Hi there,

There’s good news and bad news this week - as usual, only more so. The bad news: A fast-food chain in the US became the target of boycott threats and high-level bullying from the gay-rights movement because its CEO spoke about his Biblical view of marriage. A New Zealand website, Protect Marriage, launched on Tuesday following the introduction of a gay marriage bill in the NZ parliament, was hacked to pieces on Wednesday. And the hate campaign against University of Texas sociologist, Mark Regnerus, continues unabated because he had a study raising doubts about gay parenting published. There’s some nasty stuff in all of that.

The good news: The fast-food chain, Chick-fil-A (!), had its best day of trading ever when thousands of people in many states rolled up on Wednesday to show their support for CEO Dan Cathy and free speech. The Protect Marriage website was up again Thursday and its petition requesting no change to the definition of marriage already has close to 10,000 signatures. And professional peers, appalled at the attacks on him, are speaking up for Mark Regnerus. We have published an article by one of them, Karl D. Stephan, today.

It’s pretty clear that the debate over same-sex marriage and related issues is fast turning into a war, with the aggression coming mainly from the protagonists, backed by some very influential people and organisations -- not only presidents and prime ministers but cultural heroes like the founders of Microsoft and Amazon. Should we boycott these outfits? I ask in my piece.

I must say that, compared to the marriage issue, banking scandals are beginning to look quite mild and manageable problems. Apropos of the Libor interest rate fixing scandal, economist John Robertson looks at the contribution of innovative structures and personal unethical behaviour.

In a completely different vein, Norberto Gonzales Gaitano appreciates the portraits of fatherhood in two great movies, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Tree of Life”. And George Friedman takes a look at the US elections and decides that the gap between gap between what candidates promise and what they can actually deliver on foreign policy (if nothing else) is vast.

Don’t forget to look at our new movie blog. In the latest post Ruth Maramis ranks Christopher Nolan’s films.

Cheers,

Carolyn Moynihan,
Deputy Editor,
MercatorNet