Archives

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

400-408Mark Steyn, (marksteyn.com), the most widely-read columnist in the English-speaking world and author of one of my all time most important books, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, on the presidential race.
• Mark Steyn, Moving Barackwards.
413-423John Eastman, Dean of the Chapman University School of Law (chapman.edu/law), on the legal path the California Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage may take and on the possible changes to the Supreme Court under an Obama or McCain presidency.
• Washington Post, Next Stop, Supreme Court?  Obama's first SCOTUS appointment? Justice Hillary Clinton?
428-437Greg Lukianoff, president of F.I.R.E. (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, thefire.org), with an update on some of the most outrageous examples of political correctness on college campuses.
• Wall Street Journal (5/20), Schools Struggle With Dark Writings.
443-452Walid Shoebat, former PLO terrorist turned Christian, is speaking this Saturday 9-6pm and Sunday 9 & 11am at Ocean Hills Community Church in San Juan Capistrano (oceanhillschurch.com), an event co-sponsored by the Peace Officers Firefighters Fellowship (poff911.org).  His talk is entitled Confessions of a Terrorist: From Hate to Love, and his latest book is Why We Want to Kill You: The Jihadist Mindset and How to Defeat It.  Register at oceanhillschurch.com.
458-508Hugh Ross, President and Co-Founder of Reasons To Believe (reasons.org), an astronomer-physicist by education, and a pastor at Sierra Madre Congregational Church by choice, is an expert on the intersection of faith and science.  Hugh's latest book is Lights in the Sky & Little Green Men:  A Rational Look at UFO's and Extraterrestrials.
512-523What is the most out-of-the-ordinary event you've seen at church?
528-539What is the most out-of-the-ordinary event you've seen at church?
• SS 539Mel Trudell, owner of Custom Comfort Mattress (customcomfortmattress.com), is partnering with OPEN (Offering People Essential Needs, openusa.org), to award students at Sparks Middle School in La Puente for improving their grades.  They'll make the presentations next Friday, May 30th, from 9 to noon at the school, and it's free and open to the public.
544-554 What is the most out-of-the-ordinary event you've seen at church?
558-608Calls
612-623Calls
628-639 Calls
644-655 – • Deepak Chopra (Newsweek, On Faith) The New Evangelicalism: "Not to Attack or Exclude".
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•• Jeff Jacoby (5/21), Misunderstanding marriage in California.  He gives three reasons why the court should be overturned by the people in November.  1) "It is not the business of judges to make policy."  3) "Society has a vested interest in promoting only traditional marriage."  And here's 2),
The radical transformation of marriage won't end with same-sex weddings.
In American law, certain conditions of marriage have always been nonnegotiable. A marriage joins (a) two people (b) of the opposite sex (c) who are not close relatives. Under that venerable definition, there can be no valid same-sex marriage, no polygamous or other plural marriage, and no incestuous marriage. But if the opposite-sex requirement is an unconstitutional infringement on the right to marry - which the California court explains as "the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with the person of one's choice" - then so are the restriction of marriage to two people and the ban on incestuous marriage. If two women who wish to marry each other must be permitted to do so, why not two sisters? Why not three?
In a footnote (#52), the California court weakly tries to evade the consequences of its holding. Gay and lesbian couples are entitled to marry, writes Chief Justice Ronald George, but that "does not mean that this constitutional right . . . must . . . extend to polygamous or incestuous relationships." Why not? Well, because "our nation's culture has considered the latter types of relationships inimical to the mutually supportive and healthy family relationships promoted by the constitutional right to marry." So while the bar to homosexual marriage must be overturned because the court considers the public's opposition to it outdated, the public's opposition to incest and polygamy is still a good reason to bar them. As one of the dissenters notes, such logic invites a future court to overturn those prohibitions as well.
• Mariposa Rocks (5/18/08), Footnote 52.
Footnote 52 begins on page 79 of the opinion.  Up until that time, we are told no less than 78 times that there is a "constitutional right to marry" or some version thereof, i.e., right to marry, fundamental constitutional right to marry, fundamental right to marry.  However, Footnote 52 shows that that is quite untrue. 
"We emphasize that our conclusion that the constitutional right to marry properly must be interpreted to apply to gay individuals and gay couples does not mean that this constitutional right similarly must be understood to extend to polygamous or incestuous relationships.  Past judicial decisions explain why our nation's culture has considered the latter types of relationships inimical to the mutually supportive and healthy family relationships promoted by the constitutional right to marry . . . Although the historic disparagement of and discrimination against gay individuals and gay couples clearly is no longer constitutionally permissible, the state continues to have a strong and adequate justification for refusing to officially sanction polygamous or incestuous relationships because of their potentially detrimental effect on a sound family environment . . . Thus our conclusion that it is improper to interpret the state constitutional right to marry as inapplicable to gay individuals or couples does not affect the constitutional validity of the existing legal prohibitions against polygamy and the marriage of close relatives."  (Emphasis added)
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