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NOM Wants To Put These Words In Your Mouth. Fight Back!

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“Don’t Mess with DOMA!”

“I am writing today because I wanted to be sure that you heard from the tens of millions of Americans who firmly believe that marriage can only be the union of a husband and wife.

Too often, we remain silent, watching events in Washington from a distance. Today, I am writing to urge you to oppose any effort to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Just twelve years ago, Congress overwhelmingly adopted DOMA, and President Clinton signed it into law, protecting the rights of states to enforce their own marriage laws, and not allowing four judges in one small state to force their views on same-sex marriage upon the entire nation.

Forty-five states have now adopted laws re-affirming the definition of marriage as the union of a husband and wife. Out of thirty states where a constitutional amendment on marriage has gone to the people, the amendment has passed all 30 times, usually by overwhelming margins.

This is simply common sense, not bigotry, recognizing the shared wisdom of humanity across all cultural, religious, and ethnic lines. Marriage connects a child to both her mom and her dad, giving her the birthright of love and support from her own parents that every child deserves.

I urge you to strongly oppose any bill that would repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Our country and families are in the midst of crisis — in the financial markets, in education, in health care. Now, of all times, don’t mess with marriage!”

This is the pre-written letter that Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown and their NOM thugs want you to send to your lawmakers. These are the words they’d like to place in your mouth. These are the words that tell you how they really feel about us.

Yes, Dear Lawmaker, Dear Elected Official, “Now, of all times, don’t mess with marriage!”

Don’t mess with Maggie Gallagher’s type of marriage. Or Brian Brown’s type of marriage. Don’t mess with traditional marriage. But mess with the type of marriage millions of gay Americans would like to have, already do have, sans the piece of paper and government sanction. The type of marriage millions more hope to have some day.

Dear Elected Official, “Now, of all times, don’t mess with marriage!” Not now, when traditional marriage supporters are losing their selfish, bigoted fight across the country. When traditional marriage supporters are losing in legislatures and courts and, most importantly, in the court of public opinion.

“Now, of all times, don’t mess with marriage!”As if they ever thought there was or will be a good time to “mess with marriage.”

“I am writing today because I wanted to be sure that you heard from the tens of millions of Americans who firmly believe that marriage can only be the union of a husband and wife. (Note: there are approximately 317 million Americans. Obviously, if only “tens of millions of Americans firmly believe that marriage can only be the union of a husband and wife”, then you don’t have a majority anymore. And, guess what? You don’t. We do.)

I urge you to strongly oppose any bill that would repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Our country and families are in the midst of crisis — in the financial markets, in education, in health care. Now, of all times, don’t mess with marriage!” (Because if you repeal DOMA, the financial markets, education, and health care will all fall apart!)

Dear Elected Official, I agree: “Don’t mess with marriage!” Marriage shouldn’t be “messed with.” It’s too important an institution to mess with. It’s too essential to our lives to mess with. It’s too much a part of the human existence to “mess with.” Don’t mess with marriage. It’s already been messed with. it’s already been pummeled. It’s already been confiscated by those who don’t own it. It’s been stolen by those who, if they truly valued it, would be fighting to help the millions of people who divorce every year. Instead of spending $1.5 million on an ad to scare people, The National Organization For Marriage might have spent that money to help troubled couples save their marriage. (And might have paid Maggie a little less. More on that later.)

Dear Elected Official, I agree: “Don’t mess with marriage!” Save it. By opening the door to people who so desperately want to be married, they’re willing to spend every free moment and every free dime to get married. To help others get married. The way I see it, the ones who are trying to save marriage are the gay community and its supporters. The ones who messed with marriage are the ones who have adulterated its significance and value, and taken something sacred and turned it into a wedge issue.

Maggie Gallagher and her ilk are actively working to abuse the very institution their name portends to support.

Dear Elected Official, I agree: “Don’t mess with marriage!” Save it. Help us save it too. Open the door, let us in.

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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5 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

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22 hours ago

on

April 25, 2024

By

Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is responding to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was a U.S. president, and she delivered a strong warning in response.

Trump’s attorney argued before the nation’s highest court that the ex-president could have ordered the assassination of a political rival and not face criminal prosecution unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate.

But even then, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, if assassinating his political rival were done as an “official act,” he would be automatically immune from all prosecution.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presenting the hypothetical, expressed, “there are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against.”

RELATED: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” she asked.

“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Trump attorney Sauer quickly replied.

Sauer later claimed that if a president ordered the U.S. military to wage a coup, he could also be immune from prosecution, again, if it were an “official act.”

The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, was quick to poke a large hole in that hypothetical.

“If the president suspends the Senate, you can’t prosecute him because it’s not an official act until the Senate impeaches …. Uh oh,” he declared.

RELATED: Justices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Trump team.

“The assassination of political rivals as an official act,” the New York Democrat wrote.

“Understand what the Trump team is arguing for here. Take it seriously and at face value,” she said, issuing a warning: “This is not a game.”

Marc Elias, who has been an attorney to top Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, remarked, “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”

CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, a former U.S. Ambassador and White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform under President Barack Obama, boiled it down: “Trump is seeking dictatorial powers.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns

 

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