joseph Ferrara, who was struck by the attackers.

"Homosexual activists talk about tolerance, but everyone who saw the attack, saw their 'tolerance' in action. For me, these attacks reinforced my resolve to defend traditional family values."

Another Legal Victory for Traditional Marriage as Challenge to Proposition 8 is Tossed by Federal Judge

From Christian Newswire

A federal judge granted another strong legal victory for Proposition 8 today by throwing out the challenge that directly attempted to overturn the measure on federal constitutional grounds.

United States District Court Judge David Carter threw out the challenge to Proposition 8 and dismissed the state of California as a defendant in the case of Smelt vs. United States. The judge indicated in his ruling that since the plaintiffs in the case were legally married before the enactment of Proposition 8, and because the California State Supreme Court recently held that such marriages would remain intact, they had no "injury" or standing to challenge the measure. Portions of the case challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) will be heard in August.

"This is another great day for marriage in California," said Andrew Pugno, Chief Legal Counsel for ProtectMarriage.com, the official campaign committee for Proposition 8 and for the proponents of the measure. "The twice-expressed will of the people of California for traditional marriage is under assault from many lawsuits, but our recent string of victories in both state and federal courts is very gratifying."

The challenge to the Federal DOMA law will move forward with the U.S, Department of Justice as the official defendant. The next hearing is scheduled for August 3.

"ProtectMarriage.com will continue to fight for marriage and fight to defend the will of the people, no matter what course and no matter what legal theory they conjure up," said Pugno.

Marriage for All

From Off the Record
Catholic World News

In every nation, in every epoch, homosexuals have been free to marry. In every nation, in every epoch, homosexuals have not been free to marry other homosexuals. Homosexuals have been prohibited, exactly as heterosexuals have been prohibited, from marrying persons of the same sex. There was no question of discrimination on the basis of orientation because the appetites of the consenting parties (as is the case in every contractual obligation) were beside the point. Until now.

Partisans of same-sex marriage pretend that marriage is a good they wish to extend to those it has been arbitrarily denied: hence campaigns named "Marriage for All" or "Marriage Equality." But the publicly dispensable good (the kind a marriage license gives you) has always been available. What they resent is the moral value accorded marriage -- an honor markedly weaker today than in the past, yet still potent enough to cause gnashing of teeth among the innovators. That honor is what they want to abolish.

Imagine that the attitudes of a century ago -- when marriage was accorded the power to ennoble sexual relations -- could be beamed forward into the present. And imagine today's parents of a young man betrothed to another young man, urging him to remain a virgin until his wedding so as to preserve intact his and his fiancé's purity. Or imagine a same-sex couple, piously abstaining from fellatio or rimming during the season of Lent, only to resume it with prayerful joy on Easter morning. Simply to raise these possibilities is to see how grotesque they are. The decision to countenance same-sex unions is not to shift sodomy in one's books from the "immoral" to the "moral" column, it is to dispense with the category of sexual morality full stop. It is to rip up one's passport and renounce one's citizenship in the commonwealth of sexual morality.

Gay activists taunt the rest of us that conventional man-woman marriage is in a shambles today, and they're right. But their proposed innovation, as they really understand and rarely admit, is a choice for moral anarchy. Within their world there is no question of calling one act pure and another act impure, because the notion of purity has to be put to death before their project is embarked on. Chastity cannot be ennobling because to embrace same-sex congress is to debunk nobility. Even the photos from the Pride parades display a kind of sack-dance gloating over the dethronement of the concepts of purity and sexual integrity; it's a burlesque of those values that marriage -- real marriage -- was ordained to uphold.

Same-sex marriage is a war on honor. And it appears to be winning.

(Reprinted with permission.)

Right To Work Is More Than Economics

From Michigan Business Review
By Gary Glenn

I led the Idaho Right to Work effort for six years, culminating in the successful 1986 ballot campaign in which Idaho voters approved a Right to Work law, despite our being outspent 3 to 1 by union officials intent on defending the "pay up or you're fired" system of job discrimination against employees who choose not to join or pay dues to a labor union.

Right to Work is more than just an economic development issue, on which the proof is both overwhelming and conclusive. Idaho (1986) and Oklahoma (2001) roared into first place nationally in both job and income growth within two years of enacting Right to Work.

As the only Right to Work state in the Great Lakes, Michigan would become an economic powerhouse overnight as industry in the region rushed to relocate.

But even more so, it's an individual freedom and freedom of conscience issue, even a moral issue.

One example: Polls in 2004 showed that two-thirds of union households in Michigan voted in favor of the Marriage Protection Amendment, constitutionally protecting one man, one woman marriage. Yet national and state AFL-CIO officials formally opposed and spent their members' compulsory dues money campaigning against both the state and federal marriage amendments.

Thus, tens of thousands of Michiganians, who voted in favor of constitutionally protecting traditional marriage, are compelled as a condition of employment to financially support a private organization that lobbies and campaigns against their moral and religious convictions. That's just one of the many issues on which union officials campaign at odds with the views of individual employees compelled to finance those activities.

Should every person in Michigan be free to hold a job whether they belong to or support a private labor organization or not? Of course they should. Should it be illegal to discriminate against and fire an individual on the basis of membership or nonmembership in, or financial support or non-support of, a labor union or any other private organization, either way? Of course it should.

And if Right to Work should end up on some future election ballot, union officials will have a hard time convincing Michigan voters that Alabama or Texas or Florida or Arizona or Iowa or Tennessee or Nevada are poverty-stricken Third World-style economies.

If Right to Work (however) is presented primarily as a Big Business issue, the corporate boardroom's plan for economic recovery, the advantage will remain with union officials.

But if it is presented as a worker's (freedom) issue - with the helpful side-benefit that it will likely attract hundreds of thousands of new jobs to Michigan - then it may have a shot of surviving union officials' compulsory-dues-financed $50 million ballot campaign advertising gauntlet.

Outlawing job discrimination on the basis of union affiliation is philosophically, morally and politically justifiable, even if it had no effect on Michigan's economy. At the same time, no single change in public policy would more dramatically or immediately reverse Michigan's ongoing economic decline.

Gary Glenn is president of the American Family Association of Michigan. He lives in Midland.