Author: Papa Giorgio

Professor Thomas Hazlett – Net Neutrality

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Justice Scalia vs. Ted Olson vs. Joe Six-Pack

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In oral arguments before the Supreme Court Tuesday, Justice Antonin Scalia repeatedly pressed Ted Olson, the attorney advocating same-sex marriage, over the issue of when exactly marriage, as it is defined in most states today, became unconstitutional:

“We don’t prescribe law for the future. We decide what the law is. I’m curious, when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868? When the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted?“

Olson countered that with a question of his own, bringing up two past high-profile cases involving discrimination: “When did it become unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriages? When did it become unconstitutional to assign children to separate schools?” Olson asked.

“Well, how am I supposed to decide a case, then, if you can’t give me a date when the Constitution changes?” Scalia said.

(Breitbart)

Social Sciences Skewed by `Lifestyle Liberalism` ~ Dennis Prager Discusses George Will`s Column on Same-Sex Marriage

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From George Will’s column which Prager cites in the audio above:

…A brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the California case by conservative professors Leon Kass and Harvey Mansfield and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy warns that “the social and behavioral sciences have a long history of being shaped and driven by politics and ideology.” And research about, for example, the stability of same-sex marriages or child rearing by same-sex couples is “radically inconclusive” because these are recent phenomena and they provide a small sample from which to conclude that these innovations will be benign.

Unlike the physical sciences, the social sciences can rarely settle questions using “controlled and replicable experiments.” Today “there neither are nor could possibly be any scientifically valid studies from which to predict the effects of a family structure that is so new and so rare.”

Hence there can be no “scientific basis for constitutionalizing same-sex marriage.”

The brief does not argue against same-sex marriage as social policy, other than by counseling caution about altering foundational social institutions when guidance from social science is as yet impossible. The brief is a pre-emptive refutation of inappropriate invocations of spurious social science by supporters of same-sex marriage. For example, a district court cited Dr. Michael Lamb, a specialist in child development, asserting that the “gender of a child’s parent is not a factor in a child’s adjustment” and that “having both a male and female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted.”

The conservatives’ brief notes that, testifying in the trial court, Lamb “had conceded that his own published research concluded that growing up without fathers had significant negative effects on boys” and that considerable research indicates “that traditional opposite-sex biological parents appear in general to produce better outcomes for their children than other family structures do.”

The brief is replete with examples of misleading argumentation using data not drawn from studies satisfying “the scientific standard of comparing large random samples with appropriate control samples.” The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a distinguished social scientist, said the “pronounced” liberal orientation of the social sciences is “well established” and explainable: “Social scientists are frequently caught up in the politics which their work necessarily involves” because social science “attracts persons whose interests are in shaping the future.”

This helps explain why “Brandeis briefs” have shaped American law. Before joining the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis defended constitutional challenges to progressive legislation by using briefs stressing social science data, or what purported to be such, rather than legal arguments. He advanced his political agenda by bald assertions inexcusable even given the limited scientific knowledge of the time. For example, in his 1908 defense of an Oregon law restricting the number of hours women could work, he said “there is more water” in women’s than in men’s blood and women’s knees are constructed differently.

Since Moynihan wrote the above in 1979, the politicization of the social sciences has become even more pronounced, particularly in matters of “lifestyle liberalism.”

Hence the need for judicial wariness about social science that purports to prove propositions — e.g., that same-sex marriage is, or is not, harmful to children or society — for which there cannot yet be decisive evidence.

…read more…

The Left`s Vehicle ~ Same-Sex Marriage (Merriam-Webster Added)

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This discrimination John Nolte  speaks about is already here, in our country where states have okayed it, and in countries where it has been legalized. See #3 in my cumulative case for more info:

Via BIG Journalism:

If anyone wants to argue that the same government currently forcing religious institutions to purchase the abortion pill through ObamaCare will not eventually use civil rights violations in order to attempt to force the Church to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies — good luck with that. 

But this would have been unthinkable five years ago.

It was just three months ago that the White House and media piled on a reverend for preaching the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality. The result was his invitation to speak at Obama’s inauguration being rescinded.

This would have been unthinkable five years ago.

[….]

With all that in mind, am I really supposed to buy that, within five years (maybe five days), the left and the media won’t be incessantly asking this question: “If the Church cannot legally refuse to marry an interracial couple, how can it legally refuse same-sex couples?”

There are many good and well-intentioned people who believe same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. Much of the support from the right comes from our “live and let live” philosophy, which I share. But another liberty is on the line, and that is religious liberty. This push from the media has never been about allowing gay couples to marry; it’s about the left’s lifelong crusade to destroy the Church.

The endgame is to declare the Bible and Christian beliefs de facto bigotry:

I have a right to defend myself. And to point out the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the Bible, and insisting we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.

That is not some crackpot talking. That is Dan Savage, who has worked with no less than President Obama. And Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi… And the media loves him.

Once this idea turns into anything close to mainstream with the left, the left’s legal harassment and outright harassment against the Church will be unceasing.

[….]

But when the State and its media attempt to force the Church to condone such a thing (and they will), what is unthinkable to many of the well-intentioned today will become a terrible reality.

UPDATE: Erick Erickson at RedState:

Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God’s own established plan. In some places this is already happening. …

The left cannot allow Christians to continue to preach the full gospel. We already see this in, of all places, Canada. Gay marriage is incompatible with a religion that preaches that the unrepentant are condemned, even of a sin the world has decided is not one. The religious freedom will eventually be ended through the judiciary. We should work to extend that freedom as long as we can.

Now many of you have read through this and you are shaking your head in denial. “No way this is possible,” you say. But then just a decade ago no one seriously considered gay marriage as possible. And we are already seeing signs we’re headed in this direction. It’s coming. Get ready.

If wanting some examples of current harms that have come to others from same-sex marriage, see #3 in this post. Here is my post on Webster’s site via FaceBook:

What needs to be done is that Christians have to be equipped to defend their worldview. “Instead of thinking of Christianity as a collection of theological bits and pieces to be believed or debated, we should approach our faith as a conceptual system, as a total world-and-life view” ~ Ronald Nash. Often times this means not even using the Bible when talking to those who reject it to begin with. It will end with it, but you can defend key-concepts within this conceptual system with appeal to reason/logic/biology/Natural Law. In other words, this conversation should be encapsulated in the language/philosophy the Constitution was written in. A good place to start are the many resources I have compiled on the subject, here (see video description): http://youtu.be/kDh4gZ2yaMg.

I use Natural Law, biology, Laws of Logic as well as leaning on others to point out the many non-sequiturs from those using emotion as the foundation for changing a norm. There are conservative gays who should be able to reasonably put forward the case for fair and equitable reasons for civil-unions in states that lack the protection that California offers their civil-union partners. HOWEVER, these same gay conservatives should be able to note what Canada’s leading gay sociologist points out:

————————————–
One of the most respected Canadian sociologist/scholar/homosexual, Paul Nathanson, writes that there are at least five functions that marriage serves–things that every culture must do in order to survive and thrive. They are:

• Foster the bonding between men and women.

• Foster the birth and rearing of children.

• Foster the bonding between men and children.

• Foster some form of healthy masculine identity.

• Foster the transformation of adolescents into sexually responsible adults.

Note that Nathanson considers these points critical to the continued survival of any culture. He continues “Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival,… every human societ[y] has had to promote it actively…. Heterosexuality is always fostered by a cultural norm” that limits marriage to unions of men and women. He adds that people “are wrong in assuming that any society can do without it.”

Going further he stated that “same sex marriage is a bad idea”…[he] only opposed “gay marriage, not gay relationships.”
———————————————-

Is he “homophobic? From the stone age? Anti-Gay? I think not. He is merely stating the importance of a society that stays cohesive… their bond… what Nature has wrought. But much like the left thinking they can control climate, so to do they think they can control gender… at someone’s detriment:

✞ “If God is ‘dead,’ somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner” ~ Malcolm Muggeridge.

Which is why a lesbian, Tammy Bruce, can pen this:

▼ Even if one does not necessarily accept the institutional structure of “organized religion,” the “Judeo-Christian ethic and the personal standards it encourages do not impinge on the quality of life, but enhance it. They also give one a basic moral template that is not relative,” which is why the legal positivists of the Left are so threatened by the Natural Law aspect of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

And if I need to remind anyone what happened the last time one of the strongest movements “relativised” their message:

卐 “Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition…. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity…. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable” ~ Mussolini.

Ravi Zacharias Appears at UCLA To Discuss Tolerance ~ Serious Saturday

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From Video Description:

http://www.veritas.org/talks – We encounter an incredible diversity of cultures, lifestyles, and faiths. Unfortunately our conflicting identities and beliefs often exclude others. Is there truth to real acceptance and inclusion? Join in discussion with renowned international speaker and Christian philosopher Ravi Zacharias. Extended Q&A following the dialogue with Dr. Zacharias and Michael Ramsden, speaker and Director at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University.

Full library available AD FREE at http://www.veritas.org/talks.

Over the past two decades, The Veritas Forum has been hosting vibrant discussions on life’s hardest questions and engaging the world’s leading colleges and universities with Christian perspectives and the relevance of Jesus. Learn more at http://www.veritas.org, with upcoming events and over 600 pieces of media on topics including science, philosophy, music, business, medicine, and more!