Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) recently proposed an amendment to the so-called Gang of Eight’s immigration bill that would allow homosexuals in the U.S. to sponsor their foreign-born partners for green cards. Naturally, MSNBC was elated at this potential fusion of gay rights and immigration reform, so to celebrate, Sunday's Weekends with Alex Witt brought on Jose Antonio Vargas, a former Washington Post reporter and liberal activist who happens to be both gay AND an undocumented immigrant. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Vargas eagerly played up his double-minority status, complaining:

"I never thought I would write these words, but I agree with Bill O’Reilly (in part)." That's how Center for American Progress senior fellow and liberal theologian Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite opened her latest column for the Washington Post "On Faith" section, "Thumping the Bible: O’Reilly, gay marriage, and theology."

Brooks Thistlethwaite was praising the Fox News anchor for "vigorously defending his statement that opponents of same-sex marriage needed to do more than 'thump the Bible' if they wanted to win the debate." "If you want to influence public policy from a faith perspective, thumping the Bible does not constitute a religious argument," the Chicago Theological Seminary professor pontificated. But as we at NewsBusters have documented repeatedly, Brooks Thistlethwaite repeatedly uses the Bible to justify her calls for liberal policy prescriptions on everything from gun control to tax hikes to gay marriage.

ABC political analyst Matt Dowd on Sunday continued his evolution to the left, complaining about how disconnected the Supreme Court is from public opinion on gay marriage. Dowd, who worked for the Bush administration, appeared on This Week and chided, "To me, it's actually surprising that the Supreme Court is that actually far out of tune where the country is."

He pushed, "So, the country is way ahead on this. So, that's what I don't understand why the Supreme Court seems reluctant to weigh in an issue where the country is already moved on." Dowd, who is often billed as a down-the-line analyst for ABC, mocked the concept of traditional marriage in the past: "...If you want to go to traditional marriage, it wasn't monogamous, races couldn't marry. Women were property and they couldn't give consent."

The PBS NewsHour went into everyone’s favorite subjects last Friday, gays and guns, and discussed the overwhelming cultural shift concerning gay marriage. New York Times columnist David Brooks and syndicated columnist Mark Shields both commented on how this shift could be irreversible, but noted that the Supreme Court could “Roe v. Wade” the decision. That is, the faux conservative and the liberal pundit both agreed that a court decision could just breath new life and fresh controversy into the same-sex marriage fight.

Yes, this is NOT an April Fools' joke. Brooks and Shields were actually saying that sweeping decisions, if not taken responsibly, could create more problems in the long run.  It's a refreshing moment hearing shields, unlike others among his liberal colleagues, acknowledging how social change is best achieved through the political process rather than the courts. It is, however, a shame that Brooks failed to give a conservative constitutional case for why DOMA and Prop 8 should stand, aside from the deleterious effects of a court ruling:

You have to hand it to Washington Post editors. They're pretty slick. In hiring Jennifer Rubin as their token conservative blogger, they have a rightie who criticizes the Right enough to ensure they seldom have to actually put in the print edition excerpts of her posts critical of President Obama. In early March I noted how Post opinion editors excerpted a Rubin blog which bashed the conservative CPAC conference rather than say publish a blog post which attacked Obama and the media over sequester hype.

In the Monday, April 1 paper the Post was at it again, choosing to run a Rubin piece that sought to explain how socially conservative opponents of same-sex marriage "lost the fight" on the policy issue. But a review of Rubin's Right Turn blog archive shows a piece she wrote on Friday morning that would have been excellent to put in print and which attacked President Obama over his "gun histrionics." Here's an excerpt which includes many of her key points (emphasis mine):

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer made a statement on PBS's Inside Washington Friday that's guaranteed to raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle.

"If the [Supreme] Court were to decide that to deny same-sex marriage is unconstitutional... this will become an assault on religion" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

While CNN claims to be non-partisan, anchors have been openly expressing their favor for same-sex marriage and advocating the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Host Piers Morgan and anchor Don Lemon even descended into smearing opponents of same-sex marriage as "homophobic" and akin to segregationists.

On Wednesday, Morgan tweeted, "What politicians are beginning to realise - hardly anyone under 30 is homophobic. #RIPDOMA". He added "RIP #DOMA....you will not be missed, no flowers necessary." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After two days of same-sex marriage arguments at the Supreme Court, New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg bestowed a blessing on the "serious and unassuming" Mary Bonauto, a lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD). Even the headline equated gay marriage with the civil rights fight, citing the legendary civil rights lawyer who became a Supreme Court Justice: "In Fight for Marriage Rights, 'She's Our Thurgood Marshall.'"

The Marshall reference comes from left-wing former Rep. Barney Frank, who is openly gay and married. We also learn "Ms. Bonauto is too busy juggling legal briefs, homework and piano lessons to see herself as a woman making history." But not too busy to be feted in the news pages of the Times.

So, Politico jumped the shark on gay marriage yesterday in reporting that Justice Elena Kagan that she had a ‘gotcha’ moment during yesterday’s hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act.

But a real ‘gotcha’ moment would have been if Politico did their homework and resurrected Kagan’s past comments about gay marriage from 2009, when she was awaiting confirmation to the post of solicitor general and she insisted in the answer to a questionnaire that “there is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”

In Elena Kagan's DOMA 'Gotcha' Moment, Jennifer Epstein and Josh Gerstein gushed that:

On Wednesday and Thursday, the journalists at ABC continued to treat the gay marriage issue as though there was only one acceptable side. Diane Sawyer and Terry Moran framed the case before the Supreme Court as simply "one American seeking justice" and gave almost no time to the opposition. On the March 27 World News, Sawyer used loaded language as she hyped, "Edith Windsor received a hero's welcome when she emerged from the Supreme Court, saying it's time to take a stand for marriage equality."

Windsor is an 83-year-old lesbian who is petitioning the high court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Journalist Moran seemed to dismiss principled opposition to gay marriage as he insisted, "Sometimes, the big cases come to the Supreme Court out of conflicts between the states or battles between the branches of government and sometimes one American walks up these steps seeking justice." He added, "That's what's happening today." Sawyer could barely contain herself as she enthused, "Tonight, the fighter...Her case challenges the justices and rallies the crowd on marriage in America."  [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Compared to other MSNBC personalities, Luke Russert is usually rather restrained when it comes to his biases. But on Wednesday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, the son of the late Tim Russert could not hold back the condescension in his interview with Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Perkins gave an eloquent defense of traditional marriage, but Russert wasn’t having any of it. In his mind, as in many liberal minds, opposition to same-sex marriage must surely stem from fear. So Russert prodded Perkins:

Thousands of people gathered March 26 to “March for Marriage” on the National Mall to defend traditional marriage and families as the Supreme Court decided whether to upheld California’s prop 8. The diverse group carried signs that read “1 Man + 1 Woman= Marriage,” and “Every Child Deserves a Mom & Dad.”

The march ended in a rally in front of the Washington Monument, where religious leaders, political speakers and leaders gave impassioned speeches in defense of marriage.

Out: Using Holy Week to push gun control.That's so 2012. In: Using Holy Week as a news hook for pushing same-sex marriage.

Last April, I noted how liberal theologian and Washington Post "On Faith" contributor Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite used the week leading up to Easter as an opportunity to shame Christians towards getting rid of their firearms, twisting and contorting Christian Scripture to back her position. While gun control is still a hot topic in the news, the Center for American Progress fellow has moved on to "marriage equality" as the liberal cause celebre to cynically tie to the holiest week on the Christian calendar:

Only some social issues are divisive in the Plains states, or so implies the New York Times. A sour tone permeated Wednesday's front-page story by John Eligon and Erik Eckholm from Fargo on North Dakota's strict new abortion laws, which ban abortions based on sex or disability and forbid abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detectable: "New Laws Ban Most Abortions in North Dakota." Yet Colorado's passage of civil unions legislation for gay couples was celebrated with no dissenting voices.

And alhough the quotes from sources pro and con were balanced, with two people quoted in favor, two against, and one classified as neutral, the two pro-life sources were the last two quoted, in paragraphs 26 and 29-30 of the 31-paragraph story.

A CNN contributor and GOP strategist condescendingly lectured opponents of legalized same-sex marriage on Tuesday night's Erin Burnett OutFront, scoffing that they need to "get in to the 21st century" and ditch the "losing political issue."

"It should not be a banner issue for the Republican Party," Ana Navarro claimed before insisting that same-sex marriage is "the most rapidly evolving social issue we have seen in our lifetime." She added that "folks who are in denial about this that have to get out of the closet. They have to wave goodbye to the GEICO caveman and step out gingerly and carefully into the brave new world." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday again offered the most biased coverage on the gay marriage case before the Supreme Court. All three network morning shows skipped specific mention of the multiple thousands who marched for traditional marriage on Tuesday. ABC, however, used loaded terms such as "marriage equality" rather than gay marriage. Reporter Terry Moran gushed over the liberal position: "This is a social movement, a 21st century social movement that arrived with astonishing speed at this court, driven by activists, by Hollywood in part and by young people, especially on social media." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

In contrast, he portrayed a skeptical Supreme Court as old and out of touch: "The wave of increasing support for gay marriage in America, especially among the young, is crashing on the Supreme Court and the justices, average age 67, seem downright perplexed." Moran highlighted the case of Edie Windsor, an 83-year-old lesbian whose case is before the Supreme Court. He sympathetically related, "when Thea died in 2009, Edie got hit with almost $400,000 in federal estate taxes, a penalty she would not have had to pay if she were married to a man."

The gay marriage debate went to the Supreme Court on Tuesday and all three network evening news shows spun the argument in support of gay marriage.

While audio from the court gave ABC, CBS and NBC the ability to deliver balanced portrayals of the actual debate inside, each show put its own twist on the day’s events –against traditional marriage.

CBS “Evening News” was the most overt. Anchor Scott Pelley led into the report asking “how all this got started in California?” Reporter John Blackstone’s report was filled with images of gay couples and included at least 12 separate video or photo clips of gay weddings. That story dwelt heavily on how gays wanted things their way, profiling a lesbian couple that wants to get married, and quoting two other pro-gay voices. It included only one supporter of traditional marriage.

There's been plenty of serious analysis of the the gay marriage cases before the Supreme Court.  Maybe it's time for some comic relief . .  .

Appearing on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this evening, MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams took issue with Justice Antonin Scalia's musing whether if states can't prohibit gay marriage, they can ban bestiality.  Describing himself as "a certified, organic homosexual," Williams declared "I have a dog, but I've never had sex with my dog." View the video after the jump.

As two gay-marriage cases reach the Supreme Court this week, the New York Times's Peter Baker served up Bill Clinton's mea culpa on the Defense of Marriage Act, which the president signed into law in 1996, in the heat of his re-election campaign.

While letting Clinton explain his reversal on DOMA, which ensured that no state is obligated to recognize a same-sex marriage conducted in another state, Baker relayed the former president's exceedingly lame explanations for angering the left and signing it into law -- apparently Bob Dole (his '96 election opponent) made him do it. And, sleep deprivation.

New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro promoted billionaire New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's bankrolling of his latest liberal crusade on Sunday's front page: "TV Blitz on Guns Puts Swing Senators on the Spot."

Barbaro, who covered the Romney campaign in hostile fashion and hated Wal-Mart's occasional donations to conservative groups (dwarfed by the corporation's liberal giving), didn't ask whether big-money Bloomberg was playing an unfairly influential role by trying to buy legislation he favors through his group Mayors for Illegal Guns.

With the Supreme Court set to hear a couple of monumental same-sex marriage cases this week, Saturday's CBS This Morning brought on two law professors to analyze the cases and the likely outcomes. They were not, however, impartial scholars; they were a pair of gay rights activists, Kenji Yoshino and Suzanne Goldberg.

Yoshino is a New York University legal scholar who specializes in constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, and law and literature. He is also an openly gay man who has written numerous commentaries, for various outlets, advocating LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage. But CBS introduced him only as a “specialist in constitutional law now working on a book on the Proposition 8 litigation in California.”
 

CNN couldn't stop talking about former President Clinton's op-ed on Friday. Every hour between 5 a.m. and 3 p.m. ET, the network touted Clinton asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act that he signed as president, spending over a half hour of coverage on it.

Anchor Don Lemon reported the op-ed four times between 9 and 11 a.m. ET. Anchor Ashleigh Banfield ran two segments on it during the 11 a..m. ET hour. Lemon, openly-gay, voiced his support: "I mean, when you sit right down and just look at it, it's really all about civil and equal rights, human rights. We're a country that treats everybody equal, I mean everyone should be treated equally under the Constitution." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

If you're an outspoken religious or political conservative in the entertainment industry, it's open season by the liberal media not just on your beliefs but on your right to work. The latest example of this new outright McCarthyism comes from Wired magazine, which gives a strongly worded condemnation of DC Comics for having hired author Orson Scott Card to write Superman. 

Wired’s outrage stems from Card’s vocal opposition to gay marriage, which the magazine's Graeme McMillan says would offend the Man of Steel. “[D]oesn’t Superman stand against such bigotry?" he asked.  While Card may have very outlandish opinions on homosexuality, McMillan seems to have no problem with efforts by gay activists to virtually blacklist the Superman author from the comic industry. 

NPR's Ari Shapiro did little to conceal his slant towards same-sex "marriage" on Thursday's Morning Edition, as he reported on the Defense Department granting limited benefits to the same-sex partners of members of the military. Shapiro hyped that supposedly, "as a political move, the Pentagon's action is barely controversial."

The openly-homosexual correspondent later asserted that "it's hard to tell whether President Obama's pro-gay positions are helping to create this wave [of support for homosexuals in the military], or just letting him surf it." He also lined up three left-leaning talking heads during his report, versus only one social conservative pundit.

Last weekend in a meeting in Minneapolis, the Democratic convention's platform committee unanimously voted to plow ahead with a pro-same-sex marriage amendment that will call for the repeal of the Bill Clinton-signed Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). News of this development broke yesterday. The exact language of the platform plank is yet to be hammered out but should be available in a few weeks.

At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., yesterday, the Coalition of African-American Pastors announced that unless and until President Obama recants his position for same-sex marriage, they will counsel members of their respective congregations to not vote for Obama as his position on the issue counters biblical teaching.

ABC, CBS, and NBC all failed to cover either development on their July 31 evening newscasts or August 1 morning news programs.