Adults Raised by Gay Couples Speak Out Against Gay ‘Marriage’ in Federal Court

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div id="title-wrapper" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <h1 class="title" id="page-title" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </h1> </div> <div class="region clear-block" id="main-content" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <div class="node clear-block" id="node-879359" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <div class="meta" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span class="submitted" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="blog-style-author no-photo count-0" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <div class="author-detail" style="border: 0px; float: left; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; 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margin: 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Supreme Court Gay Marriage" width="220" /></span></a><div class="caption" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 10px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, Fil</span></div> <div class="caption" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 5px; padding: 10px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">CNSNews.com) – Four adult children of same-sex parents have submitted </span><i style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">amicus curiae</i><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">briefs in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals asking that it oppose the legalization of same-sex “marriage."</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Court, in New Orleans, La., heard arguments on Jan. 9 as it considers whether to uphold traditional marriage – defined as being between one man and one woman -- in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">B.N. Klein, Robert Oscar Lopez, Dawn Stefanowicz, and Katy Faust all grew up with homosexual parents. All four argued that redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would harm children by depriving them of a mother or father.</span></div> </div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In her brief, Dawn Stefanowicz described her experience living in a same-sex household.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I wasn’t surrounded by average heterosexual couples,” she says in her court brief.  “Dad’s partners slept and ate in our home, and they took me along to meeting places in the LGBT communities. I was exposed to overt sexual activities like sodomy, nudity, pornography, group sex, sadomasochism and the ilk.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“There was no guarantee that any of my Dad’s partners would be around for long, and yet I often had to obey them,” she said. “My rights and innocence were violated.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“As children, we are not allowed to express our disagreement, pain and confusion,” Stefanowicz explained. “Most adult children from gay households do not feel safe or free to publicly express their stories and life-long challenges; they fear losing professional licenses, not obtaining employment in their chosen field, being cut off from some family members or losing whatever relationship they have with their gay parent(s). Some gay parents have threatened to leave no inheritance, if the children don’t accept their parent’s partner du jour.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I grew up with a parent and her partner[s] in an atmosphere in which gay ideology was used as a tool of repression, retribution and abuse,” <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/240312276/B-N-Klein-Amicus-Brief" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">B.N. Klein wrote of her experience</a> with a lesbian mother. “I have seen that children in gay households often become props to be publicly displayed to prove that gay families are just like heterosexual ones.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Klein said she was taught that “some Jews and most Christians were stupid and hated gays and were violent,” and that homosexuals were “much more creative and artistic” because they were not repressed and were naturally more ‘feeling.’”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“At the same time I was given the message that if I did not agree (which I did not), I was stupid and damned to a life of punishing hostility from my mother and her partner,” she recounts. “They did this with the encouragement of all their gay friends in the community and they were like a cheering squad. I was only allowed out of my room to go to school. This could go on for weeks.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I was supposed to hate everyone based on what they thought of my mother and her partner,” said Klein. “People’s accomplishments did not matter, their personal struggles did not matter, and their own histories were of no consequence. The only thing that mattered was what they thought of gays.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/251078014/Robert-Oscar-Lopez-Amicus-Brief#scribd" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Robert Oscar Lopez </a>who was also raised by a lesbian mother and her partner, had a different experience which he described as the “best possible conditions for a child raised by a same-sex couple.”</span></span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Had I been formally studied by same-sex parenting ‘experts’ in 1985, I would have confirmed their rosiest estimations of LGBT family life,” Lopez wrote, but then went on to argue against same-sex marriage saying that, “behind these facades of a happy ‘outcome’ lay many problems.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He describes experiencing a great deal of sexual confusion due to the lack of a father figure in his life. He turned to a life of prostitution with older men as a teenager.</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I had an inexplicable compulsion to have sex with older males,” he recounted, saying he “wanted to have sex with older men who were my father’s age, though at the time I could scarcely understand what I was doing.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“The money I received for sex certainly helped me financially because it allowed me certain spending money beyond what I earned with my teenage jobs at a pizzeria and in my mother’s [psychiatric] clinic,” he states in the brief. “But the money was not as impactful as the fact that I needed to feel loved and wanted by an older male figure, even if for only as short as a half hour.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“As early as ten years ago, I developed a clear stance on homosexual relationships. A civil union or some kind of state recognition would have helped my mother and her partner,” Lopez writes.</span></div> <div dir="rtl" style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Yet the traditional marriage laws in New York State as they existed back then prevented my mother and her partner from entirely cutting my father out of my life,” he explained.  “The latter reality proved pivotal because my re-establishment of ties to my father in 1998 led to a transition in my life, from being lost and sexually confused to being stable and romantically fulfilled.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/240312274/Katy-Faust-Amicus-Briefs" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Katy Faust, </a>who grew up with a lesbian mother and her partner also testified against gay marriage but clarified that “my advocacy against gay marriage and for the rights of children will never include condemnation of my mother and her partner or details about their private lives.”</span></span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“When we institutionalize same-sex marriage,” Faust writes, “we move from permitting citizens the freedom to live as they choose, to promoting same-sex headed households. In doing so, we ignore the true nature of the outcropping of marriage.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Now we are normalizing a family structure where a child will always be deprived daily of one gender influence and the relationship with at least one natural parent,” she explains, “Our cultural narrative becomes one that, in essence, tells children that they have no right to the natural family structure or their biological parents, but that children simply exist for the satisfaction of adult desires.”</span></div> <div style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The 5th Circuit is still considering the legality of state bans on same-sex “marriage” and will issue an opinion in the coming months.</span></div> <div dir="rtl" style="border: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The U.S. <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/16/supreme-court-gay-marriage/21867355/" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Supreme Court announced </a>on Jan. 19 that it will consider gay  “marriage” bans in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee with oral arguments in April and a ruling before the end of the current term in June.</span></div> </div> </div> </div> </div>

Adults Raised by Gay Couples Speak Out Against Gay ‘Marriage’ in Federal Court

By  Lauretta Brown Sharing Service 267   (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, Fil CNSNews.com) – Four adult childr...

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Anti-gay law: 10 US senators want Nigeria sanctioned

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div style="margin-bottom: 10px;"> <img alt="" src="http://www.tribune.com.ng/images/obama1.jpg" style="border: 0px; float: left; height: auto; margin: 10px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" /><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">TEN senators of the United States (US) are seeking sanctions against Nigeria, over what they described as “a growing trend of laws and proposed legislation targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals in Africa.”</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In a letter to President Barack Obama, published by The Cable, the senators were seeking a review of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which allowed for duty-free treatment of certain imports from Nigeria and other sub-Saharan African countries since 2000.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“We, therefore, ask that your administration review Nigeria and Uganda’s eligibility for AGOA’s trade preference and, if it is determined that those countries are not ‘making continual progress’ in meeting the statute’s requirements, that you take steps to revoke AGOA eligibility to Nigeria and Uganda, in accordance with 19 USC 2466a(a)(3),” the senators stated.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The senators believed that the enacted Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act by Nigeria in January and the enforcement of these laws would be a human rights abuse, in violation of the standards set forth in the AGOA.</span></div> <center style="height: 0px; margin: auto; overflow: hidden; width: auto;"> <div style="padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 10px; text-align: left;"> </div> <div id="ebzNative"> </div> </center> <div style="margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“These laws, combined with the growing public vitriol by government officials and the media, threaten to usher in an era of widespread oppression of the LGBT community in many African countries.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“We believe that the discriminatory anti-LGBT laws in those countries represent a clear violation of human rights and hope that the interagency process charged with AGOA’s annual review will make this recommendation. We further ask that you not restore eligibility until these beneficiary countries have taken steps to eliminate harsh penalties for LGBT persons,” the senators said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 10px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The senators, according to the letter published in The Cable, are Christopher S. Murphy,  Tammy Baldwin, Martin Heinrich,  Richard Blumenthal,  Barbara Boxer,  Al Franken, Kirsten Gillibrand,  Edward Markey,  Sherrod Brown and Mark E. Udall.</span></div> </div>

Anti-gay law: 10 US senators want Nigeria sanctioned

TEN senators of the United States (US) are seeking sanctions against Nigeria, over what they described as “a growing trend of laws and pro...

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