Sunday, August 31, 2008

Proposition 8: Marriage Act

Folks here in California are familiar with the content of this proposition. We had one similar that was voted on and passed, only to be overturned by the legislating judges.

They overturned the people's vote!

...we can't let that happen again.

See the Video please.

2 comments:

  1. An estimated 65,500 adopted children are living with a lesbian or gay parent.

    Gay and lesbian parents are raising four percent of all adopted children in the United States.

    An estimated 14,100 foster children are living with lesbian or gay parents.

    Gay and lesbian parents are raising three percent of foster children in the United States.

    Millions of children in the United States have LGBT parents.

    You're not denying marriage to "gays" ... you're denying marriage to "parents" - not something to be proud of in my book.

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  2. CB,

    Thanks for your comments; it’s always good to hear from you.

    You seem to be relying on numbers on Gay Adoption to legitimize your stance on Gay Marriage. From there you jump to re-defining the term ‘Parent’

    After all, who can be against Parents?

    First of all in your reference to the number of gay/lesbian adoptions and the total number of foster children living with gay parents (those numbers reflect California’s numbers), you seem to leave out one important number. If you insist on playing the number game, you don’t mention that a majority of Californian voters rejected redefining marriage. They voted over-whelming to keep the traditional definition of marriage as being between ‘one man and one woman’.

    I myself believe in this definition whole-heartedly. I agree fully in the teachings of my Catholic faith and expressing the truths of these teachings in my everyday life, no matter where I am or whom I’m with.

    As a Catholic I am called to follow the two greatest commandments, 1) Love God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength, and 2) Love my neighbor as myself.

    This love for others involves being truthful with them especially in regards to expressing the truths of the Catholic Church and the natural laws.

    Hence the short video in support for Proposition 8.

    I’m not sure what faith you hold; what church you attend if any at all. I still must witness to these truths.

    I’d like to keep this dialogue open with you if you would like. In the meantime I’ll offer up some informative articles of interest on this subject of Marriage.

    A short letter from the Catholic Bishops of the U.S. is also enclosed for you to further understand the Catholic perspective.

    I really enjoy answering questions about my faith and I hope to do so clearly and as charitably as I can.

    Thanks again for your comments. Please keep in touch.

    WCC +<><

    Articles:(please read the complete articles)

    1) Focus on the Public Purpose of Marriage: Protecting Children: by Colleen Campbell

    (http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.3029/pub_detail.asp)

    Battles over same-sex marriage typically turn on arguments about gay rights, judicial activism and views on homosexuality. Absent are answers to a more fundamental question: What is the public purpose of marriage?

    In his new book, The Future of Marriage, author David Blankenhorn explains how confusion surrounding that question muddies our marriage debates and obscures what's at stake in their outcome.

    As president of the non-partisan Institute for American Values, Blankenhorn has devoted his career to promoting marriage and responsible fatherhood. He has seen the social science studies affirming that the best way to ensure the well being of children is to ensure that children are raised by their married, biological parents. On every measure from health and financial stability to graduation rates, those children tend to fare better than children raised in other types of families.

    Blankenhorn worries that this child-welfare ideal is endangered by a view increasingly prevalent among Americans: that marriage is merely another lifestyle choice, the public recognition of a private relationship with no intrinsic connection to parenthood.

    That view is a historical anomaly. For thousands of years, marriage has existed in nearly every society for the purpose of ensuring that a child is raised by his mother and father. Far from simply blessing a private relationship between consenting adults, marriage has aimed to promote stable sexual unions between men and women whose public commitment creates a suitable context for childrearing...

    2) Law and Moral Purpose: by Robert P. George

    (http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6101&var_recherche=marriage)

    The obligations and purposes of law and government are to protect public health, safety, and morals, and to advance the general welfare—including, preeminently, protecting people’s fundamental rights and basic liberties.

    At first blush, this classic formulation (or combination of classic formulations) seems to grant vast and sweeping powers to public authority. Yet, in truth, the general welfare—the common good—requires that government be limited. Government’s responsibility is primary when the questions involve defending the nation from attack and subversion, protecting people from physical assaults and various other forms of depredation, and maintaining public order. In other ways, however, its role is subsidiary: to support the work of the families, religious communities, and other institutions of civil society that shoulder the primary burden of forming upright and decent citizens, caring for those in need, encouraging people to meet their responsibilities to one another while also discouraging them from harming themselves or others.

    Governmental respect for individual freedom and the autonomy of nongovernmental spheres of authority is, then, a requirement of political morality. Government must not try to run people’s lives or usurp the roles and responsibilities of families, religious bodies, and other character- and culture-forming authoritative communities. The usurpation of the just authority of families, religious communities, and other institutions is unjust in principle, often seriously so, and the record of big government in the twentieth century—even when it has not degenerated into vicious totalitarianism—shows that it does little good in the long run and frequently harms those it seeks to help.

    Limited government is a key tenet of classic liberalism—the liberalism of people like Madison and ­Tocqueville—although today it is regarded as a conservative ideal. In any event, someone who believes in ­limited government need not embrace libertarianism. The strict libertarian position, it seems to me, goes much too far in depriving government of even its subsidiary role. It underestimates the importance of maintaining a reasonably healthy moral ecology, especially for the rearing of children, and it misses the legitimate role of government in supporting the nongovernmental ­institutions that shoulder the main burden of assisting those in need...

    3)
    A Statement of the Catholic Bishops of California in Support of Proposition 8

    (http://www.cacatholic.org/bishops-statements/a-statement-of-the-catholic-bishops-of-california-in-support-of-proposition-8.html)


    The issue before us with Proposition 8 is "marriage"—an ancient, yet modern, human institution which pre-exists both Church and government. Marriage, history shows us, is intrinsic to stable, flourishing and hospitable societies. Although cultural differences have occurred, what has never changed is that marriage is the ideal relationship between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation and the continuation of the human race.

    On May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that the current law defining marriage as between a man and a woman is unconstitutional. This radical change in public policy will have many profound effects on our society, because it

    * Discounts the biological and organic reality of marriage—and how deeply embedded it is in our culture, our language and our laws and ignores the common understanding of the word marriage; and because it
    * Diminishes the word "marriage" to mean only a "partnership"-a purely adult contractual arrangement for individuals over the age of 18. Children—if there are any—are no longer a primary societal rationale for the institution.

    As teachers of the faith, we invite our faithful Catholics to carefully form their consciences. We do that by drawing on the revelation of Scripture, the wisdom of Tradition, the experience and insights of holy men and women as well as on what can be known by reason alone.

    Crystallizing the teaching on marriage, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1603, 1604) proclaims:

    God himself is the author of marriage. The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life...

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