Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Traditional-values groups are urging their supporters to tell the Boy Scouts of America to stand by its policy of not letting "avowed" homosexuals join the organization.
For years, foes of same-sex marriage had a potent talking point: They'd won every time the issue went to a popular vote. That winning streak has now been shattered in a multistate electoral sweep by gay-marriage supporters — a historic tipping point likely to influence other states and possibly even the Supreme Court.
President Obama's conversion on gay marriage back in May was a bold, public celebration of gay community pride, punctuated with a flurry of lavish Hollywood fundraisers. It played extremely well in Los Angeles, New York and blue regions across the country.
Gay-rights supporters are openly rallying sympathizers who until now may have been content to stay in the closet — young conservative Republicans.
Gay marriage dominates the list of "social-issue" ballot measures going to voters this year, with amendments for and against same-sex unions up in four "blue" states:
President Obama, whose re-election is counting on support from women and young voters, encouraged graduating students from a women's college in New York to aim high and persevere through life's many challenges, imploring them to demand a seat at the table and work hard to attain it.
Gay-rights and traditional-values groups reacted swiftly Wednesday to President Obama's open support for gay marriage, which came hours after North Carolina citizens voted in a landslide to block such nuptials.
North Carolina voters made their state the 32nd in the nation to recognize marriage as a union of only one man and one woman.
Thousands of gay men and women and their allies marched joyfully through Manhattan on Sunday, celebrating New York state's new law allowing same-sex marriage and pledging to push the issue nationwide.
After I've written about gay marriage for 12 years, more than a few people have asked me how this issue got to be so big.
"As I said the day after the Supreme Court ruling, we may have lost the case, 5-4, but we're winning the cause," said Evan Wolfson, a prominent gay-rights activist and the attorney who represented gay Eagle Scout James Dale in his lawsuit against the BSA.
Since 2000, he said, the Boy Scouts have seen "a huge drop in membership, a huge loss of sponsors ... and continuing dissent from within," from their own members, parents, Eagle Scouts, sponsors and chartering organizations.
