Supreme Court Weighs Marriage

This is a good explanation of the two marriage cases before the Supreme Court.  The article is from New Yorker's Family Research Foundation

Parent, Child, Marriage

The same-sex marriage movement is presented innocently as nothing more than endorsing the 'right' of same-sex couples to marry just as heterosexual couples marry.  Supporters of same-sex marriage are quick to label any opposition to their view as bigoted, homophobic, hateful and just plain old stupid.  Those of us on the other side of the aisle look upon same-sex 'marriage' first as an oxymoron, but moreover as a move to re-define marriage, to toss out the traditional notion of marriage and to reduce the uniqueness of (heterosexual) marriage to naught, to profoundly change what is natural and normal. 

This slightly dry and tedious article illustrates how same-sex unions and same-sex 'marriage' include re-defining the relationship between parent and child.  Better to start at the end of this article with this quote,

As the sociological bonds between parent and child are perverted through a redefinition of marriage, it seems the resistance to breaking the biological bonds wanes as well. Replacing the marital act with various assisted reproductive technologies dehumanizes children and treats them as commodities to be manufactured and marketed for the pleasure of adults.

and read backwards.

Born This Way?

Michael Voris over at Church Militant.TV (also here) leaves few stones unturned.  Below he addresses homosexuality and whether it can validly be claimed that there is a sexuality other than heterosexuality.  This video is worth watching from the beginning, but if you're pressed for time, start watching at 2:14 as he develops the point that homosexuality is not another choice, but is disordered heterosexuality. (The presentation is original to him, but not the idea which is the position of the Catholic Church.)   His argument also attends to the claim that homosexuals are "born that way" and so can't help their behavior.  Were we to accept that view, then we would logically be led to accept, for example, that some people are just "born" wanting to have sex with children.  That is, we would be led to acknowledge pedophilia as a permissible and normal sexual preference, just as many are demanding that we believe homosexuality is a normal sexual preference.

 Voris borrows the analogy of colored vases to illustrate his point that homosexuality isn't just a vase of a different color but rather a broken vase. Vases, clay vases, clay pots, clay vessels.  Hmm.  Calls to mind that verse from 2 Corinthians 4:7 about the treasure we have in earthen vessels, the power of which comes from God and not us.

At The Bottom of the Slippery Slope

I wouldn't have come across this article except for the fact that I'm a Family Research  Council (FRC)reader---oh yes, they're the "hate group"--and so I was able to get Jillian Keenan's perspective on why social change shouldn't stop with same-sex marriage.    Jillian Keenan is she who had the "courage" to write about her spanking fetish published in the paper of record.  That's news.  In this article, Keenan writes that legalized polygamy would be good for women, good for immigrants and good for shoring up our constitutional right to religious freedom.

Keenan takes the following line to try to defend her enthusiasm for legalizing polygamy.  Since heterosexual marriage has its flaws and two-parent families are no longer the norm for Americans anyway, why penalize those who want the choice of being married to multiple men or women.  And, since we've already opened the door to everything else why not add legalized polygamy as well?  As she says:   "Divorce, remarriage, surrogate parents, extended relatives, and other diverse family arrangements mean families already come in all sizes—why not recognize that legally?"   Ideology obviously trumps reason here.  And it can also create strange bedfellows.  Keenan favors legalized polygamy because she wants to defend the rights of her Mormon fundamentalist friends.  I'm guessing she voted for Mitt Romney? 

By her way of thinking, Keenan also keeps company with her opposition,  those who argue that same-sex marriage will open the door to polygamy and other types of sexual relationships regarded as harmful to society.  We're right!

Light of Day

Some insight into New York state's governor and legislature is provided here by New Yorkers for Consitutional Freedom

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Seventeen seventy-five, that is!  Paul Revere's midnight ride is recounted by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem 'Paul Revere's Ride,' a great poem to read anytime, but especially on the eighteenth of April just 238 years after the fact (and just slightly after midnight).  Or 153 years after Longfellow wrote it.  Gets the blood going and causes one to remember what the fight was all about.

  "A voice in the darkness,  a knock at the door and a word that shall echo for evermore!"

 

 

 

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

 

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,–
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

 

Then he said “Good-night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

 

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

 

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,–
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

 

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,–
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

 

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

 

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

 

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

 

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

 

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

 

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

 

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

White Smoke

Scarcely a week ago, on a Wednesday afternoon about 2:05 PM, I returned home and had the fortunate idea of going directly to EWTN on the computer just in time to see the white smoke announcing the election of a new pope.  An exciting hour followed waiting to hear that it would be Jorge Mario Bergoglio, whose name had not been bandied about even by the Catholic press,  to be the successor to chair of Peter.

EWTN along with the Moynihan Letters and Whispers in the Loggia  provide all the news about Pope Francis I and his papacy.