Jeremy Hooper's Blog, page 53

No, you really don't seem to know what tyranny is, Jerry Cox

Responding to yesterday's ruling in favor of marriage equality in his state, Arkansas Family Council head Jerry Cox writes:

“This is another example of judicial tyranny. Arkansans voted overwhelmingly to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Their elected officials voted for that definition when they passed Arkansas’ Defense of Marriage Act. By issuing this ruling, one federal judge is saying seventy-five percent of Arkansas voters and lawmakers do not matter. If that isn’t ty...

Vatican's #Humanum event meant to paint gay families as 'evil' and 'obscene,' admits invited guest

Even some participants at last week's Vatican gathering of anti-gay social conservatives are starting to admit that the happy, hunky dory, positive vibe that the attendees were so desperate to message out was, in fact, disingenuous. In fact, Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, an invited attendee and assistant professor at the Catholic Ave Maria University, argues thatthe real message is one that considers same-sex families to "evil," "vicious," and "obscene":

Last week I was privileged to attend the Huma...

Read: Federal judge calls MS's marriage ban what it is: discriminatory

In a stayed ruling—the second one today from a southern state—U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves has ruled Mississippi's discriminatory marriage ban to be just that. Read it and weep, NOM:

Mississippi ruling

The hold lasts for fourteen days. But after that, we get Christmas same-sex weddings at the American Family Association's Tupelo headquarters? Stay tuned!

Yet another federal judge accurately notes crude discrimination within Arkansas' marriage ban

In a stayed ruling, U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker today struck down one of our more conservative state's discriminatory marriage ban:

Federal Judge Overturns Arkansas' Gay Marriage Ban [AP]

It is a near-certainty that the state will appeal to the 8th Circuit. But it is a full-on certainty that this is yet another chip in a quickly thawing block of frost that has sent shivers up the spines of freedom-loving Americans for far too long already.

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The opinion and order, via Equality Case Files...

Prominent conservative outlet equates LGBT activists with Nazi paramilitary

LGBT equality activists are now just like the SA members who brought Hitler and the Holocaust to rise (aka "Brownshirts"). Because this is what passes for acceptable conservative rhetoric in prominent conservative journals:

Regardless of how they began, the colors of the rainbow flag have all run together into a shade of muddy brown. So we ought to come to terms with the fact that LGBT activists have actually been waving brown shirts at us all along.



—Shocking anti-gay activist Robert Oscar Lop...

New pledge: Conservative pastors choose to separate selves from civil marriage

The prominent Christian conservative outlet First Things is promoting a new effort called "The Marriage Pledge." Essentially, it's a recognition, at long last, that church ceremony and civil marriage are, in fact, separate and distinguishable (even if many, or perhaps most, married couples opt in to both), with the pastors who have drafted the pledge calling on likeminded fellows to get out of the state marriage business altogether. Here's the text:

In many jurisdictions, including many of the...

Read: ADF creates fake 'victim' superbook; misapplies business matters to churches

When legal outfits like Alliance Defending Freedom take up the cases of bakers and florists and photographers who try to skirt local nondiscrimination law so that they can refuse service to LGBT customers, they most always lose. That's because public accommodations cannot just flout fairly and reasonably enacted policies just because the owners hold exclusionary ideas about society and its deserved participants. That's not how it works.

But this is a movement that needs all of the straws it ca...

P&G reaches out to pro-discrimination activist, learns it made right choice

Following Procter & Gamble's major decision to come out in favor of marriage equality, Phil Burress, a local anti-LGBT activist from P&G's home state of Ohio, claims the CEO of the company called him to discuss the matter. And here's how that went, according to Burress:

Burress shares that he was then called by the CEO of Proctor [sic] & Gamble. "And [I] spent time on the phone explaining that this is not about equality – this is about special rights for someone’s bed partner," he concludes. [...

In prep for Pope's 2015 visit, World Meeting of Families readies gay stigma, exclusion

The Pope has already announced that he will travel to Philadelphia next September for the Catholic Church's 8th World Meeting of Families. And when he does, let's go ahead and make it perfectly clear: this supposedly new and different pontiff will be catering to yet another event that reduces gay people to "people with same-sex attractions," that equates our "struggles" with things like divorce, and that insists all we gay folk are capable of having are "chaste friendships."

Here are snippets...

Today in ambition: NOM cofounder vows to fight marriage equality for 100 years

This comes from Robert George, an author of the Bush era Federal Marriage Amendment and the cofounder of the National Organization For Marriage:

We have to resolve that we will stand for marriage and fight for however long it takes—it might be 20 years, it might be 50 years, it might be 100 years—to rebuild the marriage culture and to restore in law, where it has been displaced, a sound understanding of marriage.





As a result of this, we will draw ridicule. We will bring scorn upon ourselves, be...