Sending the 'Very Best'? - Hallmark Introduces New Line of Cards for Gay Marriage

Hot on the heels of the California Supreme Court decision to allow same- sex "marriage," Hallmark Cards is cravenly introducing a new line of greetings cards celebrating "gay marriage." Playing it safe with generalized images such as two tuxedos and taglines like "one promise, two hearts," there is no mention of the words wedding or marriage. Hallmark can easily market the cards for civil unions and domestic partnerships should the California decision go against them and be overturned in November.

Hallmark prides itself on "quality, innovation and caring." A family-owned business since 1910, Hallmark has grown into the most recognized greeting card chain in the nation. For over 50 years, families have gathered to watch the award winning Hallmark Channel for quality movies based on American values and pro-family principles.

Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), said, "Hallmark is jeopardizing its brand as a family-friendly company. Customers used to be able to trust Hallmark to produce quality products that were safe for all ages. Now parents will need to steer their kids from Hallmark's section of the greeting card aisle and away from its previously heartwarming movies for fear that they too will push homosexual messages."

Janice Crouse, Director and Senior Fellow of CWA's Beverly LaHaye Institute, said, "By latching onto the latest fad generated by the homosexual special interest groups, Hallmark is negating its image as a wholesome company that promotes American values and pro-family principles in its products. American businesses have a corporate responsibility to the public that buys their products. Instead of bolstering campaigns by special interest groups like the homosexual activists, corporations like Hallmark should be protecting American culture from those forces that would destroy the family and create a public environment that is detrimental to general well- being, especially children's well-being."

Concerned Women for America is the nation's largest public policy women's organization.

Gay Marriage - Why Is It A Bad Idea?

Anonymous wrote a comment regarding my post from yesterday. Here is his comment, along with my reply... and more on some of the reasons why allowing gay/lesbian couples to marry is a bad idea:

anonymous wrote:

"the sky is not falling. tax paying adults should be able to marry same sex partners. honestly, im not comfortable with it either, but its just, and fair.
'pain, promiscuity, and death', due to same sex marraige? do you really believe this? the status quo has already brought p, p & d to california, and to our American society in general.
im gay, but no immersed in the culture. i will agree most gays i know are promiscuous, and mentally ill, and live exclusively in gaydom. those arent the ones interested in marraige. there are many gays who DO want that, and are capable of being "normal", loving people, adjusted to mainstream society."

The sky is not falling, BUT there will be consequences that may make it seem as though the sky is falling in future generations.

Yes, I really believe that pain, promiscuity and death will continue to be a result of homosexual unions. You said it yourself, "most gays you know are promiscuous..." That kind of sexual immorality leads to pain for the perpetrator and their victims. As we all know, AIDS is primarily a gay disease. It causes THOUSANDS of deaths around the world each year. Not only do I believe it -- but the facts show those words to be 100% true.

If people who choose homosexuality want unions, let them have their own ceremonies and unions amongst their lifestyle partners. Giving a chosen (and destructive) behavior legal standing across the realm of society is just plain wrong. It's a bad idea from ALL angles.

Setting aside religious values for a moment... Think about the problems that can and will come from gay marriage. Divorce, which is rampant among married couples, will exponentially increase in the gay population. It's a proven fact that most "gay couples" don't last more than a few months to around two years. Then, there's the issue of divorce settlements, etc. that will inevitably tie up an already overburdened judicial system. Case precedence and legal wrangling will lengthen any meaningful decisions within the realm of these relationships.

Next, think about spousal benefits. What a can of worms to be opened there!?! Then, there's insurance. Allowing homosexual partners benefits on insurance policies will most certainly be the straw that breaks the healthcare system and insurance reimbursement cycle's back. It's a proven fact that those who choose homosexual lifestyles are more susceptible to disease. When both partners are highly likely to have or contract an STD, HIV or AIDS, healthcare costs will effectively skyrocket -- which will drive up premiums. And one result will be more people who are uninsured or under-insured -- include those who chose homosexual unions.

The worst problem, IMO, will be the toll on America's children. Gay couples will most certainly demand adoption rights. Since any thinking person will have to admit that even children know in their hearts that homosexuality is not normal or natural, there will be many confused, frustrated and mal-adjusted children in our culture. Then, when their two dads get divorced, the court enters the picture again. Custody, visitation rights, and on and on it goes. Society wasn't built the way it has been built in order to hold people down -- but to help everyone live together in some sort of harmony. Adding a promiscuous, predatory lifestyle choice to normal society (and call it acceptable) will surely harm everyone in the end -- but mostly the children who will be victims from several angles.

Lastly, children will most assuredly become victimized by the predatory nature of homosexuality. It's a proven fact that many men who now live the gay lifestyle were sexually abused by another man when they were a child. Placing children, especially young boys, into a home with two homosexual men is just plain dangerous. The result will be more sexual predators, more pedophiles -- and more pain, promiscuity and death.

Do the research for yourself. The extreme end of the homosexual agenda wants sex with children legalized. Keywords for your interest: NAMBLA, Human Rights Campaign, man boy love. The truth is out there.

Sincerely, I challenge you to think ALL of this through. I am not the most eloquent writer in the world. Yet, the points made here are compelling, you must admit. If you refuse to think this through, you are denying the very real possibility of America's future.

Homosexuality is a choice some people make. God gave us all free will to make choices. Although the Bible is clear that homosexuality is a sin, it is like all other sin -- a choice. If people choose it, they will live with the consequences. I respect their choice and love the people while abhorring their sin. BUT... BUT... American society should NOT have to endure the results of allowing such a choice to become a mainstream part of our culture. It's an extremely bad idea that will have a high cost -- not only in terms of money, but in terms of human losses.

TOPIC: Doubt or Certainty? Which Does YOUR World Revolve Around?

2005 editorial from Charles Krauthammer of TIME magazine

These things come in waves, of course, but waves need to be resisted, even if the exercise leaves you feeling like King Canute. The new wave is fashionable doubt. Doubt is in. Certainty is out.

The New Republic devoted a cover article to hailing the "conservatism of doubt." For the less bookish, Hollywood spends $130 million on a Crusader epic in which the heroes are 12th century multiculturalists, Christian and Muslim, who want nothing more than love, peace and interfaith understanding. (Such people inhabit 21st century Hollywood, but as columnist John Podhoretz points out, they were nowhere to be seen in 12th century Jerusalem.) And dare you have any "deeply held views" -- a transparent euphemism for religiously grounded views -- especially regarding abortion [or homosexuality or the war against terrorism].

The Op-Ed pages are filled with jeremiads about believers -- principally evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics -- bent on turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong -- indeed, deeply un-American -- about fearing people simply because they believe.
It seems perfectly O.K. for secularists to impose their secular views on America, such as, say, legalized abortion or gay marriage. But when someone takes the contrary view, all of a sudden he is trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order.

What nonsense. The campaign against certainty is merely the philosophical veneer for an attempt to politically marginalize and intellectually disenfranchise believers. Instead of arguing the merits of any issue, secularists are trying to win the argument by default on the grounds that the other side displays unhealthy certainty or, even worse, unseemly religiosity. Why this panic about certainty and people who display it? It is not just, as conventional wisdom has it, that liberals think the last election was lost because of a bloc of benighted Evangelicals. It is because we a handful of years of moral certainty, and firm belief -- and that's about all secular liberalism can tolerate.

Do you remember 9/11? How you felt? The moral clarity of that day and the days thereafter? Just days after 9/11, on this very page, Lance Morrow wrote a brilliant, searing affirmation of right against wrong, good against evil. A few years of that near papal certainty is more than any self-respecting intelligentsia can take. The overwhelmingly secular intellectuals are embarrassed that they once nodded in assent to Morrow-like certainty, an affront to their self-flattering pose as skeptics.

Enough. A new day, a new wave. Time again for nuance, doubt and the comforts of relativism. It is not just the restless search for novelty, the artist's Holy Grail. It is weariness with the responsibilities and the nightmares that come with clarity -- and the demands that moral certainty make on us as individuals and as a nation.

Nothing has more aroused and infuriated the sophisticates than the foreign policy of a religiously inclined President, based on the notion of a universal aspiration to freedom and of America's need and duty to advance it around the world. Such liberationism, confident and unapologetic, is portrayed as arrogant crusading, a deep violation of the tradition of American pluralism, ecumenism, modesty and skeptical restraint.

That widespread portrayal is invention masquerading as history. You want certainty? You want religiosity? How about a people who overthrow the political order of the ages, go to war and occasion thousands of deaths in the name of self-evident truths and unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? That was 1776. The universality, the sacredness and the divine origin of freedom are enshrined in our founding document. The Founders, believers all, signed it. Thomas Jefferson wrote it. And not even Jefferson, the most skeptical of the lot, had the slightest doubt about it.

TOPIC: What Does the Midterm Election Cycle Mean for America?
Democrats need a fifteen-seat pickup to regain the House and a gain of six seats to claim the Senate. The White House traditionally loses seats in midterm congressional races. The most recent exception was 2002, when Bush's party picked up seats. Before you give up on Republicans, and buy into the liberal media's postulating, think about what happens if each party wins.

If the Republicans keep control over Congress:
- Possibility of 2-3 conservative Supreme Court judges who will uphold the Constitution -- as written
- Hope of curbing judicial tyranny in Circuit Courts of Appeal
- Tax cuts deserved by American citizenry would become permanent
- Much needed Social Security reform
- Possibility of stopping the bloody tide of the murder of millions of unborn children
- Illegal aliens will be treated as such
- The family-killing gay marriage will likely go back into the closet
- A strong defense system ready to fight anywhere in the world
- ACTION when it is needed

President Bush, in his own get-out-the-vote appeal, told Republicans:"The consequences of not succeeding this fall are dire for our agenda for America." Never has George W. Bush spoken truer words.

If Democrats keep control over Congress:
- Nancy Pelosi would become Speaker of the House (That is EXTREMELY scary!)
- Jim McDermott or Charlie Rangel would be in charge of House Ways & Means Committee
- Harry Reid would likely rise to Senate Majority Leader
- President Bush's tax cuts would be repealed
- Higher taxes for everyone -- especially the middle class
- Social Security funds would continue to be raided by Congress
- Probability of 2-3 more liberal, activist Supreme Court judges
- "Undocumented aliens" would be allowed to waltz in to the US and sign up for welfare, medicaid, etc.
- Gay marriage will be embraced -- without the truth of ALL the problems it will create
- Base closings and huge military cutbacks -- resulting in an ill-prepared military
- TALK, POLLS, RHETORIC -- when action is needed

Democratic victories essentially could block Bush's remaining agenda and usher in a period of intense partisan bickering over nearly every measure to come before Congress. Loss of either chamber also could subject his administration to endless congressional inquiries and investigations. Devvy Kidd adds, "What you do think will happen if the Democrats take control of Congress? They will do the same thing they did for 40 years prior to the Republicans taking control in 1995: they will spend you into poverty, push every destructive social behavior out there ("rights" for sodomites, same sex marriage and teaching this filth to school children). They will continue their quest to violate the true meaning of the Second Amendment..."

• If you remember Mark Foley, don't forget Monica Lewinsky.

• If you remember the war in Iraq, don't forget more than a dozen terrorist attacks on US citizens BEFORE the war in Iraq.

• If you think there are problems in Iraq now, don't forget what happened when we cut & run under a Democratic administration -- thousands of Iraqis died at the hands of Saddam Hussein's death squads, terrorism from the Middle East grew exponentially and 9/11 happened on OUR soil.

• If you remember ANY negative economic news, remember who signed away MILLIONS of American jobs -- HINT: Bill Clinton and NAFTA, GATT and/or CAFTA!

• If you remember (and dislike) a hard stance on North Korea and Iran becoming part of the nuclear club, don't forget who fed them the technology: China. And who gave China a huge leap forward in technology (including military secrets): The Democratic Administration of Bill Clinton and Al Gore (the men John Kerry idolizes)
  

• If you remember the deficit, don't forget what we've been through the past 6 years (Dot.com bust, 9/11 attacks -- and all of the economic hardship after it, the hurricanes, floods, fires)

• If you remember what is called a "slow federal reaction" to Hurricane Katrina, don't forget who caused the slow reaction -- Democrat Mayor Ray Nagin and a Democrat Governor (neither of whom seemed to have enough sense to poor pee out of a boot).

Jackj writes on the Republicans & Conservatives blog, "I would like to chastise the Republicans, but not at the price of electing Dems. The Dems did not improve during their time in the wilderness. On the contrary, they seemed to have moved left and become even more squishy." I agree! I would like to chastise the Republicans, too. BUT, certainly not at the price of electing liberals -- especially from the Democratic party. My childrendeserve better as they enter adulthood and start families of their own. Don't yours?