Free Republic

Yesterday was the official kick-off of the 2015 Sundance Festival. And good news, Robert Redford is still heading it up. So – for whoever requested new pictures of wrinkly old Bob – I’ve got you covered! In fact, take your pick: man spreadingHollywood foldingBobby obviously doesn’t own a comb, since he’s still workin’ that boyish tousled hair look. Butt I think we can all agree that he’s had a bit of machine grooming (dermabrasion, Botox, fillers). While still age-appropriately weathered, at least his face doesn’t look like crater lake any more. So there’s that. And just trust me; it is...

[SNIP] The exchanges are just the latest eruption in a long culture war, analysts said, with lines clearly demarcated. “As screenings have sold out, conservative media has manned barricades against liberals who have attacked the movie or the idea of lionizing Kyle,” conservative David Weigel wrote for Bloomberg. He noted that much of the controversy involves the extended battle over guns — and gun control — and pits pro-Iraq war conservatives against anti-war liberals. But it also hints at another gulf in American politics: the plummeting number of Americans who serve in the armed services, which has given rise to...

The United States started out mainly Protestant -- however due to the schisms in Western Europe, with a strong bent towards religious tolerance of other denominations. Coupled with this, the American War of Independence gave a strong bent to non-hierarchical thinking...therefore a suspicion of stratified, formalized churches (primarily Catholic) as Orthodox churches were concentrated in Russia and Eastern Europe and demographically underrepresented among the settlers. Coupled with this, historical ignorance (America as a “melting pot” formed explicitly upon socio-political theory rather than accidents of blood, war, and geography) coupled with dependence upon breakaway denominations (Lutheran, Calvinist, Evangelical) led to a...

Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear several Appeals Court cases on gay marriages, which resulted in bans on gay marriage being struck down in numerous states across the country. Following the Supreme Court's decision to punt on the issue of gay marriage, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd saw this as a sign that social conservatism was declining and obnoxiously asked "it is time for conservatives to surrender in the culture wars?" After playing a pre-packaged segment on the evolution of social conservatism in the United States, the NBC host did his best to portray social conservatives as...

Many reject the notion that a good segment of our popular culture and of our political class is at war with Christianity. But this is a real war — not a phony one, such as the left's manufactured "war on women." This hostility toward Christianity is a global phenomenon. Radical Muslims are targeting, persecuting and, in many cases, slaughtering Christians in numerous countries around the world. But I want to talk about a softer form of hostility — though nevertheless of serious concern — that is occurring in the United States. I filled an entire book with examples of discrimination...

When the fight for gay marriage began to gain traction back in the early years of the last decade, social conservative critics usually went beyond denying that marriage could be redefined to include same-sex couples. Many of them argued that homosexuals were much less inclined than heterosexuals to valorize the ideal of monogamy. Allowing gays and lesbians to marry would therefore introduce a polyamorous option into the institution, and adultery would come to be viewed as an acceptable option for all marriages.A spate of recent articles explicitly making the case for polyamory would seem to vindicate those conservative predictions and...

From behind a smoking sniper rifle high atop his ivory tower peers the secular-”progressive.” He surveys his many victims, strewn across the American landscape below and mockingly sneers, “War on Christianity? What war on Christianity?” He then resumes shooting, all the while insisting that those uncooperative Christians who scatter for cover behind the word of God and the U.S. Constitution somehow suffer from a “persecution complex” (the baker, the photographer, the florist, the innkeeper, the Christian school administrator, etc.). Though there are many, it is plain for all to see that abortion and “sexual liberation” remain the two principal...

From behind a smoking sniper rifle high atop his ivory tower peers the secular-”progressive.” He surveys his many victims, strewn across the American landscape below and mockingly sneers, “War on Christianity? What war on Christianity?” He then resumes shooting, all the while insisting that those uncooperative Christians who scatter for cover behind the word of God and the U.S. Constitution somehow suffer from a “persecution complex” (the baker, the photographer, the florist, the innkeeper, the Christian school administrator, etc.). Though there are many, it is plain for all to see that abortion and “sexual liberation” remain the two principal theaters...

As a Christian lawyer — even when I was engaged in the “commercial” practice of law rather than the nonprofit, constitutional work I do now — I always drew moral lines around my representations decisions. I was not going to use whatever meager talents God gave me to advance or celebrate causes or principles I knew to be wrong. In other words, I discriminated. But not on the basis of race, gender, disability, or sexual orientation, but rather on the basis of the action or legal principle the case would advance. I’d happily represent anyone, gay or straight, in a...

The counter counterculture uprising social conservatives promised us after the Supreme Court's neutering of the Defense of Marriage Act never quite manifested.... But in the days before the high court delivered its rulings on DOMA and California's Proposition 8, Tony Perkins, the president of the Christian conservative Family Research Council, was desperately admonitory that the country's top jurists not invite ruin on America by accurately interpreting the Constitution. "If the Supreme Court steps in and says, 'We're redefining marriage, same-sex marriage will be the law across the land,' it will create a firestorm of opposition," Perkins' Magic 8-Ball warned. "This...

Gallup is out with its latest “moral acceptability” survey. On 19 issues, Americans were asked, “In general, do you find the following morally acceptable[?]” The responses were ranked on a scale from “highly acceptable” to “highly unacceptable.” There was one issue – birth control, with 90% approval – that rated “highly acceptable” and nine, with approvals from 57% to 69%, that rated “largely acceptable.”Of those 10 issues, the response to seven of them is Exhibit A in the case of the collapse of the family in America. On two of the other three issues – wearing animal fur and medical...

. To Rev. Franklin Graham "Watchmen on the Wall Conference" 2014 Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, J. Vernon McGee, Dr. James Dobson ... all great Christian leaders and bible teachers of America in the 1960s thru 1990s ... Or were they ? For all the great works they did for Christ's church in America, IS IT POSSIBLE they made one (1) grave mistake ? I declare that they did, to the detriment of at least TWO American generations ... And I respectfully challenge Rev. Franklin Graham (and the other Conference speakers) to ACKNOWLDGE THEIR MISTAKE and APOLOGIZE to their Church Congregations....

There's an old saw about standing on the shoulders of giants and thinking you're tall. In other words, you take full advantage of what came before you while pretending, or even wrongly believing, that it sprang fully-formed from your own head or just materialized out of the ether. As militant secularists try to scrub Christianity out of Western culture, they're engaged in a fundamentally dishonest pursuit, which requires a great deal of rewriting and revising of history. They're also actively turning their backs on, or only vaguely comprehending, huge chunks of art, music and literature inspired by biblical stories and...

Has Chick-a-fila turned their backs on God by apologizing for their position against same-sex marriage? Also support your local Militia.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe the other side is being honest.Democratic politicians and liberal writers accuse Christian employers of “tell[ing] women what to do with their bodies,” and trying to “control” “access to birth control.”But a contraception ban is not on a table. Forcing religious business owners to buy birth control is the matter at hand in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, on which the Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday.The Hobby Lobby case hinges largely on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. When conservatives invoke religious liberty – whether it's employers who oppose the contraception mandate or wedding photographers who want...

Nabisco added its voice to the current trend of forcing liberal social agendas by producing a commercial for their Honey Maid graham crackers and Teddy Grahams snacks showing a homosexual couple raising two children with a voiceover stating "this is wholesome." The ad begins with a father bottle feeding his baby as another father slips in to kiss the baby's forehead. The commercial then meanders through a montage of families: mixed race, single dad, tattooed dad, military dad, and two dads. The voiceover says: No matter how things change, what makes us wholesome never will. Honey Maid -- everyday wholesome...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) OXON HILL, Md. -- Looking out on a ballroom full of friendly faces, former Alaska Gov. and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin closed the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday with a 34-minute soliloquy on the state of American politics - including a riff on what has become one of her favorite topics of late: "Duck Dynasty."Attempting to drive home a point about the "perpetual 'panties-in-a-wad people'" who go after firebrands like her, Palin thrilled the crowd of activist conservatives when she reminded them about the time the media got "their skirts all tangled up over their...

Now that our society has officially lowered us all to the level of rutting rabbits, the Coalition for Positive Sexuality (positive.org) is specifically targeting and encouraging promiscuous sex, abortion, and homosexuality to young teenagers. The Younger the Better should be their slogan. Funded by the homosexual lobby (and perhaps finally putting the myth that there is no homosexual agenda to rest) CPS is aggressively pushing its agenda of more sex/no guilt/no consequences to young and impressionable children at public schools nationwide. The greatest concession to personal responsibility and self-restraint that they attempt is to urge you to try and not...

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was right to veto SB1062, which would have amended the Arizona Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The bill, per most interpretations I’ve read, would have given broad discretion to business owners, because of their religious convictions, to refuse to do business with anyone associated with homosexual lifestyles. Religious freedom is about protection of your right to practice your religion and not being forced to violate it. However, the right to religious freedom does not mean the right to write-off and marginalize into non-existence a whole class of citizens whom you don’t like or agree with. Under Jim...

Back in 2012, a full two years before conservatives insisted that religious freedom entailed the right to discriminate against gay people or gay spouses in both private and public workplaces, Republicans in Washington trotted out the same religious liberty line for the arguably narrower purpose of defending religious employers who wanted to be exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. ........................................................ It would be an infringement upon religious liberty to shutter a church that refused to marry interracial couples. But how many conservatives would go to bat for that church if the government rescinded its tax exemption? Would they...