Author: Ruth Institute

A San Diego Citizen speaks out about Mayor Jerry Sanders

Yesterday’s Prop 8 trial testimony was dominated by the emotional San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, The anti-Prop 8 attorneys showed a video of the Mayor’s news conference from September 2007, when he broke down in tears as he gushed to the world that he now supported same sex marriage.  Learning that his own daughter was […]

An unusual custody case?

That is what the AP calls it. But actually this dispute between two women will become more and more common, unfortunately. A Santa Cruz court is slated to hear a custody dispute between former lesbian partners in which the biological mother has become romantically involved with the sperm donor father of her 10-month-old twins. Ah […]

A Connecticut civil rights lawyer…

has no use for Judge Walker. Writing in the CT Law Tribune, New Haven attorney Karen Lee Torre takes off the gloves: Perry v. Schwarzenegger, is a desperate attempt by gay marriage proponents to now get a federal court to gift over to them what they failed to gain in the legislatures and at the […]

Speaking of Roe v Wade…

The Roe v Wade anniversary is coming up. The annual March for Life will be held in Washington DC.  The Walk for Life will be held in San Francisco.  We will be doing a Ruth Institute Road Trip. Jamie and I will be driving up from Southern California with a vanload of college students to […]

Point by Point rebuttal of Ted Olson’s Newsweek piece

The American Spectator has a point by point reply to Ted Olson’s unpaid advertisement in last week’s Newsweek. Many of Jeffrey Lord’s arguments use the analogy with polygamy. Every argument made today for removing the gendered requirement for marriage can be used tomorrow to remove the “two persons” requirement for marriage.  His bottom line argument is one […]

About the Prop 8 judge

AP has a news story about Judge Vaughn Walker, who is presiding over the Prop 8 trial.   A few tidbits: Walker first was nominated to a federal judgeship in the waning days of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and then again in the early days of President George H.W. Bush. He was finally confirmed by the Senate […]

Application of Neuhaus’ Law

Richard John Neuhaus, late editor of First Things, claimed authorship of this law, “When Orthodoxy becomes optional, orthodoxy eventually becomes prohibited.”  The ever-fractious Church of England gives us a glimpse at the next step after Neuhaus’ Law: When Orthodoxy becomes optional, heterodoxy becomes subsidized: Bishops and senior clergy will debate at next month’s General Synod whether the […]

Prop 8 Trial Report from Catholics for the Common Good

I just received this report from Bill May, Chairman of Catholics for the Common Good: To summarize the first week of the trial about traditional marriage and marriage supporters, the plaintiffs have been trying to make a case that there is no rational reason to restrict marriage to just a man and a woman. On […]

“Modern marriage:” Women marry down…

This story from NPR, commenting on a Pew Trust report, reports that an increasing number of women are marrying men with lower education and incomes than themselves. (I did my Issues, Etc. interview on this topic today. The podcast should be up in a day or two.) Pew is pretty fair, and so is NPR. They are just reporting. However, you can hear the subtext: this is the feminist dream come true. Men and women are equal, except women are better. I mean, it had to happen. We have had a pretty steady drumbeat in favor of women’s acheivement for the last 40 years, with no comparable encouragement for men. What exactly did we think would happen? all of a sudden, the process of women’s increasing labor force commitment and educational acheivement would cease the instant we achieved gender parity? But the real question is this: Has this made people happy? Has it made women happy? according to some very provocative research by Dr. Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia, the happiest wives are those with a combination of traditional and progressive attitudes. The happiest married mothers are those who stay at home, whose husbands earn most of the income and whose husbands are emotionally engaged with them. Not those married moms who have made "equality" their top priority. BTW, the link to Dr. wilcox’s paper is from the set of readings we put together for our student conference last summer. I have allowed you into the inner sanctum of the Ruth Institute’s reading list! (Cue scary music. or something.) Anyhow, you can get more info about our student conference from last summer in San Diego, here. Info about our upcoming student conference at BYU is here.

More nonsense from the LA Times

The LA Times editorial board nimbly changes the subject when it’s pet project of promoting same sex marriage isn’t going well. In this editorial, they say they are sorry the subject of marriage quality came up.  Memo to LA Times: it came up because the pro-ssm team brought it up. Listen to the LA Whines:

A Leading Judicial Indicator?

Dale Carpenter, law professor at University of Minnesota and advocate of same sex marriage, is not encouraged by the Supreme Court’s overturn of Judge Walker.  Here is Carpenter’s analysis from Volokh Conspiracy: While the Supreme Court’s per curiam opinion today deals with legal matters apart from SSM, it is a potentially ominous development for the pro-SSM litigants. […]

More Bench Memos

Ed Whelan continues his analysis of the Prop 8 trial. Is this about Prop 8 or about Olson’s and Boies’ egos? the decision by Ted Olson and David Boies and their Hollywood backers to file a lawsuit challenging Proposition 8 as a violation of the federal Constitution was highly controversial among many advocates of same-sex […]

What Lisa Miller Has to Do with Same Sex Marriage Part 1

This 2008 interview with Lisa Miller takes on new significance, in the light of the fact that she has gone into hiding to prevent the forced transfer of custody of her daughter to Janet Jenkins. The Miller Jenkins case also has significance for the Prop 8 trial. This case gives a taste of how redefining parenthood […]

Question-begging by the LA Times

George Skelton of the LA Times opines that “the notion that baby-making is the principal purpose of marriage in 21st century America is plain absurd. Let’s just say that upfront.”  Well that’s nice. How does he say that with such confidence?

When The Political is NOT Personal

Frank Schubert, head of the public affairs firm that did yeoman’s work on the Prop 8 campaign, has a sister who is a lesbian. This story from the Fresno Bee, does credit to both Frank, and his sister Anne Marie. Frank Schubert was the consultant behind recent campaigns to ban gay marriage in California and […]

Just Born that way?

I just got this from a friend at the Minnesota Family Council. This is one man’s “take” on whether it even matters whether we’re “born that way.”

Why the SCOTUS decision could matter

Ed Whelan at NRO analyzes the significance of the Supreme Court’s overturn of the decision to televise the Prop 8 trial. First, it is some reflection on how the Supremes will view Judge Walker’s (lack of) impartiality. the majority’s stinging rebuke of Judge Walker’s procedural irregularities strongly signals that at least five justices have serious […]

SCOTUS rebukes Judge Walker

Ed Whelan over at NRO has posted excerpts from the Supreme Court’s ruling on televising the Prop 8 trial. I’m not a SCOTUS-watcher, but this does seem to me to be a pretty serious rebuke of Judge Walker’s judgement in making 11th hour legal revisions to allow the unprecendented broadcasting of a federal trial.   The […]

We have a really good problem …

I have a really good problem, and I’m going to need your help to solve it.  As you know, the Ruth Institute promotes lifelong married love to college students. We held our first student conference last August, here in San Diego. The students from Brigham Young University who attended our summer conference were inspired to […]

Parental Rights and Same Sex Marriage

One of the commercials from the Prop 8 campaign has been shown to several witnesses. It is instructive to see their responses. For those of you from outside CA, this was the commercial that showed that parents from MA were upset by what their second grader was being taught about homosexuality without their permission.  On […]

The Show Trial will Not be Televised after all…

According to Protect Marriage General Counsel Andy Pugno: We just got great news from the US Supreme Court: they granted a stay to prevent televising the Prop 8 trial!  We have argued from the start that there is no precedent for Judge Walker’s decision to allow the proceedings to be televised and posted on YouTube, […]

news from the Prop 8 trial

Ron Prentice, the Executive Director of ProtectMarriage.com, issued a report on the Prop 8 trial yesterday. I recieved this report via an e-mail update from Catholics for the Common Good.  I have their I have permission to quote Ron’s comments.  You can subscribe to their newsletter here.  (Don’t forget, you can also subscribe to the […]

More from Quebec

The Quebec Policy Against Homophobia gives itself these missions and permissions: On Page 20, the State gives itself the power to intervene in all parts of civil society, including the most private and intimate. “awareness-raising and educational activities must publicize the various forms of homophobia, including the most insidious. It is important to target the various […]

What’s at stake in ssm: the news from Quebec

The news from Quebec is not encouraging for those who love liberty. In their new Quebec Policy Against Homophobia: Moving Together toward social equality,  Provincial government of Quebec just gave itself permission to take all necessary steps to wipe out, not just “homophobia,” but also “heterosexism.”  In the opening message from the minister of Justice, […]

What’s at stake in redefining marriage: More power for the state

Expanding the reach of the anti-discrimination law, is almost certainly a side effect of redefining marriage.  The one and only argument for ssm is the equality argument.  it’s crude form, which we saw during the Prop 8 campaign, is “you’re being mean to us. you’re hurting our feelings. it’s not fair.”  incredibly enough, that is […]

Gay Teen Worried He Might Be a Christian

My readers will get a kick out of the parody from The Onion. At first glance, high school senior Lucas Faber, 18, seems like any ordinary gay teen. He’s a member of his school’s swing choir, enjoys shopping at the mall, and has sex with other males his age. But lately, a growing worry has […]

“Prof Cott damaged her case.” Andy Pugno

According to Andy Pugno, General Counsel for Protect Marriage, the plaintiff’s star witness,Harvard Law Prof Nancy Cott, damaged their case. 1. she admitted that marriage is more than a private arrangement, but has social significance 2. she admitted that “the public interest in promoting the raising of children by both a mother and father is […]

Nancy Cott’s testimony

From the AP: In her second day of testimony, Nancy Cott, a U.S. history professor and the author of a book on marriage as a public institution, disputed a statement by a defense lawyer that states have a compelling interest to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples for the sake of procreation.  Cott said marriage also […]

From Andy Pugno, General Counsel for Protect Marriage

After the first day of the trial, Andy Pugno posted these observations: We’re off. The first day of trial is concluded and we are beginning to see the outlines of the plaintiffs’ case emerge. Emotion was the order of the day as our opponents took the stand to describe examples of “awkward” situations and social […]

Are the Plaintiffs in Perry v Schwarzenegger really gay?

Just to drive home the point of the previous post, one of the plaintiffs in Perry v Schwarzenegger, Sandra Stier, was married to a man for 12 years.  Was she “really” a lesbian all that time, and just didn’t know it? (The case is named after one of the plaintiffs, that is, one of the […]

Who Counts as Gay? Why Does it Matter?

The quiz in this week’s Ruth Institute newsletter asks “what percentage of the population is gay?”  The answer turns out to be a resounding, “It depends.”   It depends on whether you’re talking about men or women, whether you’re looking at urban areas or not, and most significantly, what you mean by gay in the first […]

The Prop 8 Trial and the New Theory of Politics

The Prop 8 Trial and the New Theory of Politics “They reject the political determination of will by the people… the idea that the act of voting is an act of national will is decisively rejected.  The plebiscite is to express and enforce the concordance between the objective will of the people embodied in the […]

Long run consequences of same sex marriage: who knows?

I have been arguing for some time that we need to take the long run consequences of same sex marriage seriously. I’ve argued that same sex marriage will put incentives into place and set forces into motion that cannot be easily undone or predicted. In particular, I’ve argued that same sex marriage will undermine the […]

The Dangerous Olsen Boies Precedent

The Prop 8 trial that starts on Monday is not simply about overturning Prop 8. It is also about: 1. whether we will have same sex marriage nationwide, 2. whether the losers in an election can go into court to overturn it 3. whether the courts can demand that participants in a political campaign have […]

Maggie’s take on the Prop 8 trial.

In her syndicated column, my friend and colleague Maggie Gallagher makes these points about the upcoming Prop 8 trial. 1. The constitutionality of Proposition 8 should be a matter of law, not a matter of facts. But Judge Walker has ruled that they will have a trial about the facts. Ordinarily, findings of fact by a […]

Fair Trial for Prop 8?

Judge Walker’s decision to televise the Prop 8 trial gravely prejudices the outcome of the trial,  Bench Memos on National Review Online. In addition to its illegality (see Part 2), Judge Walker’s televising order threatens unfair and irreparable—and wildly asymmetric—prejudice to the parties and witnesses supporting Proposition 8.  For that reason, his order should be […]

Speaking of the Iowa Fiasco…

Regular readers of my blog and newsletter will recall that I analyzed the Supreme Court of Iowa’s ruling that gendered marriage violates the state constitution. You could pretty much predict how the court would rule, by the decisions they made about what counted as permissible evidence. the trial court refused to admit five out of […]

NJ defeats same sex marriage bill

It wasn’t even close: 20-14 in the NJ Senate. My colleague at the National Organization for Marriage, Brian Brown, predicted this.

8.5 New Year’s Resolutions to help marriage

Ruth Institute newsletter subscribers got my New Year’s Resolutions, 8.5 ways you can help marriage in 2010. Hint: if you aren’t a Ruth Institute newsletter subscriber, you can subscribe here.  It is totally free.  So here are 8.5 suggested resolutions for the new year of 2010. 1. I will speak up for marriage, and for sexual […]

The all encompassing state and same sex marriage

More from Douglas Farrow’s Touchstone article. BTW, the book he references, A Nation of Bastards is available from the Ruth Institute Reading List, along with a bunch of other good books.  I have been making this point for some time: the immediate impact of same sex marriage is very far from its full long-run impact, […]

The Audacity of the State

Douglas Farrow makes the argument that far from having “separation of church and state,” the modern world has acheived precisely the opposite. By melding the functions of civil society into the state, the state has become de facto, the religion of the society, and one that brooks no opposition. The two major area where this […]

Bench Memos on National Review Online

Ed Whelan is sounding the alarm against the outrageous plan of Judge Vaughn Walker to televise the Prop 8 case.  Bench Memos on National Review Online.

More on Polyamory: The kids will be fine, thanks.

This puff piece promoting a non-judgemental approach to polyamory finally mentions children in the last 3 paragraphs.  Ah, yes, the kids will be fine. Except they’ll be upset when their parents’ partners leave.  They look just like mundane blended families, (who have lots of problems we aren’t going to mention in our puff piece.)  Excuse me […]

The new frontier: Polyamory

Here is a puff piece in the Boston Globe on the next phase of the Sexual Revolution: Polyamory, meaning “many loves.”  Just another day in the deconstruction of marriage and family. Marriage is whatever we say it is.  Kids will be fine, as long as we are all grown up mature people and don’t get […]

Libertarians and baby selling

I got involved in a discussion over at the Econ Lib blog on the question of baby-selling. The question arose when Bryan Caplan opined that it would be best for all concerned if women considering placing their children for adoption could recieve explicit payments for their babies, not just compensation for their hospital expenses and […]

Rosie O’Donnell is dating…

She broke up with her 12 year lover/”wife” in October. She had 4 children with Kelli. Now she is dating her new love interest, named Tracy, who has six children.  How nice. Rosie O’Donnell made herself a poster child for same sex marriage and parenting. Now, she’s a poster child for what, exactly? And don’t […]

Staging a Show Trial on Prop 8

Ed Whelan is all over the Federal Court case against Prop 8 and the legal shennanigans to televise the trial. This case is fast turning into a the worst sort of Soviet-style show trial, designed more to make an example out of dissenters from the regime, than to administer justice. Any intelligent and fair-minded judge would […]

Cool Catholic Quote of the Day:Catholicism is not for wimps

from the National Catholic Register’s story on military chaplains during the Christmas season in Afganistan and Iraq: Father Michael Duesterhaus has been deployed to combat areas three times, including Fallujah, Iraq, in 2006. The Navy chaplain said “close teamwork, mission focus and personal deprivations [can] deepen one’s faith” and recounted how “one Marine, who I […]

Marriage Law Digest for December 2009

is now available from iMAPP.   The Digest is a summary of significant legal developments concerning marriage during the month of December. Edited by Mr. William Duncan, who is also a member of the Ruth Institute’s Academic Advisory Board, this month’s edition includes cases from around the English-speaking world. This is a valuable resource for anyone […]

Fathers, Sons and Hunting

I just found this lovely article by a young Catholic priest, about his father, his deceased brother, and hunting. (No, the brother didn’t die hunting.)  It is about the ways in which Father Figures help the development of young men through their time together in the wild. wordlessly. Fr. Patrick tells this story about himself as […]

Health care bill attacks marriage

We first reported this travesty here. Now CitizenLink has picked up on it, hopefully spreading the word to millions more people.  The welfare rules of the Great Society drove marriage out of the homes of the poor. The health care bill has the potential to drive marriage out of the middle class. A closer look […]

UK policy turnaround on marriage?

Or just a lot of hot air?  You decide. I can’t keep up with British politics. It is true though, that the UK has been much more aggressively anti-marriage than the US, as Patricia Morgan has ably documented.  I reviewed her book here and reprinted here.

Pantheism is not Christian

I have a bit of commentary about the movie Avatar, buried in the comments over at the First Things blog. I’m seeing more and more strange stuff from people who ought to know better, so I’m going to have to write more about it. But for now, check out this link, for my comments and […]

British court declares Judaism racist

In the January 2010 issue of First Things, (unfortunately not yet on-line) David Goldman rhetorically asks: “Have Birtain’s jews ever undergone a legal assault on the practice of thier religion within their own institutions?”  They have now. A British court has ruled that an Orthodox Jewish school’s admission policy violated the UK’s civil rights laws […]

Whose kid is it, anyhow?

Do you ever refer to your children as if they were yours alone?  As in, “I have two children,” or “my son in 8.”   I have learned to stop doing that.  “My” kids belong to my husband as much as to me.  Although it is no particular virtue or insight, just facing reality, it still […]

Christmas message: Be Not Afraid!

            We live in dark times. More Christians have been martyred in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined. A British court has just declared that Judaism is racist, a ruling that may make Jewish education impossible in the UK, even in private schools. Many of our contemporaries seem hell-bent on destroying us, […]

Eugene Volokh on the NM wedding photographer

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Gene blogs about the New Mexico wedding photographer who refused to photograph a same sex commitment ceremony. She had argued that she has a First Amendment right to refuse to produce a creative work.  Being compelled to film a ceremony that she disapproves of on moral grounds, she argued, amounted […]

Man Marries a Video Game Character

A Japanese man married a video game character.  Those of you who think marriage is whatever we say it is: is this man validly married to an imaginary animated character? He sounds for all the world like same sex marriage advocates when he looks forward wistfully to the day when anyone can marry anyone they […]

Sad Day for the District of Columbia

It is a sad day for the poor of the District of Columbia. For the sake of the 1.5% of households with same sex couples, the DC City Council has passed legislation that will effectively prohibit the Archdiocese of Washington from even applying for city social service contracts. Thankfully, the Archdiocese will continue its own […]

Multi-culturalism Run amok in Quebec

This is not diversity. This is an excuse for the state to regulate and indoctrinate, and generally stick itself into the minds of small children. In its indifference to objective knowledge, in its crusade to hallow cultural relativism and a strictly Charter-of-rights based identity, ÉCR stimulates heritage students’ detachment from their own cultural touchstones, and […]

Donor Conceived Persons

This article by an intellectual property lawyer reviews many of the issues surrounding genetic screening and anonymous sperm donors. If you think these are simple issues, you haven’t thought about them enough. Here is one of my favorite passages: Anonymity itself comes with a cost. One need only spend a little time on the website […]

University Political Correctness: Inevitable or Just Irritating?

George Leef reviews a book on the always irritating problem of political correctness. Personally, I am very grateful to: 1. My husband for getting me out of academics and supporting me while I raised our kids and 2. the Ruth Institute supporters who allow me to do out-of-the-box thinking, to search for other intellectuals who do the […]

Are Blacks Abandoning Obama?

Inquiring Lefty minds want to know.  Speaking as a dyed-in-the-wool, unapologetic right wing-nut who hangs around with others of same description of all colors: I can tell you there are plenty of blacks with traditional religious and family values who are disgusted with Obama. Let me lis the things I’ve heard them say they don’t like: […]