Veep Joseph Biden Congratulates President Obama on #SSM Ruling: 'This is a big f*cking deal' (PHOTOS)

See all the celebratory photos from White House photographer Pete Souza, at Medium, "Behind the Lens: When the President Heard the News of the Supreme Court Decision on the Affordable Care Act." (Via Memeorandum.)

Elizabeth Warren Wears Feather Boa to Celebrate Homosexual Marriage Ruling in Massachusetts

Well, it's a "boa" at the tweet, but c'mon. Is there any other kind?

From Jacklyn Friedman:

Don’t know if you can see her here, but Senator Warren is wearing a boa at the State House right now. pic.twitter.com/uFClUBBoRk

— Jaclyn Friedman (@jaclynf) June 26, 2015

Outrage as Giant Penis in Norway Goes Around 'Ejaculating' Glitter at People (VIDEO)

It's for "safe sex." But it's Norway. It's safe man-on-man butt sex as much as anything else.

Coming to America.

Watch: "Outrage as giant penis creeps up on people and sprays them for safe sex campaign."

More: "Giant glitter-spraying penis stars in Norwegian sex education advert."

Franklin Graham: Prepare for Persecution of Christians After Homosexual Marriage Ruling (VIDEO)

Yep.

And S.E. Cupp discounts this.

Franklin Graham: "Our nation has a spiritual problem."

Bingo:

CNN Contributor S.E. Cupp Gets Emotional Discussing Homosexual Marriage Ruling (VIDEO)

She's a good lady.

The problem is that it's not just about "marriage equality." The left is currently tearing the country down.

What's the GOP going to do about that?

Homosexual Flag Goes Up Over County Government Center in Santa Clara, California

We're all homosexuals now.

Interesting how the homosexual flag is going up as the Confederate flag is coming down. I don't care about the racist Confederate flag, but it sure tells you something about the direction of the country.

Rainbow flag flies over Santa Clara Co. Govt center after #SCOTUSMarriage decision this morning. @abc7newsBayArea pic.twitter.com/n2fEQc05Yh

— David Louie (@abc7david) June 26, 2015

Also, "#LOVEWINS: SUPREME COURT MAKES HISTORIC DECISION ON GAY MARRIAGE."

ADDED: It's going to be raised at government buildings all over the country. I'll update if I see more tweets:

Florida. @AmPowerBlog @debrapianalto @lheal @wellfonder http://t.co/fJ2ndGDPpm

— DernDawn (@noprezzie2012) June 26, 2015

Rainbow flag raised over City Hall in St. Pete to honor St. Pete Pride. (Photo: SPPD.) http://t.co/lz9bquV0P2 pic.twitter.com/aOffo28XU1

— Bay News 9 (@BN9) June 25, 2015

Just Waking Up and Saw This Huge Homosexual Marriage Roundup on Memeorandum Earlier

I was up scrolling through the news on my iPhone at 7:00am and the SCOTUS homosexual marriage ruling had just dropped. Memeorandum hadn't caught up with the news but had a beautiful roundup on all the ObamaCare commentary.

Here.

I have my hard copy of the Los Angeles Times, with the lead story from Noam Levey, "Analysis Obamacare appears to be about as established as a law can be in divided U.S."

So, it's a big news day today. There was an ISIS beheading in France that won't get the coverage it deserves in the U.S. with all the other news. But read around and access alternative sites. The ideological war has reached full battle pitch, and conservatives are on the defensive but not yet defeated. Join the fray friends. Truth and decency are themselves under siege.

Supreme Court Justices View Homosexual Marriage with Doubt

Well, oral arguments aren't a particularly good predictor of how the Court will rule.

And Justice Anthony Kennedy's the flaming leftist who wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which many observers claimed foreshadowed a Court ruling establishing a right to same-sex nuptials.

So, while I take this with some skepticism, it's nevertheless pretty ticklish how the homosexual rights attorneys got all beat up during the arguments yesterday. It's good to keep the leftist ghouls guessing. They've been freakin' aggressive with entitlement this last few years. Damn.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Supreme Court weighs gay marriage; Justice Kennedy unexpectedly expresses doubt":

Gay rights lawyers went to the Supreme Court hoping to find a majority of justices ready to support a historic ruling that would declare same-sex couples had an equal right to marry nationwide.

Instead during Tuesday’s arguments, they heard words of hesitation that suggested the outcome is less certain than many expected.

The most important and surprising doubts came almost immediately from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who openly wondered whether the court should intervene in an institution so deeply rooted in history and religion.

The word that keeps coming back to me is millennia,” Kennedy said in the opening minutes of a 2 1/2-hour argument, prompting looks of concern from gay rights attorneys.

Kennedy’s apparent struggle over what is perhaps the court’s most important civil rights question in a generation was welcomed by state attorneys opposing gay marriage and by his four fellow conservative justices. They emphasized that marriage has been limited throughout American history to a man and a woman, and that the issue is better left to voters at the state level, rather than to federal judges.

Despite his comments, Kennedy — who will probably have the deciding vote — may still rule in favor of marriage rights for same-sex couples when the court announces its decision in June. Kennedy in the past had similarly voiced doubts during an argument, only to discard them when the time came to make a decision.

More important, Kennedy has written the court’s three important rulings in favor of gay rights, including an opinion two years ago that spoke glowingly of the “equal dignity” of same-sex couples who had married. It was that decision that led to a string of rulings by federal courts over the last year that invalidated states’ same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional.

To the relief of gay rights advocates, Kennedy later in Tuesday’s argument returned to some of his more familiar themes about equality and at one point chided a Michigan state lawyer for insisting that marriage was chiefly about biology and procreation, and not recognizing the dignity derived from being in a committed couple.

“Same-sex couples say, 'Of course, we understand the nobility and sacredness of the marriage. We know we can’t procreate, but we want the other attributes of it in order to show that we too have a dignity that can be fulfilled,’” Kennedy said.

With an estimated 250,000 children that are being raised by same-sex couples across the nation, Kennedy also questioned the harm same-sex marriage bans have on such families.

Kennedy’s colleagues seemed less ambivalent about the question before them.

The court’s four most conservative justices, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., left little doubt they would vote to uphold the state bans on same-sex marriage. Roberts said gay rights proponents were seeking to redefine marriage.

“You're not seeking to join the institution,” he told attorney Mary L. Bonauto, who is representing two Michigan nurses who have been unable to marry and jointly adopt the four abandoned foster children they are raising. “You're seeking to change what the institution is.”

Roberts also warned that a ruling from the high court at this time would prematurely shut down the national debate over the issue.

But Bonauto emphasized that the rights of gays and lesbians were being compromised in many states and that it was unfair to tell gay couples to “wait and see.”

The four liberal justices said they saw no valid legal justification to deny marriage to same-sex couples, questioning how such recognition would harm heterosexual marriage.

“We are not taking anyone’s liberty away” by allowing gay couples to marry, said Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

They attacked the argument that marriage is intended chiefly to encourage child-rearing, and noted that many heterosexual spouses do not have children and a growing number of same-sex couples do, either through adoption or surrogacy.


Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the court had repeatedly ruled that Americans have a fundamental right to marry, and he questioned whether “purely religious reasons” can justify a ban on same-sex marriage.

“There is one group of people whom [some states] won't open marriage to,” Breyer said. “So they have no possibility to participate in that fundamental liberty. That is people of the same sex who wish to marry. And so we ask, why? And the answer we get is, ‘Well, people have always done it.’ You know, you could have answered that one the same way we talk about racial segregation.”

More.

America's Men Describe Their 'Perfect Woman' as Blonde with Blue Eyes

My wife's the one with blonde hair and blue eyes. I'm the one with the graduate degree, heh.

At London's Daily Mail, "It's not just about looks! America's men describe their 'perfect woman' as blonde, with blue eyes - and a graduate degree."

Ground Zero Wedding Photo Reunited with Owner After 13 years

A wonderful story, at CBS News:



More at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Wedding photo found in 9/11 rubble reunited with owner after 13 years."

'Inside Edition' Host Megan Alexander Speaks Out on Marriage

At Young Conservatives, "“Marriage Still Matters”: Reporter talks about why she waited until marriage to have sex."

Boy, that's pretty romantic. She'd be quite the catch.

Raising Sled Dogs in Manhattan

I wish I had a sled dog, heh.

At NYT, "Planes, Dog Sleds and Automobiles":

Samantha Brooke Berkule and Scott Stuart Johnson were married Saturday evening in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. Cantor Jill E. Abramson officiated at the Acqualina Resort and Spa on the Beach.

The bride, 35, is an assistant professor of psychology at Marymount Manhattan College and a research assistant professor of pediatrics at New York University. She graduated from Cornell and received a master’s in psychology and a doctorate in developmental psychology from Yeshiva University. Her previous marriage ended in divorce. She is the daughter of Andrea S. Berkule of Yonkers and the late Lloyd I. Berkule.

The groom, 41, owns SJ Partners, a New York investment firm, and is an adjunct professor teaching entrepreneurial finance at Columbia Business School. He graduated from Columbia, from which he also received a Master of International Affairs and an M.B.A. He is the son of Cindy S. Johnson and Tod S. Johnson of Scarsdale, N.Y.

Dr. Berkule and Mr. Johnson became acquainted in 2012 after she reached out to him through Match.com...

Interesting. The world of dating is enormously different from when I was on the market, lol.

More, including video, here.

34 Homosexual Couples to Get Married at the Grammys

Make no mistake on the numbers. It's definitely a mass wedding. A mass of homosexuals.

.@RSMcCain The wedding singers! 34 same-sex couples to get married at the Grammys http://t.co/rSD8Wnn4FK via @BeccaJLower cc. @BobBelvedere
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 26, 2014

Look, if you're libertarian it's all good. Homosexual marriage is fine. For me, just don't ram it up my ass. To say nothing of my children.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 26, 2014

Queen Latifah to Officiate a Mass Homosexual Wedding at Tonight's Grammys

Is this really necessary?

At NewsBusters, "BREAKING: CBS Putting a Gay-Marriage Protest In Middle of Grammy Performance of Leftist 'Same Love' Song."

More at Memeorandum.

And to think, I was actually looking forward to watching it tonight. But they had to go and inject far left-wing politics. No wonder people just tune out of the pop culture's moral bankruptcy. A mass homosexual wedding on national TV? Mindboggling. And depraved.

Wall Street Journal Illustrates Year-End Tax Changes Report with Militant Homosexuals

Another depraved example of how it's all about homosexuals these days. At the Wall Street Journal, of all places. (Well, they're pretty libertarian actually, especially on open-borders illegal immigration, which has always bugged me.)

Here's the piece, "Taxes: What's New This Time" (via Google), and the tax changes for so-called same-sex married couples is the very last section. But oh! The homosexuals had to be in your face all over the hard-copy of the newspaper:

Married same-sex couples must file as married taxpayers.

Following last year's Supreme Court decision, members of same-sex couples whose marriages are recognized under state or foreign law and who were married as of the end of 2013 must either file jointly or use married-filing-separately status.

In most cases, filing jointly will be the smart choice, because it will result in a lower overall tax bill. Members of same-sex couples who have entered into civil unions or domestic partnerships still are treated as unmarried individuals for federal tax purposes.

Hat Tip: The Mad Jewess.

A 'Mixed Bag'? Fifty Years Later and That's All to Be Said for 'War on Poverty'?

Because the left has announced its 2014 agenda will be a "war" against economic equality, I can understand why there was little discussion of this online yesterday. But this "mixed bag" after 50 years and hundreds of billions of dollars is a telling commentary on the inability of government to socially engineer economic outcomes.

At the New York Times, "50 Years Later, War on Poverty Is a Mixed Bag":

WASHINGTON — To many Americans, the war on poverty declared 50 years ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson has largely failed. The poverty rate has fallen only to 15 percent from 19 percent in two generations, and 46 million Americans live in households where the government considers their income scarcely adequate.

But looked at a different way, the federal government has succeeded in preventing the poverty rate from climbing far higher. There is broad consensus that the social welfare programs created since the New Deal have hugely improved living conditions for low-income Americans. At the same time, in recent decades, most of the gains from the private economy have gone to those at the top of the income ladder.

Half a century after Mr. Johnson’s now-famed State of the Union address, the debate over the government’s role in creating opportunity and ending deprivation has flared anew, with inequality as acute as it was in the Roaring Twenties and the ranks of the poor and near-poor at record highs. Programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps are keeping millions of families afloat. Republicans have sought to cut both programs, an illustration of the intense disagreement between the two political parties over the best solutions for bringing down the poverty rate as quickly as possible, or eliminating it.

For poverty to decrease, “the low-wage labor market needs to improve,” James P. Ziliak of the University of Kentucky said. “We need strong economic growth with gains widely distributed. If the private labor market won’t step up to the plate, we’re going to have to strengthen programs to help these people get by and survive.”

In Washington, President Obama has called inequality the “defining challenge of our time.” To that end, he intends to urge states to expand their Medicaid programs to poor, childless adults, and is pushing for an increase in the minimum wage and funding for early-childhood programs.

But conservatives, like Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, have looked at the poverty statistics more skeptically, contending that the government has misspent its safety-net money and needs to focus less on support and more on economic and job opportunities.

“The nation should face up to two facts: poverty rates are too high, especially among children, and spending money on government means-tested programs is at best a partial solution,” Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution wrote in an assessment of the shortfalls on the war on poverty. Washington already spends enough on antipoverty programs to lift all Americans out of poverty, he said. “To mount an effective war against poverty,” he added, “we need changes in the personal decisions of more young Americans.”

Still, a broad range of researchers interviewed by The New York Times stressed the improvement in the lives of low-income Americans since Mr. Johnson started his crusade. Infant mortality has dropped, college completion rates have soared, millions of women have entered the work force, malnutrition has all but disappeared. After all, when Mr. Johnson announced his campaign, parts of Appalachia lacked electricity and indoor plumbing.

Many economists argue that the official poverty rate grossly understates the impact of government programs. The headline poverty rate counts only cash income, not the value of in-kind benefits like food stamps. A fuller accounting suggests the poverty rate has dropped to 16 percent today, from 26 percent in the late 1960s, economists say.

But high rates of poverty — measured by both the official government yardstick and the alternatives that many economists prefer — have remained a remarkably persistent feature of American society. About four in 10 black children live in poverty; for Hispanic children, that figure is about three in 10. According to one recent study, as of mid-2011, in any given month, 1.7 million households were living on cash income of less than $2 a person a day, with the prevalence of the kind of deep poverty commonly associated with developing nations increasing since the mid-1990s.

To be honest, seeing people in poverty makes me sad. But the solution is more economic growth and opportunity, and especially expanding the culture of work, marriage, and thrift. The current Democrat agenda is simply creating a deeper dependency society, seen, for example, in New York's able-bodied black men standing around outside welfare offices waiting for their federal public assistance checks, enthusiastically referred to as "Obama bucks."

Movie Star Maria Bello 'Comes Out' as Lesbian

I've placed "comes out" in quotation marks because she's not really lesbian in the "born this way" sense that used to be the rage during the so-called homosexual "rights" movement. Funny, but apparently the movement's degenerated by now into something quite different from the innate rights legal agenda of which homosexual are argued to have inalienable guarantees against arbitrary, disparate treatment.

See Robert Stacy McCain on that, "But If They’re ‘Born That Way’...":

... why are there more lesbians than ever?

Why? Well, it turns out same-sex "sapphic" relationships are increasingly indicative of liberated lifestyle choices, or in more Zeitgeist-ian phraseology, "gender-fluid sexual expression," especially among women.

Check Robert's entry for the full discussion. And interestingly, the news today presents us with a rather high-profile example of some fairly acute gender-fluid sexual expression in the case of actress Mario Bello, who's published a lengthy op-ed at the New York Times demonstrating how her fluid lifestyle choices --- and her same-sex romantic relationship --- are emblematic of the left's culture of anything-goes sexual licentiousness. In "Coming Out as a Modern Family," Bello writes of explaining to her son her romantic relationship with another woman:

“So are you romantic with anyone right now?” he asked.

I took a deep breath, knowing that my answer, and his response, would have an impact on our lives for a very long time.

He was right; I was with someone romantically and I hadn’t told him. I had become involved with a woman who was my best friend, and, as it happens, a person who is like a godmother to my son.

How and when should I tell him? When I explained the situation to a therapist, she smiled and said, “Your son may say a lot of things about you when he’s older, but he will never say his mother was boring.”

Her advice was to wait until he asked. And now here he was, asking.

About a year before this conversation, I had been sitting in my garden in California, looking through photos and old journals I have kept since childhood. From a green tattered notebook with ink hearts drawn on it to the one I started in Haiti while helping after the earthquake there in January 2010, the journals told stories that seemed woven together by a similar theme.

I read about the handful of men and the one woman I had been in romantic relationships with, passages rife with pain and angst. It seemed when I was physically attracted to someone, I would put them in the box of being my “soul mate” and then be crushed when things didn’t turn out as I had hoped.

I read about the two men I fell for while working on films. I was sure each was my soul mate, a belief fueled by sexual attraction that made me certain I was in love, only to find that when the filming ended, so did the relationship. And I read about the man who asked me to marry him four years ago over the phone, before we had even kissed. Three months later we were in his kitchen throwing steaks at each other’s heads in anger.

As I continued to look through photos, I came across a black-and-white one of my best friend and me taken on New Year’s Eve. We looked so happy, I couldn’t help but smile. I remembered how we had met two years before; she was sitting in a bar wearing a fedora and speaking in her Zimbabwean accent.

We had an immediate connection but didn’t think of it as romantic or sexual. She was one of the most beautiful, charming, brilliant and funny people I had ever met, but it didn’t occur to me, until that soul-searching moment in my garden, that we could perhaps choose to love each other romantically.

What had I been waiting for all of these years? She is the person I like being with the most, the one with whom I am most myself.

The next time I saw her, in New York, I shared my confusing feelings, and we began the long, painful, wonderful process of trying to figure out what our relationship was supposed to be.

There's lots more at the link (via Memeorandum).

Bello goes on about how she's uncomfortable with how the term "partner" is used to denote one's sexual relationship to a long-term significant other. Why can't "partner" just mean someone with whom she shares some kind of key connection, like the father of her son, to whom she's not married, but nevertheless considers her "partner"?

Jack’s father, Dan, will always be my partner because we share Jack.

But Bello also says that her ex-boyfriend Bryn is also her "partner." I guess her dry cleaner could be her partner since they share an emotional bond through frequent touching of the same articles of clothing. Who knows? If it feels good do it? If the description fits denote it?

But the "progressive" clincher here is how Bello appropriates the notion of the "modern family" to authenticate and validate a set of lifestyle choices that have left her bereft of the kind of stable, long-lasting family structure that through the millennia has functioned as the fulcrum of social stability, regeneration of decency, and the wisdom of our predecessors:

Whomever I love, however I love them, whether they sleep in my bed or not, or whether I do homework with them or share a child with them, “love is love.” And I love our modern family.

Maybe, in the end, a modern family is just a more honest family.

Love is a good thing, but there a lots of different kinds of love, and societies need standards of right and wrong on what "love" is both morally acceptable and socially reproductive. Middle-aged men might say that they "love" tween girls in their neighborhoods, but society has said that claims of such love are not a suitable basis for the family unit.

Maria Bello is fortunate to have the fame, fortune, and choices that allow her to experiment with lifestyles that bring her the most fulfillment. She's also fortunate to have family and friends who share her morally loose framework of alternative traditions. The problem is that what Bello does --- and what shows like "Modern Family" do --- is foster a false consciousness in the public mind positing open sexuality, fluid non-commital relationships, and openly opportunistic homosexuality as perfectly reasonable arrangements of modern life. But they are not. And most families, and especially children, need something quite a bit more permanent. The destruction of the American family unit has advanced a long way since the 60s-generation declared war on the patriarchy. Society will only continue its descent to barbarism unless enough people stand up and say no, that's not the way we do it around here. Stop obliterating decency and values. We've had enough of your "progressive" war on the tried-and-true family structure in this country.

24 Grooms Seeing Their Brides for the First Time

This is cool, from BuzzFeed.

24 Grooms Blown Away By Their Beautiful Brides http://t.co/9kW8uyP5b7 pic.twitter.com/BpG9p8SoMB

— BuzzFeed Classics (@BuzzFeedClassic) November 21, 2013

Lauren Silverman Demands Marriage and Reality Show From Simon Cowell

Well, that's what you get for not wearing a raincoat.

At London's Daily Mail, "Marry me and give me a TV show! Simon Cowell's 'gold digger' pregnant lover 'has demanded he marry her and give her a reality TV show'."

Daddy Back From Afghanistan Surprises Family in Scuba Gear

Via Theo Spark, "Scuba Soldier - Back From Afghanistan Early - Surprises Family."



Also at N.Y. Daily News, "Dad back from Afghan duty stages scuba surprise."