Ruth Institute Blog

Proposal from the Ruth Institute:

Gender-Based Civil Unions

Since an essential public purpose of civil marriage in the United States has been to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another, and since this essential purpose is being overwritten and therefore discarded due to gender neutral marriage and parenting laws, we propose the following:

To establish civil unions that are gender based–one man and one woman. With respect to taxation, parentage, federal benefits, etc. (reference), they will be legally equivalent to (now gender neutral) marriage in everything but the name. The legal doctrine that was formerly known as the marital presumption of paternity, which existed in order to attach the father to the family, was distorted into the marital presumption of parentage under gender neutral marriage and parentage. It shall be restored to its former function of attaching the father to the family for these civil unions. Gender based terms shall be used to describe the parties, such as male, female, mother, father, etc.

Male/female couples who were previously considered married under the gender neutral system may opt into a gender-based civil union. Churches who uphold marriage as the union between a man and a woman can perform these ceremonies under whatever name they wish. If they wish to call it marriage, they can do so. There will be no speech restrictions regarding what individuals, churches, or other private entities call these unions. However, with respect to the legal code, they will be called civil unions.

Regarding divorce: generally, we prefer the state to have a higher bar to overcome before getting involved in a divorce for these civil unions than it does currently for civil marriage. Michael J. McManus, in the Spring 2011 edition of The Family in America (reference), proposes what he calls “Three Achievable No-Fault Reforms.” They are:

1. Mutual Consent.
2. Parental Divorce Reduction Act.
3. Responsible Spouse/Fit Parent.

We are open to discussion about any of these or other reasonable proposals. Our primary goals are to reaffirm sex differences in the legal code and to reaffirm the father’s attachment to the family. Secondarily, we see these civil unions as an opportunity to make long-needed reforms to divorce laws.

If you like this idea, we encourage you to share this post with your friends. You can also support our work by making a donation today. .

About ten years ago, maybe longer, my kids started using the word “random” in a new way. At first it sounded very strange to my ears. They seemed to be using “random” as a synonym for “spontaneous,” or perhaps “weird.” All of the kids I knew used it this way. After a while I got used to it.

This change to the language occurred randomly (haha), ie, spontaneously, but wouldn’t it be strange to have political weight behind a change like that? Does “gender neutrality” amount to political pressure to change language? I think it does. I came across an example of this today and thought it was interesting. Written by a pro family activist who lives in Hong Kong and translates news stories from English into Chinese.

As a translator I can smell that the whole LGBT agenda is in fact an imperial expansion, especially when you look at language. I once doubted my translating skills, as whenever I translate LGBT-related news, I have never found a good way to translate the English words “couple” and “parent(s)” into Chinese. But when I read some very good articles pointing to the cultural imperialism of the LGBT lobby, I realized my difficulty was in fact due to my cultural inheritance, not skills. The Chinese language seriously do not have a word for “couple” or “parent(s)”. What we have for “couple” is actually a joint word “husbandwife”, and what we have for “parents” is actually a joint word “fathermother”! I find I simply can’t translate “couple” or “parent(s)” to fit the gay agenda, UNLESS we change our culture and the Chinese way of looking at family!

This is a very clear example of how language must change in order to accommodate “gay rights” and gender neutrality. The full post is located here.

I guess the big question is this: are these changes to language organic and natural, like the way my kids adopted “random,” or are they enforced due to what some consider to be “LGBT imperialism”?

H/T Bobby Lopez at English Manif.

Join us as we inspire the survivors of the sexual revolution! Click here to download our free booklet, Improve Your Marriage, by signing up for our newsletter.

 

Found this on Twitter today. Question: if there are really no gender roles, who will bear the children? Maybe that will be outsourced?

 

 

Men and women are different. You can learn more about why men and women are different by ordering our brochure, “77 Non Religious Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage.” It’s available as a PDF download, as well as a physical brochure. Learn how to counter the lies of the Sexual Revolution and order the brochure today.

A few years ago, I was asked to give the commencement address at Providence Academy High School in Plymouth MN.  I wanted to support the young men and women in their maleness and femaleness. This is a short excerpt from what I said to those high school seniors. 

“The first thing I know about you is that each of you is called to become a mother or a father.  Each and every one of us is called to give of ourselves and to be a gift to other people.   Giving birth and taking lifelong

responsibility for the care of children is only the most obvious way in which people make gifts of themselves to others.  And some of you no doubt will do exactly this: get married and have children. But even those of you who never give birth to or father a single child, have the opportunity to act as spiritual parents to those around you.

By spiritual parents, I mean people who care for the young, as well as the helpless and the needy of any age or station of life.

You may have already acted as spiritual parents to your younger siblings, to Read more…

The legal recognition of new gender identities will further distance marriage from the natural family unit.

by Barend Vlaardingerbroek

A binary classification is one in which there are two, and only two, states in which a given entity may exist. Sex has long been such an entity, the two states in which it may be manifested being male and female. Nature occasionally presents us with individuals who do not fit in well with the binary schema in the form of genetic anomalies and morphogenetic quirks resulting in indeterminate sexual appearance; the standard response has been hormonal treatment and/or corrective surgery to assign such individuals to one of the two members of the binary set. Read more…

by Eric Owens

A transgender student at a smallish Christian liberal arts college in small-town Oregon has filed a federal Title IX discrimination claim that would force the school give the student a dorm room in an all-male residence hall, thus violating its theological principles. Read more…

By Boston Herald (MA)

A Cambridge transgender woman, outraged that convicted wife killer Michelle Kosilek could receive a free gender reassignment operation that health insurers refuse to cover for law-abiding citizens, has filed suit demanding the same right to tax-funded surgery — a move critics say could mark the beginning of a dramatic, costly shift in entitlements under the controversial federal court ruling. Read more…

by Kelly Bartlett