The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether states can ban gay marriage, delving into a contentious social issue in what will be one of the most anticipated rulings of the year.

The court, in a brief order, said it would hear cases concerning marriage restrictions in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The ruling, due by the end of June, will determine whether 14 remaining state bans will be struck down.

The court said it will decide two questions: Whether states must allows same-sex couples to marry and whether states must recognize same-sex marriages that take place out-of-state. The court will hear an extended two and a half hours of oral arguments in April.

The plaintiffs include two nurses from Michigan, April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, and Louisville.

“We are now that much closer to being fully recognized as a family, and we are thrilled,” DeBoer said.

“We are excited obviously for our clients and for the many thousands of couples like them in Michigan, but we are also excited for the entire nation,” added Dana Nessel, a lawyer for the Michigan plaintiffs.

Attorney General Eric Holder said President Barack Obama’s administration will file court papers supporting the plaintiffs and seeking to legalize gay marriage nationwide. Obama in 2012 became the first sitting president to support gay marriage.

“It is time for our nation to take another critical step forward to ensure the fundamental equality of all Americans – no matter who they are, where they come from, or whom they love,” Holder said.

Most of the states that are defending state bans had, like the gay rights advocates, urged the high court to take up the issue in order to resolve the legal uncertainty.

Supporters of gay rights have touted same-sex marriage as one of the leading American civil rights issues of this era. Gay right groups quickly urged the justices to issue a nationwide ruling endorsing the legality of gay marriage.

“It’s time for America to no longer be a house divided when it comes to the freedom to marry,” said Brian Silva, executive director of the group Marriage Equality USA.

Chad Griffin, president the Human Rights Campaign, called the pending high court ruling the “moment of truth.”

LEGAL SEA CHANGE

There has already been a legal sea change, thanks in large part to the Supreme Court’s prompting. It began in earnest in June 2013 when the court struck down a federal law that restricted, for the purpose of federal benefits, the definition of marriage to heterosexual couples. Obama’s Justice Department refused to defend the law.

Judges around the country later seized on the language in the high court decision, written by swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy, to strike down a series of state bans.

At the time of the 2013 ruling, only 12 states had authorized gay marriage. It is now legal in 36 of the 50 states.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican defending the state’s ban, welcomed the court’s announcement, saying the state and nation “will be well served” by a definitive ruling.

Although the gathering momentum toward gay marriage has been prompted largely by the courts, opinion polls show that support among Americans has been rising in recent years. But many conservative Christians remain steadfastly opposed.

Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage, said he is hopeful the court will rule “in favor of voters’ right to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

The court’s expected June ruling would come as the field of candidates for the 2016 presidential election takes shape, and the issue could factor into the race. Democrats are generally in favor of gay marriage while Republicans are divided on the issue.

The primary legal issue is whether the state bans and the refusal to recognize out-of-state marriages violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

As recently as October, the court decided not to intervene in the gay marriage issue when seven cases from five states were pending. That decision not to hear the disputes had huge legal implications because it meant that gay marriage went ahead in five states and paved the way for it to begin in several others.

A Nov. 6 decision by the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold marriage restrictions in four states increased pressure on the Supreme Court to take up the matter. It was the first of the nation’s regional federal appeals courts to uphold gay marriage prohibitions after the wave of other rulings declaring the bans unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court is divided on gay rights, with Kennedy likely to be the key vote. It is not known how he would rule on gay marriage but he has a history of backing gay rights.

Source: Reuters

A coalition of 100 Christian faith leaders, looking to raise hunger and poverty as a prominent issue in the 2016 election cycle, is urging all potential 2016 presidential candidates to post videos stating how they plan to alleviate poverty and hunger in the United States and abroad.

The group of faith leaders, which represents a wide array of Christian denominations, churches, universities, seminaries and agencies, was convened by Circle of Protection, a group committed to advocating for programs that help ease the hunger and poverty of the indigent. The coalition asks potential candidates to make three minute videos explaining how each of them will provide “help” and “opportunity” to needy people throughout the world.

Along with the many Christian schools, churches and other localized Christian groups who’ve had representatives sign onto this movement are national groups such as the National Association for Evangelicals, Sojourners, American Bible Society, Bread for the World, Catholic Theological Union, Jesuit Conference, National Latino Evangelical Coalition, and Catholic Charities USA.

“We are praying for a president who will make ending hunger and poverty a top priority of his or her administration. Are you that leader?” a statement from the group asks. “We will be calling on people of faith to examine presidential candidates to see if they have a heart for poor and hungry people. We want to know how each candidate proposes to fulfill the mandate to those who govern to ‘give deliverance to the needy,’ (Psalm 72).”

As over 45 million Americans and 14 million children are living in poverty in the U.S., Jim Wallis, CEO and founder of Sojourners, explained that the Bible states that God judges on how the less fortunate people in society are treated.

“Throughout the Scripture, we’re told that a society will be judged by how they treat “the least” among them. Our political leaders also must be assessed through the measure of their commitment to the poor and most vulnerable,” Wallis said in the release. “Though political advisors are telling their candidates that they shouldn’t talk about poverty, as people of faith we must and will disagree. That is why, as each presidential candidate declares, the faith community will hold them accountable by asking them all — Republicans and Democrats alike — to answer the question: ‘How will you treat those Jesus has called ‘the least of these?’ How will you address and find real solutions to poverty?'”

Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a Christian organization that seeks to end hunger, said that America has done a poor job recently of fulfilling God’s call to provide for the needy.

“There is a broad consensus among faith leaders that our country has been culpably neglectful of poverty, especially in our own country,” Beckmann said in the release.

Galen Carey, vice president for government relations at the National Association for Evangelicals, warned the candidates that “silence on poverty is inexcusable.”

“There are different ways to address the needs of poor and vulnerable people — some more effective than others,” Carey explained. “Christians who believe government leaders are called to share God’s concern for the poor and vulnerable want to know how presidential candidates would approach this essential responsibility.”

In the midst of the 2012 election, both President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney answered the group’s call and submitted videos to the Circle of Protection on how they would work to help improve the impoverished conditions in America

“My faith teaches me that poverty is a moral issue. The Bible calls on us to be our brother’s keeper, our sister’s keeper. And I believe as a public servant, I must do that part to answer that call,” Obama said. “That’s why my office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships has expanded its work with groups around the country to help those in need. That’s why last year, in the midst of a heated budget debate in Washington, I promised to protect vital assistance for the least of these. I have kept that promise.”

Source: Christian Post

When Bishop Harry Jackson, chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition and senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington, D.C., first called up Bishop T.D. Jakes, one of America’s favorite and most influential preachers and asked him to be a part of a summit to heal America’s racial divide, one of the first emotions Jakes felt was fear.

The senior pastor of The Potter’s House megachurch in Dallas, Texas, and New York Times best-selling author says he was afraid because his faith in people at that particular moment on matters of race had grown fragile. America was tense. Protests over controversial police actions in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, were sweeping the country. Jakes just didn’t know. What if everything just went wrong?

“My faith in people was so fragile that when Bishop Jackson called me I said, ‘Man, I’m scared. If this doesn’t go right, I just don’t know,'” he confessed during an evening service at his church hours after a diverse coalition of influential pastors and Christian faith leaders had met for the summit called “Healing the Racial Divide” on Thursday night — the birthday of civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I stood on the edge of struggling with losing my faith. Not my faith in God, but my faith in people,” Jakes confessed. “I wondered to myself, how long will we cry out and be told we’re whining? How long will we offer simple Christian clichés to complicated, complex sociological situations? How long will we major on the minor and be pitted against each other to the demise of a society that desperately needs somebody to speak for them?”

All that wondering stopped for Jakes on Thursday.

“My faith in God never shook but I’m so happy tonight,” said Jakes after a powerful and poignant meeting that many who attended saw as progress among faith leaders.

R.A. Vernon, founder and senior pastor of The Word Church in Cleveland, declared: “I almost teared up as I thought to myself, Bishop Jakes mentioned the fact that he had no idea, neither did Harry Jackson that they were planning this on Dr. King’s birthday. But might I suggest Bishop Jakes, that was not happenstance or chance, God maneuvered this moment because what other birthday present to give Dr. King than to bring truth to his vision.”

“It was Dr. King who said that ‘the most segregated hour of the week is the 11 o’clock hour on Sunday morning, and today I sat there and saw not only Bishop Jakes, but Bishop Paul Morton, pastor Tony Evans, John Hagee … and one of our Hispanic homiletic heroes, pastor (Samuel) Rodriguez. I said to myself, this is what heaven is going to look like — all these pastors, beautiful white, black and Hispanic brothers,” he added.

An earlier release from the event’s organizers had anticipated a crowd of about 75 leaders but Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, who also participated in the meeting, said it was at least twice that figure.

“About 150 to 200 (people),” he estimated. “It was a large crowd.”

In that crowd were people like Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Bernice King, CEO of The King Center in Atlanta and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr.; Alveda King, minister, civil rights activist and niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and Andrew Young, former congressman and U.N. ambassador.

For Perkins, racial reconciliation had long been a major concern. In 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected as the first African-American President of the United States, Perkins co-authored a book with Bishop Jackson called Personal Faith, Public Policy.

“And one of the issues we talked about was racial reconciliation and how the church has to be at the center of that. Nothing else is going to unify our country and culture,” said Perkins.

Racial reconciliation, however, was not a priority for faith leaders at the time, he said. But from what he saw at the gathering on Thursday, faith leaders appear to be thinking about it now.

“Back then there was no sense of urgency. But after Ferguson and after New York, there’s a sense of urgency that our nation is coming apart racially and ethnically. And so, that was the genesis behind this gathering and, quite frankly, it was encouraging to see the diversity and the breadth of leaders that came together to discuss this issue, which tells me it is very much at the forefront of concern across racial, denominational and ethnic lines,” said Perkins.

The meeting focused on seven “Bridges to Peace” community initiatives namely: reconciliation and prayer forums; education policy reform; community engagement forums; community service and compassion outreaches; personal, marriage and family development; engagement with the criminal justice system; and economic development strategies.

“Underserved communities and minorities needed to see that when our blood runs down the street that the church, not the Latino church, not the black church, I hate those terms anyway, but the blood-washed church … gathering strength together and come and sit down and hear and listen and talk,” said Jakes.

“The media for too long has pitted us against each other, divided us for the ratings it could create by the conflict. Appealing to our deepest fears and our greatest woes, and I hated that people I knew casually would learn about my people through the news rather than to walk across the street and have a sandwich,” said Jakes.

“But I serve notice on all the forces of hell. Today we walked across the street and we sat down together and we had a conversation that I have never heard before. And every blood-washed born-again spirit-filled child of the King ought to be happy in Jesus tonight. They ought to be shouting for victory tonight,” said Jakes.

“You see, I believe that the church could not answer the call to reconcile the world until the church reconciled itself but there is hope in the city tonight, there is joy in the city tonight, there is peace in the city tonight. I want the church to at least be as good as the paramedics are. When the paramedics come, they come without regard to color or culture or language or ethnicity,” he said.

Jim Garlow, of Skyline Church in San Diego, California, testified that when he got the invitation to attend the summit the Lord told him to be “silent.”

“You don’t have any knowledge about what you’re about to hear,” he said God told him. “Don’t you talk, you listen. All of us had microphones in front of us. In the meeting all day today, I never touched it because the Holy Spirit said: ‘You be silent. You’ve come to learn. You don’t know about what you’re hearing, you listen and you learn from them. That’s why I came, I didn’t know I was going to be on a microphone tonight at that point. I had no idea, especially standing in front of Bishop T.D. Jakes, the fourth member of the Trinity,” he quipped as the audience erupted with laughter.

But it was what he said and did shortly after making that statement that became somewhat of a highlight of the night.

“Bishop Jakes made a statement today. When he said it, I can’t describe how it shook me. He said all these years, I’ve gone, every time pastors call — he was referring to white pastors, when they call I go, when they say come let’s gather, I go. I always go. We go, we go, we go. But he said, not ’til this day.’ He said, ‘I’m 57 years of age,’ and he said, ‘not ’til this day, have I seen a gathering of white pastors coming to us on this day,'” Garlow recalled.

“And I want to say … Bishop, I want to say to you, we repent of that. I was shocked by that. That’s a scandal that should not be permitted to go on, and I want to publicly ask your forgiveness on behalf of people like me — that we did not come to you, you had to wait until this day, this is too long to wait, but we are here, thank you sir,” he ended. He then went over to Bishop Jakes and both men embraced in forgiveness.

Source: Christian Post