The evolution of marriage

Once again, in her column "Courting gay marriage," Tammy Bruce demonstrates the wisdom of a modern day King Solomon.  The LGBT community, under the principle of equal protection regardless of sex, race, gender, class or sexual orientation guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, should be entitled to marry.  This is the identical right of any heterosexual couple.  On a practical level, "gay" marriage doesn't diminish the traditional ideal of male-female unions in any way.  In either case, it is two consenting adults choosing to lead their lives together which generally strengthens the societal fabric and should be celebrated notwithstanding the disco balls, margaritas or drag queens.  

 

As Bob Dylan prophetically sang of social mores in 1964, "The Times They Are A-Changin.'"  Today, for example, it would be unconscionable for public opinion to condemn interracial marriage.  However, it was not so long ago—previous to 1967 to be precise—that it did.  In 1958, in a Washington, DC ceremony (where gay marriage is incidentally currently legal), the aptly named Richard Loving, a white man, married Mildred Jeter, a black woman, in violation of Virginia state statutes against miscegenation to which they plead guilty.  In lieu of serving a one year prison sentence, the Lovings could not return to Virginia together for 25 years.  Fortunately a decade later the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held this prohibition to be unconstitutional.  This decision is appropriately commemorated on the 12th day every year in June—named for Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage—not surprisingly the most popular month for weddings.

 

Naturally, differences of opinion are healthy in a democratically free society and all should be respected.  However, using the mechanisms of progressive government to mandate some artificial, one-size-fits-all, top-down solution won't work in this situation.  That’s splitting the baby in half: neither the traditional Christian nor the GLBT community wins.  Therefore, when two sets of competing values with equal validity exist each state should determine its position based upon regional cultural standards.  At the moment, 37 states and the District of Colombia are doing just that.  If the other states don't permit the performance of homosexual marriage ceremonies so be it.  These others should just respect the legal contract that gay marriages confer from their state of origin.  No fuss, no muss, the problem organically solves itself.  No doubt King Solomon, and Ms. Bruce, would approve.

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Barack Obama: The Great Agitator

Six years in, the American people definitively know that Barack Obama means "Burn, baby, burn," by the "fundamental transformation of America."  Like the virtually ignored weekly death toll of black young men by their Afro-American fellows in Mr. Obama's political hometown of Chicago; like the bankrupt, Democratically controlled city of Detroit where large sections of the city lie fallow and abandoned; like the Baltimore of today, enflamed with the same unchecked social chaos that plagued the streets and burned Ferguson, MO to the ground, the consequences of Barack Obama's lawless Saul Alinsky community-organizing are crystal clear.  
 
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright—Barack Obama's pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years who from the pulpit advocated that black people should sing "God damn America"—undoubtedly must feel, per his prophetic words, that "America's chickens are [finally] coming home to roost."  Barack Obama's point man on Ferguson, another reverend famous for race-hustling and unprosecuted tax evasion, Al Sharpton, is en route to Baltimore to further light the racial powder keg.
 
The fact that America's 10 poorest and 10 most violent cities have been controlled by the Left for decades is no surprise.  Per the Daily Caller, Eighth on the list—and unfortunately rapidly ascending—is Baltimore run by Democrat mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a woman now instantly infamous for publicly siding with faceless criminality: “It was a very delicate balancing act because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on — um — we also gave those who wished to destroy, space to do that, as well,” she said in all seriousness.  As a lawyer and a public servant, Ms. Rawlings-Blake should know the difference between lawful protest and mob violence.  
 
As there is no racial black-white dynamic to exploit for political gain, Mr. Obama is not surprisingly mum.  He, as the great agitator, does not want to highlight the fact that Baltimore is yet another Democratically controlled urban center run by a black mayor, a black police chief and a black city council president.  In addition, many other prominent city and civic leaders are Afro-American as is half of Baltimore’s 3,000-person police force.  
 
It is time for the residents of these cities—and generally the American taxpayer who pays the bills—to realize that the boilerplate Democratic "tax-and-spend" policies of ever bigger government bureaucracy, the dependence of the welfare state, and failed social and economic policies that strangle economic growth and job creation have caused the very problems liberals pretend to object to.

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Applaud Bruce Jenner’s courage

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES - - Monday, April 27, 2015

As a Christian, Republican and transgender individual, Bruce Jenner demonstrates that the conservative umbrella is just as diverse and inclusive as its squawking liberal counterpart (“Bruce Jenner: I’m a Republican and a Christian,” Web, April 25). Today gay conservative voices — most notably Washington Times columnist Tammy Bruce — champion the truth that the Republican party has evolved to a greater degree of social acceptance.

This shift parallels Mr. Jenner’s own personal journey to self-acceptance. In the 1970s as an Olympian, Mr. Jenner epitomized that age’s American spirit and representation of athletic masculinity. Over the proceeding decades societal views of what it is to symbolize the American male (or a Republican, for that matter) have changed favorably to include broader definitions.
Mr. Jenner’s gender orientation aside, to the liberal, sycophantic circle fest that is Hollywood, coming out as Republican is a true act of bravery and defiance.

Naysayers who claim that Mr. Jenner’s transition is nothing more than a publicity stunt designed to earn a few bucks don’t begin to understand the degree of Mr. Jenner’s personal courage.

When the inner gender identity does not match one’s outer appearance it is like being a prisoner in one’s own body. Psychologically I can think of nothing tougher. To compound that internal, private struggle with the very public glare of celebrity by coming out as transgender — and Republican — must be, to one’s character, a trial by fire. By comparison, the pressures of Mr. Jenner’s past Olympic victories appear small. An NBC poll indicated that a staggering 41 percent of transgender people in the United States have attempted to commit suicide. That statistic is a completely ignored epidemic. And similar to his Olympic glory that inspired a past generation, Mr. Jenner’s tenacious example to follow his own path will inspire and save the lives of a new generation of at-risk gender-questioning young people who know nothing of Mr. Jenner’s decades-old decathlon gold metal. Bruce Jenner should be embraced for his dedication to the truth and his conservatism.

DAVID L. HUNTER
Germantown

http://www.americanthinker.com/author/david_l_hunter/

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/27/letter-to-the-editor-applaud-bruce-jenners-courage/#ixzz3ZNrY59Vp
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Carter's failures peanuts compared to Obama's

The former Georgian peanut farmer, governor and U.S. president can officially stop white-knuckling it: per the data in a USA Today Quinnipiac University poll 33% to 8% Jimmy Carter will no longer be considered the worst still living president in U.S. history. In time's yellowing rearview mirror, Democrat Mr. Carter—who by most accounts is considered well-intentioned though completely incompetent—is breathing a great sigh of relief. Mr. Carter's political small-potatoes: an economy mired in a lasting malaise of double-digit inflation and interest rates, an energy crisis resulting in long gas station lines and Iranian Islamic revolutionaries kidnapping of 66 American hostages. Given the current scandal-plagued Obama administration with domestic and international failures galore, no one will remotely recall Mr. Carter's minor failure of a presidency. No, all of those unfortunate events have been completely overshadowed by the White House's current occupant who has gotten away with imperialism and corruption Richard Nixon could scarcely have dreamt of. Barack Obama, a presidential lame-duck desperate both for continued relevancy 6 years into office and a lasting legacy will have one, but not the one he wants. So rash is he to claim another hollow political victory, he negotiates a non-binding "executive agreement" with the intention, once again, to completely circumvent the authority of Congress in its Constitutional responsibility to ratify that which otherwise would be known as a treaty. To make matters worse, Mr. Obama is even offering Iran a signing bonus: between $30 billion and $50 billion of oil revenue currently frozen in offshore accounts. What does he care if Iran, the world's biggest sponsor of Islamic terrorism, uses the money to support Jihad or build missiles that can deliver nuclear warheads to the West? It won't technically be on his watch. He'll likely be on the golf course somewhere when these probabilities come to fruition and it will be the next guy's (or girl's) problem. In the dispassionate view of history, the Orwellian Nobel Peace Prize winning Mr. Obama deservedly will take the prize as worst modern U.S. president for endangering America and making the world a much more dangerous place.

Twitter: @DavidHunterblog
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Transgender soldiers deserve equality

It was fascinating to learn that approximately 15,500 transgender people serve in the U.S. military.  Since time immemorial homosexuals of all stripes have been an integral part of worldwide military cultures.  A primary historical example is the ancient Greek Sacred Band of Thebes, an elite group of soldiers: 150 pairs of male lovers in the 4th century BC.  It is not unreasonable to infer that individuals that would currently be categorized as members of the LGBT community have also always been involved in U.S. military service which until the Clinton era's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy curtailed expulsions of gays and lesbians as long as they were mum about their sexual orientation.  When the DADT policy ended on September 20, 2011 allowing gays to serve openly, I had assumed that the attitude toward transgender individuals had been similarly relaxed.  I am very surprised to learn of the military's clearly discriminatory treatment of helicopter crew chief Sgt. Shane Ortega who was barred from flight duties due to increased testosterone levels due to his medically transgender status.  Birth genetic determinants aside, Sgt. Ortega self-identifies as male and has taken the legal and medical steps so that the inner reality of his mind matches his external appearance.  Therefore, he should not have to continue to exist in a gray zone of military bureaucracy which mischaracterizes him as female and compels him to wear a woman's "dress blues."  For all intensive purposes he is male and should be treated as such.
    
Sgt. Ortega is a trailblazer.  With any luck the generations that come after him will have an easier time navigating military life.  Indeed, this boils down to equal treatment in a diverse melting-pot community in which transgender people are already involved.  The willingness of a patriotic heart to contribute should be the determining factor and the powers-that-be in the military should do all it can to facilitate that.   I thank the Washington Post for highlighting the military's continuing mismanagement of transgender service members; an important social issue that has received scant attention.

http://www.americanthinker.com/author/david_l_hunter/

Re. 'He sees a man. The Army sees a woman.' Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post

Rolling Stone: Yellow, Orwellian Journalism

What has happened to journalistic accountability and ethics in our society?  A prime violator: why haven't the powers-at-be at Rolling Stone fired the editors and writer (with whom shockingly they reportedly will happily work again) of the patently false account of rape at U.VA?  Rolling Stone has perpetrated the worst form of yellow journalism and idly turned a blind eye to the very real chaos their fiction caused the innocent: a metaphorical rape of the reputations of the seven young men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity falsely accused by “Jackie;” very real death threats that forced fraternity members briefly into hiding; broken windows and spray painted obscenities by a group of faceless vandals incited by the December 2012 story.  Only days ago, months after the fact—with the prestigious Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism having done a very public post-mortem of the journalistic carnage—has Rolling Stone finally, albeit begrudgingly "officially retracted" the story.  In any case, that will not prevent the multi-million dollar lawsuit for libel the actual victims should initiate against Rolling Stone.  Indeed, the magazine must have deep pockets if they don't mind the possibility that their lazy staff might open the publication to litigation for future sensational stories of the same ilk.  
 
Let us recall that these are the same people that brought us the glamorous August 1, 2013 cover of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, then 19, described glowingly as "a beautiful, tousle-haired boy with a gentle demeanor, soulful brown eyes and the kind of shy, laid-back manner."  Like he's a member of the pretty boy-band One Direction and not the surviving Boston Marathon bomber responsible for the deaths of three and the injury of 264.  Given Rolling Stone's sympathetic portrayal of Tsarnaev as a pained, misunderstood soul is Orwellian when the facts and yesterday's 30-count conviction demonstrate that he is a homicidal mass murderer.  This murky confusion of fact and fiction, of victims and villains, is intentional.  In the mainstream media leftist propaganda has replaced truth in America.

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