Just kidding.  But I wouldn’t be suprised…

Especially after his latest reversal, this time on marriage.

Maggie Gallagher reports:

Marriage for all or marriage for no one? Doug Kmiec, who signed onto more than one amicus brief urging courts around the country to uphold marriage as the union of one man and one woman, co-authored an op-ed recently with a new, evolved position: Ken Starr is wrong to try to uphold Prop. 8; instead, we should get government out of the marriage business. (Admittedly, it’s a little legally incoherent for the same man to say the court should NOT have struck down Prop. 8 in the first place and then say Starr is WRONG to defend the constitutional rights of Californians to amend their own constitution but, hey, let’s not get distracted.)

Read the rest of her post at NRO

The Fidelis Center for Law and Policy announces the launch of a new website – CatholicVote.com – to educate and inspire Catholic voters this fall and beyond.  The site includes a powerful video designed to encourage viewers to prioritize the issues of life, faith, and family.  In addition to the video, the site contains resources on how to register to vote, research on candidate positions, documents from the Bishops and an invitation to join in prayer.
 
The highlight of CatholicVote.com is a powerful 3:30 minute documentary on Catholic contributions to American public life. The video connects the fight for civil rights, human dignity, and the family throughout the history of our country.  The dramatic conclusion of the film urges viewers to “Vote Your Conscience.”
 
“The U.S. Bishops have stated that ‘responsible citizenship is a virtue, and participation in political life is a moral obligation,’” said Brian Burch, director of CatholicVote.com. “We launched CatholicVote.com to provide Catholics and all people of good will with the tools to both educate and inspire their fellow citizens as they prepare to vote in November.”

To watch the amazing video, visit CatholicVote.com. 

Diogenes of Catholic Culture slices an oft-used argument used by supporters of “same-sex” marriage. 

Pat is the security guard at a bank. Mike is a bank robber.

Pat is an indifferent employee. He punches the time-clock, plods through his dull routine, and waits for the paycheck on Friday. Mike, on the other hand, is a perfectionist: hard-working, methodical, punctilious about the details of his craft. What he does, he does well.

Which is morally superior: Pat’s respectable mediocrity or Mike’s criminal artistry?

If you choose Mike, you’ll probably understand the moral reasoning used by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the issue of same-sex relationships.

Proponents of “same-sex” marriage seem desperate to knock this idea that marriage is sacred by highlighting terrible marriages between men and women. To which you’re tempted to ask: “If marriage is so awful, then why do you gays want to get married?”

In addition to affirming their unequivocal support of abortion rights and taxpayer funded abortion, the new proposed Democratic platform language also expressly opposes the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.  The law is the greatest obstacle to nationwide same-sex marriage.  Presumably if Obama is elected, it will go.  The new language reads:

We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use this issue to divide us.”

It’s worth recalling that the law was signed by President Clinton and was supported by 150 Democratic members of Congress.

CNS reports:

Sen. Obama has repeatedly said during his presidential campaign that he wants to fully repeal DOMA.  On July 17, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNSNews.com that she would support Obama in repealing DOMA if he were elected president.

This is yet another issue that McCain must exploit.  Supported by a substantial number of Democrats and signed by a Democratic president, there have to be some worried Democrats that are not ready to publicly back this position.  Not to mention the majority of America.

National Journal sets the table:

At a time when the Court is precariously balanced–with four conservatives, four liberals (including the two oldest justices), and the ideologically eclectic Anthony Kennedy–these contrasting approaches have provided opposing activists with nightmare visions to rally the Democratic and Republican bases during the presidential race.

The liberal nightmare (and conservative dream) is McCain replacing one or more aging liberals with conservatives who proceed to overrule or hollow out Roe v. Wade and other liberal precedents; throw gay rights into reverse; discard the constitutional right to privacy; outlaw all racial preferences and school integration programs; narrow the reach of civil-rights protections for women, minorities, and disabled people; bless virtually unrestricted government funding of religious schools and sponsorship of crosses and other religious symbols on public property; stop shrinking and start expanding the death penalty; mow down gun control laws; roll back the four decisions since 2004 that have checked Bush administration efforts to expand presidential power in the name of fighting terrorism; and make it ever harder for consumers and workers to sue businesses.

The conservative nightmare (and liberal dream) is an Obama Court requiring taxpayers to fund essentially unlimited abortion rights throughout pregnancy; ordering all 50 states to bless gay marriage; expanding and perpetuating the use of racial preferences far beyond the 25-year phaseout suggested by the justices five years ago; prohibiting tuition vouchers for religious schools; stripping “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance; banning the death penalty; striking down the new federal wiretap law; expanding judicial oversight of military detentions, CIA interrogations, and perhaps other operations worldwide; opening the floodgates to big-dollar lawsuits against business; eroding property rights; and perhaps creating new constitutional rights to physician-assisted suicide, human cloning, and massive government welfare and medical care programs.

McCain or Obama. Take your pick.

With a vote of the State Senate, voters in Arizona as well as California and Florida, will have a chance to vote for marriage as between one man and one woman. For more information on Arizona’s fight, visit The Center for Arizona Policy.

CNSNews.com reports on an interesting ad campaign: 

“America is a country of strong families and strong values,” says a political ad that began airing in 18 states over the weekend. The candidate then goes on to say how he helped move people off the welfare rolls and fought for tax cuts.

It almost sounds like a typical Republican campaign commercial — except this is the first national ad aired by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama since he effectively secured his party’s nomination earlier this month.

The story goes on to quote Tony Campolo, a sociology professor at Eastern University, who speculates that Obama will win 35 to 36 percent of the evangelical vote.

“The older evangelicals, I think about 80 percent, will vote for John McCain even though they aren’t thrilled with him, simply because of the pro-life issue alone,” Campolo, who is also a member of the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee, told CNSNews.com. 

“The younger evangelicals are looking at poverty, the AIDS crisis, the environment and war,” he said. “They give those issues almost as much weight as they give gay marriage and abortion.”

Are they unaware that John McCain is the nominee? Even a Cliff Notes version of this election cycle would remind folks that John McCain is no Tom Tancredo or Ron Paul.

If you’re a pro-life and pro-family evangelical, but agree with the Democrats on the enviroment and poverty and the AIDS crisis, you need be in no dilemma. You vote for John McCain.

McCain is on the left on the environment. He’s emphatic about climate change. Much more so than I want, in fact. Regarding the AIDS crisis, have people forgotten that George W. Bush has opened much more AIDS funding for Africa than anyone had dreamed possible?

Poeple need to throw away this media-driven cartoon version of the GOP. This is not the world of Charles Dickens. John McCain is no Scrooge.

One county takes drastic action in wake of the California Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage.

We just sent out a release trumpeting Jindal’s school voucher plan for kids in New Orleans. We think he’d be an excellent runningmate for John McCain:

“A strong record of ethics and education reform is just what the doctor ordered to combat the perceptions of a lethargic, corrupt GOP that voters ousted from Congress in 2006,” said Brian Burch, President of Fidelis.

“With his ethics bill and education plan, Governor Jindal is blazing a trail for Republican reform in the Bayou,” said Burch.

“Adding Bobby Jindal to the ticket would reinforce John McCain’s strong message of reform and would convince independents that the GOP learned the lessons from 2006.”

There are other excellent reasons for selecting the Louisiana governor, Burch said.

“Jindal strong stance on life and marriage would solidify conservative support for the GOP ticket. As a Catholic, he would help McCain win a crucial voting bloc that Obama has had difficulty courting,” said Burch.

Make it happen, Johnny Mac!

Supporters of a marriage amendment in California have qualified for the November ballot. It would invalidate the lawless order of the California Supreme Court that “legalized” so-called same-sex “marriages.”

Ten states have petitioned California to issue a stay on enforcing the court order, pending the voters decision on a Constitutional Amendment this November.

Good.

It seems that support is closer to 50-50, but still well short of the supermajority needed to get two-thirds of Congress behind it.

Passing an Amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman was always going to be an enormously difficult task. As much as I’d like to see a Federal Marriage Amendment, having watched this debate closely for a decade, I’m beginning to think that it’s not going to happen. I hope I’m wrong.

To achieve success, such an amendment would requires two-thirds support in both Houses of Congress and three-quarters of the states. The time in which that many Senators and Congressmen agreed with traditional marriage was likely over ten years ago, when the issue was preceived to be less of a concern. You can hear them saying, why pass an Amendment, we just passed the Defense of Marriage Act? Now that the issue is at hand, we don’t have two-thirds support. (I can’t see 67 Senators in this Congress voting for a Federal Marriage Amendment.)

If Jim Manzi is right, public support for such an Amendment is at 30%. Which is why George Bush used the idea to gather conservative support during an difficult wartime election and then quickly dropped the issue like a hot rock right after getting re-elected.

Considering Bush’s informal decision to jettison the Amendment (he always issues comments in support of it, but doesn’t actively push for it), I never understood social conservative anger at John McCain and Fred Thompson during the presidential primaries. John McCain said that the Defense of Marriage Act was enough because it protected states against having to recognize other state’s gay marriages. Such a law should be enough, of course. But an activist Supreme Court, obviously, could ruin that law in a heartbeat. And Fred Thompson offered a more federalist-focused amendment that would have simply enshrined in the Constitution that no state could be forced by any court to recognize gay marriage. Since it had a chance of passing, I thought this was a great idea. It was first proposed by Ramesh Ponnuru. That kind of Amendment still might have a chance.

So what do we do now, after California’s decision? Barring a groundswell of public opinion to pass a federal marriage amendment, we need to pass as many state marriage amendments as we can. Work on that has been outstanding so far. As of 2005, there are 18 states with marriage amendments. And activists in California are working hard right now to get an marriage amendment on the ballot in November. Concerned citizens should visit ProtectMarriage.com and support their efforts in California.

The California Supreme Court has ruled today that same-sex “marriages” are to be mandated in California. Nevermind that 61% of Californians voted to protect marriage just eight years ago. What happened to We the People?

UPDATE: White House statement on the decision:

“President Bush has always believed marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman.

It’s unfortunate when activist judges continue to seek to redefine marriage by court order – without regard for the will of the people. Today’s decision by the California Supreme Court illustrates that a federal constitutional amendment is the best way for the people to decide what marriage means.

President Bush remains firmly committed to protecting the sanctity of marriage.”

Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation writing in today’s Chicago Tribune argues that the Pope and the Catholic Church are the real enslavers of women. Looking back at the recent visit of the Holy Father, Pollitt wonders:

“Where were the tough questions about the church’s absolute ban on contraception, condoms, divorce and abortion—even to save a woman’s life? If it was up to Benedict, we might be more stylish than the plural wives of the FLDS, but we’d be trapped in marriage and have 15 children just like them. In the United States the Catholic Church has lost some of its moral authority—thank you, pedophile priests—but it has more temporal power than you might think.

…FLDS men have many wives and the pope has none, which goes to show there’s more than one way to keep women pregnant and in their place.”

Pollitt suggests that the Church’s consistent teachings on love and marriage are responsible for ‘millions of lives’ in Africa for opposing contraception and condoms in the fight against AIDS. But the larger premise of her article, and for that matter, the underlying assumption of the entire pro-abortion movement is that motherhood is a curse.

Never mind that women are naturally and exclusively the member of the human species endowed with the role of carrying and bearing the gift that is a new human life. Never mind that 30 years of abortion and birth control have produced an entire generation of women who now suffer from depression, thoughts of suicide, infertility, breast cancer, and other threats to their health. Never mind that the cultural legacy of our abortion culture has produced more divorce, single-parent families, and male neglect of their responsibilities as fathers, while women have been reduced to sexual playthings, urged in both dress and disposition to tantalize men, and satisfy their sexual urges without any commitment to permanence in marriage or children.

The thought that the Pope and the Church might actually teach what they do because they want to liberate women, is unthinkable. The possibility that men and society ought to respect women for what they are, and that laws ought to affirm the dignity of women, particularly in their natural roles as mothers, is anathema to so called ‘feminists’ like Pollitt.

How dare the Pope, or the Catholic Church, suggest that perhaps, just maybe, there is a better way.

It passed 6-4 the House Judiciary Committee, one step closer to the ballot in November.