Which presidential candidate (or potential candidate) is winning the race for Twitter followers? Here’s how the race shakes out among the current front-runners:
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Abolishing the Defense of Marriage Act
The debate about the debt ceiling has dominated the news for the last couple of weeks. As a result, many people missed a significant news story last week. The Senate Judiciary Committee held the first hearing ever held to consider abolishing The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Michael Foust reports: Wednesday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee marked the first time any Senate or House committee ever held a hearing on overturning the 1996 law, which defines marriage for federal purposes as between a man and a woman and gives states the option of not recognizing another state’s gay “marriages.” Gay groups view its reversal as the first step toward…
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Gay Marriage, Religious Exemptions, and Religious Liberty
When the New York legislature voted to legalize same-sex marriage last month, there were a handful of representatives who formerly opposed gay marriage but who switched their vote to legalize it. To a man, they justified their decision on the basis of the “religious exemptions” that would supposedly protect religious organizations from having to violate their religious beliefs. Anyone paying attention knows that such exemptions are flimsy and probably won’t stand the scrutiny of the courts. But even more troubling is the fact that the exemptions do not cover religious individuals, but only religious organizations. This difficulty is not theoretical but has already come to a head in Vermont (another…
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President Obama on Gay Marriage
Chuck Todd asked President Obama about gay marriage in today’s press conference (starts at 5:45 above). Among other things, the President said that the legalization of gay marriage in New York was a “good thing” and that “we are moving in a direction of greater equality.” Laura Meckler pressed him on the issue later in the news conference (at 4:20), and he then stopped short of endorsing gay marriage saying, “I’m not going to make news on that today.”
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Robert George on NY Gay Marriage
Robert George had a big hand in the paper I posted earlier this week from The Witherspoon Institute, and he has some pointed words today about the gay marriage decision in New York. You need to read the whole thing, but I thought his remarks about the worldviews of the two most significant political players in New York (Cuomo and Bloomberg) were spot-on. He writes:
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Passive Indifference about Gay Marriage
Conservative columnist James Taranto is “Exhibit A” of why gay marriage will eventually be legal in all 50 states. Those who might stand up in favor of marriage are simply shrinking back, and Taranto is among them. The GOP majority in the NY state senate is another case in point. There is a passive indifference on the part of these conservatives when it comes to social issues in general and to gay marriage in particular. Perhaps they would prefer that our laws only recognize traditional marriage, but no biggie if they don’t. Taranto represents this point of view really well. He writes:
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The Real Story behind NY Gay Marriage
If you missed Michael Barbaro’s report in yesterday’s New York Times about the road to gay marriage in New York, you really should take the time to read it. The public story until now has been that a few key Republicans responded to emotional appeals from gay couples who wished to be wed. Barbaro shows that this is not what really happened.
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Piper on Minnesota Marriage Amendment
You need to read what John Piper has to say about the proposed Minnesota marriage amendment, which would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Piper’s article would be helpful not only to Minnesotans, but also to anyone interested in understanding how Christians should think through the intersection of public policy and sexual ethics. Here’s an excerpt:
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Pre-abortion sonogram required under new Texas law
There’s good news on the pro-life front out of Texas. Governor Rick Perry just signed into law a bill that requires women seeking an abortion to have a sonogram before going through with the procedure. The law also requires a 24-hour wait period between the sonogram and the abortion. As you can imagine, pro-abortion legislators are not happy about the law. The Associated Press reports:
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Douthat on “The Palin Tragedyâ€
Here’s Ross Douthat‘s take on Sarah Palin then and now: “Palin was caricatured viciously, but in response she decided to essentially become the caricature, giving her enemies exactly the kind of Spiro Agnew-in-heels performance they expected, and then chasing celebrity in destructive (if lucrative) ways once the initial firestorm around her subsided. The only thing that can be said in her defense is that her choices, while misguided, have been very, very human.