Protecting holy matrimony from public universities?
Posted February 27, 2007
The University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville are trying to redefine marriage, the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council warned today.
U of L is offering health insurance for the unmarried partners of its employees. UK is working to implement a similar program, the FRC warns.
In 2004, Kentuckians voted three-to-one in favor to amend the state's constitution to enshrine the traditional definition of marriage -- a union of one man and one woman. The so-called Marriage Protection Amendment also prevents state agencies, including universities, from recognizing domestic partnerships.
The Republican-controlled state Senate has already passed a bill to block the schools from giving health-care benefits to the partners of unmarried employees. Whether the Democratic-controlled House will pass the legislation remains to be seen.
Press Release from the Family Research Council
Contact your state legislators by calling the toll free legislative message line and leave the following message for your representative: "Protect marriage -- pass Senate Bill 152. Stop the universities from redefining marriage."
The Kentucky 2004 Marriage Protection Amendment is at risk!
February 26, 2007 | Refer a Friend
The Kentucky Senate passed a bill, Senate Bill 152, which prohibits all state agencies, including universities, from creating a new legal entity called "domestic partner" for the purpose of giving health insurance benefits. SB 152 is now in the House where some "redefine-marriage" representatives are trying to block any vote on the bill.
SB 152 is an effort to defend the constitutional amendment that Kentuckians overwhelmingly approved in 2004 that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. This amendment-- passed by a 75 percent majority-- has a particularly important second phrase, which states: "A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in the state."
Despite the clarity in the second phrase, the University of Louisville has ignored the Marriage Protection Amendment. The University of Kentucky has already authorized domestic partnerships, but has not yet implemented them. These initiatives are nothing more than an effort to bypass the Marriage Protection Amendment and to re-define marriage for all practical purposes by granting marriage benefits to unmarried, live-in partners.
We have less than two weeks to secure a House vote on this bill to protect marriage. Please call now and kindly ask your state representative to protect marriage by voting in favor of Senate Bill 152.
The Kentucky 2004 Marriage Protection Amendment is at risk!
Sincerely,
Tony Perkins
President
Comments
It doesn't matter who suffers, Peach. What matters is that the traditional definition of marriage is destroyed. Society has been held back too long by outmoded values like "normalcy." Everything will be so wonderful once marriage becomes defined as everything and nothing at the same time.
When Kentucky's constitutional amendment was being considered by the voters, the Family Foundation tried to allay voters' fears about the breadth and ambiguity of the amendment by publicly asserting it only prevented recognition of marriage by other, creative names like civil unions or domestic partnerships. It was needed to keep Kentucky from having to recognize Vermont civil unions, they said. It would not prevent umarried people from getting health insurance or being protected by domestic violence laws. I was treated as Chicken Little for suggesting that its language could be so broadly interpreted and applied. However, now that it has passed, they assert the very prohibition they claimed the amendment did not contain. Their religious/political cousins in Michigan are doing the same thing, trying to deprive university employees' families of health insurance they have had for more than 10 years.
How Christian is it to lie to the voters in the name of achieving God's will? How Christian is it to "protect" one family by taking access to health insurance (and the access to health care which comes with insurance) away from another? Asserting there is no harm in such action because everyone is "free" to go out into the market and buy an individual policy if s/he chooses is a red herring. If that were truly an equal choice, why do so many traditional families cling to the cheaper, cost/risk-spreading employer sponsored family plans instead of merely going out into that "free market" to purchase individual coverage? The reality is an affirmative desire to treat people not only differently, but worse, in order to punish them for being different or believing differently. That Old Testament notion is not consistent with my reading of the Gospels.
Honestly I think the fairest thing to do is to give each employee one other "slot" in their health insurance to go to any other non dependent adult they choose, if they pay the higher cost. That way, if they had an uninsured parent or sibling or even friend, that person would be covered. They could choose to use their coverage for a spouse or domestic partner.
By the way, civil unions do nothing to weaken marriage--reality TV and victoria's secret do much more damage in that they create unrealistic expectations for couples and normalize a culture of adultery.
In my experience prohibiting gay people from being together in a sanctioned way only creates more problems in that it creates a culture of secrecy and fear and encourages gay people to deny their nature and even attempt to change.
I know people who say they've experienced these changes (well, I know one person who says he went from gay to straight--he's more convinced than I am) and I know at least ten people who are still traumatized by the Christian community's conditional love for them.
Hepatitis A and B are both required in most states for school attendance, I think.
oops--obviously that last post was intended for the HPV vaccine discussion. Sorry!
Conservatism and Global Warming
Every word I have heard for the past twenty-five years from right wing conservatives is that global warming is a hoax, or a myth, or a left wing socialist tree-hugger conspiracy to embarrass business, capitalism and free enterprise. Conservationists were idiots, weak minded, weak kneed, and probably on welfare.
Talk about a deathbed conversion, or being struck blind on the road to Damascus! Harper sounds like he discovered global warming himself. This is the biggest flip-flop in our lifetime.
And conservative fundamentalist Christians have performed basically the same frantic flop. Except that there’s was predictable. Sort of like the old preacher at camp who said one year that man would never reach the moon, and the next year that God was not embarrassed by man reaching the moon. I mean, who do we think we are to try to show up God like that?
Fundamentalists pretty much toe the right wing line, and in the case of global warming as well, excepts with a very cute difference at the end. They also said that global warming was a hoax, a myth, and a left wing socialist tree- hugger conspiracy to embarrass business, capitalism and free enterprise, and God.
Until last week. Now they say that global warming, get this, is a sign of the end times. God’s punishment for our sins, right up there with volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes and floods. It’s a flip-flop but it is a consistent one. Evangelicals always end with the apocalypse. And what could be more apocalyptic than global warming.
Next they’ll tell us that they were right all along.
That's funny, Cliff.
Accurate, but funny . . . You've hit the nail on the head.
If the universities are going to redefine insurance policies -they will have to go with hosehold-whoever lives in same place-such a fathers, mothers uncles, aunts,friends,etc.
And you thought your insurance was high now-just wait.