Ruth Institute Blog

By Thomas Burke

This morning roughly 2500 people gathered on the National Mall for the , a demonstration supporting traditional marriage between a man and a woman. The participants hope to influence the hearings underway this week regarding two issues:

• California’s , a referendum that amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as strictly between one man and one woman in that state; and,
• the , known to politicos as DOMA, which defines marriage for federal purposes as between one man and one woman, and leaves states the right to decide the same within their own borders. Read more…

With the March for Marriage just over a week from now, emails are pouring in from around the country, excited individuals and groups are sharing their stories about making final plans to be with us in Washington, DC on March 26th to stand for marriage, family, and the liberties we hold dear.

The program for the March is also its final planning stages, and today I am very happy to announce a few exciting additions to the rally schedule: Read more…

from the NOM blog:

A shout-out once again to our marriage supporters in Wyoming (the “Equality State”) — yesterday your representatives in Cheyenne defeated a domestic partnership bill that could have threatened marriage by a vote of 35-24. Courts have used domestic partnerships and civil unions as an excuse to challenge laws protection marriage:

A bill that would have would have allowed same-sex couples in Wyoming to create domestic partnerships carrying most of the legal rights of marriage died Wednesday on a close vote in the House of Representatives.

… Opponents warned that the bill threatened to open the state to legal action seeking to force it to approve same-sex marriage.

Rep. Mark Baker, R-Rock Springs, spoke against the measure, saying: “We all know that this is about same-sex marriage and civil unions.” (AP)

Keep reading.

Our opponents will use the election results to push the idea that the radical redefinition of marriage is “inevitable.” Now more than ever, we have to fight back hard with prayers—and with strong arguments.

That’s why I think it’s Providential that we’re just weeks away from the release of the strongest pro-marriage argument ever written, praised by the likes of Rick Warren and Cardinal Dolan! Read more…

Obviously last night did not go the way that we had hoped, prayed and worked so hard to accomplish. Our endorsed candidate for president, Mitt Romney, came close but did not cross the finish line. We are very disappointed in losing four tough election battles on marriage by narrow margins. Even though marriage significantly out-performed the GOP ticket in each of these very liberal, very Democratic states, we also came up just short of the finish line.

But make no mistake: we are disappointed, but we are not defeated! We are fighting for a true and just cause—God’s institution of marriage. This is a social compact that is not only ordained by the Almighty, it has served society very well. It’s a cause worth fighting and with your support we will continue to do just that. Read more…

from NOM

Meet the Parkers, who had to suffer the indignity of arrest and prosecution because they didn’t want their kindergartener learning about same-sex marriage in school! Read more…

Jim and Mary O’Reilly run The Wildflower Inn, a small Vermont Bed & Breakfast they started in 1985 and have managed together for 25 years.

But after Vermont passed a Civil Union law in April 2000, a gathering storm darkened the horizon of the Wildflower Inn’s beautiful mountain view: Jim and Mary knew they could not conduct business in violation of their Catholic beliefs, and would kindly refer same-sex couples to other establishments for their celebrations. Read more…

On March 30, an MSNBC news anchor accused the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) of “race-baiting” for (among other charges) writing in a 2009 in-house document, “We … need to … interrupt the attempt to equate gay with black, and sexual orientation with race; we need to make traditional sexual morality intellectually respectable again in elite culture.” Read more…

Becky Yeh – OneNewsNow California correspondent

Internal documents from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) show that the group sought to pit African-Americans and Hispanics, two key Democratic constituencies, against homosexuals in order to win the campaign for marriage in Maine. The documents date from 2009 and were recently unsealed by court officials in Maine, where the group ran a successful campaign to ban same-sex “marriage.” Read more…

Washington, DC – The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) announced today that John Eastman, a distinguished Constitutional law scholar, is taking on the role of Chairman of the Board for NOM. Read more…