Same-sex marriage

Imagine if an employee at a college or university was suspended from her duties for signing a ballot petition that is for same sex marriage, the media outrage would be predictable and the person would become a household name. And the media would have good reason for doing so: no one should suffer employment consequences for their political convictions. But you probably haven't heard of Dr. Angela McCaskill, because she's on the 'wrong' side of the same-sex marriage debate.

In an incomprehensible move that is being criticized by even advocates for same-sex marriage, Gallaudet University put their Chief Diversity Officer on administrative leave until further notice. Why, you ask? Because McCaskill had the audacity to sign a petition at her church that supported a reversal of Maryland's relatively new same-sex marriage law.

Monday's Washington Post highlighted the gay-left Obama supporters at the Human Rights Campaign had their national dinner on Saturday night and honored actress Sally Field. "This was a rich, powerful, savvy crowd, ponying up $400K during the 30-minute live auction to buy commercial time this month in key election states." HRC is fighting defense-of-marriage ballot initiatives in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington state.

The Post account did not report that media companies have taken their liberal side in sponsoring the event. Comcast/NBC Universal was a “Gold Sponsor” of the dinner and Facebook was a “Bronze Sponsor.” Google is a national "corporate partner" of HRC's. Right now, the top of the HRC website advertises the stars of ABC's Modern Family will do an Obama-campaign-style "Modern Family Dinner Date" drawing to raise money for this group. (video below)

While CNN's ratings continue to slump, reaching record lows, its hosts and anchors seem intent on alienating what few socially-conservative viewers they may have left. Morning talk shows like Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien generally prefer to have roundtable discussions with maybe one token conservative panelist while the rest of the gang predictably parrots liberal talking points and espouses left-of-center convictions on policy issues.

Take for example how televangelist and author Joel Osteen was treated during his Thursday morning appearance to  promote his new book. Guru Deepak Chopra joined in on a conversation about the health and wellness of our mind, body, and soul. Chopra was completely ignored as soon as the topic transitioned to the matter of gay marriage. All attention was given to the pastor, who had the temerity to, as Christian pastors tend to do, stick to Biblical teachings on the matter. (audio available here; video below)

While the Innocence of Muslims is still being blamed for the riots and murders in the Middle East, the national news media has no problem running a speculative story that disrespects the teachings of the Christian faith. New "evidence" now suggests that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene after all, but the artifact in question dates back to the 4th century A.D. 

This all began when Harvard historian Dr. Karen King received a tiny strip of papyrus from an anonymous collector. After translating the Coptic script thereon, she found two phrases, one which reads, "Jesus said to them my wife. Elsewhere on the paper it continues, "She will be able to be my disciple." 

ABC and CBS News brought it up on Thursday evening, but could only afford to allot a few seconds of coverage. NBC Nightly News did not mention it at all. All three network morning news broadcasts devoted significant attention to the story, and predictably worked in references to Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code novel.

Openly gay and outspoken same-sex marriage advocate Thomas Roberts today devoted a segment of his MSNBC program to a pre-recorded interview with Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, who is publicly supportive of a new Maryland law legalizing same-sex marriage. Yet nowhere in that interview did Roberts mention that it was a Democratic state delegate who tried to silence Ayanbadejo.

As I noted on September 10, the broadcast networks were silent about State Del. Emmett C. Burns's August 29 letter to Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti in which Burns called on Bisciotti to "inhibit such [political] expressions" from his players. While Roberts did note that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell spoke out recently in favor of NFL players speaking their minds on political issues, the MSNBC anchor failed to mention that that was in response to a question at a press conference regarding Del. Burns's statement.

NFL commissioner Robert Goodell weighed in on a recent controversy involving a Maryland state legislator who sent a letter to the owner of the Baltimore Ravens that called upon him to silence linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, who supports same-sex marriage. "I think in this day and age, people are going to speak up about what they think is important. They speak as individuals and I think that’s an important part of democracy," Goodell answered diplomatically.

Reporting on the story, Politico's Kevin Cirilli gave readers the background that State Delegate Emmett C. Burns, Jr. played in the controversy, but avoided mentioning Burns's party affiliation in both occasions when he referenced Burns, an African-American Democrat and Baptist minister:

New York Times movie critic Jeanette Catsoulis demonstrated her simplistic liberal politics once again in her brief Friday review of the gay marriage documentary "The Right to Love," picking on mild concern from the subject's parents and grandparents as proving themselves "enemies of progress."

She found the movie itself "squishy" and the soundtrack "regrettably saccharine," but described left-wing MSNBC host Rachel Maddow as an "arrow of lucidity."

CNN's Anderson Cooper smacked the Romney campaign Monday night for alleged dishonesty. He claimed they were talking too much about social issues while saying the economy is their real focus.

"The question tonight, and not just from the opposition, have the Romney forces been moving away from dollars and cents and jobs, and shifting toward more red meat, hot-button culture war mode?" Cooper asked. "I mean what's up with the culture stuff suddenly?" he posed later. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Two days after a Gawker editor wrote about pedophilia being a "sexual orientation," film director Nick Cassavetes defended incest by comparing it to gay marriage.

Such occurred during an interview with TheWrap Sunday.

Suppose there were a Republican state legislator in Georgia, who also happens to also be an ordained Baptist minister, who sent a letter to the owner of the Atlanta Falcons -- on official state legislature letterhead no less -- demanding he keep his players from speaking out in favor of same-sex marriage. The media firestorm would be predictable.

Well, a Democratic state legislator from Maryland did send such a letter in late August to the owner of the Baltimore Ravens, and while there has been media coverage since the story broke in the middle of last week, it's mostly been in print and online sources. A search of Nexis found no reporting by the broadcast network newscasts on this controversy. The New York Times sports page covered the controversy yesterday, but reporter Adam Himmelsbach omitted Del. Emmett C. Burns's  party affiliation.

After offending religious Americans by appearing to boo God, the Democratic National Convention had the top ranking Catholic official in the country perform the closing Benediction Thursday night. Cardinal Timothy Dolan did the same for the Republicans last week in Tampa Bay, but those delegates didn’t seem to have a problem with a party platform that included God and Jerusalem.

The only networks respectful enough to show the prayer in its entirety without interruption was Fox News, Fox Business and C-SPAN. ABC, CNN, and PBS kept it in background while talking over it. MSNBC completely ignored it, cutting the audio feed to let their pundits share their opinions without distraction. CBS and NBC returned to local news affiliates as soon as he began.  

[See video below.  MP3 audio here.]

The left's war on traditional marriage took a truly disgraceful turn Monday.

The folks at Salon actually published a piece entitled "Gay Couples Have Happier Kids."

The sub-headline read, "Studies show that the traditional nuclear family is not better. It's a dying model -- and that's a good thing":

The war against Chick-fil-A, whose COO dared to support traditional marriage, continues. This time, the battlefield is college football – specifically, Chick-fil-A’s sponsorship of two college football games.

OutSports.com editor Cyd Ziegler took to Huffington Post on August 20 with a piece titled, “Stop Chick-fil-A from Forcing College Football Players to Wear Their Logo,” which advocated the end of the Chick-fil-A's sponsorship of the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game and the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

Fall 2012 TV premieres promise to be laden with gay themes, and daytime soap “Day of Our Lives,” will jump on the same bandwagon. The Huffington Post reported openly gay character Sonny Kiriakis will be part of an anti-gay bullying plotline and will suffer a violent attack.

The plot is in lock-step with other anti-conservative story arcs. Sonny’s assailant will be an old friend, Tad, who fears Sonny is trying to “make him gay.”

In the aftermath of the pro-gay attack on the Family Research Council, pro-LGBT organizations and personalities condemned the violence, but stood staunchly in defense of the motives.

According to the Aug. 16, Washington Post, “LGBT groups stand in solidarity with the Family Research Council.” That’s far from the truth.

Floyd Corkins, a volunteer for the last six months at the D.C. Center for the LGBT Community, marched into the Family Research Center with a gun and serious ammunition, denounced FRC’s policy positions, and shot a security guard in the arm before being subdued. Another hate crime, but this time against perhaps the pre-eminent pro-family organization in America. CBS gave the story 20 seconds. NBC spent 17 seconds.

Imagine a volunteer for the Family Research Council marching into some gay group’s headquarters with a gun, and after shouting his opposition to the homosexual agenda, opened fire and wounded a guard before being subdued. Never mind evening news. This would be Breaking News! and for days there would be seemingly endless coverage of continued conservative hatred.

On the day after gunman Floyd Corkins attacked the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., ABC's World News on Thursday was the only broadcast network evening newscast to run a followup report which elaborated on Corkins's political opposition to the group's conservative views.

I was camping yesterday morning when a friend alerted me via Twitter on my iPhone there had been a shooting at Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Frightened for my friends, I began scanning Google for news reports. Ten minutes later the first story popped up, stating an FRC security guard had been shot in the arm, and the shooter had been arrested.

The shooting of a security guard at the D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council, a social conservative group, by a volunteer for a local gay community center, failed to raise the New York Times's usual politically motivated concerns about harmful and hateful rhetoric it's shown in the past.

Most notoriously, the Times repeatedly, falsely, and maliciously suggested that Tucson gunman Jared Loughner, who killed six people and seriously wounded Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, had been motivated to kill by conservatism in general and Sarah Palin in particular, even before any information about Loughner was available.

Less than a day after a shooting at the Family Research Council, CNN dug up a 13 year-old FRC quote to support the "hate group" label by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center. Early Start anchor Zoraida Sambolin said the FRC was "hate spewing hate."

"I want our viewers to actually see some of the things that this organization has put out there so that – we kind of understand why they were labeled a hate group," Sambolin insisted. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Even after the shooting of a security guard at the Family Research Council, the Huffington Post can’t stop slamming the pro-family organization as a “hate group.” The Huffington Post waited less than three hours before publishing an article which complained about “the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center deems a hate group.”

Contributor Waymon Hudson, in an August 15 article titled “Paul Ryan: Poster Boy of Today’s Extreme GOP,” posted an attack on Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan which slammed the Family Research Council on 1:36 PM – less than three hours after the shooting, which took place around 10:45 AM. Attacking Ryan as an extremist, Hudson complained that Ryan “has agreed to address the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center deems a hate group, at the organizations annual Voters Value Summit in September.”

The broadcast networks complain loudly about real or perceived offenses committed by conservatives. But when they are faced with violence committed by those they agree with, they downplay or even bury such behavior. The silence of the networks regarding the vandalism of multiple Chick-fil-A restaurants is only the latest example of destruction committed by the left and ignored by the media.

Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy ran afoul of gay marriage advocates when he dared to praise “the biblical definition of the family unit” in an interview with the Baptist Press and declare in a radio interview: “I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’” The controversy his remarks sparked was intense; the media slammed him for his remarks.

Glee star Jane Lynch began Comedy Central's Roseanne Barr Roast Sunday with a vulgar attack on Chick-fil-A.

Not surprisingly, the liberal crowd along with the other presenters thought this was the funniest thing they’d ever heard (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times food writer and reporter Mark Bittman remains unrepentant even after his apology for calling a deceased public relations executive for Chick-fil-A a "pig" for that company's opposition to gay marriage. Bittman forwarded this Twitter message from a follower: "If Chick-Fill-A's VP SUPPORTED same-sex marriage & died, sound of right-wing claims it was God's judgment would've been deafening."

And it hasn't hurt his standing at the paper; in fact he's in the print edition on Friday with "Guns, Butter And Then Some," yet another sophomoric liberal op-ed, advocating gun control, calling Fox News host Bill O'Reilly a hatemonger, and putting the word "terrorists" in quotation marks to mark those 33 Americans killed in terror attacks since 9-11.

New York Times food writer and reporter Mark Bittman issued an apology on his nytimes.com blog on Tuesday for a venemous post on the recent death of Chick-fil-A's vice-president for public relations Donald Perry.

In a recent blog post, I used an inappropriate phrase to refer to the late VP of PR for Chick-fil-A. My choice of words did not rise to either my own standards or to The Times’s, and the phrase has been removed from the post. I regret this lapse.

CNN is known for being an activist network on the subject of gay rights, so it comes as no surprise that their newest target is the Boy Scouts of America.  As Newsbusters’ Matthew Philbin recently pointed out, CNN has close ties to GLAAD (Gays and Lesbians Allied Against Defamation) which might explain its decision to attack any organization that does not support its gay agenda.

The Boy Scouts organization, which does not allow openly gay individuals to join its organization as employees, volunteers or members, has been attacked viciously by CNN since it reaffirmed its position in June of this year. Since then, CNN has brought on numerous guests critical of the Scouts policy, including on Tuesday when it hosted Martin Sizmar, a former Eagle Scout who returned his medal because of their policy on gay individuals serving in their organization. The cable network allowed no one to defend the Scouts.  [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The broadcast networks promoted gay activists’ protest of the fast food company Chick-fil-A, but when that protest fizzled, they did little to cover the failure.

ABC’s Steve Osunsami hyped the protests ahead of time, saying “nearly 100,000 friends and family have been invited online.” After the apparent lack of turnout at the kiss-in, however, the networks stopped reporting on the protest. Only ABC briefly mentioned the results of the kiss-in, after all three networks talked about the protests on the morning of Aug. 3.

CBS couldn’t resist taking one parting bite at Chick-fil-A. On Aug. 6, CBS “This Morning” anchors Gayle King and Jeff Glor highlighted a lesbian chef’s “Chick on Chick Filet,” made with “loving chicken breasts,” a “honey mustard witness,” and “tolerant fries.”

Anchor Jeff Glor reported: “The Houston Press tells us about a restaurant weighing in on the Chick-fil-A same-sex marriage controversy. Beaver’s Restaurant in Houston, which is owned by a lesbian chef, created a special sandwich. The Chick on Chick Filet is described as ‘two loving chicken breasts married on toasty buns with a honey mustard witness and joined in celebration with tolerant fries.’ Their words. Long story short: That’s a sandwich.”  Anchor Gayle King responded, laughing: “I’d give it a try.” (Video after the jump.)