Same-sex marriage

CNN, the network that encourages gay activists and promotes the gay agenda, is now trying to sweep the issue aside – when President Obama is under fire for his support of gay marriage, that is. On Thursday morning, CNN's Carol Costello suggested Rev. William Owens, a critic of Obama's support for same-sex marriage, focus on something else.

"I think nearly every poll out there shows that same-sex marriage is low on the priority list for most Americans," she told Owens. "High on the priority list especially among African-American voters is the lack of jobs. So why not go out and talk about that instead of same-sex marriage?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Yesterday on Fox News's Special Report, senior national correspondent John Roberts did a segment on the controversy surrounding gay marriage.  A version of his report also appears on the Fox News Web site.  In it, Roberts interviewed a gay marriage proponent saying that young Republicans "overwhelmingly support the freedom to marry." And then:

Roberts:  It isn't just young Republicans who are changing their minds. Conservative David Blankenhorn fought fiercely for Prop 8, California's measure to ban gay marriage.  In June, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times with the headline: "How My View On Gay Marriage Changed".  Blankenhorn is now fully in favor of same-sex marriage.

The manufactured controversy over Chick-Fil-A won’t be dying down anytime soon, if media figures get their way.

Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathy stated that he was “guilty as charged” when it came to supporting the traditional family, and commented on a radio show that “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say: You know, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’”

That’s tantamount to heresy in Hollywood and in New York and D.C. newsrooms. The media have proven themselves in the tank for same sex marriage, and Chick-Fil-A is learning what it means to cross them.

Is CNN equating racism with a store owner refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple? In its "controversial marriage news" on Monday, CNN reported both a church refusing to let a black couple marry in its sanctuary and a bakery refusing service for a gay couple's wedding reception.

Back in May, anchor Don Lemon compared Mitt Romney defending traditional marriage to infamous Alabama Governor George Wallace touting segregation, so this isn't the first egregious smear by the network that loves to promote the gay agenda. [Video below the break.]

San Francisco media outlet SFist has adopted the language of the Westboro Baptist Church to bash Chick-fil-A, referencing the death of Chick-fil-A spokesman Donald Perry with the question “God Hates Flacks?”

A July 27 article about the death of Chick-fil-A PR Vice President Donald Perry was titled “God Hates Flacks? Chick-fil-A Spokesman Dies of Heart Attack.” The headline references the disgusting slogan of the Westboro Baptist Church – God Hates Fags.

Astronaut Sally Ride kept her sexual orientation secret right up to the moment she died.

Yet CNN's Howard Kurtz on Reliable Sources Sunday actually scolded the New York Times for withholding this fact until the 38th paragraph in its obituary for Ride (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Associated Press made no attempt to hide their liberal slant on Tuesday as they hyped an obscure leftist organization's report attacking American conservatives' efforts to support traditional marriage in Africa. Writer Michelle Faul repeatedly used biased labels such as "anti-gay," "religious right," and "Christian right" against social conservatives. By contrast, she made only one vague reference to the far left political ideology of the group that issued the report.

Faul also falsely implied that American social conservatives endorse legislative efforts in Uganda to implement the death penalty on those convicted of "aggravated homosexuality."

The Boston Herald has reported that Mayor Tom Menino is threatening to make obtaining the necessary licenses for a family business to operate "very difficult" -- not because the business's products are controversial or hazardous, but because the privately-held company believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

The middle three paragraphs of an unbylined Associated Press report predictably watered down Menino's threatening posture against the Chick-fil-A fast-food chain to an issue of "discrimination" and made it appear as if there is some kind of rift between the president and the company (bolds are mine throughout this post):

The media crusade against Christian company Chick-fil-A for upholding Christian values and support companies favoring traditional marriage has reached new depths of insanity. In a satire piece blasting Chick-fil-A, Huffington Post contributor Domenick Scudera used his biblical ignorance to bash the Christian restaurant.

Scudera lambasted the Christian firm in a July 19 article snidely titled “Did Jesus Eat Chick-fil-A at the Last Supper?” His beef with Chick-fil-A: that the owner, Dan Cathy, stated that his “restaurant is based on biblical principles.”

CNN continues its brazen support of gay activists upset with the Boy Scouts. On Wednesday afternoon, anchor Don Lemon gave the sappiest of  interviews to former Cub Scout den leader and lesbian Jennifer Tyrell, booted from the organization because she is openly-gay.

Lemon asked saccharine questions like "You doing okay?" and "do you feel disrespected?" and "You sound a little sort of downtrodden." CNN boasts of itself as "The Most Trusted Name In News," but what kind of "news" are people getting with sentimental Oprah-style interviews during an election season? [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Leading news agency Thompson Reuters has come out of the closet regarding its support for gay causes: it has declared its open opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment in Minnesota to ban gay marriage.

LifeSiteNews.com reported that Reuters officials Mike Suchsland and Rick King sent an e-mail to its employees, declaring: “We believe the Minnesota Marriage Amendment, if passed, would limit our ability to recruit and retain top talent. For this reason, we do not believe that the Amendment would be good for Thomson Reuters or the business community in the state.”

Once again CNN is cheerleading the fight for gay rights, this time within the Boy Scouts. An effusive Starting Point panel welcomed gay activist Zach Wahls on Wednesday and celebrated his cause of pushing the Boy Scouts towards acceptance of openly-gay scouts and leaders.

Wahls is no stranger to CNN, as back in May he was lauded as a "very powerful" activist during a soft interview. On Wednesday, the CNN panel oozed admiration for him. "I'm a big fan. I've followed you for a little while," Starting Point regular Margaret Hoover told him. "You're a wonderful spokesman for the effort for equality." [Video below. Audio here.]

David Letterman said Monday that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is promising conservatives that if he's elected, "he will put Anderson Cooper back in the closet."

Such was said during the obligatory Romney-bashing portion of Letterman's Late Show monologue on CBS (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary, file photo):

Wednesday's Today show on NBC ran a four and a half minute piece profiling Saratoga Springs, Utah, Mayor, and congressional candidate Mia Love, who has a very good chance of being the first black female Republican elected to Congress.

MSNBC's Daily Rundown show on Tuesday ran a similar report on the Utah Republican.

On the July 4 Today, guest co-anchor Willie Geist introduced the report:

New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters led Monday's front-page cheers for the new enthusiasm in the gay community surrounding Barack Obama's reelection campaign: "In Gay Pride Legions, Seeing an Obama Army."

To most passers-by, the tens of thousands of people who jammed the sidewalks of Greenwich Village on Sunday were just the typical tank-top-clad revelers of a gay pride weekend.

Yesterday the Southern Baptist Convention elected their first black president, an historic moment for an organization that got its start defending slavery in pre-Civil War America.

CNN Starting Point host Soledad O'Brien interviewed Fred Luter Jr., who will be installed as president Wednesday evening. The interview on the main was fine, but towards the end, contributor Margaret Hoover pressed Luter as to whether he would champion as a "civil rights" cause, "inclusiveness of gay Americans," referring it seems to same-sex marriage. Luter answered in the negative, citing the Bible's teachings on the definition of marriage. It's then that O'Brien retorted that his stance put him in opposition to President Obama, as if to suggest that were a scandalous position for him to be in:

The blogosphere is abuzz today after anti-conservative bully and gay activist Dan Savage tweeted, “The GOP’s house faggots grab their ankles right on cue...Pathetic” in response to GOProud’s endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. 

GOProud, which describes itself on its website as, “the voice of gay conservatives and their straight allies,” voted last night to endorse the presumptive Republican nominee in his bid against Obama in November. Lisa DePasquale, the interim Chair of the Board of Directors issued a statement to the press, saying that the organization is, “prepared to commit significant resources to help make Mitt Romney the next President of the United States.”

CNN is friendly to Christianity -- as long as the priests, ministers and religious play into the network's liberal agenda. If Christian guests stand up for traditional marriage, however, they can expect a much colder welcome if they even make it on air.

So it was no surprise that CNN has been promoting a dissenting nun's struggle with the Vatican, and making clear that it is siding with wayward American nuns after the Catholic Church has announced a reform of the Leadership Council of Women Religious (LCWR). Anchor Christine Romans tossed softball after softball to liberal Sister Maureen Fiedler on Tuesday's Starting Point, and mocked the Vatican's criticism of the LCWR.

"Let me ask you, women can't be priests. Women – if you follow church teaching, can't use contraception," Romans stated before noting the irony of the prominence of statues of Mary in Catholic churches.  "[W]omen in the church when you look at some of the teachings, is there a war on woman within your church?" she asked Fiedler. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The Catholic News Agency's Michelle Bauman reports that there has been a "wave" of recent defections and departures from the Democratic Party that could be as many as several hundred. The establishment press is clearly being remiss in failing to note them at all -- something which would not be occurring if it involved Republicans going to the party of the left.

The reasons for the moves primarily relate to President Obama's endorsement of same-sex "marriage" and the assault on religious freedoms inherent in his administration's requirement that employers who offer health insurance plans, in Bauman's words, "cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even if doing so violates their consciences." Excerpts from her report follow the jump, including a notable quote from Artur Davis, the former four-term Democratic congressman who announced to very little press coverage in late May that if he runs again for public office, it will be as a Republican:

The D.C. gay magazine Metro Weekly interviewed Bravo star Kathy Griffin and asked her how big it was that President Obama endorsed the "gay marriage" concept. "There's never been a sitting president who has even seen the LGBT community like this. Never. It's huge. It's f---ing huge."

"So I get mad at my young gays that don't know what Stonewall is. I get mad at my young girls that don't know who Gloria Steinem is," Griffin said. "And I get mad at my own Democrats or centrists or liberal-leaning people that are acting like, ''I don't know if I'm gonna vote for the president. What's the point?'' Really? Well, get ready for President Romney and Vice President Bachmann." She wants the left to be pragmatic:

CNN took some shots at the Vatican on Thursday when touting a dissident nun's book that made the Amazon.com best sellers list. "The nun who wrote a book about sex should be thanking the Vatican for condemning it," anchor Carol Costello quipped.

Exactly why CNN thinks this is news is uncertain, unless it wants to advance a liberal religious agenda. Just the other day, a regular contributor to CNN's religion blog came on and blasted the church for declaring the nun's book "Just Love" to be not in conformity with Catholic teaching – even though the nun herself admitted the book was not an official expression of church teaching on sexual ethics. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The front of Thursday's New York Times Home section (!) features a large story targeting Mitt Romney that makes the paper's notorious front-page investigation into Ann Romney's troubling horse habit look as significant as Watergate by comparison.

Political reporter Michael Barbaro invaded the Home section and devoted a staggering 1,800-word investigation to the fact that Romney's liberal neighbors in La Jolla, California don't approve of his presence or his politics: "The Candidate Next Door." The text box: "On a cul-de-sac in La Jolla, residents are not happy about their new neighbor's renovation plans – or his entourage."

Since his very public endorsement of same-sex marriage on May 9, President Obama has become the unabashed hero of the LGBT community – a fact the liberal media has openly cheered. On Thursday's NBC Today, White House correspondent Kristen Welker described Obama being "greeted by thundering and sustained applause" at a Hollywood fundraiser Wednesday night.

Welker proclaimed that gay community had been, "newly energized after the President's recent endorsement of same-sex marriage." On CBS's This Morning, correspondent Bill Plante highlighted President Obama's "warm welcome from campaign donors in the Los Angeles gay community" at the LGBT Leadership Council Gala.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post could barely contain its glee over the event: "...the president had to plead with the audience to sit down after a long and emotional ovation and chants of 'Four more years!' Twin screens on each side of the stage displayed huge 'Obama Pride' logos."