Author: Ruth Institute

Welcome Friewis

Welcome to all the new visitors from this site. Now that you are over here, I call you my FRIEnds w/ Wrong Ideas. (I don’t have enemies.) What with Christmas parties and all, I haven’t had time to extend a proper welcome to all my new Friends from Queerty and TPM and other such places. […]

Panic in the Streets over the Rainbow Flag

Wow! I really hit a nerve talking about the rainbow and what it does or does not symbolize. It is very interesting to me that this offhand discussion of symbolism struck such a nerve. Trouble is, the various commentators can’t seem to get their stories straight. One headlinesays, “Anti-Gay Ruth Institute Wants to Steal the […]

The symbol of the Cross

One of the more annoying comments on the Rainbow article is this one: Someone should tell the H8ers – who merely highjack the word “god” to spread their H8 – that the alleged “christian cross” was STOLEN (in 1081AD) by the Christian Crusade leader, Godfrey de Bouillon, from the Muslims. That’s right, the Christians STOLE […]

Original Meaning, Privileges and Immunities, Fundamental Rights and Other Legal Magic Words

So this morning, I’m reading the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review on the treadmill at 24 Hour Fitness, “Who’s Afraid of Original Meaning?” by George Thomas of Claremont McKenna College. I won’t pretend that I understand the twists and turns of his argument about why Scalia’s interpretation of Original Meaning isn’t as original as it should […]

Virtual Alternative Half-time Show

Yes, it is the season of Christmas and giving and love and blah, blah, blah. It is also the season of back to back football games. Which means half time shows. which can mean offensive (remember Janet Jackson’s Wardrobe Malfunction a few years ago.) Or obnoxious commercials that are too precious by half. Or whatever. […]

The Life-Style Left Exploits the Poor

The Life Style Left exploits the poor Back in the day, when the Left used to go through the motions of standing up for the poor and downtrodden, they used words like, “alienation,” “exploitation,” “oppression of the weak by the rich” and “atomistic individualism.” Capitalism promoted all these Bad Things, you see, and the Left […]

WSJ Reports: Baby Selling Goes Global

The Wall Street Journal reports on the growing phenomenon of reproductive tourism. I encourage Regular Ruth Readers to go to this story and comment. In a hospital room on the Greek island of Crete with views of a sapphire sea lapping at ancient fortress walls, a Bulgarian woman plans to deliver a baby whose biological […]

They’ve already redefined marriage

In their minds, that is. Our side considers legalizing same sex marriage to be a redefinition of marriage. We try to persuade people that redefining marriage would be harmful. But I have noticed that many people who favor ssm have ALREADY mentally redefined it. In their minds, marriage is only about adult relationships, with children […]

Defending Prop 8: Defending the Voters.

I expect that Chuck Cooper will defend the voters of California against the truly scurrilous attack made by Olsen and Boies and repeated by Judge Walker. The plaintiffs complained about the advertising used during the campaign. I was shocked the first time I heard this complaint. They couldn’t find anything explicitly “homophobic” in the campaign […]

Prop 8 Resources

Our sister organization, the National organization for Marriage has an outstanding set of resources for following Prop 8. There is a case timeline here. And they have a list of links to important case documents here, including many amincus briefs.

How Chuck Cooper will defend Prop 8 tomorrow

Chuck Cooper, lead attorney for the defense of Proposition 8, will surely make a big deal out of the sloppy reasoning of Judge Walker’s opinion. He will certainly point out that there are numerous cases at the state and federal level, which are precedents for the same sex marriage issue. These cases hold that there […]

WaPo gets the Prop 8 point: the number of experts is pointless.

The Prop 8 legal defense team has taken a beating in public debate. But the MSM, in the person of Washington Post reporter Lisa Leff (finally) start asking the right questions. What was the point, if any, of all the expert testimony presented in the original Prop 8 case? Our side says it was basically […]

We have some questions of our own.

The Prop 8 trial will be full of questions. Here at NOM and the Ruth Institute, we have a few questions of our own. We think the People of California, those people who had the audacity to vote for Prop 8, are on trial here. We are proud of our involvement in Prop 8, and […]

The “fundamental right to marry” case favors man/woman marriage.

Skinner v. Oklahoma is one of the standard cases cited in defense of the “fundamental right to marry.” In this 1942 case, the Court stated, “We are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man. Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race.” […]

Stop the Presses: European court Protects Marriage!

In this day of US Courts following European Courts, here comes an interesting story from the European Court of Human Rights: “The European Court of Human Rights has refused permission to appeal in a challenge to the ban on gay marriage in Austria. The effect of the decision is to make the court’s rejection of […]

Body Image Craziness

One topic we are hearing from college women in our programs: they are under enormous pressure to look a certain way, namely slim and perfect. A friend of mine sent me a link to this video: Dove Evolution Please share this video with all the young women you know! they are starving themselves and otherwise […]

Abortion Trauma

I have long noticed that the harms associated with abortion are not taken seriously. That is because “the right to choose” isn’t really the issue. the issue is the right to have unlimited sexual activity without a live baby resulting. If abortion has significant medical or psychological consequences, these consequences will limit women’s desire to […]

Second Thoughts: Abortion Law is Family Law

Ruth Institute board member Helen Alvare has a brilliant article on recasting abortion law in terms of family law, instead of constitutional law. family law is experiencing second thoughts about “what was lost” during the period when lawmakers fell into a pattern of prioritizing adults’ interests over children’s. This is a fair characterization of family […]

A “Roe” moment for marriage

I once told the Blackstone legal Fellows, if you knew that Roe v Wade was coming down the pike, wouldn’t you throw yourself in front of a train to stop it? Archbishop Joseph Kurtz is making the same argument here: Saying “today is like 1970 for marriage,” Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., urged […]

Iowans Dismiss Judges who redefined marriage

From USA Today: Three Iowa Supreme Court justices lost their seats Tuesday in a historic upset fueled by their 2009 decision that allowed same-sex couples to marry. Vote totals from 96% of Iowa’s 1,774 precincts showed Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit with less than the simple majority needed to […]

Election Preferences

This election season, some friends of mine have made a project of reporting on the actual pro-abortion, pro-gay views and activities of a candidate. The husband in this husband and wife team researched the candidate’s positions on abortion and same sex unions. He wrote up a flyer, reporting this information. The wife translated the flyer […]

The Poor’s Good Marriages

This is really an excellent blog post from the First Things blog. David Lapp dissects one economists’ approach to the decline of marriage among the poor. While there surely is an economic dimension to marriage, marriage historically has primarily been about bringing children and parents together. So we invented the vacuum cleaner (a standard economic-determinist […]

Test Tube Parenthood on Trial

This article from Canada’s National Post focuses on a woman’s quest to give Donor Conceived Persons the right to search for their genetic, but absent parent. This is a right accorded to adopted children, but not to Donor Conceived Persons. One young woman I interviewed some months ago, who is making a documentary about her […]

Johnny has two mommies and four dads

I’ve been telling my audiences that redefining marriage means redefining parenthood. I’ve told people that same sex marriage will create pressure for triple parenting. Now, here is an article in the Boston Globe, explaining what I’m talking about. You can see for yourself that I am not making this up. (By the way, notice the […]

Loved Into Existence

In my Magnificat (a daily Catholic prayer book) I found this quotation last Sunday, from Fr. Richard Veras: “I do not decide my mission, Jesus loves my mission into existence, by continually loving me into existence.” I love that phrase, “loved into existence.” I realize that this is one of the core beliefs of the […]

What people don’t know about Iowa

I follow changes in the marriage debate across the country and around the world. I’m often surprised as I travel around that not everyone follows these things as closely as I do. So, one of my jobs is keeping ordinary people informed about strange goings-on in other parts of the country. For instance, my audience […]

Never Enough: The Utility of Impossible Objectives

I have been reading the new book, Never Enough, by William Voegeli at Claremont McKenna College, with great interest. His theme is that the advocates of the welfare state have never been able to give a coherent account of the proper size and scope of their ambitions. How much assistance to the poor is enough? […]

My position on same sex adoption

The article in the Kalamazoo Gazette may have caused some confusion about my views on same sex adoption. My position on same sex adoption: • There should be a social and legal presumption that kids need a mom and a dad, preferably their own mom and dad. When that is not possible, society should try […]

What I really said in Kalamazoo

This article from the Kalamazoo Gazette has caused some confusion. In my talk, I didn’t say a word about civil unions. The reporter came up afterwards and asked me some questions. I said that “all the practical problems of same sex couples can be solved without redefining marriage.” I didn’t say I favor civil unions […]

Do Real Men Love the Latin Mass?

I ask the indulgence of our non-Catholic readers, for that matter, of our non-traditionalist Catholic readers. This is a completely esoteric post, but here goes. While I was in Kalamazoo MI this weekend, I went to Latin Mass at Fr. Sirico’s parish, St. Mary’s. Now, this was not the Novus Ordo in Latin, which is […]

Standing on the Threshhold of an Inconceivable Age

Here is an excellent talk on sex and happiness Standing on the Threshold of an Inconceivable Age: Sexuality in the 21st Century, by Reverend Dale S. Kuehne from Alexander Hamilton Institute on Vimeo. This is about an hour long, but there is alot of good food for thought here.

Elitism and Judicial Supremacy

Why do the Courts so often impose their “enlightened” views on the rest of us? Political Science professor Robert Lowry Clinton believes he has the answer: A few months ago, I was attending a presentation by one of my colleagues on American elections. He reported that it was now settled among experts that American voters […]

Nobel Misconception

I was going to write something about the award of the Noble Prize in medicine to the developer of IVF. But my friend from Down Under, Carolyn Moynihan of Mercator Net said what I wanted to say: There is something quite ironic in this week’s award of the Nobel Prize to Robert Edwards for the […]

Who’s for abortion?

On one of my recent trips, I heard from some old-time pro-life sidewalk counselors. These are folks who have been praying outside abortion clinics since Roe v Wade practically. They made this observation: “in the old days, our opponents on the sidewalks would be feminists of some sort. Today, it is far more likely that […]

Ed Whelan’s Amicus Brief in the Prop 8 case

Ed Whelan filed an amicus brief in the Prop 8 case, on behalf of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. RRR’s have seen some of his arguments already in this space. He explodes the contention that the Prop 8 defense team “didn’t provide any evidence.” And in fact shows pretty clearly that Judge Walker echoed […]

On the Other Hand, Sex is a Requirement for Marriage

Actually having Sex is a requirement for marriage, even if actually having a baby is not. Marriages traditionally had to consummated in order to be valid. In case you think this is an unimportant point, look again to the life story of Henry VIII. For his fourth wife, Henry agreed to wed Anne of Cleves, […]

Why Actual Fertilty is Not a Requirement for Marriage: Exhibit A

As a defender of natural marriage, I am often asked why actually having children is not a requirement for marriage. I claim that the essential public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. If that is the case, why are infertile couples permitted to marry. So, […]

Why the Judges in Iowa have to go: Basic Unfairness

The judges who imposed same sex marriage in Iowa did a terrible job in the case, Varnum v Brien. I had a couple of articles about the case when it came out in 2009. Here they are again, to help folks make the case as to why this decision should be considered as poorly decided […]

Why the Iowa Judges Have to Go: Defining Marriage Down

The judges in Varnum v Brien made very clear what some of us have been saying for a long time: same sex marriage doesnt’ just let more people join in to the existing institution of marriage. Same sex marriage redefines marriage, downgrading its essential public purposes and leaving nothing but inessential private purposes. The judges […]

The Good of Sex in Marriage

“Marriage between one man and one woman is the only moral cntext for sexual intimacy. This is because in marriage, and only in marriage, a man and woman freely and willingly commit their entire lives to one another in mutual love and fidelity. … Non-contracepted sex between a husband and wife is good regardless of […]

News Flash: Sex Discrimination is Finished

Economists have known for a long time that discrimination per se accounts for relatively minor part of the wage differences between men and women. By far the largest factor is the impact of children on people’ work/life decisions. Children affect men and women differently. This was already very apparent in data when I started in […]

It’s Not Working (the Blue State Script, that is)

I recently reviewed Red Families vs. Blue Families. (I didn’t like it much.) The authors’ constant refrain was “The Blue State Script works. Delay marriage and childbearing until the mid-thirties, with the help of unapologetic use of abortion and contraception. The marriages last longer and are more stable. The kids are better off. Be like […]

I found an image of the book cover

Here is an image of the cover of Women, Sex and the Church, edited by Erika Bachiochi, which chapters by Cassandra Hough, Laura Garcia, Angela Franks, Katie Elrod, Sister Sara Butler and Elizabeth Schiltz. along with Yours Truly.

Legislative Facts and other facts

I’m not a lawyer, so I never knew what “legislative facts” were. But it seems that “legislative facts” are the kind of facts relevant to a trial like the Prop 8 trial. What is the significance of this? People (including Judge Walker) chide the Prop 8 legal defense team for not bringing enough “expert witnesses.” […]

Something else Judge Walker didn’t talk about

He didn’t say a word about the origins of same sex attraction. There was not a single witness who provided scientific evidence for the claim that same sex attraction is a genetically determined, immutable trait. Instead, he relied on reports of personal experiences to suggest (but not prove) that “gays and lesbians are the type […]

Red Families v Blue Families

I didn’t much care for this book. The essence of the Cahn and Carbone’s version of class difference, which they wrongly attribute to “red states” and “blue states”, is delayed age at first marriage. Later marriage allows women to complete their education and enter into high-income, high-status jobs before beginning families. These high status women […]

What Judge Walker didn’t talk about

Sherlock Holmes once famously said, “Watson, I call to your attention the curious fact of the dog barking in the night.” “But Holmes, there was no dog barking in the night.” “That is the curious fact.” It is a curious fact that Judge Walker did not discuss any of the previous cases that deal with […]

Chuck Cooper is not an idiot

Far from it. Chuck Cooper is the lead attorney defending Prop 8. Judge Walker’s opinion created the impression that the Prop 8 defense team had not presented any evidence and had basically done a rotten job. The MSM, naturally, has continued to dutifully carry this message to the public, to the point that even supporters […]

Brutally Honest: Judging the Judge’s Judgment

A guy calling himself BroKen writes this about Judge Walker’s ruling: Are you religious? Then you should be offended by the federal ruling on California’s Proposition 8. Maybe you’re not very religious. But do you believe in morality? That is, do you believe that some things are wrong and some things are right? If you […]

Rejecting Industrialized Sex

Great post today over at the First Things blog. It is odd that simply because of its “sexual freedom” our time should be considered extraordinarily physical. In fact, our “sexual revolution” is mostly an industrial phenomenon, in which the body is used as a idea of pleasure or a pleasure machine with the aim of […]

Ed Whelan on Judge Walker’s Lawlessness

Ed Whelan at the NRO Bench Memos provides the best analysis of Judge Walker’s overreach in his overturn of Prop 8. Today, Ed discusses the significance of the Ninth Circuit’s Stay order in the case. In case you missed the news, Judge Walker had originally ordered that same sex marriages begin immediately. The Proponents of […]

Fox News Poll on the Prop 8 Overturn

Fox News has a poll on the Prop 8 Overturn. It is worded in an odd way, to give opponents two ways to answer, thus possibly skewing the results. Still, this very non-scientific poll creates the impression that no one cares about the Overturn and that same sex marriage is inevitable. Go take it. suggest […]

David Blankenhorn didn’t mess up in the Prop 8 Trial

I have been reading lots of disappointed commentary about the defense of Prop 8. “If only we had a better defense team, more witnesses, better witnesses, etc.” I have had people contact me telling me they wish I had testified. Others write to volunteer their services in Public Relations, Advertizing or even Lawyering. What I […]

The End of Men

The End of Men recently published in the Atlantic, can’t decide whether the marginalization of men from the family, the economy and the academy, is a nightmare or a dream come true. Steve Baskerville takes on the questions no one else will and says what no one else will say. The End of Men is […]

Early Puberty for girls

MSNBC had this article on the lowering age of sexual maturity among girls. This article tracks an overall decline in the age of breast development. It reminded me of a series of papers I’ve read about the declining age of first menstruation. This MSNBC article doesn’t report on this, and the factors may be somewhat […]

Did the Prop 8 Defense Team Fumble the Ball?

I am hearing this question alot. I don’t think they did, for this reason: they thought the issue was whether the constitution requires same sex marriage. The other side acted as if the issue was whether same sex marriage is good public policy. The Protect Marriage Lawyers thought all that stuff that took up so […]

UC Davis Law Dean Vikram Amar on the future of Prop 8

Associate dean and professor at the UC Davis School of Law, Vikram Amar, predicts that Prop 8 will ultimately be decided in the Ninth Circuit, not at the Supreme Court: If the Ninth Circuit reverses Judge Walker’s ruling and upholds Prop. 8, I think it improbable that the Supreme Court would grant the plaintiffs’ request […]

We the People

Pastor Jim Garlow’s personal and public statement on the Prop 8 Overturn includes this gem: We would have wished the judge would have looked at the first three words of the U.S. Constitution, “We the People.” There’s a reason why that document does not begin with the words, “I the Judge.” Whether you think same […]

Using the mind well

Before I sign off for the night, I have to quote my friend Fr. James Schall, prof of govt at Georgetown University, lo these many years. He has a marvelous essay on a recent conversation Pope Benedict had with a group of students. “You asked me questions with great frankness and at the same time […]

Judge Walker’s Alternative Purpose of Marriage

You will recall that I claimed in my AOL News article that the Essential Public Purpose of Marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. Some people dispute this by pointing to alternative purposes of marriage, or by discovering groups of individuals who seem not to be participating in […]

Common Questions about the essential public purpose of marriage

A reader posted my AOL New article on her facebookpage and got this response from a friend: I see multiple problems with her argument, 1. She does not mention divorce, which has already ‘redefined marriage.’ Divorce rates in our nation have been hovering around 50% for quite some time, and divorce can be very detrimental […]

Cardinal Mahoney: Judge Walker got it Wrong

I am pleasantly surprised by this statement from Cardinal Mahoney of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Cardinal Mahoney is not usually known for making strong statements on what are usually considered “social conservative” issues. “Social justice” issues, yes. But life and marriage– not as much. So listen to this: Today it was announced that U.S. […]

The fraudulent principle of “liberal neutrality:” from Prof Ed Feser

Philosophy professor and prolific author Dr. Ed Feser has a lenghthy post on the Prop 8 overturn. I’m just picking out some highlights. I suggest you read the whole thing. The dialogue in the comments is worth looking at also. 1. Judge Walker’s decision, he tells us, is based on the principle that the state […]

Maggie Gallagher’s take on the Prop 8 overturn

Maggie Gallagher writes in the San Fran Chronicle: Judge Walker’s ruling proves that the American people were and are right to fear that too many powerful judges do not respect their views, or the proper limits of judicial authority. … Judge Walker has added insult to injury by suggesting that support for marriage is somehow […]

My piece on AOL News: “The Institution Formerly Known as Marriage”

AOL News was looking for someone on the natural marriage side of the argument to comment on Judge Walker’s overturn of Prop 8. They found me. Here is the link to the article. Here is a reprint. Forward to your friends! Go over to AOL and join in the comments section. RRR’s will see the […]

So What About Judge Walker’s Sexual Orientation, (or anybody else’s?)

I just posted a correction to my press release from yesterday, changing the modifier on Judge Walker from “openly gay,” to “widely reported to be gay.” As I noted, he has never denied the report, nor has he ever described himself as “gay.” I am willing to respect his self-understanding, and his privacy. Hence my […]