This follows the previous articles I sent about the Jihad and Crusades. This article shows how the Jihad continued after the Crusades and also describes how non-Muslims lived in conquered lands for up to 14 centuries. I hope you find this historic background material to be interesting.
Jihad in the Modern EraFollowing its defeat at the walls of Vienna in 1683, Islam entered a period of strategic decline in which it was increasingly dominated by the rising European colonial powers. Due to its material weakness vis-à-vis the West, dar al-Islam was unable to prosecute large-scale military campaigns into infidel territory. The Islamic Empire, then ruled by the Ottoman Turks, was reduced to fending of the increasingly predatory European powers.In 1856, Western pressure compelled the Ottoman government to suspend the dhimma under which the Empire's non-Muslim subjects labored. This provided hitherto unknown opportunities for social and personal improvement by the former dhimmis, but it also fomented resentment by orthodox Muslims who saw this as a violation of the Sharia and their Allah-given superiority over unbelievers.By the late 19th century, tensions among the European subjects of the Empire broke out into the open when the Ottoman government massacred 30,000 Bulgarians in 1876 for allegedly rebelling against Ottoman rule. Following Western intervention that resulted in Bulgarian independence, the Ottoman government and its Muslim subjects were increasingly nervous about other non-Muslim groups seeking independence.It was in this atmosphere that the first stage of the Armenian genocide took place in 1896 with the slaughter of some 250,000 Armenians. Both civilians and military personnel took place in the massacres. Peter Balakian, in his book, The Burning Tigris, documents the whole horrific story. But the massacres of the 1890s were only the prelude to the much larger holocaust of 1915, which claimed some 1.5 million lives. While various factors contributed to the slaughter, there is no mistaking that the massacres were nothing other than a jihad waged against the Armenians, no longer protected as they were by the dhimma. In 1914, as the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the central powers, an official anti-Christian jihad was proclaimed.
To promote the idea of jihad, the sheikh-ul-Islam’s {the most senior religious leader in the Ottoman Empire} published proclamation summoned the Muslim world to arise and massacre its Christian oppressors. “Oh Moslems,” the document read, “Ye who are smitten with happiness and are on the verge of sacrificing your life and your good for the cause of right, and of braving perils, gather now around the Imperial throne.” In the Ikdam, the Turkish newspaper that had just passed into German ownership, the idea of jihad was underscored: “The deeds of our enemies have brought down the wrath of God. A gleam of hope has appeared. All Mohammedans, young and old, men, women, and children must fulfill their duty. … If we do it, the deliverance of the subjected Mohammedan kingdoms is assured.” … “He who kills even one unbeliever,” one pamphlet read, “of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God.” (quoted in Balakian, The Burning Tigris, 169-70.)The anti-Christian jihad culminated in 1922 at Smyrna, on the Mediterranean coast, where 150,000 Greek Christians were massacred by the Turkish army under the indifferent eye of Allied warships. All in, from 1896-1923, some 2.5 million Christians were killed, the first modern genocide, which to this day is denied by the Turkish government.Since the breakup of the Islamic Empire following World War I, various jihads have been fought around the globe by the independent Muslim nations and sub-state jihadist groups. The most sustained effort has been directed against Israel, which has committed the unpardonable sin of rebuilding dar al-harb on land formerly a part of dar al-Islam. Other prominent jihads include that fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Muslim Bosnians against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, the Muslim Albanians against the Serbs in Kosovo, and the Chechens against the Russians in the Caucasus. Jihads have also been waged throughout northern Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, and a host of other places throughout the world. In addition, the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks around the world have been committed by Muslims, including, of course, the spectacular attacks of 9/11/01 (USA), 3/11/04 (Spain), and 7/7/05 (UK). (For a more comprehensive list of Muslim attacks, visit www.thereligionofpeace.com.)The fact is, the percentage of conflicts in the world today that do not include Islam is pretty small. Islam is making a comeback. DhimmitudeIslam's persecution of non-Muslims is in no way limited to jihad, even though that is the basic relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim world. After the jihad concludes in a given area with the conquest of infidel territory, the dhimma, or treaty of protection, may be granted to the conquered "People of the Book" -- historically, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. The dhimma provides that the life and property of the infidel are exempted from jihad for as long as the Muslim rulers permit, which has generally meant for as long as the subject non-Muslims -- the dhimmi -- prove economically useful to the Islamic state. The Quran spells out the payment of the jizya (poll- or head-tax; Sura 9:29), which is the most conspicuous means by which the Muslim overlords exploit the dhimmi. But the jizya is not merely economic in its function; it exists also to humiliate the dhimmi and impress on him the superiority of Islam. Al-Maghili, a fifteenth century Muslim theologian, explains:
On the day of payment {of the jizya} they {the dhimmi} shall be assembled in a public place like the suq {place of commerce}. They should be standing there waiting in the lowest and dirtiest place. The acting officials representing the Law shall be placed above them and shall adopt a threatening attitude so that it seems to them, as well as to others, that our object is to degrade them by pretending to take their possessions. They will realize that we are doing them a favor in accepting from them the jizya and letting them go free. (Al-Maghili, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 361.)Islamic law codifies various other restrictions on the dhimmi, all of which derive from the Quran and the Sunnah. Several hundred years of Islamic thought on the right treatment of dhimmi peoples is summed up by Al-Damanhuri, a seventeenth century head of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most prestigious center for learning in the Muslim world:
… just as the dhimmis are prohibited from building churches, other things also are prohibited to them. They must not assist an unbeliever against a Muslim … raise the cross in an Islamic assemblage … display banners on their own holidays; bear arms … or keep them in their homes. Should they do anything of the sort, they must be punished, and the arms seized. … The Companions [of the Prophet] agreed upon these points in order to demonstrate the abasement of the infidel and to protect the weak believer's faith. For if he sees them humbled, he will not be inclined toward their belief, which is not true if he sees them in power, pride, or luxury garb, as all this urges him to esteem them and incline toward them, in view of his own distress and poverty. Yet esteem for the unbeliever is unbelief. (Al-Damanhuri, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 382.)The Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian peoples of the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe suffered under the oppressive strictures of the dhimma for centuries. The status of these dhimmi peoples is comparable in many ways to that of former slaves in the post-bellum American South. Forbidden to construct houses of worship or repair extant ones, economically crippled by the jizya, socially humiliated, legally discriminated against, and generally kept in a permanent state of weakness and vulnerability by the Muslim overlords, it should not be surprising that their numbers dwindled, in many places to the point of extinction. The generally misunderstood decline of Islamic civilization over the past several centuries is easily explained by the demographic decline of the dhimmi populations, which had provided the principle engines of technical and administrative competence. Should the dhimmi violate the conditions of the dhimma -- perhaps through practicing his own religion indiscreetly or failing to show adequate deference to a Muslim -- then the jihad resumes. At various times in Islamic history, dhimmi peoples rose above their subjected status, and this was often the occasion for violent reprisals by Muslim populations who believed them to have violated the terms of the dhimma. Medieval Andalusia (Moorish Spain) is often pointed out by Muslim apologists as a kind of multicultural wonderland, in which Jews and Christians were permitted by the Islamic government to rise through the ranks of learning and government administration. What we are not told, however, is that this relaxation of the disabilities resulted in widespread rioting on the part of the Muslim populace that killed hundreds of dhimmis, mainly Jews. By refusing to convert to Islam and straying from the traditional constraints of the dhimma (even at the behest of the Islamic government, which was in need of capable manpower), the dhimmi had implicitly chosen the only other option permitted by the Quran: death.
www.jihadwatch.com
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
After Jihad, then Crusades
wanted to send this article which describes the Crusades. The crusades did happen after 4 Centuries of Jihad against the western world. As the article shows, they were bloody, as all wars are, and are not the way that someone who wants to follow the command about loving your enemies should act, but from a secular point of view, they were a delayed reaction to continual warfare. I hope you find this interesting.
What about the Crusades?The obvious response to this question is, "Well, what about them?" Violence committed in the name of other religions is logically unconnected to the question of whether Islam is violent. But, by mentioning the Crusades, the hope of the Islamic apologist is to draw attention away from Islamic violence and paint religions in general as morally equivalent.In both the Western academia and media as well as in the Islamic world, the Crusades are viewed as wars of aggression fought by bloody-minded Christians against peaceful Muslims. While the Crusades were certainly bloody, they are more accurately understood as a belated Western response to centuries of jihad than as an unprovoked, unilateral attack. Muslim rule in the Holy Land began in the second half of the 7th century during the Arab wave of jihad with the conquests of Damascus and Jerusalem by the second "rightly-guided Caliph," Umar. After the initial bloody jihad, Christian and Jewish life there was tolerated within the strictures of the dhimma and the Muslim Arabs generally permitted Christians abroad to continue to make pilgrimage to their holy sites, a practice which proved lucrative for the Muslim state. In the 11th century, the relatively benign Arab administration of the Holy Land was replaced with that of Seljuk Turks, due to civil war in the Islamic Empire. Throughout the latter half of the 11th century, the Turks waged war against the Christian Byzantine Empire and pushed it back from its strongholds in Antioch and Anatolia (now Turkey). In 1071, Byzantine forces suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in what is now Eastern Turkey. The Turks resumed the jihad in the Holy Land, abusing, robbing, enslaving, and killing Christians there and throughout Asia Minor. They threatened to cut off Christendom from its holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, rebuilt under Byzantine stewardship after it was destroyed by Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1009.It was in this context of a renewed jihad in the Middle East that the Roman Pope, Urban II, issued a call in 1095 for Western Christians to come to the aid of their Eastern cousins (and seems to have harbored the hope of claiming Jerusalem for the Papacy after the Great Schism with Eastern Christianity in 1054). This "armed pilgrimage," in which numerous civilians as well as soldiers took part, would eventually become known years later as the First Crusade. The idea of a "crusade" as we now understand that term, i.e., a Christian "holy war," developed years later with the rise of such organizations as the Knights Templar that made "crusading" a way of life. It worth noting that the most ardent Crusaders, the Franks, were exactly those who had faced jihad and razzias for centuries along the Franco-Spanish border and knew better than most the horrors to which Muslims subjected Christians. At the time of the First Crusade, the populations of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, though ruled by Muslims, were still overwhelmingly Christian. The "Crusading" campaigns of the Western Christian armies were justified at the time as a war liberating the Eastern Christians, whose population, lands, and culture had been devastated by centuries of jihad and dhimmitude. Conquering territory for God in the mode of jihad was an alien idea to Christianity and it should not be surprising that it eventually died out in the West and never gained ascendancy in the East.Following the very bloody capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by the Latin armies and the establishment of the Crusader States in Edessa, Antioch, and Jerusalem, the Muslim and Christian forces fought a see-saw series of wars, in which both parties were guilty of the usual gamut of wartime immorality. Over time, even with reinforcing Crusades waged from Europe, the Crusader States, strung out on precarious lines of communication, slowly succumbed to superior Muslim power. In 1271, the last Christian citadel, Antioch, fell to the Muslims. No longer having to divert forces to subdue the Christian beachhead on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Muslims regrouped for a 400-year-long jihad against Southern and Eastern Europe, which twice reached as far as Vienna before it was halted. In geostrategic terms, the Crusades can be viewed as an attempt by the West to forestall its own destruction at the hands of Islamic jihad by carrying the fight to the enemy. It worked for a while.Significantly, while the West has for some time now lamented the Crusades as mistaken, there has never been any mention from any serious Islamic authority of regret for the centuries and centuries of jihad and dhimmitude perpetrated against other societies. But this is hardly surprising: while religious violence contradicts the fundamentals of Christianity, religious violence is written into Islam's DNA.
What about the Crusades?The obvious response to this question is, "Well, what about them?" Violence committed in the name of other religions is logically unconnected to the question of whether Islam is violent. But, by mentioning the Crusades, the hope of the Islamic apologist is to draw attention away from Islamic violence and paint religions in general as morally equivalent.In both the Western academia and media as well as in the Islamic world, the Crusades are viewed as wars of aggression fought by bloody-minded Christians against peaceful Muslims. While the Crusades were certainly bloody, they are more accurately understood as a belated Western response to centuries of jihad than as an unprovoked, unilateral attack. Muslim rule in the Holy Land began in the second half of the 7th century during the Arab wave of jihad with the conquests of Damascus and Jerusalem by the second "rightly-guided Caliph," Umar. After the initial bloody jihad, Christian and Jewish life there was tolerated within the strictures of the dhimma and the Muslim Arabs generally permitted Christians abroad to continue to make pilgrimage to their holy sites, a practice which proved lucrative for the Muslim state. In the 11th century, the relatively benign Arab administration of the Holy Land was replaced with that of Seljuk Turks, due to civil war in the Islamic Empire. Throughout the latter half of the 11th century, the Turks waged war against the Christian Byzantine Empire and pushed it back from its strongholds in Antioch and Anatolia (now Turkey). In 1071, Byzantine forces suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in what is now Eastern Turkey. The Turks resumed the jihad in the Holy Land, abusing, robbing, enslaving, and killing Christians there and throughout Asia Minor. They threatened to cut off Christendom from its holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, rebuilt under Byzantine stewardship after it was destroyed by Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1009.It was in this context of a renewed jihad in the Middle East that the Roman Pope, Urban II, issued a call in 1095 for Western Christians to come to the aid of their Eastern cousins (and seems to have harbored the hope of claiming Jerusalem for the Papacy after the Great Schism with Eastern Christianity in 1054). This "armed pilgrimage," in which numerous civilians as well as soldiers took part, would eventually become known years later as the First Crusade. The idea of a "crusade" as we now understand that term, i.e., a Christian "holy war," developed years later with the rise of such organizations as the Knights Templar that made "crusading" a way of life. It worth noting that the most ardent Crusaders, the Franks, were exactly those who had faced jihad and razzias for centuries along the Franco-Spanish border and knew better than most the horrors to which Muslims subjected Christians. At the time of the First Crusade, the populations of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, though ruled by Muslims, were still overwhelmingly Christian. The "Crusading" campaigns of the Western Christian armies were justified at the time as a war liberating the Eastern Christians, whose population, lands, and culture had been devastated by centuries of jihad and dhimmitude. Conquering territory for God in the mode of jihad was an alien idea to Christianity and it should not be surprising that it eventually died out in the West and never gained ascendancy in the East.Following the very bloody capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by the Latin armies and the establishment of the Crusader States in Edessa, Antioch, and Jerusalem, the Muslim and Christian forces fought a see-saw series of wars, in which both parties were guilty of the usual gamut of wartime immorality. Over time, even with reinforcing Crusades waged from Europe, the Crusader States, strung out on precarious lines of communication, slowly succumbed to superior Muslim power. In 1271, the last Christian citadel, Antioch, fell to the Muslims. No longer having to divert forces to subdue the Christian beachhead on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Muslims regrouped for a 400-year-long jihad against Southern and Eastern Europe, which twice reached as far as Vienna before it was halted. In geostrategic terms, the Crusades can be viewed as an attempt by the West to forestall its own destruction at the hands of Islamic jihad by carrying the fight to the enemy. It worked for a while.Significantly, while the West has for some time now lamented the Crusades as mistaken, there has never been any mention from any serious Islamic authority of regret for the centuries and centuries of jihad and dhimmitude perpetrated against other societies. But this is hardly surprising: while religious violence contradicts the fundamentals of Christianity, religious violence is written into Islam's DNA.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Jihad Before Crusades II
I previously sent an article showing how the Crusades happened after 4 CENTURIES of jihad against the west. I wanted to send this as a follow up article which shows some more of the events that happened before the Crusades began. I hope you find this to be interesting history.
The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 ADSome twenty-five years before the first Crusading army set out from central Europe for the Holy Land, the Turkish (Ottoman) armies began an assault on the Christian Byzantine Empire, which had ruled what is now Turkey since the Roman Empire's capital was moved to Constantinople in 325 AD. At the battle of Manzikert, in 1071, the Christian forces suffered a disastrous defeat, which left much of Anatolia (Turkey) open to invasion. This second wave of jihad was temporarily held up by the invading Latin Armies during the Crusades but, by the beginning of the 14th century, the Turks were threatening Constantinople and Europe itself.In the West, Roman Catholic armies were bit by bit forcing Muslim forces down the Iberian peninsula, until, in 1492, they were definitively expelled (the Reconquista). In Eastern Europe, however, Islam continued in the ascendant. One of the most significant engagements between the invading Muslims and the indigenous peoples of the region was the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks annihilated a multinational army under the Serbian King, St. Lazar, though their progress into Europe was significantly slowed. After numerous attempts dating back to the seventh century, Constantinople, the jewel of Eastern Christendom, finally fell in 1453 to the armies of Sultan Mahomet II. Lest one ascribe the atrocities of the first wave of jihad to the "Arabness" of its perpetrators, the Turks showed they were fully capable of living up to the principles of the Quran and the Sunnah. Paul Fregosi in his book Jihad describes the scene following the final assault on Constantinople:
Several thousand of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles, servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph} Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognized Constantine {XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse's legs under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the Ottoman empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him. (Fregosi, Jihad, 256-7.) This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King, John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery from as far away as Ireland into the 19th century.
The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 ADSome twenty-five years before the first Crusading army set out from central Europe for the Holy Land, the Turkish (Ottoman) armies began an assault on the Christian Byzantine Empire, which had ruled what is now Turkey since the Roman Empire's capital was moved to Constantinople in 325 AD. At the battle of Manzikert, in 1071, the Christian forces suffered a disastrous defeat, which left much of Anatolia (Turkey) open to invasion. This second wave of jihad was temporarily held up by the invading Latin Armies during the Crusades but, by the beginning of the 14th century, the Turks were threatening Constantinople and Europe itself.In the West, Roman Catholic armies were bit by bit forcing Muslim forces down the Iberian peninsula, until, in 1492, they were definitively expelled (the Reconquista). In Eastern Europe, however, Islam continued in the ascendant. One of the most significant engagements between the invading Muslims and the indigenous peoples of the region was the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks annihilated a multinational army under the Serbian King, St. Lazar, though their progress into Europe was significantly slowed. After numerous attempts dating back to the seventh century, Constantinople, the jewel of Eastern Christendom, finally fell in 1453 to the armies of Sultan Mahomet II. Lest one ascribe the atrocities of the first wave of jihad to the "Arabness" of its perpetrators, the Turks showed they were fully capable of living up to the principles of the Quran and the Sunnah. Paul Fregosi in his book Jihad describes the scene following the final assault on Constantinople:
Several thousand of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles, servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph} Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognized Constantine {XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse's legs under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the Ottoman empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him. (Fregosi, Jihad, 256-7.) This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King, John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery from as far away as Ireland into the 19th century.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Jihad Before Crusades
I wanted to send this article which is historic in nature, which describes the Jihad in the centuries before the Crusades began. Of course the Crusades themselves were wars that weren't righteous in the eyes of God who says to love your enemies, but from a purely worldly point of view, they were wars that were begun after 4 centuries of Jihad. Anyway, I thought you might find this interesting.
i. The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 ADNear the end of his life, Muhammad sent letters to the great empires of the Middle East demanding their submission to his authority. This dispels any notion that the Prophet intended Islam's expansion to stop with Arabia. Indeed, it is only logical that the one true religion, revealed by the final and fullest prophet, should have universal sway. Thus, as Muhammad had fought and subdued the peoples of the Arabian peninsula, his successors Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (known as "the four rightly-guided Caliphs") and other Caliphs fought and subdued the people of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe in the name of Allah.
Volume 4, Book 53, Number 386; Narrated Jubair bin Haiya: Umar {the second Caliph} sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans. ? When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau {Persia} came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, "Let one of you talk to me!" Al-Mughira replied, ? "Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says: "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master."Unleashing upon the world the blitzkrieg of its day, Islam rapidly spread into the territories of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe in the decades after Muhammad's death. The creaking Byzantine and Persian powers, having battled each other into mutual decline, offered little resistance to this unanticipated onslaught. The Arab Muslim armies charged into the Holy Land, conquered what is now Iraq and Iran, then swept west across North Africa, into Spain, and finally into France. The Muslim offensive was finally halted in the West at the Battle of Poitiers/Tours, not far from Paris, in 732 AD. In the east, the jihad penetrated deep into Central Asia. As Muhammad had plundered his foes, so his successors also stripped the conquered areas -- incomparably richer both materially and culturally than the desolate sands of Arabia -- of their wealth and manpower. Almost overnight, the more advanced civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and Iberia saw their agriculture, native religions, and populations destroyed or plundered. Save for a handful of walled cities that managed to negotiate conditional surrenders, the catastrophes those lands suffered were very nearly complete.Bat Ye'or, the leading scholar of Islam's expansion and its treatment of non-Muslims, has provided an inestimable service through the compilation and translation of numerous primary source documents describing centuries of Islamic conquest. She includes these documents in her works on Islamic history and the plight of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the history of jihad, the slaughter of civilians, the desecration of churches, and the plundering of the countryside are commonplace. Here is Michael the Syrian's account of the Muslim invasion of Cappodocia (southern Turkey) in 650 AD under Caliph Umar:
… when Muawiya {the Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into slavery -- men and women, boys and girls -- and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country rejoicing. (Michael the Syrian, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 276-7.)The following description by the Muslim historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the destruction wrought upon the infidels, including noncombatants.
In 177 <17>, Hisham, prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions, then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder. He returned safe and sound, dragging behind him God alone knows how much booty. This is one of the most famous expeditions of the Muslims in Spain. In 223 <2>, Abd ar-Rahman b. al Hakam, sovereign of Spain, sent an army against Alava; it encamped near Hisn al-Gharat, which it besieged; it seized the booty that was found there, killed the inhabitants and withdrew, carrying off women and children as captives. In 231 <6>, a Muslim army advanced into Galicia on the territory of the infidels, where it pillaged and massacred everyone. In 246 <27>, Muhammad b. Abd ar-Rahman advanced with many troops and a large military apparatus against the region of Pamplona. He reduced, ruined and ravaged this territory, where he pillaged and sowed death. (Ibn al-Athir, Annals, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 281-2.)This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.
i. The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 ADNear the end of his life, Muhammad sent letters to the great empires of the Middle East demanding their submission to his authority. This dispels any notion that the Prophet intended Islam's expansion to stop with Arabia. Indeed, it is only logical that the one true religion, revealed by the final and fullest prophet, should have universal sway. Thus, as Muhammad had fought and subdued the peoples of the Arabian peninsula, his successors Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (known as "the four rightly-guided Caliphs") and other Caliphs fought and subdued the people of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe in the name of Allah.
Volume 4, Book 53, Number 386; Narrated Jubair bin Haiya: Umar {the second Caliph} sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans. ? When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau {Persia} came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, "Let one of you talk to me!" Al-Mughira replied, ? "Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says: "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master."Unleashing upon the world the blitzkrieg of its day, Islam rapidly spread into the territories of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe in the decades after Muhammad's death. The creaking Byzantine and Persian powers, having battled each other into mutual decline, offered little resistance to this unanticipated onslaught. The Arab Muslim armies charged into the Holy Land, conquered what is now Iraq and Iran, then swept west across North Africa, into Spain, and finally into France. The Muslim offensive was finally halted in the West at the Battle of Poitiers/Tours, not far from Paris, in 732 AD. In the east, the jihad penetrated deep into Central Asia. As Muhammad had plundered his foes, so his successors also stripped the conquered areas -- incomparably richer both materially and culturally than the desolate sands of Arabia -- of their wealth and manpower. Almost overnight, the more advanced civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and Iberia saw their agriculture, native religions, and populations destroyed or plundered. Save for a handful of walled cities that managed to negotiate conditional surrenders, the catastrophes those lands suffered were very nearly complete.Bat Ye'or, the leading scholar of Islam's expansion and its treatment of non-Muslims, has provided an inestimable service through the compilation and translation of numerous primary source documents describing centuries of Islamic conquest. She includes these documents in her works on Islamic history and the plight of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the history of jihad, the slaughter of civilians, the desecration of churches, and the plundering of the countryside are commonplace. Here is Michael the Syrian's account of the Muslim invasion of Cappodocia (southern Turkey) in 650 AD under Caliph Umar:
… when Muawiya {the Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into slavery -- men and women, boys and girls -- and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country rejoicing. (Michael the Syrian, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 276-7.)The following description by the Muslim historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the destruction wrought upon the infidels, including noncombatants.
In 177 <17>, Hisham, prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions, then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder. He returned safe and sound, dragging behind him God alone knows how much booty. This is one of the most famous expeditions of the Muslims in Spain. In 223 <2>, Abd ar-Rahman b. al Hakam, sovereign of Spain, sent an army against Alava; it encamped near Hisn al-Gharat, which it besieged; it seized the booty that was found there, killed the inhabitants and withdrew, carrying off women and children as captives. In 231 <6>, a Muslim army advanced into Galicia on the territory of the infidels, where it pillaged and massacred everyone. In 246 <27>, Muhammad b. Abd ar-Rahman advanced with many troops and a large military apparatus against the region of Pamplona. He reduced, ruined and ravaged this territory, where he pillaged and sowed death. (Ibn al-Athir, Annals, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 281-2.)This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.
California's Judicial Consequences
I wanted to send this article which shows the consequences to the country because of the Judicial decision of California's Supreme Court. For background information, you can click here http://brianleesblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/californias-supreme-court.html It is sad for all of us to see this happening.
California Court's Judicial Activism Threatens the Institution of Marriage
by Jennifer A. Marshall, Daniel P Moloney, Ph.D. and Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
WebMemo #1932
On May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court overturned California voters' 61 percent majority, expressed in 2000's Proposition 22, in favor of affirming marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The California court's decision is the latest in a series of judicial and legislative efforts to institutionalize a social experiment in its early stages by elevating it in law to the status of the oldest of institutions: marriage.The legislature previously passed a domestic partnership law granting same-sex couples the benefits and privileges of marriage. What is happening now is no minor adjustment, nor a slight change in degree that just extends benefits or rights to a larger class, but a substantive change in the essence of the institution. The court's decision does not expand marriage; it alters its core meaning. To redefine marriage so that it is not intrinsically related to the relationship between fathers, mothers, and children formally severs the institution from its nature and purpose, remaking the institution into a mere contract between any two individuals.Beyond the Competence of the JudiciaryThe decision is a masterpiece of judicial activism. It is long on public policy preferences, and extremely short on law. Questions like what constitutes marriage are beyond the competence and expertise of judges. Decisions like these weaken the judicial system by causing the electorate to question the legitimacy of judicial decision-making.As with Roe v. Wade, this decision is troubling from three angles: on the process, on the reasoning, and on the substance.
It was an instance of the judiciary usurping the political process.
It was poorly reasoned, abandoning the original meaning of California's constitution in order to invent a right to same-sex "marriage."
It was wrong on the substance, comparing support for traditional marriage to racism, disregarding the nature and purpose of marriage, and ignoring the reasons for which the state has always set marriage apart from other household forms. The California court's decision treats the push for same-sex "marriage" as the latest wave of the civil rights movement. The decision repeatedly declares that sexual orientation is just like race or ethnicity, and traditional views about marriage are the new racism. If the other branches of government aren't moving fast enough to enshrine this new "civil right" and combat this new "discrimination," then the courts will have to do it for them.The first court faced with this argument made the obvious point: "in commonsense and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex" [Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn., 1971)].Overthrowing Cultural NormsThe decision isn't about "fairness." It isn't about health care benefits. It's about officially elevating homosexual relationships to the unique status of marriage.Across America, proponents of official recognition of same-sex relationships appealed to tolerance and fairness. But the California decision reveals that the push for same-sex "marriage" is not about giving same-sex couples the same health-care benefits and hospital visitation rights that married couples have. The state of California already gave same-sex couples all that. Instead, the California decision reveals that the push for same-sex "marriage" is about overthrowing cultural norms that have properly set traditional marriage apart from other household forms on the basis of tradition, legal precedent, and social-science evidence.Government's interest in marriage has been based primarily on its interest in the welfare of the next generation. Among the many types of social relationships, marriage has always had a special place in all legal traditions, our own included, because it is the essential foundation of the intact family—a father, a mother and children—and no other family form has been able to provide a commensurate level of social security.During the 1990s, a serious public policy debate resulted when social science data showed the consequences of several decades of experimentation with family forms. Out of this increased awareness grew a movement for policy and cultural changes to reinforce and restore marriage in America. By contrast, the current debate over same-sex "marriage" is not anchored in sound research, and data on the consequences of children being brought up by same-sex couples remains scarce. Same-sex "marriage" advocates propose that we institutionalize a social experiment in its early stages by elevating it in law to the status of the oldest of institutions.Changing the definition of marriage has vast cultural consequences, including religious liberty implications. When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court invented a version of same-sex "marriage," the decision had a ripple effect that significantly affected Massachusetts civil society—including forcing Catholic Charities out of the adoption business because of their religious objections to placing children with same-sex couples. Because the California court changed the legal norm to make same-sex "marriage" a fundamental right that the state is obligated to protect and enforce, it will be illegal, a violation of people's rights, to treat same-sex "marriages" as different from traditional marriages. This will alter daily life from dozens of angles.ConclusionThe activist California Supreme Court's decision creating a constitutional right to same-sex "marriage" was a bad decision. Though supporters of same-sex "marriage" may like the outcome, by usurping the question from the political branches—which in California had been willing to compromise concerning domestic partnership for same-sex couples—the Court creates an all-or-nothing question that can no longer be answered by ordinary political means. The decision makes it all the more likely that California will ban same-sex "marriage" by means of a state constitutional amendment in November 2008 in order to take the issue back from the judiciary. California already had a law defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman, but the state Supreme Court brushed it aside, claiming that the law violated the state constitution. The California decision shows that a state constitutional amendment is vital to the protection of marriage. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/wm1932.cfm
California Court's Judicial Activism Threatens the Institution of Marriage
by Jennifer A. Marshall, Daniel P Moloney, Ph.D. and Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
WebMemo #1932
On May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court overturned California voters' 61 percent majority, expressed in 2000's Proposition 22, in favor of affirming marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The California court's decision is the latest in a series of judicial and legislative efforts to institutionalize a social experiment in its early stages by elevating it in law to the status of the oldest of institutions: marriage.The legislature previously passed a domestic partnership law granting same-sex couples the benefits and privileges of marriage. What is happening now is no minor adjustment, nor a slight change in degree that just extends benefits or rights to a larger class, but a substantive change in the essence of the institution. The court's decision does not expand marriage; it alters its core meaning. To redefine marriage so that it is not intrinsically related to the relationship between fathers, mothers, and children formally severs the institution from its nature and purpose, remaking the institution into a mere contract between any two individuals.Beyond the Competence of the JudiciaryThe decision is a masterpiece of judicial activism. It is long on public policy preferences, and extremely short on law. Questions like what constitutes marriage are beyond the competence and expertise of judges. Decisions like these weaken the judicial system by causing the electorate to question the legitimacy of judicial decision-making.As with Roe v. Wade, this decision is troubling from three angles: on the process, on the reasoning, and on the substance.
It was an instance of the judiciary usurping the political process.
It was poorly reasoned, abandoning the original meaning of California's constitution in order to invent a right to same-sex "marriage."
It was wrong on the substance, comparing support for traditional marriage to racism, disregarding the nature and purpose of marriage, and ignoring the reasons for which the state has always set marriage apart from other household forms. The California court's decision treats the push for same-sex "marriage" as the latest wave of the civil rights movement. The decision repeatedly declares that sexual orientation is just like race or ethnicity, and traditional views about marriage are the new racism. If the other branches of government aren't moving fast enough to enshrine this new "civil right" and combat this new "discrimination," then the courts will have to do it for them.The first court faced with this argument made the obvious point: "in commonsense and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex" [Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn., 1971)].Overthrowing Cultural NormsThe decision isn't about "fairness." It isn't about health care benefits. It's about officially elevating homosexual relationships to the unique status of marriage.Across America, proponents of official recognition of same-sex relationships appealed to tolerance and fairness. But the California decision reveals that the push for same-sex "marriage" is not about giving same-sex couples the same health-care benefits and hospital visitation rights that married couples have. The state of California already gave same-sex couples all that. Instead, the California decision reveals that the push for same-sex "marriage" is about overthrowing cultural norms that have properly set traditional marriage apart from other household forms on the basis of tradition, legal precedent, and social-science evidence.Government's interest in marriage has been based primarily on its interest in the welfare of the next generation. Among the many types of social relationships, marriage has always had a special place in all legal traditions, our own included, because it is the essential foundation of the intact family—a father, a mother and children—and no other family form has been able to provide a commensurate level of social security.During the 1990s, a serious public policy debate resulted when social science data showed the consequences of several decades of experimentation with family forms. Out of this increased awareness grew a movement for policy and cultural changes to reinforce and restore marriage in America. By contrast, the current debate over same-sex "marriage" is not anchored in sound research, and data on the consequences of children being brought up by same-sex couples remains scarce. Same-sex "marriage" advocates propose that we institutionalize a social experiment in its early stages by elevating it in law to the status of the oldest of institutions.Changing the definition of marriage has vast cultural consequences, including religious liberty implications. When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court invented a version of same-sex "marriage," the decision had a ripple effect that significantly affected Massachusetts civil society—including forcing Catholic Charities out of the adoption business because of their religious objections to placing children with same-sex couples. Because the California court changed the legal norm to make same-sex "marriage" a fundamental right that the state is obligated to protect and enforce, it will be illegal, a violation of people's rights, to treat same-sex "marriages" as different from traditional marriages. This will alter daily life from dozens of angles.ConclusionThe activist California Supreme Court's decision creating a constitutional right to same-sex "marriage" was a bad decision. Though supporters of same-sex "marriage" may like the outcome, by usurping the question from the political branches—which in California had been willing to compromise concerning domestic partnership for same-sex couples—the Court creates an all-or-nothing question that can no longer be answered by ordinary political means. The decision makes it all the more likely that California will ban same-sex "marriage" by means of a state constitutional amendment in November 2008 in order to take the issue back from the judiciary. California already had a law defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman, but the state Supreme Court brushed it aside, claiming that the law violated the state constitution. The California decision shows that a state constitutional amendment is vital to the protection of marriage. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/wm1932.cfm
Marriage, the Courts, and the Constitution
California itself passed a law by the majority of its citizens that was overturned by the court so the danger is which of the other states with definition of marriage laws can be secure in knowing that their own laws will not be overturned? That is a danger of this and people who are same-sex married in California may try to get other states' laws thrown out by the court rather than by voting out these laws. I put the article below to explain what I meant. Hopefully the chaos from this stops soon.
A link to what the states' current position on same-sex marriage is
http://marriage.about.com/cs/marriagelicenses/a/samesexcomp.htm
An article here
A Defining Moment: Marriage, the Courts, and the Constitution
by Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
Backgrounder #1759
What was once an important debate over the nature, purpose, and legal status of marriage has emerged as a critical national issue, the resolution of which will shape the future of our society and the course of constitutional government in the United States.
The debate has taken form in courts throughout the nation. A series of significant judicial decisions--beginning with that of a trial court judge in Hawaii, followed by a superior court judge in Alaska, and then by the Vermont Supreme Court--has brought the issue of homosexual "marriage" to the forefront of our nation's attention. Last November, a 4-3 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared that traditional marriage upholds persistent prejudices and that couples of the same sex have a right to marry in that state.
Despite numerous efforts to block or delay the Massachusetts court's controversial edict, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been forced to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples since May 17. This decision will remake the entire social structure of the state of Massachusetts and trigger state and federal litigation throughout the United States.
These judicial decisions--as well as the actions of local officials who, intentionally contrary to state law, have issued thousands of fraudulent marriage licenses to same-sex couples--seek to redefine the institution of marriage by judicial fiat and affirm homosexual "marriage" as a fundamental civil right that the federal government has a constitutional obligation to secure nationwide.
Faced with such a concerted legal and political effort to deconstruct and thereby undermine one of the most basic institutions of civil society, policymakers must now take immediate steps at both the state and federal levels to protect marriage, prevent judicial usurpation, and uphold the rule of law.
Although the amendment process should never be taken lightly, and although it is an extremely difficult endeavor, it is now the prudent and timely course--for the sake of constitutional government and the sake of marriage--to amend the U.S. Constitution to preserve marriage as the legal union between one man and one woman.
What Is at Stake
For thousands of years, on the basis of experience, tradition, and legal precedent, every society and every major religious faith have upheld marriage as a unique relationship by which a man and a woman are joined together for the primary purpose of forming and maintaining a family. This overwhelming consensus results from the fact that the union of man and woman is apparent and manifest in the most basic and evident truths of human nature.
Marriage is the formal recognition of this relationship by society and its laws. While individual marriages are recognized by government, the institution of marriage pre-exists and is antecedent to the institution of government, which in turn presupposes and depends on the institution of marriage. Society's interest in uniquely elevating the status of marriage among human relationships is that marriage is the necessary foundation of the family, and thus necessary for societal existence and well-being.
The basic building block of society is the family, which is the primary institution through which children are raised, nurtured, and educated, and develop into adults. Marriage is the cornerstone of the family: It produces children, provides them with mothers and fathers, and is the framework through which relationships among mothers, fathers, and children are established and maintained. Only in the context of family built on the foundation of marriage can the sometimes competing needs and interests of men, women, and children be harmonized.
Because of its characteristic relationship with the family, marriage is uniquely beneficial to society. Based on existing studies comparing two-parent and single-parent households, social science overwhelmingly demonstrates that children do far better when they are raised by two married parents in a stable family relationship and that children raised in other household structures are subject to significantly increased risk of harm.
Evidence further suggests that one reason children do better in a married household is not just the stability of having two parents, but the fact that a male and a female parent each bring distinctive strengths, perspectives, and characteristics to the family unit that benefit both children and the parents. Although we have little information concerning children raised in households with same-sex parents, what we do know is that marriage between a man and a woman provides unique social, economic, and health benefits for children, adults, and society in general.
Moreover, because of the shared obligations and generational relationships that accrue with marriage, the institution brings significant stability, continuity, and meaning to human relationships and plays an important role in transferring basic cultural knowledge and civilization to future generations.
In the end, despite all the changes that law and cultural trends have wrought concerning marriage--despite the laws concerning prenuptial agreements, divorce, tax, and property that treat marriage as a contract--it has never before been, nor is it now completely, the case that marriage is a mere contract. Society has changed the form, but never the substance, of marriage; and it is the substance of marriage--its very nature, definition, and purpose--that creates and justifies its unique position as a social institution and continues to give lawmakers strong and reasonable arguments for upholding traditional marriage and protecting it in law.
The Threat to Marriage
Marriage is being challenged by a number of state and federal court decisions that seek to overthrow the customs, laws, and social norms of human experience.
In 1993, a plurality of the Hawaii Supreme Court declared that the state's existing marriage statute was a form of "sex discrimination" that could be justified only by a "compelling state interest."1 Three years later, a Hawaii trial court ruled that the state's marriage law violated the Hawaii constitution.2 In response, the people of Hawaii amended their state constitution to allow the legislature to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples, and the legislature passed a Marriage Protection Act that defined marriage as the union between one man and one woman.
In 1996, in the face of this unprecedented circumstance, the United States Congress passed a bipartisan federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), signed by then-President Bill Clinton, that both defines marriage "for all purposes of federal law" as the union of one man and one woman and clarifies that the effect portion of the "Full Faith and Credit" clause of the U.S. Constitution does not require that states be forced to recognize as a marriage any union other than that of one man and one woman.3
In 1998, after cases in California, Florida, and New York failed to establish the recognition of same-sex "marriages," a superior court judge in Alaska declared that "the choice of a life partner is personal, intimate, and subject to the protection of the right to privacy" and ruled that the Alaska marriage statute violated the state constitution.4 In response, Alaska voters approved a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
The next year, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the legislature must grant full and equal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples, and the Vermont legislature was forced to pass an extensive "civil unions" law that provides virtually all protections and benefits afforded to civil marriage.5
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Lawrence v. Texas that homosexuals, like heterosexuals, have the right to "seek autonomy" in their relationships and cited "personal decisions relating to marriage" as an important area of that autonomy. The Court also noted that whether a majority of the public opposes "a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice."6
Massachusetts Rejects Marriage
In November 2003, seizing upon the premise dangled before it by the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, a divided Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 4-3 that homosexual couples are legally entitled to marriage under the Massachusetts state constitution.
The court decided that traditional marriage "is rooted in persistent prejudices" and "works a deep and scarring hardship on a very real segment of the community for no rational reason." Marriage is "a caste-like system," added the concurrence, defended by nothing more than a "mantra of tradition."
On the premise that marriage is "an evolving paradigm," t he court reformulated the common-law definition of civil marriage to mean "the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others," declaring that "the right to marry means little if it does not include the right to marry the person of one's choice, subject to appropriate government restrictions in the interests of public health, safety, and welfare."
The court stayed its entry of judgment for 180 days "to permit the Legislature to take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of this opinion."7 When the state Senate asked whether a "civil unions" bill would satisfy the ruling, the court rejected the alternative, writing that traditional marriage amounts to "invidious discrimination" and that "no amount of tinkering would remove that stain."8
The state legislature in convention responded by passing an amendment to the state constitution that would effectively overturn the court's decision, but because of the lengthy constitutional amendment process in Massachusetts, the amendment cannot be enacted prior to the scheduled enforcement of the decision, which the court adamantly has refused to delay further.
The Redefinition of Marriage
The argument of these judges is that homosexual "marriage" is simply the extension of privileges to a discriminated class in the name of civil rights. The parallel is made to the Supreme Court's striking down, as instances of arbitrary and invidious discrimination, statutes that had been drawn according to race, in particular laws against interracial marriage.9
But this analogy does not work. The first court faced with this argument as the ground used to justify same-sex "marriage" made the obvious point: "in commonsense and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex."10
What is happening is no minor adjustment, a slight change in degree that just extends benefits or rights to a larger class, but a substantive change in the essence of the institution. It does not expand marriage; it alters its core meaning, for to redefine marriage so that it is not intrinsically related to the relationship between fathers, mothers, and children formally severs the institution from its nature and purpose.
Expanding marriage supposedly to make it more inclusive, no matter what we call the new arrangement, necessarily ends marriage as we now know it by remaking the institution into something different: a mere contract between any two individuals.
In general, fundamental social changes in long-standing traditions and institutions should be seriously considered only where there is strong consensus for change, as well as clear evidence and powerful reasons for the modification. Change for the sake of social experimentation and perceived "cultural progress" is inherently dangerous and jeopardizes the ordered liberty that is necessary for a free society.
This change threatens the very coherence and stability of marriage as a social institution. Social science today tells us quite a bit about how the experiments of recent decades with household forms other than the intact family--such as cohabitation and single parenting--have affected children and adults alike.
Changing the definition of marriage--or even remaining neutral as to that definition--breaks down the very argument that gives marriage its unique and preferable status in society. If marriage becomes just one form of commitment in a spectrum of sexual relationships rather than a preferred monogamous relationship for the sake of children, the line separating sexual relations within and outside of marriage becomes blurred, and so does the public policy argument against out-of-wedlock births or in favor of abstinence.
Based on current evidence and settled reasoning, it would be a terrible folly to weaken marriage either by elevating non-marital unions to the same position or by lowering the institution of marriage to the status of merely one form of household.
A New Status Quo
Imposed by the courts, the redefinition of marriage is the legal establishment of a new status quo. While it is not correct to say that homosexuality or the advance of same-sex "marriage" is solely to blame--traditional marriage measured in terms of divorce, cohabitation, illegitimacy, and fatherlessness has been in decline for some time--the judicial redefinition of marriage, forced by the push for same-sex "marriage," essentially codifies and affirms these trends.
With time, this new legal status quo will be upheld, applied, and enforced throughout our laws, with implications that go well beyond the immediate decision. With the establishment of homosexual "marriage" as a matter or right, a whole host of laws and regulations will be triggered to assure non-discrimination and equal treatment.
Consider a few possibilities:
Freedom of Association. If homosexual "marriages" are recognized by federal and state governments, there will be no principled reason to oppose new federal laws forbidding discrimination in hiring based on sexual orientation. Churches, synagogues, mosques, religious schools, and faith-based charities, as well as secular organizations of every kind, would be subject to a new kind of government scrutiny.
Free Speech. The legalization of homosexual "marriage" would invite an ongoing assault on individuals and organizations that uphold traditional marriage or have moral or religious objections to the practice of homosexuality. By definition, all dissenters will find themselves at odds with the new political ethos and are likely to be stigmatized as prejudiced and discriminatory. Such characterizations already have been made by activists, politicians, and judges who are sympathetic to the arguments for same-sex "marriage." The legalization of homosexual "marriage" will greatly accelerate these pressures to marginalize the nation's religious communities and the values that define them. In some countries, speaking publicly against homosexuality has been criminalized.
Education. The deconstruction of marriage will affect what children are taught in virtually every subject at public schools. Students will be instructed that marriage, like slavery before it, is a vestige of America's discriminatory past that was overcome by the latest step forward in the advancement of civil rights. At the very least, heterosexual and homosexual relations will be presented in public schools as fundamentally equivalent expressions of individual autonomy.
All told, these changes represent a significant escalation of the cultural debate and divide in our society and could well threaten the civil and religious liberty of individuals and organizations that have moral or religious objections to the new status quo.
What Happens Now?
Advocates of same-sex "marriage" have filed and will continue to file lawsuits in various states seeking recognition of homosexual "marriage" as a constitutional right under state law. At least 20 major lawsuits are pending in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and West Virginia. These suits ask state courts to determine that state constitutional provisions require the recognition of same-sex "marriage." To date, these actions affect only individual states.
The successful implementation of the Massachusetts court's decision will create a strong precedent and significantly increase lawsuits to force its ruling on other states. Inevitably, the organized legal strategy that has brought the issue forward thus far will be surpassed by the political and judicial activism that will result as same-sex couples that are married in Massachusetts demand recognition in the other 49 states.
It is likely that, contrary to existing state laws, some state officials, as well as some city and county officials, will recognize same-sex "marriages" promulgated in Massachusetts.
More problematic, same-sex couples that move from Massachusetts will bring suit in other states, arguing that the state or U.S. Constitution requires that their new state recognize their same-sex "marriage" as valid. These judicial cases and actions by individuals will run up against opposition in the 38 states that have passed state Defense of Marriage Acts, as well as those states that have pre-existing laws that define marriage as the union between one man and one woman.
State courts might recognize same-sex "marriages" pursuant to their state constitutions, overriding clear state policy and state DOMAs. Thus, legal recognition of homosexual "marriage" could be spread by way of state courts on a state-by-state basis.
A state or federal court ruling that a state must recognize same-sex "marriages" pursuant to the U.S. Constitution would assuredly lead to an appeal into the federal court system and eventually bring the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. This would very likely entail a challenge to the federal DOMA.
Under normal circumstances, the federal DOMA would survive constitutional scrutiny. Many thoughtful legal scholars, however, believe that it likely would not withstand activist judges using dubious interpretations of due process or equal protection to advance their policy objectives. Given what is at stake, it is risky to rely solely on the federal DOMA.
In any event, the federal DOMA does not protect the nation from state judges like those in Massachusetts who misconstrue their state constitution to establish same-sex "marriage." Nor does it address various local jurisdictions that openly ignore and violate state marriage laws.
Even if individual states can withstand or postpone direct legal challenges, all states will have to address the very practical and myriad legal problems that same-sex "marriage" generates regarding such issues as adoption, child support and custody, state benefits, and inheritance and property rights. These complications and the legal inconsistencies that are likely to result will increase the likelihood that, at some point, the U.S. Supreme Court will choose to, or be forced to, intervene and resolve the issue for the nation.
If the Supreme Court of the United States gets a word on this issue, it will likely be the last. Assuming the justices follow the logical trend of their own precedents and jurisprudence of recent decades, it would be inconsistent for them not to redefine marriage according to their notions of autonomy, equality, and social progress. And if the United States Supreme Court does redefine marriage, the Court will expect, and many will argue, that the American people should accept their mandate as the final resolution of the issue.
What Can Be Done?
The institution of traditional marriage can be protected through actions taken in the following arenas.
Public Education
Concerted efforts must be made at every level to educate the public, policymakers, and political leaders generally about marriage and current threats to the institution of marriage. While there is a growing consensus in favor of traditional marriage, public confusion about what to do invites strong and consistent moral and political leadership. Several themes are important to this effort.
A clear and compelling case must be made for the nature, substance, and societal importance of marriage.
Marriage as a unique relationship between a man and a woman should be defended on the basis of empirical evidence and studies provided by social science.
A strong case must be made that redefining the institution of marriage undermines the institution, destroys the case for promoting an ideal of marriage, and threatens religious liberty and private institutions.
Legal Policy
Many legal battles are yet to be fought at the state and federal levels, and each of these battles is significant. Judicial decisions in Massachusetts and other localities are but the opening moves in a long-term legal strategy to impose homosexual "marriage" through the courts, circumventing lawmakers and the people before they have an opportunity to react through legislation or the electoral process.
Above and beyond defending existing state laws and legal precedents that uphold traditional marriage, a primary objective of legal policy is to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act from inevitable constitutional challenge. In addition to upholding the constitutional rule of law in the face of activist courts, a major purpose of this legal strategy is to slow down the judicial juggernaut as much as possible so that legislatures and the people will not be excluded from this debate and precluded from acting to protect marriage.
State Policy
It should be kept in mind that, while the marriage debate is now a national issue, it is not primarily a federal policy matter. By tradition, and in accord with our constitutional division of power between the federal government and the states, marriage is recognized and regulated by state law. Most of the key battles, therefore, will occur at the state level.
State Marriage Statutes. The first line of defense is for states to review their laws concerning marriage and clarify and strengthen public policy preferences that favor traditional marriage. Based on recent legal decisions, states would be wise not only to clearly define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but also to state, as a matter of public policy, the purpose and rational basis of state marriage policy and the grounds upon which marriage is reserved only to a man and a woman. The long-standing practice of assuming or leaving ambiguous the definition and purpose of marriage is now an invitation for an activist court to deem policy upholding traditional marriage as being irrational.
This makes it necessary to restate, in a clear and more compelling way, the reasons that sustain the traditional laws on marriage. Massachusetts faces judicially enforced same-sex "marriage," in part, because it lacked a strong public policy on marriage, allowing the court to declare that there is no rational basis for upholding the traditional definition of marriage. It must be made clear that public policy stems from legitimate concerns and objectives, not animus or animosity, and that it bears a real and substantial (i.e., rational and reasonable) relevance to the public health, safety, morals, and general welfare of society.
State DOMAs. Under traditional legal principles, a marriage performed in one state is valid in another state as long as that marriage does not violate a strong public policy of the other state. If states want to avoid being forced to recognize the validity of same-sex "marriages" originating in other states, they must clearly and unambiguously declare their state policy and their refusal to recognize same-sex "marriages" from other states.
To date, 38 states have state Defense of Marriage Acts. However, the language in these laws varies widely. Alabama, for instance, has a strong DOMA, but those of Illinois and Iowa are rather weak. Ohio, which already had a DOMA, recently acted to strengthen its statutory language. Massachusetts did not have a state DOMA. Efforts should be made to establish DOMAs in every state and to clarify and strengthen existing state DOMAs where necessary.
State Constitutional Amendments. The best way to defend against a state court that might seek to overturn state public policy or force recognition of another state's marriage policy is to amend the state constitution to establish a state constitutional policy on marriage. Three states--Alaska, Nebraska, and Nevada--have passed constitutional amendments that prevent same-sex "marriage." Hawaii amended its state constitution to allow the legislature to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples.
At this time, 16 states have pending constitutional amendments to protect marriage, and at least three others are expected to introduce such amendments soon. The accumulation of state constitutional amendments will also send a powerful signal to federal courts that might be faced with a decision regarding same-sex "marriage," showing a clear and compelling trend in state policies on the issue. The U.S. Supreme Court will be hard-pressed to ignore the recent passage of 20 or more state constitutional amendments that reiterate and constitutionalize clear state policy preferences that uphold traditional marriage.
State Petitions. States concerned about the growing threat to marriage ought to petition the U.S. Congress to voice their concerns and express their views about federal legislation and a constitutional amendment to protect marriage. At the same time, they should inform the members of their state congressional delegations about their state policies on marriage. States should also be mindful that they have the power, under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, to call for a convention to propose a constitutional amendment. The passage of such petitions would put pressure on Congress to act to protect marriage.
Federal Legislation
There are several things that Congress could do to support and defend marriage. Consistent with DOMA, Congress could call on the states to clarify their marriage statutes and define in state law, and in state constitutions if necessary, that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
Congress could also take steps to enforce the definition of marriage established in DOMA when it reauthorizes federal programs and otherwise enforces federal policy, ensuring that all federal policies are consistent with that definition. Having authority over the District of Columbia, which currently has no laws defining marriage and has no DOMA, Congress could pass legislation consistent with the federal DOMA that protects the institution of marriage in the District of Columbia.
In addition to being good policy, such actions would serve as important proxy votes to build the case for defending marriage and help establish an argument for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The most important and responsible step Congress can take to preserve marriage is to send a constitutional amendment that protects the institution of marriage to the states for ratification.
A Constitutional Response
Policymakers ought to be disturbed when judges circumvent the lawmaking process and assume the powers of legislating. They should also be troubled by the ease with which overzealous judges are willing to disregard clear laws and legislative intent because it fails their perception of rationality. Constitutional government is threatened when judges alter the definition of social institutions and reinterpret duly approved laws in order to achieve their own policy preferences.
Policymaking decisions with vast societal implications should be made through the lawmaking process in a way that reflects broad-based public opinion and is informed by long-established traditions and the principles of social order.
But do we need to amend the U.S. Constitution? In our system of law, the powers of government are divided between the federal and state governments. The framers rightly left marriage policy, like so many other things, with the states. Marriage, however, is no mere policy issue. The meaning of marriage concerns the very integrity and essence of one of the primary elements of civil society.
Nor is the definition of marriage a matter for state-by-state experimentation. Society is not harmed when high-tax states live side by side with low-tax states: The market adjusts to the inconsistency. This is not the case where substantive differences exist with regard to the definition of marriage. A highly integrated society such as ours--in which issues such as property ownership, tax and economic liability, and inheritance and child custody cross state lines--requires a uniform definition of marriage.
In a free society, certain fundamental questions must be uniformly addressed and settled for the good of that society. States cannot impair the obligation of contracts, coin their own money, or experiment with forms of non-republican government. And Americans learned the hard way that the nation could not endure half slave and half free.
If marriage is a fundamental social institution, then it has the same value and import throughout all of society. As such, it is not only reasonable but also obligatory that traditional marriage be preferred and defended in the law and, if necessary, protected in the U. S. Constitution.
Preserving marriage in the Constitution does not mean that marriage must be completely nationalized or that it should become the regulatory responsibility of the federal government. Policy decisions concerning questions such as degrees of consanguinity, the age of consent, and the rules of divorce should remain with the states.
Decisions to extend certain individual benefits to remedy legitimate grievances that stop well short of marriage--i.e., that do not undermine the distinctive status of marriage or create a parallel institution to marriage--are policy questions that should be the responsibility of state legislatures. But we must protect the integrity of the institution of marriage as such by defining the societal boundaries and determining the limits beyond which no part of society can go.
An amendment should recognize and preserve the institution of marriage and should reserve marriage to unions between one man and one woman. In addition, it should block judges--at the state level as well as the federal level--from redefining marriage, creating "civil unions," or overriding a legislature's decision concerning the benefits of marriage.
A constitutional amendment that defines marriage and blocks the actions of overzealous judges would protect the states' capacity to regulate marriage by sustaining it as an institution. If we are to guard the states' liberty to determine marriage policy in accord with the principles of federalism, we must first ensure that the institution itself is not redefined out of existence or abolished altogether.
A Defining Moment
As designed by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, the amendment process is neither an exclusively federal nor an exclusively state action: It is a shared responsibility of both Congress and the states representing the American people. By intention, it is a very difficult process. To succeed, an amendment proposed by Congress must have the votes of two-thirds each of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and it must then be ratified by three-quarters of the states.
Constitutional amendments ought to be rare and should be pursued only after careful and serious consideration, when it is necessary to address an issue of great national magnitude and when there is broad-based support among the American people throughout the states.
Despite our reluctance to amend our most sacred law--despite the significance of the endeavor and awesome task of changing the Constitution--the critical nature of the recent course of events dictates this action.
The challenge to marriage is unambiguous and the threat of a nationwide redefinition of the institution is increasingly imminent. There is now strong and growing agreement--as reflected in poll after poll and, even more significantly, in the laws of three-quarters of the states--that traditional marriage should be protected. President George W. Bush recognized the "overwhelming consensus in our country" when he called on Congress to send an amendment protecting marriage to the states.
Just as the imposition of same-sex "marriage" is not at all inevitable, with concerted effort, it is by no means impossible to amend the U.S. Constitution to protect marriage. Indeed, the circumstances are ripe for a successful effort at this time.
The very consideration of an amendment that focuses on marriage would be an important vehicle for a nationwide debate about the nature, purpose, and legal status of this fundamental societal institution. States are already strengthening their laws, passing state DOMAs, and considering state constitutional amendments--all of which should be encouraged. A meaningful national conversation about an amendment to defend marriage will further this process and become the centerpiece of a larger and longer-term effort to promote and strengthen marriage and the family.
If the options are either to allow a few activist judges to redefine marriage by fiat or to amend the Constitution to reflect the settled will of the people, the choice is clear. It is imperative, for the sake of constitutional government, that we proceed with the democratic process of amending the Constitution.
The overriding importance of marriage to our nation's future and the difficult and lengthy amendment process make it crucial that we act now.
This is a defining moment for our nation. Americans are a greatly tolerant and very reasonable people. They did not choose this debate or force this issue on the nation. But now that the issue has been joined and the decision has been forced, we must act in accord with our basic principles and deepest convictions to preserve constitutional government and the foundational structure of civilization.
Matthew Spalding, Ph.D., is Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
1. Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44 (Hawaii, 1993).
2. Baehr v. Miike, 910 P.2d 112 (Hawaii, 1996).
3. Defense of Marriage Act, § 1 U.S.C.A., § 7 (1996).
4. Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics, 1998 WL 88743 (Alaska Super.,1998).
5. Baker v. State, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt., 1999).
6. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).
7. Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass., 2003).
8. Opinions of the Justices to the Senate, SJC 09163 (Feb. 3, 2004).
9. See Loving v. Virginia, 87 S.Ct. 1817 (1967).
10. Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn., 1971
A link to what the states' current position on same-sex marriage is
http://marriage.about.com/cs/marriagelicenses/a/samesexcomp.htm
An article here
A Defining Moment: Marriage, the Courts, and the Constitution
by Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
Backgrounder #1759
What was once an important debate over the nature, purpose, and legal status of marriage has emerged as a critical national issue, the resolution of which will shape the future of our society and the course of constitutional government in the United States.
The debate has taken form in courts throughout the nation. A series of significant judicial decisions--beginning with that of a trial court judge in Hawaii, followed by a superior court judge in Alaska, and then by the Vermont Supreme Court--has brought the issue of homosexual "marriage" to the forefront of our nation's attention. Last November, a 4-3 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared that traditional marriage upholds persistent prejudices and that couples of the same sex have a right to marry in that state.
Despite numerous efforts to block or delay the Massachusetts court's controversial edict, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been forced to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples since May 17. This decision will remake the entire social structure of the state of Massachusetts and trigger state and federal litigation throughout the United States.
These judicial decisions--as well as the actions of local officials who, intentionally contrary to state law, have issued thousands of fraudulent marriage licenses to same-sex couples--seek to redefine the institution of marriage by judicial fiat and affirm homosexual "marriage" as a fundamental civil right that the federal government has a constitutional obligation to secure nationwide.
Faced with such a concerted legal and political effort to deconstruct and thereby undermine one of the most basic institutions of civil society, policymakers must now take immediate steps at both the state and federal levels to protect marriage, prevent judicial usurpation, and uphold the rule of law.
Although the amendment process should never be taken lightly, and although it is an extremely difficult endeavor, it is now the prudent and timely course--for the sake of constitutional government and the sake of marriage--to amend the U.S. Constitution to preserve marriage as the legal union between one man and one woman.
What Is at Stake
For thousands of years, on the basis of experience, tradition, and legal precedent, every society and every major religious faith have upheld marriage as a unique relationship by which a man and a woman are joined together for the primary purpose of forming and maintaining a family. This overwhelming consensus results from the fact that the union of man and woman is apparent and manifest in the most basic and evident truths of human nature.
Marriage is the formal recognition of this relationship by society and its laws. While individual marriages are recognized by government, the institution of marriage pre-exists and is antecedent to the institution of government, which in turn presupposes and depends on the institution of marriage. Society's interest in uniquely elevating the status of marriage among human relationships is that marriage is the necessary foundation of the family, and thus necessary for societal existence and well-being.
The basic building block of society is the family, which is the primary institution through which children are raised, nurtured, and educated, and develop into adults. Marriage is the cornerstone of the family: It produces children, provides them with mothers and fathers, and is the framework through which relationships among mothers, fathers, and children are established and maintained. Only in the context of family built on the foundation of marriage can the sometimes competing needs and interests of men, women, and children be harmonized.
Because of its characteristic relationship with the family, marriage is uniquely beneficial to society. Based on existing studies comparing two-parent and single-parent households, social science overwhelmingly demonstrates that children do far better when they are raised by two married parents in a stable family relationship and that children raised in other household structures are subject to significantly increased risk of harm.
Evidence further suggests that one reason children do better in a married household is not just the stability of having two parents, but the fact that a male and a female parent each bring distinctive strengths, perspectives, and characteristics to the family unit that benefit both children and the parents. Although we have little information concerning children raised in households with same-sex parents, what we do know is that marriage between a man and a woman provides unique social, economic, and health benefits for children, adults, and society in general.
Moreover, because of the shared obligations and generational relationships that accrue with marriage, the institution brings significant stability, continuity, and meaning to human relationships and plays an important role in transferring basic cultural knowledge and civilization to future generations.
In the end, despite all the changes that law and cultural trends have wrought concerning marriage--despite the laws concerning prenuptial agreements, divorce, tax, and property that treat marriage as a contract--it has never before been, nor is it now completely, the case that marriage is a mere contract. Society has changed the form, but never the substance, of marriage; and it is the substance of marriage--its very nature, definition, and purpose--that creates and justifies its unique position as a social institution and continues to give lawmakers strong and reasonable arguments for upholding traditional marriage and protecting it in law.
The Threat to Marriage
Marriage is being challenged by a number of state and federal court decisions that seek to overthrow the customs, laws, and social norms of human experience.
In 1993, a plurality of the Hawaii Supreme Court declared that the state's existing marriage statute was a form of "sex discrimination" that could be justified only by a "compelling state interest."1 Three years later, a Hawaii trial court ruled that the state's marriage law violated the Hawaii constitution.2 In response, the people of Hawaii amended their state constitution to allow the legislature to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples, and the legislature passed a Marriage Protection Act that defined marriage as the union between one man and one woman.
In 1996, in the face of this unprecedented circumstance, the United States Congress passed a bipartisan federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), signed by then-President Bill Clinton, that both defines marriage "for all purposes of federal law" as the union of one man and one woman and clarifies that the effect portion of the "Full Faith and Credit" clause of the U.S. Constitution does not require that states be forced to recognize as a marriage any union other than that of one man and one woman.3
In 1998, after cases in California, Florida, and New York failed to establish the recognition of same-sex "marriages," a superior court judge in Alaska declared that "the choice of a life partner is personal, intimate, and subject to the protection of the right to privacy" and ruled that the Alaska marriage statute violated the state constitution.4 In response, Alaska voters approved a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
The next year, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the legislature must grant full and equal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples, and the Vermont legislature was forced to pass an extensive "civil unions" law that provides virtually all protections and benefits afforded to civil marriage.5
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Lawrence v. Texas that homosexuals, like heterosexuals, have the right to "seek autonomy" in their relationships and cited "personal decisions relating to marriage" as an important area of that autonomy. The Court also noted that whether a majority of the public opposes "a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice."6
Massachusetts Rejects Marriage
In November 2003, seizing upon the premise dangled before it by the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, a divided Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 4-3 that homosexual couples are legally entitled to marriage under the Massachusetts state constitution.
The court decided that traditional marriage "is rooted in persistent prejudices" and "works a deep and scarring hardship on a very real segment of the community for no rational reason." Marriage is "a caste-like system," added the concurrence, defended by nothing more than a "mantra of tradition."
On the premise that marriage is "an evolving paradigm," t he court reformulated the common-law definition of civil marriage to mean "the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others," declaring that "the right to marry means little if it does not include the right to marry the person of one's choice, subject to appropriate government restrictions in the interests of public health, safety, and welfare."
The court stayed its entry of judgment for 180 days "to permit the Legislature to take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of this opinion."7 When the state Senate asked whether a "civil unions" bill would satisfy the ruling, the court rejected the alternative, writing that traditional marriage amounts to "invidious discrimination" and that "no amount of tinkering would remove that stain."8
The state legislature in convention responded by passing an amendment to the state constitution that would effectively overturn the court's decision, but because of the lengthy constitutional amendment process in Massachusetts, the amendment cannot be enacted prior to the scheduled enforcement of the decision, which the court adamantly has refused to delay further.
The Redefinition of Marriage
The argument of these judges is that homosexual "marriage" is simply the extension of privileges to a discriminated class in the name of civil rights. The parallel is made to the Supreme Court's striking down, as instances of arbitrary and invidious discrimination, statutes that had been drawn according to race, in particular laws against interracial marriage.9
But this analogy does not work. The first court faced with this argument as the ground used to justify same-sex "marriage" made the obvious point: "in commonsense and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex."10
What is happening is no minor adjustment, a slight change in degree that just extends benefits or rights to a larger class, but a substantive change in the essence of the institution. It does not expand marriage; it alters its core meaning, for to redefine marriage so that it is not intrinsically related to the relationship between fathers, mothers, and children formally severs the institution from its nature and purpose.
Expanding marriage supposedly to make it more inclusive, no matter what we call the new arrangement, necessarily ends marriage as we now know it by remaking the institution into something different: a mere contract between any two individuals.
In general, fundamental social changes in long-standing traditions and institutions should be seriously considered only where there is strong consensus for change, as well as clear evidence and powerful reasons for the modification. Change for the sake of social experimentation and perceived "cultural progress" is inherently dangerous and jeopardizes the ordered liberty that is necessary for a free society.
This change threatens the very coherence and stability of marriage as a social institution. Social science today tells us quite a bit about how the experiments of recent decades with household forms other than the intact family--such as cohabitation and single parenting--have affected children and adults alike.
Changing the definition of marriage--or even remaining neutral as to that definition--breaks down the very argument that gives marriage its unique and preferable status in society. If marriage becomes just one form of commitment in a spectrum of sexual relationships rather than a preferred monogamous relationship for the sake of children, the line separating sexual relations within and outside of marriage becomes blurred, and so does the public policy argument against out-of-wedlock births or in favor of abstinence.
Based on current evidence and settled reasoning, it would be a terrible folly to weaken marriage either by elevating non-marital unions to the same position or by lowering the institution of marriage to the status of merely one form of household.
A New Status Quo
Imposed by the courts, the redefinition of marriage is the legal establishment of a new status quo. While it is not correct to say that homosexuality or the advance of same-sex "marriage" is solely to blame--traditional marriage measured in terms of divorce, cohabitation, illegitimacy, and fatherlessness has been in decline for some time--the judicial redefinition of marriage, forced by the push for same-sex "marriage," essentially codifies and affirms these trends.
With time, this new legal status quo will be upheld, applied, and enforced throughout our laws, with implications that go well beyond the immediate decision. With the establishment of homosexual "marriage" as a matter or right, a whole host of laws and regulations will be triggered to assure non-discrimination and equal treatment.
Consider a few possibilities:
Freedom of Association. If homosexual "marriages" are recognized by federal and state governments, there will be no principled reason to oppose new federal laws forbidding discrimination in hiring based on sexual orientation. Churches, synagogues, mosques, religious schools, and faith-based charities, as well as secular organizations of every kind, would be subject to a new kind of government scrutiny.
Free Speech. The legalization of homosexual "marriage" would invite an ongoing assault on individuals and organizations that uphold traditional marriage or have moral or religious objections to the practice of homosexuality. By definition, all dissenters will find themselves at odds with the new political ethos and are likely to be stigmatized as prejudiced and discriminatory. Such characterizations already have been made by activists, politicians, and judges who are sympathetic to the arguments for same-sex "marriage." The legalization of homosexual "marriage" will greatly accelerate these pressures to marginalize the nation's religious communities and the values that define them. In some countries, speaking publicly against homosexuality has been criminalized.
Education. The deconstruction of marriage will affect what children are taught in virtually every subject at public schools. Students will be instructed that marriage, like slavery before it, is a vestige of America's discriminatory past that was overcome by the latest step forward in the advancement of civil rights. At the very least, heterosexual and homosexual relations will be presented in public schools as fundamentally equivalent expressions of individual autonomy.
All told, these changes represent a significant escalation of the cultural debate and divide in our society and could well threaten the civil and religious liberty of individuals and organizations that have moral or religious objections to the new status quo.
What Happens Now?
Advocates of same-sex "marriage" have filed and will continue to file lawsuits in various states seeking recognition of homosexual "marriage" as a constitutional right under state law. At least 20 major lawsuits are pending in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and West Virginia. These suits ask state courts to determine that state constitutional provisions require the recognition of same-sex "marriage." To date, these actions affect only individual states.
The successful implementation of the Massachusetts court's decision will create a strong precedent and significantly increase lawsuits to force its ruling on other states. Inevitably, the organized legal strategy that has brought the issue forward thus far will be surpassed by the political and judicial activism that will result as same-sex couples that are married in Massachusetts demand recognition in the other 49 states.
It is likely that, contrary to existing state laws, some state officials, as well as some city and county officials, will recognize same-sex "marriages" promulgated in Massachusetts.
More problematic, same-sex couples that move from Massachusetts will bring suit in other states, arguing that the state or U.S. Constitution requires that their new state recognize their same-sex "marriage" as valid. These judicial cases and actions by individuals will run up against opposition in the 38 states that have passed state Defense of Marriage Acts, as well as those states that have pre-existing laws that define marriage as the union between one man and one woman.
State courts might recognize same-sex "marriages" pursuant to their state constitutions, overriding clear state policy and state DOMAs. Thus, legal recognition of homosexual "marriage" could be spread by way of state courts on a state-by-state basis.
A state or federal court ruling that a state must recognize same-sex "marriages" pursuant to the U.S. Constitution would assuredly lead to an appeal into the federal court system and eventually bring the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. This would very likely entail a challenge to the federal DOMA.
Under normal circumstances, the federal DOMA would survive constitutional scrutiny. Many thoughtful legal scholars, however, believe that it likely would not withstand activist judges using dubious interpretations of due process or equal protection to advance their policy objectives. Given what is at stake, it is risky to rely solely on the federal DOMA.
In any event, the federal DOMA does not protect the nation from state judges like those in Massachusetts who misconstrue their state constitution to establish same-sex "marriage." Nor does it address various local jurisdictions that openly ignore and violate state marriage laws.
Even if individual states can withstand or postpone direct legal challenges, all states will have to address the very practical and myriad legal problems that same-sex "marriage" generates regarding such issues as adoption, child support and custody, state benefits, and inheritance and property rights. These complications and the legal inconsistencies that are likely to result will increase the likelihood that, at some point, the U.S. Supreme Court will choose to, or be forced to, intervene and resolve the issue for the nation.
If the Supreme Court of the United States gets a word on this issue, it will likely be the last. Assuming the justices follow the logical trend of their own precedents and jurisprudence of recent decades, it would be inconsistent for them not to redefine marriage according to their notions of autonomy, equality, and social progress. And if the United States Supreme Court does redefine marriage, the Court will expect, and many will argue, that the American people should accept their mandate as the final resolution of the issue.
What Can Be Done?
The institution of traditional marriage can be protected through actions taken in the following arenas.
Public Education
Concerted efforts must be made at every level to educate the public, policymakers, and political leaders generally about marriage and current threats to the institution of marriage. While there is a growing consensus in favor of traditional marriage, public confusion about what to do invites strong and consistent moral and political leadership. Several themes are important to this effort.
A clear and compelling case must be made for the nature, substance, and societal importance of marriage.
Marriage as a unique relationship between a man and a woman should be defended on the basis of empirical evidence and studies provided by social science.
A strong case must be made that redefining the institution of marriage undermines the institution, destroys the case for promoting an ideal of marriage, and threatens religious liberty and private institutions.
Legal Policy
Many legal battles are yet to be fought at the state and federal levels, and each of these battles is significant. Judicial decisions in Massachusetts and other localities are but the opening moves in a long-term legal strategy to impose homosexual "marriage" through the courts, circumventing lawmakers and the people before they have an opportunity to react through legislation or the electoral process.
Above and beyond defending existing state laws and legal precedents that uphold traditional marriage, a primary objective of legal policy is to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act from inevitable constitutional challenge. In addition to upholding the constitutional rule of law in the face of activist courts, a major purpose of this legal strategy is to slow down the judicial juggernaut as much as possible so that legislatures and the people will not be excluded from this debate and precluded from acting to protect marriage.
State Policy
It should be kept in mind that, while the marriage debate is now a national issue, it is not primarily a federal policy matter. By tradition, and in accord with our constitutional division of power between the federal government and the states, marriage is recognized and regulated by state law. Most of the key battles, therefore, will occur at the state level.
State Marriage Statutes. The first line of defense is for states to review their laws concerning marriage and clarify and strengthen public policy preferences that favor traditional marriage. Based on recent legal decisions, states would be wise not only to clearly define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but also to state, as a matter of public policy, the purpose and rational basis of state marriage policy and the grounds upon which marriage is reserved only to a man and a woman. The long-standing practice of assuming or leaving ambiguous the definition and purpose of marriage is now an invitation for an activist court to deem policy upholding traditional marriage as being irrational.
This makes it necessary to restate, in a clear and more compelling way, the reasons that sustain the traditional laws on marriage. Massachusetts faces judicially enforced same-sex "marriage," in part, because it lacked a strong public policy on marriage, allowing the court to declare that there is no rational basis for upholding the traditional definition of marriage. It must be made clear that public policy stems from legitimate concerns and objectives, not animus or animosity, and that it bears a real and substantial (i.e., rational and reasonable) relevance to the public health, safety, morals, and general welfare of society.
State DOMAs. Under traditional legal principles, a marriage performed in one state is valid in another state as long as that marriage does not violate a strong public policy of the other state. If states want to avoid being forced to recognize the validity of same-sex "marriages" originating in other states, they must clearly and unambiguously declare their state policy and their refusal to recognize same-sex "marriages" from other states.
To date, 38 states have state Defense of Marriage Acts. However, the language in these laws varies widely. Alabama, for instance, has a strong DOMA, but those of Illinois and Iowa are rather weak. Ohio, which already had a DOMA, recently acted to strengthen its statutory language. Massachusetts did not have a state DOMA. Efforts should be made to establish DOMAs in every state and to clarify and strengthen existing state DOMAs where necessary.
State Constitutional Amendments. The best way to defend against a state court that might seek to overturn state public policy or force recognition of another state's marriage policy is to amend the state constitution to establish a state constitutional policy on marriage. Three states--Alaska, Nebraska, and Nevada--have passed constitutional amendments that prevent same-sex "marriage." Hawaii amended its state constitution to allow the legislature to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples.
At this time, 16 states have pending constitutional amendments to protect marriage, and at least three others are expected to introduce such amendments soon. The accumulation of state constitutional amendments will also send a powerful signal to federal courts that might be faced with a decision regarding same-sex "marriage," showing a clear and compelling trend in state policies on the issue. The U.S. Supreme Court will be hard-pressed to ignore the recent passage of 20 or more state constitutional amendments that reiterate and constitutionalize clear state policy preferences that uphold traditional marriage.
State Petitions. States concerned about the growing threat to marriage ought to petition the U.S. Congress to voice their concerns and express their views about federal legislation and a constitutional amendment to protect marriage. At the same time, they should inform the members of their state congressional delegations about their state policies on marriage. States should also be mindful that they have the power, under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, to call for a convention to propose a constitutional amendment. The passage of such petitions would put pressure on Congress to act to protect marriage.
Federal Legislation
There are several things that Congress could do to support and defend marriage. Consistent with DOMA, Congress could call on the states to clarify their marriage statutes and define in state law, and in state constitutions if necessary, that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
Congress could also take steps to enforce the definition of marriage established in DOMA when it reauthorizes federal programs and otherwise enforces federal policy, ensuring that all federal policies are consistent with that definition. Having authority over the District of Columbia, which currently has no laws defining marriage and has no DOMA, Congress could pass legislation consistent with the federal DOMA that protects the institution of marriage in the District of Columbia.
In addition to being good policy, such actions would serve as important proxy votes to build the case for defending marriage and help establish an argument for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The most important and responsible step Congress can take to preserve marriage is to send a constitutional amendment that protects the institution of marriage to the states for ratification.
A Constitutional Response
Policymakers ought to be disturbed when judges circumvent the lawmaking process and assume the powers of legislating. They should also be troubled by the ease with which overzealous judges are willing to disregard clear laws and legislative intent because it fails their perception of rationality. Constitutional government is threatened when judges alter the definition of social institutions and reinterpret duly approved laws in order to achieve their own policy preferences.
Policymaking decisions with vast societal implications should be made through the lawmaking process in a way that reflects broad-based public opinion and is informed by long-established traditions and the principles of social order.
But do we need to amend the U.S. Constitution? In our system of law, the powers of government are divided between the federal and state governments. The framers rightly left marriage policy, like so many other things, with the states. Marriage, however, is no mere policy issue. The meaning of marriage concerns the very integrity and essence of one of the primary elements of civil society.
Nor is the definition of marriage a matter for state-by-state experimentation. Society is not harmed when high-tax states live side by side with low-tax states: The market adjusts to the inconsistency. This is not the case where substantive differences exist with regard to the definition of marriage. A highly integrated society such as ours--in which issues such as property ownership, tax and economic liability, and inheritance and child custody cross state lines--requires a uniform definition of marriage.
In a free society, certain fundamental questions must be uniformly addressed and settled for the good of that society. States cannot impair the obligation of contracts, coin their own money, or experiment with forms of non-republican government. And Americans learned the hard way that the nation could not endure half slave and half free.
If marriage is a fundamental social institution, then it has the same value and import throughout all of society. As such, it is not only reasonable but also obligatory that traditional marriage be preferred and defended in the law and, if necessary, protected in the U. S. Constitution.
Preserving marriage in the Constitution does not mean that marriage must be completely nationalized or that it should become the regulatory responsibility of the federal government. Policy decisions concerning questions such as degrees of consanguinity, the age of consent, and the rules of divorce should remain with the states.
Decisions to extend certain individual benefits to remedy legitimate grievances that stop well short of marriage--i.e., that do not undermine the distinctive status of marriage or create a parallel institution to marriage--are policy questions that should be the responsibility of state legislatures. But we must protect the integrity of the institution of marriage as such by defining the societal boundaries and determining the limits beyond which no part of society can go.
An amendment should recognize and preserve the institution of marriage and should reserve marriage to unions between one man and one woman. In addition, it should block judges--at the state level as well as the federal level--from redefining marriage, creating "civil unions," or overriding a legislature's decision concerning the benefits of marriage.
A constitutional amendment that defines marriage and blocks the actions of overzealous judges would protect the states' capacity to regulate marriage by sustaining it as an institution. If we are to guard the states' liberty to determine marriage policy in accord with the principles of federalism, we must first ensure that the institution itself is not redefined out of existence or abolished altogether.
A Defining Moment
As designed by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, the amendment process is neither an exclusively federal nor an exclusively state action: It is a shared responsibility of both Congress and the states representing the American people. By intention, it is a very difficult process. To succeed, an amendment proposed by Congress must have the votes of two-thirds each of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and it must then be ratified by three-quarters of the states.
Constitutional amendments ought to be rare and should be pursued only after careful and serious consideration, when it is necessary to address an issue of great national magnitude and when there is broad-based support among the American people throughout the states.
Despite our reluctance to amend our most sacred law--despite the significance of the endeavor and awesome task of changing the Constitution--the critical nature of the recent course of events dictates this action.
The challenge to marriage is unambiguous and the threat of a nationwide redefinition of the institution is increasingly imminent. There is now strong and growing agreement--as reflected in poll after poll and, even more significantly, in the laws of three-quarters of the states--that traditional marriage should be protected. President George W. Bush recognized the "overwhelming consensus in our country" when he called on Congress to send an amendment protecting marriage to the states.
Just as the imposition of same-sex "marriage" is not at all inevitable, with concerted effort, it is by no means impossible to amend the U.S. Constitution to protect marriage. Indeed, the circumstances are ripe for a successful effort at this time.
The very consideration of an amendment that focuses on marriage would be an important vehicle for a nationwide debate about the nature, purpose, and legal status of this fundamental societal institution. States are already strengthening their laws, passing state DOMAs, and considering state constitutional amendments--all of which should be encouraged. A meaningful national conversation about an amendment to defend marriage will further this process and become the centerpiece of a larger and longer-term effort to promote and strengthen marriage and the family.
If the options are either to allow a few activist judges to redefine marriage by fiat or to amend the Constitution to reflect the settled will of the people, the choice is clear. It is imperative, for the sake of constitutional government, that we proceed with the democratic process of amending the Constitution.
The overriding importance of marriage to our nation's future and the difficult and lengthy amendment process make it crucial that we act now.
This is a defining moment for our nation. Americans are a greatly tolerant and very reasonable people. They did not choose this debate or force this issue on the nation. But now that the issue has been joined and the decision has been forced, we must act in accord with our basic principles and deepest convictions to preserve constitutional government and the foundational structure of civilization.
Matthew Spalding, Ph.D., is Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
1. Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44 (Hawaii, 1993).
2. Baehr v. Miike, 910 P.2d 112 (Hawaii, 1996).
3. Defense of Marriage Act, § 1 U.S.C.A., § 7 (1996).
4. Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics, 1998 WL 88743 (Alaska Super.,1998).
5. Baker v. State, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt., 1999).
6. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).
7. Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass., 2003).
8. Opinions of the Justices to the Senate, SJC 09163 (Feb. 3, 2004).
9. See Loving v. Virginia, 87 S.Ct. 1817 (1967).
10. Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn., 1971
I Corinthians Cultural Background Video
I wanted to send this video from our web site, if you haven't seen it already, that gives a cultural background to I Corinthians. I hope you find it interesting!
Video here: http://abc.ucg.org/tours/
Video here: http://abc.ucg.org/tours/
Thursday, June 19, 2008
California's Supreme Court
I wanted to send this article about the California supreme court's ruling against an amendment http://brianleesblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/california-marriage.html, that passed by a large majority, which defined marriage as between one male and one female. It is too bad that even in areas where the majority of our nation wants to to the moral thing, that a small group can impose an immoral law like that on that state, and since the constitution requires contracts in one state to be honored in all, the country http://brianleesblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/ny-same-sex-marriage.html . A book I recommended previously about Judicial tyrany like this is Men in Black, if you want to get it at your library or bookstore and you can also review our book about the ten commandments to know right and wrong.
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/56924749&referer=brief_results
http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/TC/
Will Gay Rights Trample Religious Freedom?By Marc D. Stern, Los Angeles Times Early this morning, gay and lesbian couples were surely lining up at county clerk's offices across the state to exercise their new right to marry, bestowed on them last month by the California Supreme Court.In its controversial decision, the court insisted that these same-sex marriages would not "diminish any other person's constitutional rights" or "impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official or any other person." Religious liberty would be unaffected, the chief justice wrote, because no member of the clergy would be compelled to officiate at a same-sex ceremony and no church could be compelled to change its policies or practices.And yet there is substantial reason to believe that these assurances about the safety of religious liberty are either wrong or reflect a cramped view of religion.The case for same-sex marriage, reduced to its essentials, is an attractive one. It is that the government in a liberal democracy ought not to impose any one moral vision on its citizens; moral decisions ought to be, as much as possible, a matter of private choice and not law.But it should not follow that having allowed same-sex couples to come out of the closet, as it were, that religious people should in turn be confined to the sanctuary.In the same-sex marriage decision, the state Supreme Court suggests that all will be well and good as long as the "official" activities of the clergy aren't affected. But that excludes religion entirely from a broad range of social welfare and other activities, despite the fact that the California Constitution declares: "Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed..."Click here to read the rest of this article: Will Gay Rights Trample Religious Freedom?
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/56924749&referer=brief_results
http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/TC/
Will Gay Rights Trample Religious Freedom?By Marc D. Stern, Los Angeles Times Early this morning, gay and lesbian couples were surely lining up at county clerk's offices across the state to exercise their new right to marry, bestowed on them last month by the California Supreme Court.In its controversial decision, the court insisted that these same-sex marriages would not "diminish any other person's constitutional rights" or "impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official or any other person." Religious liberty would be unaffected, the chief justice wrote, because no member of the clergy would be compelled to officiate at a same-sex ceremony and no church could be compelled to change its policies or practices.And yet there is substantial reason to believe that these assurances about the safety of religious liberty are either wrong or reflect a cramped view of religion.The case for same-sex marriage, reduced to its essentials, is an attractive one. It is that the government in a liberal democracy ought not to impose any one moral vision on its citizens; moral decisions ought to be, as much as possible, a matter of private choice and not law.But it should not follow that having allowed same-sex couples to come out of the closet, as it were, that religious people should in turn be confined to the sanctuary.In the same-sex marriage decision, the state Supreme Court suggests that all will be well and good as long as the "official" activities of the clergy aren't affected. But that excludes religion entirely from a broad range of social welfare and other activities, despite the fact that the California Constitution declares: "Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed..."Click here to read the rest of this article: Will Gay Rights Trample Religious Freedom?
iPod & Ethics
I wanted to send this article below which talks about how flippant some people are about stealing from others. In this magazine, Vertical Thought http://www.verticalthought.org/issues/vt19/music_legal.htm , this issue came up and shows that the commandment against stealing applies to this topic and yet a significant amount of iPod users are either ignorant or don't care about this issue.
Anyway, I hope you find this interesting and you should definitely subsribe to this blog by clicking here for more interesting issues like this. Leave a comment at the end if you'd like!!
Average teenager's iPod has 800 illegal music tracks
Dan Sabbagh, Media Editor
.ExternalClass EC_div#related-article-links p a, .ExternalClass EC_div#related-article-links p a:visited
{color:#06c;}
Teenagers and students have an average of more than 800 illegally copied songs each on their digital music players, the largest academic survey of young people's music ownership has found. The research also showed that half of 14 to 24-year-olds were happy to share all the music on their hard drive, enabling others to copy hundreds, or thousands, of songs at any one time. Although illegal copying has become widespread, the scale of the problem uncovered by the University of Hertfordshire left the music industry surprised. On average every iPod or digital music player contained 842 illegally copied songs. Fergal Sharkey, former lead singer of the Undertones and now chief executive of British Music Rights, said: “I was one of those people who went around the back of the bike shed with songs I had taped off the radio the night before. But this totally dwarfs that, and anything we expected.”
Related Links
Buyers rush for the iPod of ebooks
U2 boss: cut off illegal downloaders from web
The average digital music player carries 1,770 songs, meaning that 48 per cent of the collection is copied illegally. The proportion of illegally downloaded tracks rises to 61 per cent among 14 to 17-year-olds. In addition, 14 per cent of CDs (one in seven) in a young person's collection are copied. Illegal copying in some form is undertaken by 96 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds surveyed, falling to 89 per cent of those aged 14-17. Nearly two thirds copy CDs from friends, and similar proportions share songs by e-mail and copy all the music held on another person's hard drive, acquiring up to 10,000 songs in one go. British Music Rights argues that the solution partly lies in developing new legal services that make breaking copyright unappealing. Mr Sharkey said: “The positive message is that 80 per cent of downloaders said they would pay for a legal subscription-based service, and they told us they would be willing to pay more than a few pounds a month.” British Music Rights declined to release the exact amount but it is believed to be about £10 a month. The organisation is trying to help the record companies to persuade internet service providers to sign up to a new type of music service, in which vast catalogues of songs are available for an add-on fee to a broadband package. Agreements with providers such as Virgin Media are expected in the next few weeks. In France last week, Orange, France Telecom's mobile arm, reached agreement with all four main record companies to provide downloads of more than a million songs to mobile phones and home computers for €12 (£9.40) a month. Music sales have been falling steadily and the big companies are desperate to strike subscription-based agreements rather than rely on one-off CD and download sales. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article4144585.ece
Anyway, I hope you find this interesting and you should definitely subsribe to this blog by clicking here for more interesting issues like this. Leave a comment at the end if you'd like!!
Average teenager's iPod has 800 illegal music tracks
Dan Sabbagh, Media Editor
.ExternalClass EC_div#related-article-links p a, .ExternalClass EC_div#related-article-links p a:visited
{color:#06c;}
Teenagers and students have an average of more than 800 illegally copied songs each on their digital music players, the largest academic survey of young people's music ownership has found. The research also showed that half of 14 to 24-year-olds were happy to share all the music on their hard drive, enabling others to copy hundreds, or thousands, of songs at any one time. Although illegal copying has become widespread, the scale of the problem uncovered by the University of Hertfordshire left the music industry surprised. On average every iPod or digital music player contained 842 illegally copied songs. Fergal Sharkey, former lead singer of the Undertones and now chief executive of British Music Rights, said: “I was one of those people who went around the back of the bike shed with songs I had taped off the radio the night before. But this totally dwarfs that, and anything we expected.”
Related Links
Buyers rush for the iPod of ebooks
U2 boss: cut off illegal downloaders from web
The average digital music player carries 1,770 songs, meaning that 48 per cent of the collection is copied illegally. The proportion of illegally downloaded tracks rises to 61 per cent among 14 to 17-year-olds. In addition, 14 per cent of CDs (one in seven) in a young person's collection are copied. Illegal copying in some form is undertaken by 96 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds surveyed, falling to 89 per cent of those aged 14-17. Nearly two thirds copy CDs from friends, and similar proportions share songs by e-mail and copy all the music held on another person's hard drive, acquiring up to 10,000 songs in one go. British Music Rights argues that the solution partly lies in developing new legal services that make breaking copyright unappealing. Mr Sharkey said: “The positive message is that 80 per cent of downloaders said they would pay for a legal subscription-based service, and they told us they would be willing to pay more than a few pounds a month.” British Music Rights declined to release the exact amount but it is believed to be about £10 a month. The organisation is trying to help the record companies to persuade internet service providers to sign up to a new type of music service, in which vast catalogues of songs are available for an add-on fee to a broadband package. Agreements with providers such as Virgin Media are expected in the next few weeks. In France last week, Orange, France Telecom's mobile arm, reached agreement with all four main record companies to provide downloads of more than a million songs to mobile phones and home computers for €12 (£9.40) a month. Music sales have been falling steadily and the big companies are desperate to strike subscription-based agreements rather than rely on one-off CD and download sales. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article4144585.ece
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
European Union Vote - Beast Delayed!
I wanted to send the article below which shows the latest delay in transforming the European Union into the superpower it is destined to be. On the UCG website, the latest news commentary here http://www.ucg.org/commentary/world-leader-free-world.htm talks about the time when the European Beast will be the world's superpower. We can be happy for now that this prophetic event has not yet happened so we can use this extra opportunity to repent and get ourselves spiritually prepared. I do hope you find the article below to be insightful.
For a clear explanation of biblical prophecies foretelling the global consequences of Europe's rise to international dominance simply download, request or read online our free booklet: The Book of Revelation Unveiled.
The Problem With Europe
June 17, 2008
By George Friedman
Related Special Topic Page
EuropeThe creation of a European state was severely wounded if not killed last week. The Irish voted against a proposed European Union treaty that included creation of a full-time president, increased power to pursue a European foreign policy and increased power for Europe’s parliament. Since the European constitutional process depends on unanimous consent by all 27 members, the Irish vote effectively sinks this version of the new constitution, much as Dutch and French voters sank the previous version in 2005.The Irish vote was not a landslide. Only 54 percent of the voters cast their ballots against the constitution. But that misses the point. Whether it had been 54 percent for or against the constitution, the point was that the Irish were deeply divided. In every country, there is at least a substantial minority that opposes the constitution. Given that all 27 EU countries must approve the constitution, the odds against some country not sinking it are pretty long. The Europeans are not going to get a strengthened constitution this way.But the deeper point is that you can’t create a constitution without a deep consensus about needing it. Even when there is — as the United States showed during its Civil War — critical details not settled by consensus can lead to conflict. In the case of the United States, the issues of the relative power of states and the federal government, along with the question of slavery, ripped the country apart. They could only be settled by war and a series of amendments to the U.S. Constitution forced through by the winning side after the war.
The Constitutional ChallengeCreating a constitution is not like passing a law — and this treaty was, in all practical terms, a constitution. Constitutions do not represent public policy, but a shared vision of the regime and the purpose of the nation. The U.S. Constitution was born in battle. It emerged from a long war of independence and from the lessons learned in that war about the need for a strong executive to wage war, a strong congress to allocate funds and raise revenue, and a judiciary to interpret the constitution. War, along with the teachings of John Locke, framed the discussions in Philadelphia, because the founders’ experience in a war where there was only a congress and no president convinced them of the need for a strong executive. And even that was not enough to prevent civil war over the issue of state sovereignty versus federal sovereignty. Making a constitution is hard.The European constitution was also born in battle, but in a different way. For centuries, the Europeans had engaged in increasingly savage wars. The question they wanted to address was how to banish war from Europe. In truth, that decision was not in their hands, but in the hands of Americans and Soviets. But the core issue remained: how to restrain European savagery. The core idea was relatively simple. European wars arose from European divisions; and, for centuries, those divisions ran along national lines. If a United States of Europe could be created on the order of the United States of America, then the endless battling of France, Germany and England would be eliminated. In the exhaustion of the postwar world — really lasting through the lives of the generation that endured World War II — the concept was deeply seductive. Europe after World War II was exhausted in every sense. It allowed its empires to slip away with a combination of indifference and relief. What Europeans wanted postwar was to make a living and be left alone by ideology and nationalism; they had experienced quite enough of those two. Even France under the influence of Charles de Gaulle, the champion of the idea of the nation-state and its interests, could not arouse a spirit of nationalism anywhere close to what had been. There is a saying that some people are exhausted and confuse their state with virtue. If that is true, then it is surely true of Europe in the last couple of generations. The European Union reflected these origins. It began as a pact — the European Community — of nations looking to reduce tariff barriers. It evolved into a nearly Europe-wide grouping of countries bound together in a trade bloc, with many of those countries sharing a common currency. Its goal was not the creation of a more perfect union, or, as the Americans put it, a “novus ordo seclorum.” It was not to be the city on the hill. Its commitment was to a more prosperous life, without genocide. Though not exactly inspiring, given the brutality of European history, it was not a trivial goal.The problem was that when push came to shove, the European Community evolved into the European Union, which consisted of four things:
1. A free trade zone with somewhat synchronized economic polices, not infrequently overridden by the sovereign power of member states.
2. A complex bureaucracy designed to oversee the harmonization of European economies. This was seen as impenetrable and engaged in intensive and intrusive work from the trivial to the extremely significant, charged with defining everything from when a salami may be called a salami and whether Microsoft was a monopoly.
3. A single currency and central bank to which 15 of the 27 EU members subscribed.
4. Had Ireland voted differently, a set of proto-institutions would have been created — complete with a presidency and foreign policy chief — which would have given the European Union the trappings of statehood. The president, who would rotate out of office after a short time, would have been the head of one of the EU member states.
Rejecting a European RegimeThe Irish referendum was all about transforming the fourth category into a regime. The Irish rejected it not because they objected to the first three sets of solutions — they have become the second-wealthiest country in Europe per capita under their aegis. They objected to it because they did not want to create a European regime. As French and Dutch voters have said before, the Irish said they want a free trade zone. They will put up with the Brussels bureaucracy even though its intrusiveness and lack of accountability troubles them. They can live with a single currency so long as it does not simply become a prisoner of German and French economic policy. But they do not want to create a European state. The French and German governments do want to create such a state. As with the creation of the United States, the reasons have to do with war, past and future. Franco-German animosity helped created the two world wars of the 20th century. Those two powers now want a framework for preventing war within Europe. They also — particularly the French — want a vehicle for influencing the course of world events. In their view, the European Union, as a whole, has a gross domestic product comparable to that of the United States. It should be the equal of the United States in shaping the world. This isn’t simply a moral position, but a practical one. The United States throws its weight around because it can, frequently harming Europe’s interests. The French and Germans want to control the United States.To do this, they need to move beyond having an economic union. They need to have a European foreign and defense policy. But before they can have that, they need a European government that can carry out this policy. And before they can have a European government they must have a European regime, before which they must have a European constitution that enumerates the powers of the European president, parliament and courts. They also need to specify how these officials will be chosen. The French and Germans would welcome all this if they could get it. They know, given population, economic power and so on, that they would dominate the foreign policy created by a European state. Not so the Irish and Danes; they understand they would have little influence on the course of European foreign policy. They already feel the pain of having little influence on European economic policy, particularly the policies of the European Central Bank (ECB). Even the French public has expressed itself in the 2006 election about fears of Brussels and the ECB. But for countries like Ireland and Denmark, each of which fought very hard to create and retain their national sovereignty, merging into a Europe in which they would lose their veto power to a European parliamentary and presidential system is an appalling prospect.Economists always have trouble understanding nationalism. To an economist, all human beings are concerned with maximizing their own private wealth. Economists can never deal with the empirical fact that this simply isn’t true. Many Irish fought against being cogs in a multinational British Empire. The Danes fought against being absorbed by Germany. The prospect of abandoning the struggle for national sovereignty to Europe is not particularly pleasing, even if it means economic advantage. Europe is not going to become a nation-state in the way the United States is. It is increasingly clear that Europeans are not going to reach a consensus on a European constitution. They are not in agreement on what European institutions should look like, how elections should be held and, above all, about the relation between individual nations and a central government. The Europeans have achieved all they are going to achieve. They have achieved a free trade zone with a regulatory body managing it. They have created a currency that is optional to EU members, and from which we expect some members to withdraw from at times while others join in. There will be no collective European foreign or defense policy simply because the Europeans do not have a common interest in foreign and defense policy.
Paris Reads the Writing on the WallThe French have realized this most clearly. Once the strongest advocates of a federated Europe, the French under President Nicolas Sarkozy have started moving toward new strategies. Certainly, they remain committed to the European Union in its current structure, but they no longer expect it to have a single integrated foreign and defense policy. Instead, the French are pursuing initiatives by themselves. One aspect of this involves drawing closer to the United States on some foreign policy issues. Rather than trying to construct a single Europe that might resist the United States — former President Jacques Chirac’s vision — the French are moving to align themselves to some degree with American policies. Iran is an example.The most intriguing initiative from France is the idea of a Mediterranean union drawing together the countries of the Mediterranean basin, from Algeria to Israel to Turkey. Apart from whether these nations could coexist in such a union, the idea raises the question of whether France (or Italy or Greece) can simultaneously belong to the European Union and another economic union. While questions — such as whether North African access to the French market would provide access to the rest of the European Union — remain to be answered, the Germans have strongly rejected this French vision.The vision derives directly from French geopolitical reality. To this point, the French focus has been on France as a European country whose primary commitment is to Europe. But France also is a Mediterranean country, with historical ties and interests in the Mediterranean basin. France’s geographical position gives it options, and it has begun examining those options independent of its European partners.The single most important consequence of the Irish vote is that it makes clear that European political union is not likely to happen. It therefore forces EU members to consider their own foreign and defense policies — and, therefore, their own geopolitical positions. Whether an economic union can survive in a region of political diversity really depends on whether the diversity evolves into rivalry. While that has been European history, it is not clear that Europe has the inclination to resurrect national rivalries. At the same time, if France does pursue interests independent of the Germans, the question will be this: Will the mutual interest in economic unity override the tendency toward political conflict? The idea was that Europe would moot the question by creating a federation. That isn’t going to happen, so the question is on the table. And that question can be framed simply: When speaking of political and military matters, is it reasonable any longer to use the term Europe to denote a single entity? Europe, as it once was envisioned, appears to have disappeared in Ireland.Tell Stratfor What You Think
For a clear explanation of biblical prophecies foretelling the global consequences of Europe's rise to international dominance simply download, request or read online our free booklet: The Book of Revelation Unveiled.
The Problem With Europe
June 17, 2008
By George Friedman
Related Special Topic Page
EuropeThe creation of a European state was severely wounded if not killed last week. The Irish voted against a proposed European Union treaty that included creation of a full-time president, increased power to pursue a European foreign policy and increased power for Europe’s parliament. Since the European constitutional process depends on unanimous consent by all 27 members, the Irish vote effectively sinks this version of the new constitution, much as Dutch and French voters sank the previous version in 2005.The Irish vote was not a landslide. Only 54 percent of the voters cast their ballots against the constitution. But that misses the point. Whether it had been 54 percent for or against the constitution, the point was that the Irish were deeply divided. In every country, there is at least a substantial minority that opposes the constitution. Given that all 27 EU countries must approve the constitution, the odds against some country not sinking it are pretty long. The Europeans are not going to get a strengthened constitution this way.But the deeper point is that you can’t create a constitution without a deep consensus about needing it. Even when there is — as the United States showed during its Civil War — critical details not settled by consensus can lead to conflict. In the case of the United States, the issues of the relative power of states and the federal government, along with the question of slavery, ripped the country apart. They could only be settled by war and a series of amendments to the U.S. Constitution forced through by the winning side after the war.
The Constitutional ChallengeCreating a constitution is not like passing a law — and this treaty was, in all practical terms, a constitution. Constitutions do not represent public policy, but a shared vision of the regime and the purpose of the nation. The U.S. Constitution was born in battle. It emerged from a long war of independence and from the lessons learned in that war about the need for a strong executive to wage war, a strong congress to allocate funds and raise revenue, and a judiciary to interpret the constitution. War, along with the teachings of John Locke, framed the discussions in Philadelphia, because the founders’ experience in a war where there was only a congress and no president convinced them of the need for a strong executive. And even that was not enough to prevent civil war over the issue of state sovereignty versus federal sovereignty. Making a constitution is hard.The European constitution was also born in battle, but in a different way. For centuries, the Europeans had engaged in increasingly savage wars. The question they wanted to address was how to banish war from Europe. In truth, that decision was not in their hands, but in the hands of Americans and Soviets. But the core issue remained: how to restrain European savagery. The core idea was relatively simple. European wars arose from European divisions; and, for centuries, those divisions ran along national lines. If a United States of Europe could be created on the order of the United States of America, then the endless battling of France, Germany and England would be eliminated. In the exhaustion of the postwar world — really lasting through the lives of the generation that endured World War II — the concept was deeply seductive. Europe after World War II was exhausted in every sense. It allowed its empires to slip away with a combination of indifference and relief. What Europeans wanted postwar was to make a living and be left alone by ideology and nationalism; they had experienced quite enough of those two. Even France under the influence of Charles de Gaulle, the champion of the idea of the nation-state and its interests, could not arouse a spirit of nationalism anywhere close to what had been. There is a saying that some people are exhausted and confuse their state with virtue. If that is true, then it is surely true of Europe in the last couple of generations. The European Union reflected these origins. It began as a pact — the European Community — of nations looking to reduce tariff barriers. It evolved into a nearly Europe-wide grouping of countries bound together in a trade bloc, with many of those countries sharing a common currency. Its goal was not the creation of a more perfect union, or, as the Americans put it, a “novus ordo seclorum.” It was not to be the city on the hill. Its commitment was to a more prosperous life, without genocide. Though not exactly inspiring, given the brutality of European history, it was not a trivial goal.The problem was that when push came to shove, the European Community evolved into the European Union, which consisted of four things:
1. A free trade zone with somewhat synchronized economic polices, not infrequently overridden by the sovereign power of member states.
2. A complex bureaucracy designed to oversee the harmonization of European economies. This was seen as impenetrable and engaged in intensive and intrusive work from the trivial to the extremely significant, charged with defining everything from when a salami may be called a salami and whether Microsoft was a monopoly.
3. A single currency and central bank to which 15 of the 27 EU members subscribed.
4. Had Ireland voted differently, a set of proto-institutions would have been created — complete with a presidency and foreign policy chief — which would have given the European Union the trappings of statehood. The president, who would rotate out of office after a short time, would have been the head of one of the EU member states.
Rejecting a European RegimeThe Irish referendum was all about transforming the fourth category into a regime. The Irish rejected it not because they objected to the first three sets of solutions — they have become the second-wealthiest country in Europe per capita under their aegis. They objected to it because they did not want to create a European regime. As French and Dutch voters have said before, the Irish said they want a free trade zone. They will put up with the Brussels bureaucracy even though its intrusiveness and lack of accountability troubles them. They can live with a single currency so long as it does not simply become a prisoner of German and French economic policy. But they do not want to create a European state. The French and German governments do want to create such a state. As with the creation of the United States, the reasons have to do with war, past and future. Franco-German animosity helped created the two world wars of the 20th century. Those two powers now want a framework for preventing war within Europe. They also — particularly the French — want a vehicle for influencing the course of world events. In their view, the European Union, as a whole, has a gross domestic product comparable to that of the United States. It should be the equal of the United States in shaping the world. This isn’t simply a moral position, but a practical one. The United States throws its weight around because it can, frequently harming Europe’s interests. The French and Germans want to control the United States.To do this, they need to move beyond having an economic union. They need to have a European foreign and defense policy. But before they can have that, they need a European government that can carry out this policy. And before they can have a European government they must have a European regime, before which they must have a European constitution that enumerates the powers of the European president, parliament and courts. They also need to specify how these officials will be chosen. The French and Germans would welcome all this if they could get it. They know, given population, economic power and so on, that they would dominate the foreign policy created by a European state. Not so the Irish and Danes; they understand they would have little influence on the course of European foreign policy. They already feel the pain of having little influence on European economic policy, particularly the policies of the European Central Bank (ECB). Even the French public has expressed itself in the 2006 election about fears of Brussels and the ECB. But for countries like Ireland and Denmark, each of which fought very hard to create and retain their national sovereignty, merging into a Europe in which they would lose their veto power to a European parliamentary and presidential system is an appalling prospect.Economists always have trouble understanding nationalism. To an economist, all human beings are concerned with maximizing their own private wealth. Economists can never deal with the empirical fact that this simply isn’t true. Many Irish fought against being cogs in a multinational British Empire. The Danes fought against being absorbed by Germany. The prospect of abandoning the struggle for national sovereignty to Europe is not particularly pleasing, even if it means economic advantage. Europe is not going to become a nation-state in the way the United States is. It is increasingly clear that Europeans are not going to reach a consensus on a European constitution. They are not in agreement on what European institutions should look like, how elections should be held and, above all, about the relation between individual nations and a central government. The Europeans have achieved all they are going to achieve. They have achieved a free trade zone with a regulatory body managing it. They have created a currency that is optional to EU members, and from which we expect some members to withdraw from at times while others join in. There will be no collective European foreign or defense policy simply because the Europeans do not have a common interest in foreign and defense policy.
Paris Reads the Writing on the WallThe French have realized this most clearly. Once the strongest advocates of a federated Europe, the French under President Nicolas Sarkozy have started moving toward new strategies. Certainly, they remain committed to the European Union in its current structure, but they no longer expect it to have a single integrated foreign and defense policy. Instead, the French are pursuing initiatives by themselves. One aspect of this involves drawing closer to the United States on some foreign policy issues. Rather than trying to construct a single Europe that might resist the United States — former President Jacques Chirac’s vision — the French are moving to align themselves to some degree with American policies. Iran is an example.The most intriguing initiative from France is the idea of a Mediterranean union drawing together the countries of the Mediterranean basin, from Algeria to Israel to Turkey. Apart from whether these nations could coexist in such a union, the idea raises the question of whether France (or Italy or Greece) can simultaneously belong to the European Union and another economic union. While questions — such as whether North African access to the French market would provide access to the rest of the European Union — remain to be answered, the Germans have strongly rejected this French vision.The vision derives directly from French geopolitical reality. To this point, the French focus has been on France as a European country whose primary commitment is to Europe. But France also is a Mediterranean country, with historical ties and interests in the Mediterranean basin. France’s geographical position gives it options, and it has begun examining those options independent of its European partners.The single most important consequence of the Irish vote is that it makes clear that European political union is not likely to happen. It therefore forces EU members to consider their own foreign and defense policies — and, therefore, their own geopolitical positions. Whether an economic union can survive in a region of political diversity really depends on whether the diversity evolves into rivalry. While that has been European history, it is not clear that Europe has the inclination to resurrect national rivalries. At the same time, if France does pursue interests independent of the Germans, the question will be this: Will the mutual interest in economic unity override the tendency toward political conflict? The idea was that Europe would moot the question by creating a federation. That isn’t going to happen, so the question is on the table. And that question can be framed simply: When speaking of political and military matters, is it reasonable any longer to use the term Europe to denote a single entity? Europe, as it once was envisioned, appears to have disappeared in Ireland.Tell Stratfor What You Think
Monday, June 16, 2008
Google & Blogging
I wanted to send this article which shows how a person can use google and/or a blog to become a source of information, such as biblical information. As an example a person can find interesting topics and put links to some of our church's liturature with them. If you are interested doing something like this, the article below might give some pointers.
> MY NAME> > In the world of Google, you need to get your link on> the first page, which means the first ten hits. Your goal> is the top listing. It is very difficult to achieve this.> > Search Google for "Gary North." Use the quotation> marks to make the search specific. See how many hits you> get. This may amaze you. Most of them refer to me, for> better or worse.> > I am not the only Gary North. There is a general in> Iraq. There is a professor at Ohio University. (I first> came across him in 1970 when I visited Michigan State.) > There is a homosexual activist who grew up in the same L.A.> suburb where my parents moved to after I went off to> college. But the first nine links on Google are to me. > The top link is my web site. This is perfect placement.> > Your goal is to imitate me. Your name is yours. > Build on it. I will cover this later in this report.> > YOUR NICHE> > If you have no niche, you are a commodity. You will> be priced accordingly. > > What is your niche? Do you have one?> > Do you have a blog site with Blogger or a competitor? > They are free.> > If someone searches on Google for you, are you at the> top of the screen? > > Is there a reason why someone should search for your> on Google? If not, why not?> > You need to think about the specialized information> you possess that gives you an advantage in some market. > What can you do better than your competition? If the> answer is "nothing," you are at a competitive disadvantage.> > Is there some area where people come to you for> advice? If there is, get on-line with a Website or a blog> site and start putting what you know on line.> > What are you doing to secure your own little monopoly> of service?> http://garynorth.com/.
> MY NAME> > In the world of Google, you need to get your link on> the first page, which means the first ten hits. Your goal> is the top listing. It is very difficult to achieve this.> > Search Google for "Gary North." Use the quotation> marks to make the search specific. See how many hits you> get. This may amaze you. Most of them refer to me, for> better or worse.> > I am not the only Gary North. There is a general in> Iraq. There is a professor at Ohio University. (I first> came across him in 1970 when I visited Michigan State.) > There is a homosexual activist who grew up in the same L.A.> suburb where my parents moved to after I went off to> college. But the first nine links on Google are to me. > The top link is my web site. This is perfect placement.> > Your goal is to imitate me. Your name is yours. > Build on it. I will cover this later in this report.> > YOUR NICHE> > If you have no niche, you are a commodity. You will> be priced accordingly. > > What is your niche? Do you have one?> > Do you have a blog site with Blogger or a competitor? > They are free.> > If someone searches on Google for you, are you at the> top of the screen? > > Is there a reason why someone should search for your> on Google? If not, why not?> > You need to think about the specialized information> you possess that gives you an advantage in some market. > What can you do better than your competition? If the> answer is "nothing," you are at a competitive disadvantage.> > Is there some area where people come to you for> advice? If there is, get on-line with a Website or a blog> site and start putting what you know on line.> > What are you doing to secure your own little monopoly> of service?> http://garynorth.com/.
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