by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 7/22/14 3:07 PM

Here is a powerful video with a pro-life theme that you should spend two minutes watching.

Dave Andrusko of the National Right to Life Committee tells us why this video is so amazing:

It’s been a long, long time since I was a first-time dad trying frantically to figure out what to do (in the absence of my wife) when our newborn daughter would cry, seemingly inconsolable.

This afternoon, thanks to pro-life blogger Chelsea Zimmerman, I was vividly reminded of the rush of emotions lo those many years ago. She linked to a video whose closing line for the two-minute long video is “Technology can never replace love.”

First shot: a little baby is crying her lungs out and a young dad leaps from his chair (where he was probably sleeping) and races to the crib. What to do? What else? Uses his smart phone to call mom, who is shopping.

What should I do, he asks, she won’t stop crying? Maybe she’s hungry. In a hilarious moment, he takes a quick look down, realizes he isn’t carrying the necessary equipment (so to speak). What else? Well, use the phone to show her the dancing penguins. Nope, no dice, she cries louder.

Find out what happens next…—->

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 7/22/14 2:52 PM

Here’s a unique way pregnant women are celebrating life! Women are commissioning an artist in England to paint their swollen bellies with unique and child-based images that are vivid and full of imagination.
Here is more and some of the amazing drawings—->
http://twentytwowords.com/women-celebrate-an-imminent-baby-with-paintings-on-their-pregnant-bellies-20-pics/?
In addition to doing more typical commissioned paintings, English artist My Little Sweet-pea is available for “Bump Painting.” Dozens of women have hired her to create temporary body art for their pregnant bellies.
Some women choose children’s stories as their theme; others pick an image that signifies the life growing within them; and some just want a beautiful picture. Here are some examples…

by Rebecca Taylor | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 7/22/14 2:50 PM

There is one argument against the Hobby Lobby decision that is driving me crazy maybe because it is going unchallenged on Facebook pages and comboxes all over.

It goes like this: if Hobby Lobby can deny health insurance coverage for birth control, then what will stop a company owned by other religious nut jobs from denying blood transfusions, chemotherapy, or inhalers for asthma?

This one seems to make sense and I am sure many people do not see where it falls short. I am not expert on Constitutional Law or on health insurance in general but this seems pretty obvious to me.

Blood transfusions, chemotherapy, and inhalers are medicine. They are therapeutic in nature needed for those who are sick. These are exactly the kinds of things health insurance is supposed to pay for. Any employer religious or otherwise is going to have a very tough time having a legitimate claim for not including well-known therapeutic measures for their employees because these are actually “health care.”

Birth control is different. Of course there are cases where the pill is prescribed for medical reasons, but I speak only about birth control for the prevention of pregnancy. In this case birth control is not medicine nor is it therapeutic.

Birth control actually takes something that is normal, fertility, and makes it not work properly. Birth control is not even remotely in the same class as blood transfusions, chemotherapy or inhalers.
Really birth control is something that allows people to engage in baby-making behavior without making babies.

That is not medicine; it is a life style choice no different from condoms, other barrier methods or even permanent sterilizations. Employers are not required to cover life style choices like condoms in their policies because they are not something health insurance should cover.

I have not heard a single man shouting about how his employer is denying him access to his condoms. Why? Probably because when it comes to men’s reproductive systems we can still engage in calm and clear reasoning without hysterical hyperbole.

If a man wants to engage in baby-making behavior without making a baby we make him pay for it.
Ladies, we want equality do we not? Or is this really about getting more than “health care” and making someone else pay for it?

By Ben Johnson, July 21, 2014

Two obituaries published this weekend show how little progress America has made on abortion in the last several decades.

The death of actor James Garner saddened fans across the country. Born James Scott Bumgarner, the 86-year-old Rockford Files star overcame mental and physical abuse from his stepmother – who would regularly beat him with whatever was handy and force him to wear dresses as a form of emasculation – to become one of the most beloved stars of his day.

In his autobiography, The Garner Files, he revealed that he had no memory of his birth mother, who died when he was four years old.

“It wasn’t until I was fifteen that my cousin Betty told me my mother died of uremic poisoning after a botched abortion,” he wrote. “I have no idea whether my father was involved in the decision to have the abortion or whether he blamed himself for her death. We never talked about it in the family.”
After 1973, the back alley abortionists simply came out of the shadows, hung out a shingle, and continued business as usual.

Reading between the lines, Garner seems to have wondered whether his years of harrowing abuse could have been avoided if his father had intervened. (He also mentions the fact that his mother was a Christian Scientist and, thus, shunned conventional medical treatment.)

The same day Garner died, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran the obituary of Dr. Michael Freiman. Born Seymour Milton Freiman, the 85-year-old became infamous for performing the first legal abortion in Missouri after Roe v. Wade.

The obituary says Freiman referred women to abortionists in places where the procedure was legal before Roe, then pushed to open an abortion facility as soon as possible after the 1973 decision.
He celebrated its grand opening by performing seven abortions in one day.

He, too, had a backstory:
Michael Freiman was a teenager when his cousin had an abortion. It was the 1940s, and abortions were illegal. His cousin had found one of those clandestine places women sought out when they couldn’t find a willing doctor. The operation was botched. The cousin died, and the abortionist dumped her body on the parking lot in front of an emergency room.

His cousin’s tragedy continues to occur too frequently in his chosen industry, with doctors sometimes arranging for injured women to be transported to the ER in their employees’ cars to divert attention from their incompetence.

When they call an ambulance, they often withhold vital information that costs time – or someone’s life – as in the case of Tonya Reaves, the 24-year-old Chicago woman who died from a botched abortion in 2012. Planned Parenthood let her bleed for five-and-a-half hours in its facility, then sent her to the emergency room without telling the physicians the cause of her symptoms. Instead of administering life-saving treatment, doctors had to waste precious time determining the cause of the injuries for themselves. In the end, Reaves died of an incomplete abortion, perforated uterus, and needless delay.
The Thomas More Society filed a complaint charging that Planned Parenthood’s “abandonment of a patient” led to Tonya Reaves’ death.

Unfortunately, abandonment is standard operating procedure in Big Abortion. Dr. James C. Anderson, M.D., said not a single abortionist ever told him of the cause of the medical problems he had to fix when caring for butchered post-abortive women in his 30 years of practice.

The well-funded industry is now fighting against bills requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, a move lawmakers hope will reduce patient abandonment of the sort that killed the late Dr. Freiman’s cousin.

Their callous decision to place money over the lives of others, pre- or post-natal, should surprise no one. Before Roe v. Wade, abortions were not typically performed by carnival barkers but by bottom-feeding physicians out to make a quick buck. After 1973, the back alley abortionists simply came out of the shadows, hung out a shingle, and continued business as usual.

Meanwhile, the death toll mounts. Participants at the 2013 National Memorial Service for the Preborn, just before the March for Life, read a litany of names of women who had died from legal abortion, led by Reaves. The list was both necessarily incomplete and interminably long.

With these two obituaries, we may add two more.

And the victimized women, the tears of family members, the profits of the abortion industry, and the deaths of innocent children will continue to multiply until each one of us decides that there have been enough obituaries, written and unwritten, caused by abortion.

A study from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released Tuesday found that there are far fewer who people who identify as homosexual and bisexual in America than many think. The study also found that self-identified homosexuals lead less healthy lives.

According to the study, which was based upon data from the 2013 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), 2.3 percent of Americans identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. The study also found that “health behaviors,” “health conditions,” and “health care access and utilization” were statistically worse among what the CDC calls “sexual minorities.”

The NHIS survey interviewed 34,557 adults aged 18 and older. This was the first time the survey has ever examined sexual orientation.

The CDC’s calculation of the percentage of Americans who are homosexual is lower than many previous studies. According to The Washington Post, other surveys have found estimates closer to four percent.
Larger estimates include that of researcher Alfred Kinsey, whose assertion in 1948 that 10 percent of Americans were homosexual has shaped the common view. However, according to Professor Judith Reisman, “the point of [Kinsey’s] exaggerated numbers was to change perception and thus laws to cater to the large population and to normalize homosexuality.”

Kinsey’s research has been shown to have numerous flaws. Among them, he focused much of his research on prison populations and pro-homosexual groups, something a former director of the Kinsey Institute described as “opportunistic collection.” He also appears to have focused his study on specific regions of the nation, rather than the country as a whole, and interviewed male prostitutes and sexually abused children, claiming that these demographics represent average Americans.

The CDC study also found dramatically different health behaviors in the homosexual population. Over one-quarter of gay and lesbian Americans over the age of 18 currently smoke, the study found, while fewer than 20 percent of heterosexual Americans do the same. And homosexuals were far more likely to have had five or more alcoholic drinks in one night in the past year than their heterosexual and bisexual counterparts, though heterosexual men drank almost as much as the highest-risk women — bisexuals.

Over 50 percent of bisexual men had drunk at least five beverages in one night, compared with 31 percent of heterosexual men and 34 percent of bisexual women.

Homosexuals were more likely to have met the federal guidelines for aerobic exercise, and to have had flu shots, however.

Bob Witeck, president of Witeck Communications and a LGBT-issues consultant, argued that the CDC’s results are skewed. “The gay population sampled very likely skews younger on average than non-gay adults in the sample” because older homosexuals “are more likely not to disclose and remain closeted,” he told LifeSiteNews.

“Younger gay people also tend to socialize, meet and connect with others in gay bars, parties and other social venues. In all of these venues, smoking and drinking are prevalent – not rare. To visit and enjoy a bar’s social setting, for most adults is to choose to drink and smoke. If the data was controlled for age and behaviors about socializing, then the difference between the gay and non-gay adult might be closer.”

Kevin Naff, editor of the Washington Blade, a homosexual newspaper, told LifeSiteNews that while “it’s a terrific milestone that the government is finally gathering data about lesbian, gay and bisexual people, the actual number of gay Americans is routinely undercounted due to the reluctance of many to self-identify as gay.”

Witeck said another major factor in the health differentials were related to how “many gay people do feel more stress in their lives – not about their same-sex attraction or identity, but about the degree of alienation or hostility or disdain they may feel from their family, co-workers or their faith if they feel like outsiders.”

“They must have coping mechanisms that allow them to deal with all forms of stigma, and it’s not at all unusual for people feeling like outsiders to depend more on substances like alcohol and cigarettes,” Witeck said. “Again, that is not because of their sexual orientation. It is because of the way they are judged or alienated by others.”

According to Americans for Truth President Peter LaBarbera, however, “while it’s convenient for gay activists to blame homophobia or other outside sources for the ill health of homosexuals, the evidence shows that disease rates and other harms are represented disproportionately among homosexuals.”
“A good example is a study done 12 years after Denmark allowed same-sex domestic partnerships, which found that suicide among men in same-sex partnerships ‘was nearly eight times greater than for men with positive histories of heterosexual marriage,’” he continued.

“Certainly,” said LaBarbera, “nobody thinks of Denmark as a bastion of homophobia.”

Likewise, Focus on the Family Issues Analyst Jeff Johnston told LifeSiteNews,”Many studies have shown that lesbian-, gay-, or bisexual-identified people have greater health problems in a wide variety of areas, including behaviors, mental health issues and physical conditions. It’s significant that the CDC study would find similar outcomes.”

Last year, a CDC study of gay men in America found that approximately two-thirds of gay men who have HIV/AIDS engage in sex without using a condom. Earlier in 2013, the director of the CDC’s division of HIV/AIDS prevention said that “gay and bisexual men remain at the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.”
Johnston also said that “the study just confirms what we already knew” about the population size of homosexuals. “What’s interesting,” according to Johnston, “is comparing that number with public perception. The average person thinks the percentage is much higher, probably because of the high profile that entertainment, news media and other influential sources have given homosexuality in recent years.”

In the understandable excitement so many of us felt two weeks ago over the wonderfully welcome and important U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding the Conestoga / Hobby Lobby case, I have delayed celebrating another high court decision in another Alliance Defending Freedom supported-case – one with its own enormous implications for your family’s First Amendment-protected freedom of speech. And, even more importantly, for the defense of life in the womb.

On June 26, the nation’s highest court unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law creating a 35-foot Gospel-free “buffer zone” around abortion facilities. These zones’ express purpose was to block advocates for life from speaking with women on their way into these buildings to have an abortion. (The law imposed up to two-and-a-half years in jail for its violation.) The court ruled that those who would gracefully make the case for life face-to-face are legally entitled to do so, up until the moment a woman enters the abortion facility’s property.

“It is no accident that public streets and sidewalks have developed as venues for the exchange of ideas,” the court wrote in its opinion. “Even today, they remain one of the few places where a speaker can be confident that he is not simply preaching to the choir. … In light of the First Amendment’s purpose ‘to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail…,’ this aspect of traditional public fora is a virtue, not a vice.”

“Peaceful pro-life citizens should be able to freely share their message with mothers in vital need without being forced to shout from outside an anti-speech zone,” says ADF Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden. “As the Supreme Court found, Massachusetts had no constitutional basis for creating speech-restricted zones that exist to hinder a particular point of view.”

“Americans have the freedom to talk to whomever they please on public sidewalks,” says allied attorney Michael DePrimo, co-counsel on the case, which was argued before the court in January. “That includes peaceful pro-lifers who just want to offer information and help to women who would like it. The Supreme Court has affirmed a critical freedom that has been an essential part of American life since the nation’s founding.”

The ruling will impact other cases across the nation, including Reddy v. Foster, an ADF lawsuit challenging a similar anti-speech zone law in New Hampshire. The case will be heard later this month in federal court; last week, though, a temporary restraining order took effect, suspending enforcement of the zones pending a ruling in the case, and allowing pro-life speech there.

“The government has no sound justification for banning free speech on public sidewalks, as the U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed,” says ADF Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “Censorship zones in such places are about as clear a violation of the First Amendment as it gets. This is especially true when the government allows some pro-abortion voices to speak within a zone but censors all pro-life speech there. While it’s good that the law has been temporarily suspended, we will continue to work toward ensuring that New Hampshire’s law is permanently halted in light of the Supreme Court’s decision that struck down such laws.”

Truly, we are blessed by this recent surge in support at the high court for your religious liberty, freedom of speech, and the sanctity of life. Please join me in giving thanks – and in praying for our attorneys as they continue to defend a host of cases, coast-to-coast, that involve these vital aspects of American life.

Reprinted with permission from Alliance Defending Freedom.

Guilherme Ferreira Araújo, Fri Jul 11 2014

Thiago Silva is one of the top stars in Brazil’s national soccer team. So important was he to this year’s team that many sports commentators blamed the country’s first and only loss in the semifinals of this year’s world cup to the fact that Thiago was prevented from playing that game. But what people just recently learned inthis mini-documentary about Thiago’s life, is that abortion nearly took Thiago’s life before he ever had a chance to take a breath, much less kick a soccer ball.

Thiago Silva now lives the gilded life a soccer star playing in the big leagues in Europe. He lives in Paris and plays for the French champions, Paris Saint Germaine. In addition to his great skill as a defensive back, Thiago Silva’s deep Christian faith before and after the matches, when he is often seen praying, is evident.

As C.S. Lewis wrote “there are no ordinary people” and Thiago Silva is a great example.
Although Thiago Silva was born to a desperately poor family that lived near a dangerous shantytown in the city of Rio de Janeiro, he was able to overcome these hardships and achieve great success in the eyes of the world.

As a professional soccer player, Thiago Silva has won many prizes, including being named as one of the top 11 players in Europe for three consecutive years. But surely none of his professional achievements would have meant anything without the most amazing gift of all, the respect that his mother and grandfather had for Thiago’s God given right to life.

A report made by Globo TV Channel, the largest TV station in Brazil, revealed that Thiego’s mother, Angela, already had two children – a boy and a girl – when she became pregnant with Thiago. She was convinced she couldn’t afford to raise another child, and despite feeling terrible pain at the thought of aborting her baby, she was convinced she had no other option.

“I was sitting on my father’s lap and I cried a lot. I didn’t want to have an abortion but I couldn’t bear another child,” she said. Angela’s father, however, convinced her not to abort the baby. “My father did not allow me to commit this sin,” recalled Angela.

Poverty and illness loomed large in Thiago’s childhood. When he was 14, he suffered from tuberculosis. “It was the greatest battle of my life. I had to stay in the hospital for 6 months until I recovered.”

Living a mere 50 meters away from one of Rio’s infamous shantytowns, the famous soccer center back could have easily turned to a life of crime. “We would always hear shootings. The cops would come to the borough where I lived often. When I got home I would thank God for getting home safe.” But instead, Thiago chose to follow God and pursue his dream of becoming a professional soccer player.
Life had never been easy for Thiago and his professional life was no different. Thiago failed to get onto local Brazilian teams at first and ended up in a second rate local team from a poor area of Rio de Janeiro. But with hard work and discipline his initial failures soon turned to success. He finally got his chance to be seen in Europe when he was signed by a Russian team. He was eventually signed to play for the French powerhouse Paris Saint German. He now earns annual salary of $16 million/year.

Thiago’s story of courage and determination is an example of why we should never give in to the temptation of determining another human being’s potential in life, especially that of an unborn child. Thiago could have been aborted, but he wasn’t. He could have chosen a life of crime, but he didn’t. He could have given up his dream, but he persevered. Now, he is one of the best center backs in the world and an inspiring reminder that every life is worth living.

A person’s worth should never be measured by what they achieve, and therein lies the greatness of Thiago’s mother’s decision. She knew the chances that the world would give a child from a poor family growing up in the Brazilian slums surrounded by disease and crime. The fact that Thiago didn’t succumb to his environment is as much a credit to God as it is to Thiago and his family. This is the miracle of a Christian life which allows God the opportunity to transform every single person from the lowest depths to the greatest heights.

By Kirsten Andersen, Fri Jul 11, 2014

In the wake of the 5-4 Supreme Court decision acknowledging the rights ofHobby Lobby and other closely-held private companies to refuse to provide coverage for abortifacients to their employees and dependents on religious grounds, a group of atheists has accused the Court’s justices of participating in a “Catholic conspiracy” to deny women birth control.

In a full-page ad that ran in the New York Times July 3, just three days after the ruling, the Freedom From Religion Foundation slammed the “all-male, all-Roman Catholic majority” on the Supreme Court for putting “religious wrongs over women’s rights.” Alongside the text of the ad was a huge portrait of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, whose motto, the group claims, was “No Gods — No Masters.”
“Dogma should not trump our civil liberties,” the ad said.

The group called on Congress to repeal the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. This is the law the Supreme Court cited in ruling that the Obama administration cannot force businesses that object to provide coverage for abortifacient drugs in employees’ health insurance plans.
“We must next ask whether the HHS contraceptive mandate ‘substantially burden[s]’ the exercise of religion,” the majority wrote. “We have little trouble concluding that it does.”

Hobby Lobby’s owners are protestant Christians, not Catholics, but all five justices who sided with the company are members of the Catholic faith. One of the four dissenting justicesnis also Catholic. (The other three are Jewish.)

“Allowing employers to decide what kind of birth control an employee can use is not, as the Supreme Court ruled, an ‘exercise of religion.’ It is an exercise of tyranny. Employers should have no right to impose their religious beliefs upon workers,” the ad said.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, responded to the ad with a sarcastic thank you note published in the Catholic New York newspaper, calling FFRF’s rhetoric “drippingly bigoted.”
“I simply want to welcome the grey, full-page ad, and thank the anonymous militiamen at FFRF for giving me yet another handout for my students when I give my next talk on ‘Anti-Catholic Bigotry in the United States,’” the cardinal wrote. “Now, don’t get me wrong: a robust examination of [the] Supreme Court decision, even one that disagrees with the ruling, is expected, welcome, and helpful in a Republic that prizes such give-and-take, indeed, protects it. But, as the professors of logic, rhetoric, and speech taught us in college, arguments attacking a person—instead of an idea, viewpoint, or opinion—are the weakest and most vicious of arguments…although, sadly, rather effective in firing up a mob.”

Mob tactics, Dolan suggested, are exactly what FFRF are engaging in, perhaps due to a lack of factual arguments with which to make their point.
“An ad soberly criticizing the decision would have been part of the discourse that makes us such a durable democracy…and there have been such ads,” Dolan wrote. “But the FFRF, perhaps knowing that their legal arguments fall flat, instead attacks the people on the court, and implies that their Catholic faith makes it impossible for them to protect the cherished Constitution they have sworn on a Bible to uphold.”

Dolan asked whether the FFRF would publish a similar ad saying a Jewish politician could not vote on Israel, or a Mormon judge tackle the issue of marriage.
“Of course not!” he said. “But, in keeping with a long, shadowy, legacy of antipathy, justices who happen to be Catholics—never mind their past frequent votes hardly consonant with the public teaching of their faith—are branded and bullied by a group who only succeed in providing the latest example of a prejudice that has haunted us for centuries.”

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League also condemned the FFRF ad as “hate speech” against Catholics.
“All the Jewish judges on the high court voted in the minority,” Donohue pointed out, “but only an anti-Semite would conclude that their Jewishness determined their vote. Similarly, only an anti-Catholic would conclude that those who voted in the majority did so because of their Catholicity.”
Added Donohue, “From the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, Catholics had to deal with the Ku Klux Klan. Now they must deal with more sophisticated bigots. What unites the Klan and FFRF is their maliciousness. Unfortunately, as we have seen this week, anti-Catholic bigotry has erupted in many quarters, all of them urbane.”

In a follow-up post on the FFRF blog Friday, staff attorney Andrew Seidel doubled down on the Catholic conspiracy theory.

“There is excellent cause to question the impartiality of any truly devout Catholic justice on an issue such as access to birth control,” Seidel wrote.

“When [Catholic] Justice Sotomayor dissented in Hobby Lobby, she violated the teachings of her church, and I respect her all the more for that,” Seidel wrote. “She held her civil duty (and in all probability her womanhood) above the out-dated and barbaric teachings of the Catholic Church.”

While praising Sotomayor for her “scruples” in voting to force religious people to act against their conscience, Seidel called on Justices Scalia, Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, and Thomas to either leave their faith at the courthouse door or resign.

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life, July 2014

Tax law says that Churches may not intervene in political campaigns. But the definition and boundaries of such intervention are vague and confusing. In its attempt at guidance, the IRS says “all the facts and circumstances” have to be examined. From one point of view, this standard itself is not a standard at all, but a mere statement of the obvious. After all, if a person, in making any kind of judgment, does not consider “facts and circumstances,” what, after all, does he or she consider — crystal balls, astrological signs, dreams and hallucinations?

From another point of view, how can one possibly consider all facts and circumstances of any action or decision? In real day to day life, we consider those facts and circumstances of which we are aware in the amount of time we have to make the decision, and which seem important enough to influence the decision. It’s a normal fact of life that, looking back on decisions we have made, we come to see facts and circumstances we did not have the time or ability to weigh at the time of the decision.

Obviously, a consideration of “all the surrounding facts and circumstances” if it can ever happen at all can only happen after the action has been taken, and perhaps a long time after, or indeed never.
The Congressional Research Service has reported, “In many situations, the activity is permissible unless it is structured or conducted in a way that shows bias towards or against a candidate. Some biases can be subtle and whether an act-ivity is campaign intervention will depend on the facts and circumstances of each case.” (Lunder & Whitkaker at 3.)

A question obviously arises here. Unless we are to say that Churches have no freedom to teach on issues that also happen to correspond to political debates, how are they protected from the accusation of being “partisan” simply because the position of the organization, or the teaching of the Church or the Gospel, corresponds to the position that one particular political party or candidate has, and is diametrically opposed to that of their opposing party or candidate?

The Church opposes abortion and stands up for the rights of the unborn. The Republican Party platform takes a similar position. The Democratic Party platform, on the other hand, supports abortion as a right. So now, is the Church’s pro-life position partisan, and therefore illegal to assert?
That would be both absurd and intolerable.

Erik Stanley states, “The predictable outcome of this state of affairs has been massive self-censorship among churches and pastors.” Even the Supreme Court, on more than one occasion, has noted with concern what happens when people aren’t given a clear, bright line regarding what speech and activity is forbidden and what is not. “Uncertain meanings inevitably lead citizens to ‘steer far wider of the unlawful zone . . . than if the boundaries of the forbidden areas were clearly marked.’”(Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 109 (1972) (quoting Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 372 (1964)).

We at Priests for Life believe there is a solution to all this. We believe it’s time to stop censoring ourselves by the risk-averse mentality, often fostered by legal advisors, that wants to not only avoid breaking the law, but also avoid both the accusation and the appearance of breaking the law. This lack of willingness to fight leads to sterility and paralysis, keeping the Church’s mission from being fulfilled.

Instead, we should rely on legal counsel who are willing to interpret the IRS guidelines in a way that does not stifle our mission, and have the readiness to defend that interpretation. We need to conduct non-partisan activities in a way that common sense judges as non-partisan: no candidate or party is endorsed, and the activity is open to all. And we should push for legislation that provides a “bright line” test for Churches and tax exempt organizations so that they know ahead of time, by a clear, reasonable, andily discernible standard,what does and does not constitute prohibited political intervention. A perfect example of this is provided in the Buckley vs. Valeo Supreme Court decision which, in another context, indicated the bright line to be defined by whether or not one uses “explicit words of advocacy of election or defeat of a candidate.” The Court gave examples of such words and phrases: ‘vote for,’ ‘elect,’ ‘support,’ ‘cast your ballot for,’ ‘Smith for congress,’ ‘vote against,’ ‘defeat,’ ‘reject.’

It is time to apply a clear standard like this in order to interpret the political intervention prohibition on Churches.

LifeSiteNews staff, Fri Jul 4, 2014

ABUJA, Nigeria — The Catholic Bishops of Nigeria have called for the Church to be “more courageous and consistent in Pro-Life activities in favour of human life, marriage and the family as counter-cultural antidotes to anti-life ideologies and practices.”

The call came in a communiqué issued following an international pro-life march and conference organized by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria and held in Abuja from June 5-7.
“The relentless promotion by some international organizations of ‘sexual and reproductive rights’, a euphemism for abortion, is deceptive and unacceptable,” the communiqué asserts.
The bishops’ demand that “legislation for abortion, which is the intentional killing of innocent babies in the womb, be denounced and abrogated,” and promise that they “remain resolved in our efforts to ensure that abortion is never legalized in our country.”

The content of the communiqué echoes speeches made by bishops at the conference, which was attended by approximately 1,500 delegates and speakers from across Africa, Europe, and North America.
In a stirring speech, Archbishop Anthony Obinna of Owerri told the conference, “We have become aware of aggressive, ideological and practical assaults on human life, sexuality, marriage and the family.”
“By publicly repudiating the aberration of same-sex ‘marriage’ and prohibiting it in law, to the anger of several anti-life European/American governments and agencies, Nigeria, through its current President, Goodluck Jonathan, has placed itself in the position of a global defender of life and proper family values,” said the archbishop.

These points were emphasized by Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama, president of the Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, who told the conference, “We cannot be terrorized into doing anything to diminish life and the family. … We don’t want an abortion industry. We want industries which produce food, roads, transport systems and other practical things which people need.”

The threat posed by international governments and agencies was stressed in a speech John Smeaton, chief executive of the UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, delivered to the Nigerian Bishops Conference on the eve of the two day event.
Smeaton warned the bishops that “the most powerful politicians and pro-abortion organizations in the world are absolutely determined that Nigeria should follow Britain, America, and other powerful western nations by legalizing abortion and by destroying the moral welfare and happiness of your children.”

Smeaton told the bishops that compared to the West, Nigeria was a “wealthy nation.” In Britain, he told them, children are given access to abortion at school and are subjected to pornographic anti-life sex education. Many teachers were receiving training from Stonewall, a militant homosexual “rights” group. All these things, Smeaton stressed, were taking place in Catholic schools with the co-operation of the Catholic authorities.

The assembled bishops responded to his honest and forthright speech with a standing ovation.
Smeaton told LifeSiteNews, “Archbishop Kaigama, and his fellow Nigerian bishops, are at the centre of the global defence of life and moral values. Bishops around the world should follow their lead and speak out for strong policies against the subversion of the truth and meaning of human sexuality.”
The Nigerian bishops’ communiqué can be read here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/lifesite/BUILDING_A_CULTURE_OF_LIFE_4.pdf.
John Smeaton’s full speech can be found here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/lifesite/Address_given_by_John_Smeaton_to_the_bishops_of_Nigeria_5th_June_2014.pdf.

By Jonathon Van Maren

Last week, every harried and hysterical abortion activist with the ability to type and access to a WordPress blog went completely crazy. You see, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision on Monday that no, companies owned by people who dislike abortion don’t actually have to pay for abortion drugs or drugs that could result in killing an already existing human being.

This, of course, is totally unacceptable to the abortion crowd, who would like us all to soar to new heights of delusion and pretend that ending a pregnancy chemically is, in fact, “health care,” and that it’s none of our business what happens to tiny human beings, and that also we have to pay for the whole bloody process, because feminism, that’s why. The sheer number of stupid arguments being howled loudly in protest of this decision is mind-boggling.

The Supreme Court Justices voting in favor of Hobby Lobby were all male! Uh, so were the justices who legalized abortion—and I wasn’t aware that arguments had genitals? The pills we want don’t always cause abortions or hardly ever so who cares! Well, if there might be a human being sitting in the bushes, I think it most prudent not to fire a gun in that direction, because we value human life. Why do stupid pro-lifers want me to have hundreds of babies?! We’re not talking about preventing a human life, we’re talking about ending one that already exists. This is really basic stuff.
And I could go on (and on and on.) But I want to take a look at the three “arguments” that I’ve seen the most frequently, and have irritated me the most.

1. This ruling is an attack on American women!
Depending on what poll you take a look at, almost half of American women consider themselves pro-life. A majority support abortion restrictions. Sorry, abortion fans, but you don’t get to call yourselves the representatives of American women, as if half of them should stay out of the debate and vacuum their living rooms while you loudly and repulsively claim that for women to be free, they have to be able to have their children vacuumed out of their uteruses. In fact, instead of looking for real solutions to genuine threats to women, feminists pretend that abortion is the one-size-fits-all Band-Aid solution to every problem there is. Sexual assault? Give her an abortion. Abusive relationship? She needs an abortion. Poverty-stricken? Kill her fetus, that’ll do the trick! Abortion activists do nothing to actually address real problems, and it’s really tiring to read their constant babbling about how the fictitious right to chemically poison, suction, dismember, or otherwise kill pre-born children is essential to their identity as women.

2. Christians just want us to stop having all the sex we want!
Okay, look. Back in the day, the Sexual Revolutionaries told the State to get out of their bedrooms. And they did. But now, they want everyone back in the bedroom—approving of whatever sexual expression is taking place and paying for pills and rubbers to ensure that all the sex they’re having stays nice and sterile. If we don’t want to pay for such things and make the apparently offensive suggestion that the women who desire them are independent enough to obtain these products for themselves, we get berated by women like Jessica Valenti of the The Guardian, who gravely informs her readers that, “The Hobby Lobby ruling proves men of the law still can’t get over ‘immoral’ women having sex.” Uh, no. Actually, it proves that people like Jessica Valenti can’t get over the idea that she has to fund her own sex life.

3. Contraception and abortion are essential healthcare!
I know a million other people have made this point, but apparently abortion activists just don’t hear it. Pregnancy is not a disease. Unnaturally ending a pregnancy due to a bizarre cannibalistic ideology that says killing tiny humans is okay is not healthcare. And while people might decide that they want to avoid pregnancy, that’s still not healthcare. It’s not addressing some medical condition (unless, of course, fertility is a medical condition that we need to bombard with as many pharmaceuticals as we can so as to render it unhealthy.) A number of feminists have claimed that the Hobby Lobby ruling “threatens women’s lives and health.” This claim would be hilarious if it weren’t so dangerously asinine. It’s about time that they stop insulting women by claiming that their ability to get pregnant is a medical condition to be treated.

There have been more arguments, especially legal ones, bandied about since the ruling on Monday. But fortunately for religious freedom, for people who respect human life throughout all stages, and for those who possess a worldview that allows for rational discourse, Hobby Lobby won their case against the feminist fascists of the Sexual Revolution.
And it’s about time, too.

Jonathon Van Maren is a writer and pro-life speaker who has given presentations across North America on abortion and pro-life strategy. Jonathon graduated from Simon Fraser University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History. He is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

By Joe Heschmeyer, Monday, June 30, 2014

On June 30, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Hobby Lobby case (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.), siding with Hobby Lobby. It was a 5-4 decision, with Justice Alito writing the opinion (Justice Kennedy, who joined the majority, also wrote a concurring opinion). The Court’s decision, holding that the HHS Mandate violates Hobby Lobby’s religious freedom, has already been seriously misunderstood. So let’s set the record straight on four major issues:

1. Is This Case About Scalia and Other Court Conservatives Imposing Their Religion?

No: something nearer the opposite, really. This whole case involves a law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a law that exists because of a controversial 1990 Supreme Court case called Employment Division v. Smith.

Here’s what happened: Alfred Smith and Galen Black worked at a rehab clinic, but were fired for using peyote, and denied unemployment benefits. They sued, claiming that they were using peyote for religious reasons, because they were members of the Native American Church. In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Scalia, the Court held that a facially-neutral law could be applied across the board, even if it had the effect of hindering religious rituals.

The case was explosive. In his dissent from Smith, Justice Blackmun noted that the “respondents’ use of peyote seems closely analogous to the sacramental use of wine by the Roman Catholic Church.” Thus, the Smith decision seemed like it might allow the government to pass facially-neutral laws (like prohibiting peyote or wine) that effectively outlawed a particular religion.

Unsurprisingly, both conservatives and liberals were startled by Smith. Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and 170 co-sponsors (122 Democrats, 47 Republicans, and an Independent) introduced RFRA. It quickly passed 435-0 in the House and 97-3 in the Senate. As the Court noted in its decision today, RFRA “prohibits the Federal Government from taking any action that substantially burdens the exercise of religion unless that action constitutes the least restrictive means of serving a compelling government interest.”

That’s the whole point of the law: to make it harder for a federal law to trample the exercise of religion, without a compelling government interest. In other words, Congress was concerned that Scalia and the other conservatives on the Supreme Court didn’t take a broad enough view of religious freedom. Which is probably the opposite of what you’ve heard.

2. Isn’t this Case just About Contraception?

No. While there are plenty of parties suing who are against contraception, Hobby Lobby isn’t amongst them. Their objection was just to paying for abortions.

Four of the twenty drugs involved in this case are believed, not just to prevent conception (which would make them contraceptive, as the name implies), but to prevent the implantation of an embryo into the uterine wall. Interfering with the natural development of an embryo in order to bring about its death is an abortion.

At the heart of this, there’s a semantic debate over when pregnancy begins, because two definitions are used. Some obstetricians use an early definition: pregnancy begins once the sperm fertilizes the egg, resulted in an embryo (an organism genetically distinct from both its parents). Other obstetricians use a late definition: that pregnancy doesn’t begin until the fertilized egg implants into the uterine wall.

Of these, the early definition is better. Imagine that, one day, scientists are able to fuse sperm and egg in a laboratory setting, and bring the child full term in an artificial womb (or some other laboratory conditions). According to the late definition, we would have to conclude that this person was never conceived. That’s an absurd result, easily avoided by holding to the early definition.

But regardless of the semantic debate, the fact remains: even amongst those people who are fine with contraception, many still disagree with killing a fertilized embryo (or being forced to pay for others to do so). The owners of Hobby Lobby are just such people. As the Court noted in today’s opinion:
The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients. If the owners comply with the HHS mandate, they believe they will be facilitating abortions, and if they do not comply, they will pay a very heavy price—as much as $1.3 million per day, or about $475 million per year, in the case of one of the companies. If these conseq uences do not amount to a substantial burden, it is hard to see what would.

3. Did the Supreme Court Just Declare That Corporations are People?

Rick Ungar at Forbes responded to the Hobby Lobby decision by writing an article entitled “Founding Fathers Spinning In Their Graves As SCOTUS Rules That Corporations Are People Too.” This is a surprisingly frequent allegation, given how hilariously wrong it is.

Do you know who decided that corporations are people, too? Congress.To see that, you don’t need to read any further than 1 U.S.C. §1, the very first law on the books. It reads: “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise […] the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.”

And guess what? That’s the whole point of a corporation. They enter into contracts, as if they’re people. They’re allowed to own property, as if they’re people. They have to pay income tax, as if they’re people. If you got rid of these rights and duties, you would be eliminating the entire purpose of corporations existing, which is why no one who understands corporate law seriously proposes changing this part of 1 U.S.C. §1.

But having said that, corporations aren’t really people, and there are some rights that they don’t enjoy (for example, the right to vote). So the task of the Supreme Court was to figure out whether the religious freedom protections of RFRA is one of those rights. In today’s decision, they determined that it was, at least for a closely-held corporation (that is, a corporation in which 5 or fewer people control a majority of the shares).

4. Did Either Side Deny that Corporations are People Under RFRA?

No, which is why the panicky reactions of Ungar, et al, are so surreal. The HHS admitted that a nonprofit corporation can be a “person” under RFRA. But the HHS’ position was that a nonprofit corporation could exercise religion, but that a for-profit corporation couldn’t. So if you’re a Christian non-profit, you can exercise religion, but if you’re a for-profit Christian bookstore, you can’t.

As the Supreme Court noted, such a distinction makes no sense. That position also would make it very hard for activist corporations to exist: the HHS’ position amounts to saying that for-profit corporations can only exist for the sake of profit. The Court noted that:
This argument flies in the face of modern corporate law. […] While it is certainly true that a central objective of for profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits. If for-profit corporations may pursue such worthy objectives, there is no apparent reason why they may not further religious objectives as well. […]
Not all corporations that decline to organize as nonprofits do so in order to maximize profit. For example, organizations with religious and charitable aims might organize as for-profit corporations because of the potential advantages of that corporate form, such as the freedom to participate in lobbying for legislation or campaigning for political candidates who promote their religious or charitable goals.
As an example of such a for-profit corporation, the Court pointed to Google.org, which ““advance[s] its charitable goals” while operating as a for-profit corporation to be able to“invest in for-profit endeavors, lobby for policies that support its philanthropic goals, and tap Google’s innovative technology and workforce.”” So it’s not just religious organizations that the HHS’ position would have undermined, but all manner of socially-conscious companies. The government was prepared to undermine all for-profit corporations’ ability to be socially conscious, just because they happened to dislike the particular kind of social activism that Hobby Lobby engaged in.

So regardless of your views on contraception or abortion, if you’re a person who wants for-profit corporations to be able to act ethically – to be able to concern themselves with something more than fattening their shareholders’ wallets – today’s decision is a very good thing.

Joe Heschmeyer is a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, a former attorney, a Royals fan, and a Catholic blogger (at Shameless Popery). God willing, he’ll be ordained a priest in 2018.

“The anti-life mandate the Obama Administration tried to impose on these families is evidence of Big Abortion’s manipulative agenda, as they move from choice to coercion,” said AUL’s Dr. Charmaine Yoest.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (06-30-14) – “Today’s decision is a victory for common-sense as pro-life Americans do not lose their First Amendment freedoms when they open a family business or when they value unborn life,” commented Americans United for Life President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest, upon hearing news that the Court ruled in favor of the Green and Hahn families in two cases challenging Obamacare’s coercive HHS Mandate. “These cases underscore the critical need for laws protecting Americans’ freedom of conscience. The anti-life mandate the Obama Administration tried to impose on these families is evidence of Big Abortion’s manipulative agenda, as they move from choice to coercion.”

In a 5-4 decision in Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Burwell (formerly Sebelius) and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the U.S. Supreme Court held that closely held corporations (such as the Green and Hahn family businesses) cannot be required to provide “contraception” coverage. The Court held that the Obama Administration failed to show that its coercive Mandate was the least restrictive means of advancing its claimed interest.

Including these cases, Americans United for Life has filed 18 amicus curiae briefs in challenges to Obamacare’s HHS Mandate which includes requiring employers to offer life-ending drugs and devices in health insurance policies. AUL’s briefs presented analysis and arguments defending the constitutional rights of all Americans when it comes to healthcare purchases.

Conestoga Wood Specialties is owned by Christians and operated according to the owners’ Mennonite Christian beliefs. Hobby Lobby is an Oklahoma-based national arts and crafts retailer founded and run by David Green and his family, and their Christian faith has remained an integral part of the business. Both Conestoga Wood and Hobby Lobby do not oppose all contraception, but only those drugs and devices that have been labeled as “contraception” by the FDA even though they are known to have life-ending effects.

In its briefs before the Supreme Court, AUL demonstrated that the life of a new human being begins at fertilization (conception), that so-called “emergency contraception” has a post-fertilization effect that can prevent a new human being from implanting in the uterus, and that forcing employers to provide coverage for such drugs violates their constitutionally protected freedom of conscience.
The briefs were filed by an all-woman team of four AUL attorneys on behalf of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, Christian Medical Association, National Catholic Bioethics Center, Physicians for Life, and National Association of Pro Life Nurses.

“Real healthcare respects life,” noted Dr. Yoest. “Whether the issue is punishing Americans for their beliefs, pushing life-ending drugs that have been deceptively labeled as contraception, or creating new income streams for the abortion industry, the anti-life implications of Obamacare are far reaching.”

Abortion is woven into the healthcare law at multiple levels, making repeal of the law a pro-life necessity. The abortion-related provisions of Obamacare, include:

• Failing to prohibit the use of federal tax dollars for abortion, abortion coverage, and abortion-inducing drugs and devices.
• Pretending that the Hyde Amendment protections were enough to prohibit direct payment for abortions.
• Permitting federally subsidized Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) to provide abortion coverage through the state insurance exchanges required in all 50 states.
• Failing to prohibit all multi-state qualified health plans from providing coverage for abortion.
• Including a “preventive care” mandate that is being used to force coverage of drugs and devices known to end life.
• Failing to provide comprehensive First Amendment conscience protections for individuals, employers, and insurance companies that have religious or moral objections to abortion.

Americans United for Life continues to work at the state and federal level to enact comprehensive statutory protections that guard against Big Abortion’s coercive agenda.

ALBANY, NY – Albany’s new bishop led about 1,000 pro-life activists in a Walk for Life around New York’s state capitol building June 17. Catholics from the diocese, which had been directed for nearly four decades by a bishop known for his progressivism, see the new bishop as a “springboard of new energy” for the pro-life movement in the city.

“It’s just wonderful to have someone in our corner who is committed to the cause.”
Organized by local Catholics Jason and Teri Kippen, and assisted by the New York State Council of the Knights of Columbus, the Walk was led by Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, who succeeded Bishop Howard Hubbard in February.

Scharfenberger, who also led a prayer service prior to the walk, told LifeSiteNews that he participated “because the issue was important. They invited me and so I joined. It was wonderful to participate in this.”

Theresa Schweigert, Respect Life Coordinator at St. Madeleine Sophie Church, said she was “so grateful to our new bishop for leading us in such a beautiful prayer service and procession.”

“Bishop Scharfenberger’s initiative reminds us once again that we Catholic Christians must be a visible witness of the Gospel of Life,” said Schweigert. “By taking our Catholic Faith out into the streets, and as in this case a Rosary Procession past the seats of government for both the City of Albany and the State of New York, we become the salt and light that Jesus taught about in the Sermon on the Mount.”

Bishop Edward Scharfenberger delivers the homily at the prayer service before the Walk for Life.Michael Schweigert / Citizens Concerned for Human Life
Teri Kippen told The Evangelist, the Albany diocese’s newspaper, that the pro-life movement in the diocese has been “a little lackluster” but she believes Bishop Scharfenberger’s involvement in their efforts can be “a springboard of new energy.”

“It’s just wonderful to have someone in our corner who is committed to the cause,” she said.
Scharfenberger visited an abortion clinic in April, and has engaged in Facebook discussions with pro-life activists.

Bishop Edward Scharfenberger leads Albany’s Walk for Life.Michael Schweigert / Citizens Concerned for Human Life
Bishop Hubbard famously held a Mass in 2011 for the Catholic Association for Lesbian & Gay Ministry, a Catholic organization that had been banned from meeting in other dicoeses because it dissents from Catholic teaching on same-sex relationships. That year, he also said it would not be “appropriate” to deny New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Communion over his pro-abortion stance.

Additionally, Albany’s first female mayor, Kathy Sheehan, who publicly supportssame-sex “marriage” and abortion, served as the diocese’s communications director under Hubbard.
At the same time, in the 1980s Hubbard took the state of New York to court over its licensing of two Planned Parenthood abortion clinics.

Scharfenberger’s family has a history of pro-life activism. His nephew, Jon, worked for Students for Life of America before his untimely death, and ran the Students for Life group when he attended Ave Maria University.

Jason Kippen told LifeSiteNews that the Knights of Columbus played an enormous role in the Walk’s success. Not only did they pay $800 in fees to help get the Walk going, Kippen says the Knights “sponsored the event, got the permit, and paid for a million-dollar insurance policy for the Walk itself.”

By Hilary White, Fri Jun 27, 2014

ROME – The Vatican’s preparatory document for the upcoming Synod on the Family, released Thursday, includes as a major theme the fact that in many places ordinary Catholics, clergy and laity, either do not know or do not accept their Church’s teaching on sex, marriage, life, and family. This situation of general ignorance has come about, it says, because of a failure to clearly present the Church’s teachings to Catholics.

In some places “many Christians, for various reasons, are found to be unaware of the very existence of this teaching [on marriage and family],” states the document, known as the “Instrumentum Laboris” or working text.

“The People of God’s knowledge of conciliar and post-conciliar documents on the Magisterium of the family seems to be rather wanting,” the document notes. “The documents … do not seem to have taken a foothold in the Faithfull’s mentality.”

This remark will be considered the understatement of the century for most Catholics who have been involved in the pro-life and pro-family struggle. The entire pro-life movement has insisted for decades that one of their greatest obstacles is that the majority of Catholics have rarely, if ever, heard homilies or other instruction from the Church on sexual morality, procreation, abortion, marriage, homosexuality, contraception, divorce and remarriage, and cohabitation.

The Vatican’s document, titled “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization,” (*) was created after officials examined the results of a questionnaire sent out not only to bishops and theologians, but to the laity in parishes around the world. Whatever the outcome of the Synod, the first session of which is set for this coming October, this document can be taken as a general summary of the current situation of the Church, which some members of the hierarchy have already acknowledged is grim.

The document notes that many responses said it is not only laity who suffer from a general ignorance of Catholic teaching. “Some observations attribute the responsibility for this lack of knowledge to the clergy, who, in the judgment of some of the faithful, are not sufficiently familiar with the documentation on marriage and the family, nor do they seem to have the resources for development in these areas,” it states.

“Some observations inferred that the clergy sometimes feel so unsuited and ill-prepared to treat issues regarding sexuality, fertility and procreation that they often choose to remain silent,” it continues. “Some responses also voice a certain dissatisfaction with some members of the clergy who appear indifferent to some moral teachings.”

“Their divergence from Church doctrine leads to confusion among the People of God,” it adds. “Consequently, some responses ask that the clergy be better prepared and exercise a sense of responsibility in explaining the Word of God and presenting the documents of the Church on marriage and the family.”

In the months following the distribution of the questionnaire, various Episcopal conferences reported a dire lack of knowledge among the faithful of the Church’s teachings on marriage and family. The German and Swiss bishops went so far as to say that the near-total ignorance of Catholic teaching by the laity was an indication that it ought to be changed, or even abandoned.

This refrain was taken up by others, including the Vatican’s own head of the Synod, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, who suggested that the time has come to “update” Church teaching. (The cardinal later clarified that the update he was calling for was in the spirit of Pope St. John XXIII’s call at the Second Vatican Council, rather than a demand that the Church abandon her teachings.)

But the document offers a clear-cut and much more obvious solution: get busy teaching those doctrines.
“In places with a vibrant Christian tradition and a well-organized pastoral programme, people are responsive to the Christian doctrine on marriage and the family,” it says. “When the teaching of the Church is clearly communicated in its authentic, human and Christian beauty, it is enthusiastically received for the most part by the faithful.”(Part I, Chapter II (8))

Ryan T. Anderson June 25, 2014

Today the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an important ruling on Utah’s marriage amendment. This is the first time a circuit court has ruled on marriage since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) this time last year. In a 2-1 split decision, the 10th circuit ruled that Utah’s marriage amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The majority held that “the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right to marry” and that “a state may not deny the issuance of a marriage license to two persons, or refuse to recognize their marriage, based solely upon the sex of the persons in the marriage union.” The decision will almost certainly be appealed.

Of course the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right to marry—but the Supreme Court decisions that established a fundamental right to marry understood marriage as the union of a man and a woman. In issuing today’s ruling, the court implicitly supplied its own, new answer to the central question in this debate: what is marriage?

The only way the 10th Circuit could reach its decision today was to smuggle in a view of marriage that sees it as an essentially genderless institution and then declare that the Constitution requires that the States (re)define marriage in such a way.

But our Constitution is silent on what marriage is. And there are good arguments on both sides of this debate. Judges should not insert their own policy preferences about marriage and declare them to be required by the Constitution.

Indeed, this is the message that Judge Paul Kelly delivered in his dissenting opinion in today’s case. Quoting Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Judge Kelly explains: “‘Same-sex marriage presents a highly emotional and important question of public policy—but not a difficult question of constitutional law,’ at least when it comes to the States’ right to enact laws preserving or altering the traditional composition of marriage.”

Kelly continued:
The Constitution is silent on the regulation of marriage; accordingly, that power is reserved to the States, albeit consistent with federal constitutional guarantees. And while the Court has recognized a fundamental right to marriage, every decision vindicating that right has involved two persons of the opposite gender.

Kelly explained that we need not seek from the courts a single 50-state answer: “If the States are the laboratories of democracy, requiring every state to recognize same-gender unions—contrary to the views of its electorate and representatives—turns the notion of a limited national government on its head.”
In citing Justice Alito, Judge Kelly hit on an important point—that there are competing policy arguments on the definition of marriage and that in a system of limited constitutional self-government, the people and their elected representatives should be making these decisions.
Justice Alito’s opinion on DOMA cited my book, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, as an example of one view of marriage: a “comprehensive, exclusive, permanent union that is intrinsically ordered to producing new life.” And he cited Jonathan Rauch as a proponent of the idea that marriage is a commitment marked by emotional union.

Alito explained that the Constitution is silent on which of these substantive visions of marriage is correct. The Court, he explained, should defer to democratic debate.

Indeed, whatever any individual American thinks about marriage, the courts shouldn’t redefine it. Marriage policy should be worked out through the democratic process, not dictated by unelected judges. The courts should uphold the freedom of the American people and their elected representatives to make marriage policy.

Last summer, when the Supreme Court struck down DOMA, Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized the limits of the majority’s opinion. He made clear that neither the holding nor its logic required redefining state marriage laws. The states remain free to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
If marriage ends up back at the Supreme Court again next year, the Court will be less likely to usurp the authority of citizens if it is obvious that citizens are engaged in this democratic debate and care about the future of marriage.

We must rally in support of our constitutional authority to pass laws defining marriage. We must make clear that court-imposed same-sex marriage via a Roe v. Wade-style decision will not settle the marriage debate any better than it has settled the abortion debate.

We must insist, with Judge Kelly, that judges “should resist the temptation to become philosopher-kings, imposing [their] views under the guise of constitutional interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal. —