The Defense of Life and of Marriage/Family

The Defense of Life at Its Most Vulnerable

Representatives Paul Ryan and Mike Fitzpatrick should both be applauded for their recent "yea" votes on H R 3803, the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (Since a 2/3 majority was needed, the shameful votes of colleagues like Bob Brady (1st), Chaka Fattah (2nd), Allyson Schwartz (13th), Michael F. Doyle (14th), and Charles Dent (15th - this required voting against the majority of his party) carried the day.).

The Defense of Marriage

As per the National Organization for Marriage, "The House of Representatives has voted 247-166 to prohibit the Department of Defense from using taxpayer dollars to violate the Defense of Marriage Act, with 17 Democrats joining all but 5 Republicans in support of the measure."  Once again, Representatives Paul Ryan and Mike Fitzpatrick should both be applauded for their recent votes on this matter.

As per a 6/14/12 address to his brother bishops by the Most Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, chairman of the USCCB's Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage (and new archbishop of San Francisco):

"the love of husband and wife is a decisive gift for the world, and it calls for stewardship and responsibility...."At the federal level, recent negative court decisions concerning both the federal Defense of Marriage Act as well as California’s Proposition 8 now open the door for both DOMA and Prop 8 to go before the Supreme Court....

"President Obama has now voiced his official support for the redefinition of marriage in the law....

"[The] 'New Family Structures Study'....has surveyed a very large, nationally-representative, and random sample of American young adults (ages 18 to 39) who were raised in different family or home environments, including homes with a parent in a same-sex relationship, as well as single-parent families, step-families, adoptive families and families where the children were raised by their biological parents married to each other.

"the study’s principal investigator, Dr. Mark Regnerus [notes]....several significant statistical differences when comparing young adults who were raised in an intact home with their married, biological parents and young adults raised in other home environments....

"this study has been noted to empirically call into question other studies with smaller & more restrictive sample sizes that have purported to show that there are no differences between father-mother parenting & other arrangements  ....Dr. Loren Marks...reviewed fifty-nine (59) previous studies cited by the American Psychological Association (APA)....

"social science continues to affirm that children thrive and do best with their mother and father in an intact home. The protection of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a work of justice and is foundational to the good of all, especially for those most vulnerable among us, our children. It is the way of true compassion—love in truth and truth in love. Our young people are hungry for this truth and are in a position to witness to it in a uniquely powerful way."