Social Conservatives Launch ‘Unprecedented’ Campaign Against Pro-Marriage Equality Republicans

BuzzFeed.com:

Conservative activists are launching “an unprecedented campaign” against three Republican candidates — two of whom are out gay men — because of their support for marriage equality and abortion.

The National Organization for Marriage, Family Research Council Action, and CitizenLink “will mount a concerted effort to urge voters to refuse to cast ballots” for Republican House candidates Carl DeMaio in California and Richard Tisei in Massachusetts and Republican Senate candidate Monica Wehby in Oregon, according to a letter sent to Republican congressional and campaign leaders on Thursday.

“We cannot in good conscience urge our members and fellow citizens to support candidates like DeMaio, Tisei or Wehby,” the presidents of the three groups write. “They are wrong on critical, foundational issues of importance to the American people. Worse, as occupants of high office they will secure a platform in the media to advance their flawed ideology and serve as terrible role models for young people who will inevitably be encouraged to emulate them.”

DeMaio and Tisei are the only out LGBT federal candidates from the Republican Party to be appearing on the ballot this fall.

“The Republican Party platform is a ‘statement of who we are and what we believe.’ Thus, the platform supports the truth of marriage as the union of husband and wife, and recognizes the sanctity and dignity of human life,” NOM President Brian S. Brown said in a statement. 

Brown called it “extremely disappointing” to see candidates supported “who reject the party’s principled positions on these and other core issues.” 

Of the effort to urge people to oppose DeMaio, Tisei, and Wehby, he said, “We cannot sit by when people calling themselves Republicans seek high office while espousing positions that are antithetical to the overwhelming majority of Republicans.”

The letter was sent to House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Greg Walden, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, and others in Republican congressional leadership.

In it, the three conservative groups also warned that it is a “grave error” for the party to be supporting “candidates who do not hold core Republican beliefs and, in fact, are working to actively alienate the Republican base.”

If it means anything, that no-good traitor and RINO John McCain is going around endorsing Wehby.

RELATED:  GOP Senate Candidate Monica Wehby Runs Pro-Gay Marriage Ad

Federal Judge in Louisiana Rules State Has Right to Ban Same-Sex Marriages

WaPo.com:

A federal judge in Louisiana bucked a national trend and ruled Wednesday that the state has the right to ban same-sex couples from marrying.

The decision by Judge Martin L.C. Feldman is the first in which a federal district judge has upheld a state ban since the Supreme Court knocked down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in June 2013. 

“It would no doubt be celebrated to be in the company of the near-unanimity of the many other federal courts that have spoken to this pressing issue, if this court were confident in the belief that those cases provide a correct guide,” Feldman wrote. “Clearly, many other courts will have an opportunity to take up the issue of same-sex marriage; courts of appeals and, at some point, the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision of this court is but one studied decision among many.”

More than 20 federal courts have ruled in favor of advocates of same-sex marriage. Panels of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th and 4th circuits are the highest courts to strike down state bans, in Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia. 

Both the winning and losing sides in those appellate cases have asked the Supreme Court to rule definitively on whether the U.S. Constitution extends the fundamental right of marriage to same-sex couples. The justices could make a decision on whether to accept the cases as early as this month.

Good for Feldman to not only correctly apply the Constitutions to this matter, but to defy Godless white liberals and now force King Anthony Kennedy to rule on "gay marriage" and put an end to the issue once and for all.

RELATED:  Federal judge: Louisiana’s law banning gay marriage is constitutional

John Boehner Announces Plans To Sue Barack Obama

CBSNews.com:

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced Wednesday that he's pushing the House of Representatives to sue President Obama "in an effort to compel the president to follow his oath of office and faithfully execute the laws of our country." 

He did not say which specific laws the suit will say the president has not enforced, although he wrote in a letter addressed to his House colleagues that Mr. Obama has "run an end-around on the American people and their elected legislators" on issues ranging from health care, to energy, to foreign policy and education.

"On one matter after another during his presidency, President Obama has circumvented the Congress through executive action, creating his own laws and excusing himself from executing statutes he is sworn to enforce - at times even boasting about his willingness to do it, as if daring the America people to stop him," Boehner said. 

He warned that allowing the pattern to continue unchecked " shifts the balance of power decisively and dangerously in favor of the presidency, giving the president king-like authority at the expense of the American people and their elected legislators." 

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that the president had taken action consistent with this executive authority because of Republican opposition. Now, he said, they have "shifted their opposition into a higher gear."  

RELATED: Obama: Boehner Wants to Sue Me for ‘Doing My Job’

DC Comics Writer Chuck Dixon Claims His Conservative Politics Lost Him Jobs in Comics

TheMarySue.com:

Chuck Dixon has not only written a lot of Batman comics, he was heavily involved in my favorite era of the character, in which the state of Batman’s relationships with his various surrogate family members and friends held just as much weight as his triumph over his foes. And while Gail Simone is more closely associated with the Birds of Prey, Dixon was the first to popularize the all-female superhero team in a way that wasn’t primarily for the male gaze. From his most popular and longstanding work in the DC Universe alone, you would not immediately guess Dixon is an outspoken social conservative.

This weekend, Dixon and artist Paul Rivoche (whose graphic novel adaptation of a popular conservative reading of the Great Depression hit shelves in the last month) published a post on the Wall Street Journal‘s opinion section bemoaning the predominantly liberal bias of modern comics (as they see it). The piece also claims Dixon’s career dried up once he started to voice his political views in the workplace, and calls for conservative creators of all stripes to take up the torch and catch up to the left wing in their dominance of the market. I think.

The essay also has a healthy dose of the “won’t somebody think of the children” argument, claiming we should eliminate politics from superhero comics because they are aimed at impressionable minds.

Our fear is that today’s young comic-book readers are being ill-served by a medium that often presents heroes as morally compromised or no different from the criminals they battle. With the rise of moral relativism, “truth, justice and the American way” have lost their meaning.

I can agree with Dixon on the fact that kids are ill-served by the superhero medium. Take, for example, DC offering an issue full of gore and violence for Free Comic Book Day, the most kid-oriented date on the comics publishing calendar. Superhero comics simply aren’t targeted at children any more (much to the annoyance to a number of geek parents I know, who’d really like to be able to share a Superman comic written within the last year with their tiny offspring), and they haven’t been since before Dixon started working on them.

Dixon and Rivoche acknowledge this when they talk about the rise in anti-hero comics of the nineties and the subsequent effect of that change on classic characters like Batman and Superman. Conveniently, they do this without mentioning the contributions of Frank Miller, another very outspoken right-wing comics pro, to the beginnings of that trend with his work on The Dark Knight Returns, and lay the source of all this “moral relativism” at the feet of liberal politics. Dixon claims that this bend towards liberal politics in comics lost him jobs:

[In the 1990s, Chuck Dixon] expressed the opinion that a frank story line about AIDS was not right for comics marketed to children. His editors rejected the idea and asked him to apologize to colleagues for even expressing it. Soon enough, Chuck got less work.

This description raises more questions than it answers. Millions of people live with AIDS every day. What is so political about their lives that a frank and honest depiction of their disease can not be made appropriate for children? Except, of course, that AIDS has long been associated, sometimes exclusively, with the gay community, and we all know that Superman can romance Lois Lane as much as he wants, and Bruce Wayne can date every socialite in Gotham, but homosexual relationships are inappropriate for children. Ultimately, at the end of the piece, Dixon and Rivoche’s call is not for less political subjects in comics to make them more kid friendly, but for more, different politics in comics. “We hope conservatives,” they say, “free-marketeers and, yes, free-speech liberals will join us. It’s time to take back comics.”

RELATED: How moral relativism ruined comic books

Traditional Marriage's Last Stand

TheWeek.com:

Genuine cultural and moral revolutions are exceedingly rare in human history, but that's precisely what all of us are living through right now on the issue of marriage. Thanks to the ruling of a U.S. District Court last Friday, Wisconsin became the 20th state (plus the District of Columbia) with legalized same-sex marriage. (The Wisconsin ruling won't be enforced until later this month.) 

The speed and accelerating pace of change has been breathtaking. Ten years ago, same-sex marriage was legal in just one state (Massachusetts). By the end of 2012, seven more states had permitted homosexuals to marry. Then the flood gates opened, with eight more states flipping by the end of 2013. Wisconsin was the fourth to flip this year, with court rulings pending in seven more states. At this rate, Nate Silver's 2013 prediction — that by 2020 voters in 44 states would be willing to vote in support of same-sex marriage — may prove to be too conservative.

But that doesn't mean opponents of same-sex marriage have given up the fight. While many champions of traditional marriage have conceded their loss and fallen back to a position of defending their religious freedom to dissent from the growing social and legal consensus in favor of gay marriage, others are less conciliatory.

That's where a mysterious new website comes in.

Listing no sponsoring person or group, and claiming not to "represent the official beliefs or positions of any organization, religious or otherwise," "Discussing Marriage" compiles the most powerful arguments in favor of traditional marriage and presents them in a thoughtful, measured, visually appealing way (including ample use of slightly cheesy stock photos). On the whole, it's an impressive website. (Editor's note: Since this story was published, the site seems to have gone off-line, at least temporarily.)

But also an utterly unconvincing one. If this is where those who hope to defend traditional marriage plan to make their last stand against the surging forces of same-sex marriage, the battle is going to be a rout.

Perhaps the most notable thing about the website is how far it goes in making the case for treating opponents — including gay couples — with respect. Whereas the mainstream of the anti-gay-marriage movement has recently gathered under the banner of religious freedom, arguing that they should continue to be permitted to argue and preach that homosexual relationships are intrinsically immoral, "Discussing Marriage" takes a very different tack, asserting that the marriage debate should not "center on issues of sexual morality or the moral status of homosexual persons."

The website's authors even express regret for the "pain that they have caused" as a result of having "engaged in hurtful dialogue in the past." Of course, many gay men and women will see the very act of marshaling arguments meant to deny them the right to marry as an affront to their dignity. Still, the expression of contrition and effort to uphold a high standard of civility is admirable.

RELATED:  Ex-Gays Protecting Traditional Marriage