Exactly! The Bible and most cultures, until the 20th century, at least, do not approve of divorce and remarriage. And even our modern culture once looked down on people who committed adultery. Does NOM, either nationally or in RI, think that Rudy Guiliani, John McCain or Newt should lose their marriage rights/recognition because of their immoral activity?

It’s interesting that the same social science Gallagher is citing has overwhelmingly shown that the children of single parents and those in blended families do worse than those in homes with intact parents. Which civil rights does Gallagher think she should lose because of her inferior family structure? Should the VA social services be coming to take away her minor son to ensure he is not further harmed by her “lifestyle choices”?

Let us remember that Gingrich did not simply “have an affair” with his current wife – he actually put her on his payroll when he was Speaker of the House. That means he was paying a woman to have sex with him – as close to prostitution as you can legally get, no? But it’s OK, because when Gingrich converted to Catholicism at his current wife’s request, the Church decided his first two marriages didn’t count (despite the first one producing two daughters) and annulled them, so Gingrich and the current Mrs. are validly married within the Church. Perhaps that’s why NOM uses them, they are basically a Catholic front organization, so they likely take the Church’s stance that his current marriage is his actual only marriage.

Yeah because all those members of Congress, not to mention all their staffers, live in DC right? I guess that’s why the traffic from Capitol Hill to the low-tax haven of Northern VA is so light.

What really disgusted me was hearing Land mention 2000 years of “Christian tradition.” The Southern Baptists were created in the 1840s to justify slavery and white supremacy and only renounced its racism in 1995, according to Wikipedia. The Baptist movement in general is less than 500 years old. That is hardly a history of two centuries.

We may even discover that push-ups are not the best measure of combat survival and victory.

In fact, it’s quite likely the military will find some jobs are better suited for women – I am thinking of combat roles where smaller stature and endurance may be more important than upper body strength. I remember when the Hubble Space Telescope was being repaired about 15 years ago, and the image of one of the women astronauts holding the enormous, and non-functional, solar panel they were removing from the Hubble. This woman was about 5’2″ and 100 lbs soaking wet, but the experts were discussing how she was the perfect person for the job because, in weightlessness, NASA needed a small agile person to get into some very cramped spaces when doing the repair. I could easily see the same issue happening in combat – in a tank for instance, where the cramped spaces could mean a woman driver who is shorter could be better able to handle the machine (presuming tanks have power steering, of course).

My question is whether, even with so many public figures coming out, the media will really stop reporting with the closet in mind — the double standard that results in reporters inquiring on all sorts of levels about personal lives and relationships of hetero celebs, but studiously avoid asking socially out, but professionally questionably closeted people about the mundane same aspects of their lives.

THIS – times one million. I think that is what people who are complaining Jodie Foster didn’t really come out even last night (can you actually come out by saying you’re not going to make a big coming out speech?) don’t seem to get – she has clearly been out in her non-public life for decades. Hell, she not only has two children with her former partner – both those children have Bernard as their middle name. Their two parents literally couldn’t have been more clear about their lives without a big coming out speech. And everyone in Hollywood knew the score. If the media has simply treated a lesbian couple as it treats a straight couple, there would never have been a need for Foster to make any such statements last night.

But there’s a flip side to your piece, Pam, in a big question for the LGBT community – when do we stop supporting the closet? When it is still possible – in fact likely – for LGBT people in rural/conservative areas to be fired because of their personal lives, we are not yet at a point when the closet can be completely abandoned, but we should feel fine about discussing and “exposing” the lives of the barely-closeted like Foster or Anderson Cooper.

@ Mena – “out of touch with reality” – that’s an enormous understatement. In the full piece, Lewis complains about the coarsening of our culture and the breakdown of the family without a hint of irony. Yet he is part of the conservative movement that gave us Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens,” Nixon’s “southern strategy” and George HW Bush’s Willie Horton ads. It is the conservative movement that blames crime on single mothers, created the myth of us godless Sodomites working to destroy both the Church and the Family, and has created a series of “others” – Communists, feminists, liberals in general – to attack as explicitly outside American culture. If the culture has become coarser, it’s not because we are actually being honest about the full range of humanity and human experiences, it is due the politics of personal destruction, which has been adopted as strategy point #1 by conservatives.

As for the breakdown of the family, which party was it that gave us the first divorced President? To which party did the governor who redefined “hiking the Appalachian Trail” belong? And which party is it that has paraded a series of known adulterers as viable Presidential candidates (yes, we’ve had both Bill Clinton and John Edwards, but we only knew about the first guy when we actually voted for him, and he’s still on his first marriage)?

The real irony is, it is the Blue states, for all their evil liberalism, where our culture is at its most vital, where economies are booming and where social problems like teen pregnancy and divorce tend to be lower.

The human species comes in two complimentary sexes, male and female.

Bzzzzt! Sorry Mr. George, you lose the argument based on the facts. Humanity comes in many forms. Although most Americans are either male or female, 1 out of ever 2,000 births results in an intersex human being, someone who is physically (or even genetically) between the two genders. And while Catholics are free to believe those people cannot get married (because typically they are infertile, and infertility can be a bar to marriage in the Church) our civil laws must allow for all people to enjoy the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Also, I’ll say it again, how does the Catholic Church have any moral foundation on marriage after they decided to recognize Newt and Calista’s marriage? Apparently divorce and adultery are only barriers to marriage in the Catholic Church if you are poor or unconnected. If you’re rich and powerful, however, as many annulments as you need will be granted to ensure you can marry the woman who spent 6 years undermining your last marriage.

You know, I might have some iota of concern about these noble “Christian” clerks if they had ever objected to any of the heretics, blasphemers, fornicators and adulterers they’ve been serving, apparently without incident, for their entire careers. But to arbitrarily draw the line at homosexuals – so it’s fine for them to issue licenses to some hetero guy with monogamy issues who’s on his 5th or 6th wedding, but not TEH GAYZ – sorry, that just doesn’t fly.

Alvin, I love the letter, but I would add another example in hopes it would penetrate Warren’s dense skull. As a Roman Catholic kid, I was taught people who chose Warren’s “religious lifestyle” were grevious sinners, willing to turn their backs on God and his True Church (the Roman Catholic, of course) to worship the false god of Protestantism. They were barely above Satan worshippers. So the real analogy is this – Warren proudly proclaims his heresy and blasphemy (at least according to the Roman Catholics) and demands not merely tolerace or even acceptance, but approval of his sin – he thinks his religious lifestyle choice should make the rest of us think he’s a great guy. Why should Roman Catholics be forced to recognize Warren’s choices – not just of relgion, but also in marriage, because he is not married according to the Laws of God – if it violates their religious beliefs? And if Warren does accept that in a civilized society we overlook religious differences and treat everyone the same, why should that same respect not go to gay and lesbian couples (or indviduals)?

I think we need to remind all these right wing religious fanatics that there are plenty of people in the world who consider their lifestyle choices to be sins. When they advocate that the majority should be able to strip the minority of rights, they need to remember that means their own rights are up for a simple yes/no vote as well.

That’s funny, because the Church has NEVER complained about the laws that require them to recognize all kinds of sinners – adulterers, fornicators, heretics and blasphemers – as full human beings. Catholic hospitals cannot refuse to recognize, say, John McCain as being Cindy McCain’s husband, even though according to the Church they are adulterers who will spend eternity in Hell.

If gays have to respect Catholics, then the reverse must also be required.

To respond to Ms. Dunlap’s questions, one need only look at the state of affairs that existed pre-Roe v. Wade. In 1971, my mother was refused a medically necessary abortion (she had gone into premature labor at 23 weeks pregnant and was bleeding profusely) by a judge, who had no medical training whatsoever, because he decreed she was not “close enough to death” (that’s a direct quote from the ruling). Instead my mother was forced to suffer for 18 hours, in pain far worse than the labor to have either my sister or me, until her doctors had enough pieces of the fetus to prove she was no longer pregnant (sorry to be so graphic, but that’s the reality) and could do the procedure to stop her bleeding and save her life. During that ordeal, she had to have her full blood volume replaced with transfusions and my father decided to send my sister (6 years old) and me (4 years old) to my aunt’s so we would not be there when she died. Ma did ultimately survive, but was unable to have any more children, which she wanted. She was 32.

As for risks to women’s lives during pregnancy and childbirth, according to this article from MSNBC, 550 women die each year (out of 4 million births) from such complications . It’s a small number, but still 4X higher than the US public health goals.

Social science research illustrated that children do better when raised by a married mom and dad.

Social science illustrates that children of single parents and of poor parents do worse than those raised by wealthier couples, yet we don’t limit the rights of families headed either by single parents or poor parents.

Referendum 74 redefines marriage for everyone in Washington.

Mormon “celestial marriage” redefined the institution for everyone. Should we downgrade Mitt and Anne’s relationship to a “civil union” because they aren’t Christians?

…because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.

You mean, like voting for a candidate who promotes heresy and blasphemy? When I was in Catholic school, I learned that the Mormons were a “pseudo-Christian cult” who had turned the backs on God (some nuns even claimed they worshipped Satan). Funny how the ONLY sins that can now jeapordize your soul involve TEH GAY and abortion. Kind of a “dumbing down” of the religion since my day – even more so from my parents’ day, when my Baptist uncle was not allowed to be my father’s best man because Protestants were not allowed on a Catholic altar.

In the DC area over the last few months to a year, there has been a frightening increase in anti-LGBT crimes, including several murders of trans women, a shooting in a restaurant and at least two unprovoked street attacks against gay men, one in broad daylight. To my knowledge the FRC, even though their offices are mere blocks from where many of these attacks occurred, has never expressed one iota of concern or compassion for these victims. Although I am certainly concerned for the security guard – who has rightly been hailed as a hero for preventing further bloodshed – I will not shed a tear for the FRC. Their history of bigotry, slander and the creation of propaganda to use against innocent LGBT citizens is well known. They cannot escape their past and to try to use this shooting as a means to re-legitimize the organization is sickening.

Unfortunately reports are that the shooter was a volunteer at the DC LGBT Center. You know that FRC and its aligned organizations will not hesitate to use this fact to condemn all LGBT people and to renew their calls for limitations on our civil rights. This man may have pushed our movement back years and I am very concerned for the potential impact on the marriage vote in MD>

To be fair, I got the impression Willard Romney’s lady friend was referring to the media with the “you people” comment, although I acknowledge that doesn’t make it much better. As for the donations they make to their church, funny she should bring that up. Exactly what charitable activities do those donations support? For all the negatives you can put on the Catholic church, the institution has still managed to create quite an array of schools, hospitals, food banks, social service agencies and many other charities, that serve many types of people. Where are the Mormon equivalents? There are millions, if not billions, of dollars flowing from good Mormons – who must tithe to retain their “temple recommend” – where do they go?

I don’t say tax the churches, I say audit them.

Funny, his sister’s kids have the exact same kind of a “loving, active father” in their lives as Maggie Gallagher’s first kid. Exactly what civil rights does he think Ms. Gallagher should lose?

Even if you ignore the participation of the church – hell, the coordination of the church – in the largest criminal conspiracy in the history of humanity, their own recent actions prove the hypocrisy of Mr. Cordileone’s words.

Only one definition of marriage can stand…that it’s the union of a man and a woman for the purpose of the binding of the two and the procreation and education of the next generation of offspring.

Really? Because it seems to me that neither Maggie Gallagher nor Newt Gingrich’s “marriages” meet this definition, yet both are recognized by the Church. In Ms. Gallagher’s case, her “marriage” did involve procreation, but not of all her children, as she brought her illegitimate child to the relationship – the child she conceived with a now absentee baby daddy and raised for a decade in a fatherless home. In addition, Ms. Gallagher and her current husband, in order to achieve the Church’s blessing of their “union,” had to expressly promise that Mr. Srivastav would not participate in the education of his offspring, at least where religion and spirituality are concerned. Mr. Srivastav is not Christian – he is a Hindu – and the Church will only bless unions where the children are brought up Catholic.

As for Mr. Gingrich, his “marriage” fails on even more fronts. He has already had two previous “unions,” one of which produced children. He has no children, that we know of, with his current “wife,” Calista, who was such a “good Catholic” that she conducted a multi-year adulterous affair with Mr. Gingrich, and was ultimately successful in destroying that “union.” By annulling his previous two marriages, the Church actually divided Mr. Gingrich not only from his previous wives but from his children, as the Church now considers them illegitimate.

Apparently, the definition of marriage does not matter if you’re a prominent Catholic.

I work in the field of health care quality and my company is heavily involved in the implementation of ACA . There is significant evidence that aggressively managing chronic conditions – like diabetes, asthma, and cardiac conditions – reduces lifetime healthcare costs by keeping people healthier. That is one reason the best insurance companies have been investing in disease and case management services for those types of patients. More recent research has also demonstrated that these savings actually increase over time. In act NC has a twenty year history in the state’s Medicaid system that is one of the best examples of this phenomenon. Getting more people into primary care through insurance companies is one of the best ways to promote this model, although I would have preferred a Medicare-for-all approach.

The other major opportunity for health care savings is in implementing healthcare IT. A lot of the excess cost of medical care is due to redundant care because physicians cannot easily share information on patients. Thus any doctor treating a diabetic ends up repeating tests other doctors have already run.