The Senate has delayed a highly-anticipated vote to enshrine same-sex marriage into law until after the midterm elections this November.
The news was announced by lawmakers Thursday after weeks of bipartisan deliberations that left some Republicans with objections to the act’s potential religious liberty implications.
The bill, titled the Respect for Marriage Act, follows the House version that was passed earlier in July.
It is being led by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin). and Susan Collins (R-Maine), who are working across aisles to gain at least 10 GOP Senate votes needed to pass it.
Baldwin told reporters Thursday she is “very confident” the bill will pass but said she needs “a little more time.”
Some Republicans, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), have signaled a need to hammer out legislative protections for religious liberty.
“There are some very legitimate concerns about religious liberty, and those concerns would have to be properly addressed,” Johnson said in an interview last week.
Johnson called the act “unnecessary” but said he saw “no reason to oppose it” in a statement in July.
A record number of 47 Republicans joined Democrats in passing the bill in the House in July.
The bill would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage in federal law as the union of a man and a woman and permitted states not to recognize same-sex marriages that were contracted in other states.
DOMA was already effectively nullified, however, when the Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriage rights in the 2013 and 2015 Supreme Court decisions United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges.
Democrats have pushed the bill as necessary after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in that decision, he suggested the court should reconsider all “substantive due process” cases, including the 2015 Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage.
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Vatican City flag waiving over St. Peter’s dome – Bohumil Petrik / CNA
Rome Newsroom, May 20, 2021 / 05:30 am (CNA).
The Vatican’s Council for the Economy faces a “huge task” in its efforts to quickly bring up the Holy See’s accounting and financial transparency to international standards, according to one of its lay members.
“We are very much focused on getting those basic standards in place and making sure the information that is in front of the pope when he makes decisions is thorough, complete, and fair. And we’re not in that situation yet,” Council for the Economy member Ruth Kelly told EWTN News.
Kelly, who was Education Secretary under British Prime Minister Tony Blair and later worked for HSBC Global Asset Management, is one of seven lay people on the Vatican council overseeing the administrative and financial structures and activities of the Roman Curia, institutions of the Holy See, and Vatican City State.
The lay members work together with eight cardinals to set the budget for the Holy See’s entities and raise the level of financial transparency — something which Kelly said can pose unique challenges.
“For example, the historic legacy is very, very difficult to tackle if you take the example of, say … a place of residence through tradition in a particular part of the Vatican, or Rome, or somewhere in the world. It may be the case that no one has ever had it valued, or really thought about who legally owned it, because through customs and tradition it was obvious to what use it should be put,” she said.
“The Holy See cannot yet account for all of the investment properties that it owns specifically around Rome and in Italy. And there’s a huge task to go through to make sure it identifies properly the ownership of each — whether it’s owned by a diocese, whether it’s owned by the Vatican, whether it’s owned by a parish, or somebody else — and then to valuate it to make sure that it’s properly accounted for in the balance sheets.”
“So that’s one real area where the Holy See needs to be moved quickly up to date.”
Ruth Kelly, pictured in 2006. / skuds via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
The Council for the Economy is also currently implementing an investment policy for the Vatican and “a huge training program” in financial standards for those who work in its departments and dicasteries, according to Kelly.
“I’m actually very encouraged by the steps that I’ve seen, even though there’s so much to do and so far to go,” she said.
Pope Francis established the Council for the Economy in 2014 as part of his program of financial reform. Kelly was appointed to the council for a six-year term last August along with five other women with backgrounds in banking, finance, asset management, and international law.
“There’s a real recognition that it’s now very important at the heart of the Church to have lay experts involved in overseeing the Vatican accounts and policies and so forth. And that is important, not just in its own sake, but also for the credibility of the process,” Kelly said.
“The ambition is to have international accounting standards applied in full across the Holy See,” she said. “That’s not a position which we have arrived at yet, but it is one to which we aspire.”
Kelly spoke at the webinar series, “Inspiring Trust: Church Communications and Organizational Vulnerability,” offered by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. The university is entrusted to Opus Dei, with which Kelly is associated.
“To be brutally honest about it, from my perspective of the council’s perspectives … it’s not clear how funds have been flowing and how they’ve been managed because the transparency hasn’t been there,” she said.
Kelly is adamant that “once that transparency is there, and international standards are applied, then you can start talking altogether differently about the Vatican’s role and its responsibility and how it manages money, and so forth.”
“If someone’s going to put money into the Peter’s Pence account, they need to know that that money is being well spent. And at the moment, you can’t say definitely that we can show that, but we’re well on the way I think to be able to do that before too long,” she said.
The Council of the Economy was very focused on cost restraint in setting this year’s budget, asking Vatican departments to come up with reductions in their spending, Kelly explained.
The Vatican’s budget, which already operated on a deficit, took another hit in 2020 and the beginning of 2021, when the Vatican Museums, a major source of income, was forced to close for months.
For the Holy See, the coronavirus crisis also meant collapsing market investments, uncertain income from real estate investments, and diminished contributions from the Church around the world.
“The Holy See suffered, along with every other organization, or many other organizations, in the pandemic, and that’s not surprising. And the question really for the council is how much of that is temporary and how much of that will bounce back,” she said.
“And it is the case that fundraising has been severely dented through the COVID crisis, not surprisingly, as it has been felt right throughout the Church,” she said.
“So, you know, it is one of the areas in our minds, as we think about how to restore the reputation and how to create a strong reputation for how the Holy See manages finances.”
Kelly is confident that there is a strong willingness among both the lay members and the cardinals on the council to “make an impact quickly.”
“We do expect results, very significant results, before the six years run out at the end of the council’s current term,” she said.
German Cardinal Reinhard Marx has overseen the council since its creation in 2014. Other cardinals currently on the council include Joseph Tobin of Newark; Anders Arborelius of Stockholm; Péter Erdő of Esztergom-Budapest; Odilo Scherer of São Paulo; Gérald Lacroix of Quebec; Giuseppe Petrocchi of L’Aquila; and Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.
Among the lay members are German law professor Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchhof; Maria Kolak, president of the National Association of German Cooperative Banks; Alberto Minali, the former chief investment officer of the asset management group Eurizon; Leslie Ferrar, who was treasurer to Britain’s Prince Charles; elevator manufacturer Zardoya Otis; and Eva Castillo Sanz, who sits on the board of directors of the Spanish bank Bankia.
Kelly said: “One of the things that’s on my mind to really explore as we go forward is how the whole whistleblowing setup works in the Vatican. Because I think part of an open culture is not only financial transparency but the ability of people to raise issues in private, perhaps without being identified or only identified if they so wish.”
“Now I do know that whistleblowing happens, but I’m not yet sure that that works well enough within the Holy See, and the Vatican.”
“There is a huge way to go, but I do think the will is there at the very top to see change happen,” she said.
An image from the Canadian pro-life group Choice42’s animated video encouraging pregnant women to choose life. / Choice42
Montreal, Canada, Jul 5, 2021 / 11:00 am (CNA).
A viral video is challenging society and the media for pressuring women to choose abortion. Its message is simple: Women have an incredible Wonder Woman-like ability to choose life for their unborn baby – and succeed. They can, in other words, choose life for two.
Canadian pro-life group Choice42 released its animated video encouraging pregnant women to choose life on May 29. The short film follows a scared, wide-eyed young woman as she flees from the dark monsters of societal pressure and struggles to climb up a mountain. The video attracted hundreds of thousands of views on social media and was so successful that, on June 28, the group released a version in Portuguese, appealing to countries like Brazil. It empowers women with the truth that, yes, “you can do this.”
EWTN Pro-Life Weekly highlighted a clip from the two-minute video on June 26.
“So you’re pregnant. You didn’t plan this. You didn’t want it. And now you have a choice to make,” the narrator says as the animation begins. “Take a breath. You can do this.”
“No matter what’s going on in your life, you can rise up and take this on,” she adds. “You can rock this.”
But, the narrator cautions, “I’m going to be real with you.”
“The choices that our society and the media are going to present you with, they’re not all equal,” she says. “Right now, your baby’s heart is already beating. That started about 21 days after conception. We’re talking about another human being here, and not just any human being. Your baby.”
The video goes on to warn that “abortion is probably going to be suggested, even pushed on you” also “by the people closest to you.”
But, the narrator urges, “you’re already this baby’s mother.”
“This child is already here in the world, living and growing inside you,” she says. “And what these people are suggesting to you is that you murder your own baby.”
While the narrator acknowledges that her words might sound harsh, she says, “I’m not going to lie to you. Not when your baby’s life is on the line.”
But pregnant women are “not alone, not by a long shot.”
“Reach out for help if you need it,” the narrator says. “We’ll help you.”
As an organization, Choice42 does just that: It exists to expose abortion for what it is and to empower pregnant women to choose life by providing emotional support, educational programs, and financial assistance.
The founder and director, Laura Klassen, dedicates her time to creating videos like this and others, in which she often wears her trademark pink wig. This one, she said, took six months to create.
“We just thought, why don’t we just put this into a video,” she told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly. “Something really relatable to mostly younger women, and just put that out there so that hopefully we can reach more women with our message even if we’re not talking with them one-on-one.”
Washington D.C., Aug 3, 2017 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A leading Democratic Party campaigner has signaled openness to pro-life candidates, continuing months of controversy over the party’s future.
Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in charge of helping Democratic congressional candidates, told The Hill there would be no “litmus test” for candidates on abortion when it comes to funding their campaigns.
The comments drew support from Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America.
“We have been advocating for years that the Democratic Party needs to open itself up to the viewpoints of more than 20 million pro-life Democrats,” Day said Aug. 1.
“Our party, which advocates for diversity and inclusion, has been sending mixed messages about inclusion for its pro-life members,” said Day, adding the statement shows “that Democrats are serious about winning again.”
Democrats for Life cited the loss of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, traditionally strong Democratic states, in the 2016 presidential election. The states are “very pro-life,” the organization said.
Lujan’s remarks focused on winning a majority of 218 votes in the House of Representatives, which would require winning 24 seats in the 2018 elections.
“There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates,” he told TheHill.com. “As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America.”
“We’ll need a broad coalition to get that done,” he said. “We are going to need all of that, we have to be a big family in order to win the House back.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List and an advisor to the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign, said the Democratic party’s official abortion stand has cost it.
“Democrats’ extreme pro-abortion platform has lost more votes than it has gained and led to defeat in the last two election cycles,” she said, citing a Gallup poll reporting that 32 percent of Democrats consider themselves pro-life.
At the same time, Dannenfelser said Lujan’s comments are “not the same as concrete policy endorsements.”
“Only changes in the party platform that represent majority views and momentum, like that of the Pain-Capable bill, will signify true change,” she said, referring to a bill that bars abortion when the unborn child is believed to feel pain.
Pro-abortion rights groups, however, criticized Lujan’s comments and downplayed any claimed advantage in backing pro-life candidates.
NARAL Pro-Choice America national campaigns director Mitchell Stille rejected as “sadly mistaken” any claim that President Trump and Republican candidates won in 2016 because of opposition to abortion.
The Democratic Party’s abortion support was a focus of controversy in the early 2017 campaign of Health Mello, a Democratic candidate for mayor of Omaha, Neb.
In mid-April former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez publicly supported Mello. Mello had supported abortion restrictions in the past as a state senator, and was endorsed by Nebraska Right to Life in 2012, but received a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood Voters of Nebraska in 2015.
Mello had pledged not to do anything as mayor that would restrict “access to reproductive health care.” Nonetheless, pro-abortion rights groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America criticized the Perez and Sanders endorsements as “politically stupid.”
“Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” he said April 21. “This is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”
At the time, a DNC aide told The Hill this statement did not represent a litmus test.
Dannenfelser said Aug. 1 that some Democrats are starting to recognize their vulnerability on abortion, even though “abortion lobby leaders are beside themselves over the mere suggestion that a pro-life Democrat be permitted to run.”
In 2006, the last time the Democrats won the House of Representatives from Republican control, the party recruited and supported several pro-life Democrats.
Well, of course they have postponed it. The Democrats are essentially dishonest, manipulative and amoral .This is a typical strategy. Most of all they dont want this to be an election talking point to potentially lose them votes. It should be ok though. Far too many of their most reliable voters dont appear to have a problem with their poisonous dishonesty and dangerous ideology anyway. As for the Republicans who supported this legislation in the house, I hope they eventually get voted out of office.
The midterm elections have nothing to do with the delay…
Unconfirmed reports from anonymous sources reveal that in reaching across the aisle Baldwin and Collins caused unfamiliar levels of convulsion when–even upon close inspection–neither could identify what a “woman” is, nor the meaning of the term “marriage,” nor “sex,” nor “religious liberty” nor even the meaning of “religious” or “liberty.”
Decorum then was partially restored when Collins complained somewhat coherently about the Justice Clarence Thomas concurring opinion in the Dobbs ruling. But then Baldwin shook uncontrollably, tearfully pouting something about a new Leftist supreme court justice who has disallowed any such definitive discussion within her party, as to what a woman might be, or might not be, or whatever.
At this point, emergency Congressional therapists were summoned into the chamber, but none came as all of them were predisposed, tending to the unresolved needs of one another.
Well, of course they have postponed it. The Democrats are essentially dishonest, manipulative and amoral .This is a typical strategy. Most of all they dont want this to be an election talking point to potentially lose them votes. It should be ok though. Far too many of their most reliable voters dont appear to have a problem with their poisonous dishonesty and dangerous ideology anyway. As for the Republicans who supported this legislation in the house, I hope they eventually get voted out of office.
The midterm elections have nothing to do with the delay…
Unconfirmed reports from anonymous sources reveal that in reaching across the aisle Baldwin and Collins caused unfamiliar levels of convulsion when–even upon close inspection–neither could identify what a “woman” is, nor the meaning of the term “marriage,” nor “sex,” nor “religious liberty” nor even the meaning of “religious” or “liberty.”
Decorum then was partially restored when Collins complained somewhat coherently about the Justice Clarence Thomas concurring opinion in the Dobbs ruling. But then Baldwin shook uncontrollably, tearfully pouting something about a new Leftist supreme court justice who has disallowed any such definitive discussion within her party, as to what a woman might be, or might not be, or whatever.
At this point, emergency Congressional therapists were summoned into the chamber, but none came as all of them were predisposed, tending to the unresolved needs of one another.