Tag: Marriage

Critical Issues

The weakness of it is not due to the argument itself but to the condition of the hearer

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Published on cnsnews.com last Friday, the Rev. Marcel Guarnizo provides a lengthy response to Bill O’Reilly’s recent dismissal of “Bible thumping” in the public square over the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, including the following comments on the incompatibility of the type of law involved in establishing such a legal fiction with a constitutional order per se: O’Reilly fails to make clear distinctions. For example, on the issue of religion in the public square, his claim that theological arguments are unacceptable in the public square is meant ...

Critical Issues

Not so much a cultural revolution, as it is a mop-up job

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Thanks to a link provided by Operation Rescue Boston’s Bill Cotter in a recent newsletter email, I recently came across an article by John Jalsevac at LifeSiteNews.com, which I consider the most insightful piece of short literature I have read on the cultural phenomenon of gay marriage, recognizing not only the problem the concept presents, but also acknowledging the very thin grounds modern (i.e. liberalized) “conservatives” have to stand on in resisting the expansion of the modern notion of marriage to include gays: But an honest look at the cultural l...

Critical Issues

Alan Keyes Schools a Journalist on the Distinction Between Principles and Particulars

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Alas, how different the world might be today if that 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate race had turned out differently: The video provider labels this “A strong argument against gay marriage”, though I would be inclined to call it something like “A simple elucidation of the fundamental error of gay marriage”. For what it’s worth, Alan Keyes is the only presidential candidate I’ve ever donated money to (in the 2000 election), though I very well may have donated to Rick Santorum this year if he had been the GOP nominee. I love the look on Obama’s face when they cu...

Critical Issues

Same-sex marriage violates the right of the family to protection by society and the state

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, January 5th, 2012. Douglas Farrow, from an outstanding piece in the new (and terrific-looking) issue of Touchstone, entitled Why Fight Same-Sex Marriage? Nail-head, meet hammer: [W]e should observe also that when a family of some description is founded by a same-sex couple, it is always founded by violating the natural parent-child bond that marriage is intended to nurture and protect. It deprives the child, whether in the same way that divorce does or in some more innovative technological way, of its prima facie right to i...

Critical Issues

A Final Note on Hvistendahl’s Incoherence

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Prior to my summer blogging hiatus, I had posted a couple of entries on some responses to Mara Hvistendahl’s recent book on the social consequences of widespread sex-selection abortions in Asia. I ended up requesting the book from my local public library, and checked it out in mid-July. I couldn’t get past the prologue; it was dreadful. As Hvistendahl laid out her project in the prologue, it was hard not to detect something like a sadness for a great hope gone bad; a belief that abortion should have been not just a means for individual women to “gain con...

Religion & Society

On a Nationalized American Religious Disposition

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I don’t take many calls that come in from 800- or similar area codes, but I took one this morning, because I am expecting a call-back for a warranty replacement issue. The call turned out to be from an organization looking to add my name to a petition allegedly being submitted somewhere or another as a token of protest against the legal successes of a militant atheist group committed to outlawing the observation of the National Day of Prayer. This militant anti-religious campaign, I was assured, represented an affront or assault (I can’t remember which n...

Family Life

Wait, it’s my kids

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A few days before Christmas, I was coming home late after being out attending to some delicate family matters, and I stopped at my favorite local Chinese restaurant for some food to bring home for supper. After placing my order with the manager, I decided to sit at the bar and wait for my order. There were two young professional women, perhaps into their early thirties, sitting in conversation near the south end of the small bar, so I walked to the north end, sat down on the corner where I’d have a view of the door leading to the kitchen, and ordered mys...

Critical Issues

Gay Marriage and the Handicapped Parking Spot Problem: A Parable

Posted on by John W Gillis / 1 Comment

Once upon a time, a certain society made a conscious decision to confer a particular benefit upon a specific segment of the population: the rationale being that people with various physical ailments encountered particular hardships when attempting to access various public places, because of the long distances they often needed to locomote themselves after parking their cars in parking lots and garages – their physical ailments and disorders making such treks tedious, and sometimes even dangerous. As a remedy to this perceived problem, the society – let’s...

Life in Christ

A Saint for Our Age

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Today was the feast day of Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, and I spent a lot of time thinking about him. When Maximilian was canonized by Pope John Paul II, the pope proclaimed him The Patron Saint of Our Difficult Century. He was a great evangelizer and defender of the faith, as well as a protector of Jews and a fierce critic of Nazism – a witness which eventually landed him in Auschwitz as a prisoner. It was there that his legend was cemented. In retribution for an attempted prisoner escape, the deputy commander of the death camp ordered ten men fro...