Free Republic

Although more than 75 witnesses testified at the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics hearing Monday on a proposed voter initiative to define marriage in the District as being between a man and a woman, there were few legal arguments presented. Most who came before the board spoke based on emotion. And the majority of the witnesses were in favor of getting the issue before the District's nearly 400,000 registered voters. The push from the city's religious community comes as the D.C. Council considers legalizing same-sex marriage, with 10 of 13 council members in support of at-large Councilman David Catania's...

...Lori Roman (at Regular Folks United) brought up a few statements uttered by Jennings a decade or so ago~when he praised Harry Hay~of the North American Association for Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). This delightful organization promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men. Jennings even went so far as to pen the forward to Hay’s book, “Queering Elementary Education”. However, Obama’s connection to Hays through Jennings doesn’t end there. Another “acquaintance” of our current President wrote one of the endorsements on the book jacket: Bill Ayers, of the 1960’s Weathermen fame. Here’s a question, who is...

onathan Bray, one of the organizers of Southern Decadence, a celebration that has become known as the gay Mardi Gras, spent his time this week getting ready for the big party and watching weather reports. "I looked out in the Gulf and didn't see a storm," Bray said. "No Katrina, no Gustav. I'm so happy." In the almost four decades since it started, Southern Decadence has become a traditional Labor Day weekend, end-of-summer, event. But for two of the last four years, hurricanes crashed the French Quarter-centered party. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Gustav last year both generated evacuation orders...

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, an advocacy group in Los Angeles, filed a lawsuit against county health officials, accusing them of failing to regulate condom use in the pornography industry to protect actors and actresses from contracting H.I.V. and other diseases. The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court, comes one month after a pornographic actress in Los Angeles said she had contracted H.I.V. Health officials have since released data showing 18 positive H.I.V. tests in the industry and thousands of other sexually transmitted disease infections since 2004. County officials should “require condom use in the production of pornography,” according to a statement...

I met Viatcheslav Alexeivich when I was wandering around the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants during the 1990s; on a street, he had heard me speaking in English to someone, and was intrigued. He later told me he had been intrigued because he had noticed the absence of ears, and was startled to find someone like that "speaking excellent English." In America, I've always worn the hair long, so as to hide this particular absence, but because I was in a strange place among people strangers to me, I had decided it was better to make the absence...

Two women are filing a discrimination lawsuit against a Michigan McDonald’s that they claim refused to hire them because they wear the hijab, a Muslim headscarf. “These unbelievers insult our religion by insisting that we expose ourselves in order to get a job at their restaurant,” charged litigant Toi Whitfield of Detroit. “We will not submit to decadence.” “Our virtue should not bar us from employment,” fellow litigant, Quiana Pugh of Dearborn added. “We have a dress code at the restaurant,” explained Bud Bland, manager of the targeted McDonalds. “Everyone who works here wears a standard uniform—pants, shirt and hat....

The world's unofficially most-expensive burger made its debut in London today, costing nearly $200 for patrons with enough money to visit the fast food chain that makes it. That's right, the bourgeois burger is made by Burger King. After six months in development, Burger King today launched "The Burger," a limited edition hamburger selling for $190. Chef Mark Dowding, the director of new product development and innovation for the fast food chain, says his creation targets a certain type of consumer. "I call them burger aficionados," said Dowding. But this is Burger King. Are these "aficionados" really frequenting London's fast...

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP) - People in the United States are living in a world of pain and they are popping pills at an alarming rate to cope with it. The amount of five major painkillers sold at retail establishments rose 90 percent between 1997 and 2005, according to an Associated Press analysis of statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration. More than 200,000 pounds of codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine were purchased at retail stores during the most recent year represented in the data. That total is enough to give more than 300 milligrams of painkillers to every person...

Drug-addiction services have also grown massively. In our society, every problem calls forth its equal and supposedly opposite bureaucracy, the ostensible purpose of which is to solve the problem. But the bureaucracy quickly develops a survival instinct, and so no more wishes the problem to disappear altogether than the lion wishes to kill all the gazelle in the bush and leave itself without food. In short, the bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy of drug addiction. The propaganda, assiduously spread for many years now, is that heroin addiction is an "illness"....

When the timing is right, the two parades meet on North Rampart Street, one showcasing men in skimpy skirts and bouffant wigs, the other with high-steppers waving handmade umbrellas and beaded fans. Both parades -- one hosted by Southern Decadence, the other by Black Men of Labor -- strolled through the streets Sunday within several blocks of each other in downtown New Orleans. This year, Decadence, a three-day gay festival, lured nearly 125,000 visitors to the city, while the Black Men of Labor parade attracted thousands of local and displaced New Orleanians. Behind each parade's glitz and glamour, participants said,...

American Decadence—Part 4 of 4 The Characteristics of an Uncivilized People by Reginald Firehammer [American Decadence—Part 3] The Sign of a Child There is another feature of declining cultures, such as ours, which to many is quite bewildering—the sexual exploitation of children which I've documented in this article. The bewildering aspect of this is not just the horrors it inflicts on young boys and girls, which are bad enough, but what kind of people could be part of that horror and what attracts them to it. This, again, is nothing new, because most of the world has never been civilized,...

American Decadence—Part 3 of 4 The Characteristics of an Uncivilized People by Reginald Firehammer [American Decadence—Part 2] Is This Civilized? Civilized people have a certain look. It's a reflection of that dignity that comes from their values and their knowledge of what is and is not appropriate to human nature, that is, the kind of being a human being is—the way one dresses and presents himself is a reflection of who and what he is, of his values, and his sense of the importance of decency and integrity, of being the best he can possibly be. What is your picture...

American Decadence—Part 2 of 4 The Characteristics of an Uncivilized People by Reginald Firehammer Only a Savage Society Savages its Children What are we doing to our children? "The average age a child is first exposed to pornography online is 11 years old. Nearly all (90 percent) of kids aged 8-16 have viewed porn online." What kind society does that to their children? Probably the kind populated with people who see nothing wrong with dressing little girls as prostitutes, or those who provide, "thong underwear for 7-year-olds," or "pole dancing for girls on television." Such a society is comprised of...

American Decadence—Part 1 of 4 The Characteristics of an Uncivilized People by Reginald Firehammer In describing the character of the people who dominated the society of the 50s I used words like courtesy, decency, respect, reverence, and dignity. None of these words can be used to describe the last two or three generations except in the negative. Today's society can only be described as discourteous, indecent, disrespectful, irreverent, and; well, there isn't a word that captures what those with no sense of personal dignity truly are, graceless, or despicable, or contemptible, perhaps. I'm not attempting to characterize today's entire population....

In 1966, the Supreme Court was once again trying to define obscenity. Among other decisions, they revised an earlier definition to include the requirement that the material be "patently offensive." As usual, Justice William O. Douglas dissented, claiming that: "There are as many different definitions of obscenity as there are human beings, and they are as unique to the individual as his dreams." It so happened that I some leisure that spring, and therefore (malgré Justice Douglas) took it upon myself to formulate a universal definition of obscenity-thanks to some help from playwright Bertolt Brecht, artist Ed Kienholz, and fabulist...

Racism and Anti-Semitism—Part VI by Reginald Firehammer I mentioned in an earlier article that in America and the West, there is a minority, not the Jews, that is hated, vilified, and blamed for all the evils of the world. It is business men. I repeat an earlier quote from Ayn Rand: Other Persecuted Minorities "Whenever, in any era, culture, or society, you encounter the phenomenon of prejudice, injustice, persecution, and blind, unreasoning hatred directed at some minority group—look for the gang that has something to gain from that persecution, look for those who have a vested interest in the destruction...

Candace de Russy has provided a nicely informative article about the uglier side of the Omniculture, in today's edition of National Review Online. The American public square, de Russy notes, has been blitzed with what Gawker.com, a gossip website, calls “revulse-amusement” and misused for what columnist Andrea Peyser terms a “raunch-fest” — revelry calculated, according to the New York Times, to churn up waves of “ethical nausea.”After recounting some of the recent seamy media events, such as the O. J. Simpson book and Britney Spears' unfathomable exploits in public exhibitionism, de Russy notes that many of these occurrences are manifestations...

Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com) Dalrymple on Decadence, Europe, America and Islam By Paul Belien Created 2006-09-16 23:50 An interview with Theodore DalrympleAnthony Daniels is a 57-year old recently retired psychiatrist. He began his career in Africa and worked for many years as a hospital and prison doctor in Birmingham before he moved to the South of France in 2005. Using the pen name Theodore Dalrymple he writes about the collapse of Western civilization in Europe, analyzing the social pathologies of our time. When he chose his pen name, he says, he opted for a name that would evoke...

Today's Brazil: Where Jesus trumps decadence JIM RUTZ © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com I have a friend named Cindy Jacobs, who is a truly stellar lady and also the most noted prophetess in America, if not the world. Let me give you just one example of her exceptional gifting: A few years ago, she spoke at an evangelistic rally in a stadium in Costa Rica, and as she was walking away from the platform, she happened to glance at a sickly-looking man in the audience who had plainly had a stroke. A fleeting thought flashed through her head that she should turn...

The cost of weddings in the United States has soared to a point some of today's younger generation may be turning away from the ritual. Courtney Martin, whose article on marriages appears in the Christian Science Monitor, seems to be one. She says a typical wedding in 1990 cost $15,208, compared to $4,376 in 1980. Martin, who has no immediate plan to wed her friend of seven years, says that wedding today will set a couple back $22,360, or enough for private college tuition for their future child if that sum is invested at 10 percent return. "Truth be told,...

New Orleans: A Tale of Two CitiesBy Thomas DrakeCatholics do a Rosary Walk downtown New OrleansIt was early December and many old friends were around the table in lively conversation after months of being scattered across America as part of the "Katrina Diaspora." Stories of personal adventures and misadventures, loss and separation from family and friends, were bantered back and forth. Everyone had just returned from the First Saturday devotions at St. Patrick's in downtown New Orleans. The devotions had helped put these dramatic events in a more spiritual perspective. At a certain moment, the conversation turned to the topic...

Performance artist Marina Abramovic really wanted to present, during a week of appearing at the New York Guggenheim Museum, her most radical work, called “Rhythm 0.” Performed only once in Naples in 1974, its premise was terrifyingly simple: She agreed to stand in a gallery for six hours while anyone who came in could choose any of 72 objects around her - including knives, scissors, a needle, a loaded gun - and do anything they wanted to her with the objects. It was her only work in which she essentially ceded control over her body, and over the pain to...

LONDON, OCT. 22, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Western Europe and the United States are decadent societies because they have abandoned a morality based on the traditional virtues. So says a book just published by the London-based Social Affairs Unit, "Decadence: The Passing of Personal Virtue and Its Replacement by Political and Psychological Slogans." Edited by Digby Anderson, the volume brings together authors from a variety of backgrounds and views. A first section contains essays on the "old" virtues, such as prudence, love and courage. The second deals with the "new" virtues, centered on the environment, caring, therapy and being critical. The book...

Here's something to get you all riled up for the weekend... Join CODEPINK for New Year’s in Cuba December 27-January 2, 2006 Cuba is one of the most beautiful and fascinating countries on Earth—and George Bush says you can’t go there. Well, we’re going anyway, and we invite you to join us! This New Year’s CODEPINK will be organizing a large group of fun-loving and freedom-loving Americans to break George Bush’s ban on travel to Cuba. Join co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, together with Academy Award winning producer Paul Haggis, as we visit with farmers at their co-ops, doctors...

LAFAYETTE, La., September 9, 2005, (LifeSiteNews.com) – City-Parish President Joey Durel is warning individuals who are set on parading through his city streets in celebration of “Southern Decadence” that they will be arrested by police. Encompassing 5 days of parades, pub crawls and the most public nudity and sexual activity of any North American gay event, the Southern Decadence festival is a New Orleans phenomena hosted by the city’s gay community. This year’s celebration was definitively cancelled just days before its beginning by Hurricane Katrina. Though a few dozen tried to celebrate in New Orleans in spite of the damage...

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A judge has awarded the former wife of a multimillionaire businessman a divorce settlement worth more than $40 million even though she admitted having affairs with her rock-climbing guide and a man she met on a flight to China. In addition to a $24 million payment, Susan Sosin (search) will keep the couple's $3.6 million Manhattan apartment, $2 million Utah ski house and $800,000 home in Wallkill, N.Y. (search). But she has to vacate the couple's two mansions in Connecticut and three desert properties in Arizona. [[snip]]

American TV host Oprah Winfrey is ditching the high life to star in a poverty striken TV reality series.The 51 year old media mogul, with an estimated net worth of 300 million, has agreed to live a life of poverty in the hard hitting documentary.Winfrey will reside in a high rise apartment in a notoriously tough Chicago, Illinois, neighborhood for one month. The series plans to highlight America's inner city housing 'crisis.' A spokeswoman for Harpo Productions says that Oprah has ' Interviewed just about every major celebrity and done shows on almost every topic imaginable. But now she intends...

Last week I got the giggles, courtesy of the Nazis. I was checking in as the first, and possibly last, Jew to be a guest at a beautiful, new $185 million InterContinental Resort Hotel at, er, Berchtesgaden - Hitler's beloved holiday home in the German Alps, near the Austrian border.Pristine and modern, it is a complete contrast to the standard cuckoo-clocks-and-Eva-Braun's-knickers twee Alpine hotel style, the jewel in the crown of the British InterContinental Hotel Group.It's stylistically cool to the point of being a bit chilly. There's even a little style joke in the lobby - the mandatory display of...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Conservative Christian groups are urging a boycott of two of consumer product maker Procter & Gamble's key products, charging the company is aligning itself with gay rights groups, according to a published report. The New York Times said Friday that James Dobson of Focus on the Family and the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association are angry at P&G for a statement on the company's internal Web site opposing an anti-gay rights statute in its hometown of Cincinnati. The law exempts gays and lesbians from special civil rights protection. The two influential conservatives charge...

Last Sunday, I picked up a copy of Boston Magazine while sitting in the green room at the Fox News studios in Watertown, Mass. Leafing through the publication, I came across an article titled "Confessions of an Ivy League Callgirl," written by Jeannette Angell, a university lecturer with a master's degree from Yale. The fact that she was a Yalie caught my eye -- as a Harvard Law student, I've already adopted our communal animosities -- and so I read the piece.  Apparently, Angell began trading sex for cash after receiving her doctorate in social anthropology. But what was shocking...

Advocates of "gay marriage" or homosexual civil unions argue that promiscuity will be reduced. Such an argument overlooks two key points. First, a embracing homosexual unions is more likely to undermine the institution of marriage and produce other negative effects than it is to make fidelity and longevity the norm for homosexual unions. Second, homosexual unions are not wrong primarily because of their disproportionately high rate of promiscuity and breakups. They are wrong because "gay marriage" is a contradiction in terms. As with consensual adult incest and polyamory, considerations of commitment and fidelity factor only after certain structural prerequisites are...

Best BTM I have seen since Styx (not as funny though).

Madonna is planning on changing her name to "Esther". She says that as she has gotten older and more mature, she thinks "Madonna" is no longer appropriate. Now that she's a mother, she teaches her children how to be responsible: they have to actually clean up their rooms and say "thank you" when someone compliments them and everything. And please, no teasing. Never mind that Esther was a beautiful virgin in The Bible. The most beautiful virgin given to the King (Esther 2:2-7). Yep. That describes her perfectly (Austin Powers voice here--"Raaaaiiiigggghhhtt...")

Traditional Catholics find Holland interesting because it is on the cutting edge of liberal decadency. What is in Holland now will be everywhere else before long. It is the example of what's coming. The Dutch pride themselves on being at the head of liberal "progress." My report is timely because we are in the time of Advent, expecting the Messias, and Christmastide, grateful for His coming. Liturgically, we are living with the patriarchs in the hope that He will come to release us from our problems. We are feeling with them what life was or would be on earth without...

Clean Up Airwaves Years ago, a guy who ran a pornography shop came to see me. He had been busted by the cops. He wanted me to write a story defending his free-speech rights. "If they can arrest me, they can arrest somebody for selling Shakespeare," he said, dragging out the old slippery-slope argument. "Well, if you start selling Shakespeare and somebody arrests you for selling Shakespeare, come see me," I said. "In the meantime, get out of my office." The First Amendment was not written, designed or intended to protect obscenity, vulgarity, pornography and indecency — or dancing nude...

She kissed Madonna on stage and drunkenly married a childhood friend for 55 hours, but Britney Spears's new live show is her most shocking performance yet. The 22-year-old, wearing pink underwear with stockings and suspenders, cavorts with a male dancer and writhes suggestively on a bed as she tries to win over an older audience. It remains to be seen whether fans have tired of her attempts to shock with revealing outfits and erotic dance routines. The world tour is not a complete sell-out and tickets are still on sale for her rare UK dates. Spears, who performed at Miami's...

<p>And that is a two-edged sword. People will see what they want to see in a movie shorn of any point of view not in literal accord with the gospels. True believers will bear witness to holy writ. Others -- nonbelievers or even less literal-minded Christians -- will be troubled by the film's staunch adherence to a story line and characters that have been used by bigots to fuel hatred for centuries.</p>

MTV Networks revs up gay-themed Outlet NEW YORK (Variety) --- MTV Networks, buoyed by positive talks with top cable operators, has begun stepping up the planning for Outlet, a 24-hour network aimed at gays and lesbians. In development for more than two years, Outlet failed to launch in 2002 because MTV had brought in sister network Showtime to market it as a pay channel. When that strategy didn't pass muster with cable operators, Showtime bowed out of the picture and MTV repositioned Outlet as an ad-supported, digital, basic cable network. But with that repositioning, MTV has had to change its...

Looks like this poll by the American Family Association is under attack by the homopervs and/or their surrogates. Currently the exclusivity of traditional marriage is only backed by 32% of respondents, while 67% want to enshrine homosexual sodomy within the bounds of a legally defined "marriage" or union in the United States.Sure, I know online polls aren't scientific or even necessarily heeded by courts or legislators...but we can certainly do better than this!

Misguided Mission It's clear that the president's brain is occupied by the neoconservatives who surround him. It's clear from their writings and policy statements that the neoconservatives believe the United States can become the dominant power on Earth. This is a bad judgment that is dangerous and could become lethal. This is why thoughtful people believe it is imperative to defeat George Bush in the 2004 elections. This wrongheaded policy, cooked up by academics and journalists, is not one that will merely embarrass the United States. It is a wrongheaded policy that could have dire consequences for the American people....

Religious groups demand an end to New Orleans' Southern Decadence Festival NEW ORLEANS -- The wet Jockey shorts contest will be followed by drag queen fashion shows, the Mr. Louisiana Leather 2004 Contest and thousands of gay men drinking a whole lot of alcohol. The Southern Decadence Festival started in the French Quarter for the 32nd straight year on Wednesday and will draw an estimated 110,000 people, mainly gay men, from around the world. To the participants, Decadence is the ultimate Bourbon Street blowout, full of good, not-so-clean fun. But to a growing number of religious leaders, it's a sinister...

MORALISTS WITHOUT MORALS I would fain flee to Sarmatia and the frozen Sea when people who ape the Curii[1] and live like Bacchanals dare talk about morals. In the first place, they are unlearned persons, though you may find their houses crammed with plaster casts of Chrysippus;[2] for their greatest hero is the man who has brought a likeness of Aristotle or Pittacus,[3] or bids his shelves preserve an original portrait of Cleanthes.[4] Men's faces are not to be trusted; does not every street abound in gloomy-visaged debauchees? And do you rebuke foul practices, when you are yourself the most...

Pop diva Jennifer Lopez proudly sings how she is 'Jenny from the Block' but a new UK Television Documentary brings the story tumbling down.It reveals that she comes from a smart (posh) New York suburb, had a private education and experienced nothing of the tough urban upbringing she likes to protray to her admiring fans.In it J-Lo--who just bought a 10 million dollar island hideaway with fiancee Ben Affleck-sang about the girl who 'used to have a little and now has a lot.' Photographer Tony Duran says: 'I remember the first day I met her,. She told me, 'If you...

"We've been overseas for several weeks and have been reading and following the news accounts of our government's position. The anti- American sentiment that has unfolded here is astounding." This just got the poor girl in deeper. The only thing that would astound the typical country fan about Maines' encounter with anti- Americanism is the fact that she didn't slug the person expressing it. Another singer from country's classic era, Merle Haggard, put it this way: "When you're runnin' down my country, man, you're walkin' on the fightin' side of me."

<p>Not wanting to jeopardize $328 million in federal funding, Harvard Law School has decided to end the official ban it imposed on military recruiters because of the services' discrimination against gay men and lesbians. With the US Defense Department now enforcing a six-year-old law against such recruitment bans more strictly than before, the law school's principled stand in favor of nondiscrimination threatened to cost all Harvard schools their largesse from Washington.</p>

by L. Brent Bozell III TEEN CHOICE AWARD LESSONS? Another summer of freedom for teenagers is again tumbling to a close. After months of being late to bed and later to rise, children are agonizing over another year of organized learning about to begin. So the commissars of teen culture have thrown one last TV party -- the "Teen Choice Awards," voted on by the readers of Seventeen magazine and broadcast on that antonym of wholesomeness, Fox. If you're a boy or girl of 12, and you're about to take a plunge into the world of teenagerdom, what would television...

The Patriarchal Family in History Author: Christopher Dawson Title: The Patriarchal Family in History Larger Work: Dynamics of World History Pages: 156-166 Publisher & Date: Sheed & Ward, 1956 Description: Written in 1933, historian Christopher Dawson analyzes the roots of the patriarchal family and predicts the downfall of the family in a contraceptive society. THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY IN HISTORY By Christopher Dawson Essay written 1933, taken from The Dynamics of World History, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1956. The traditional view of the family was founded on a somewhat naive and one-sided conception of history. The knowledge of the past was...

HIV-Positive Muppet Coming to Sesame Street (CNSNews.com) - An HIV-positive Muppet is coming to Sesame Street, an adviser to the children's program said. Wire reports said Joel Schneider, the vice president and senior adviser to the Sesame Street Workshop, made the announcement Thursday at the 14th International AIDS Conference now underway in Barcelona, Spain. According to those reports, the HIV-positive Muppet will first appear on the South African version of Sesame Street, a program called "Takalani Sesame," in September. The character will be female, but other details, such as the name and color, are still being worked out. "This character...

Conservatives need not apply In our March issue, we reported in this space on some for-credit courses on offer at the University of California at Berkeley. There was a course in Blackjack, for students who hadn’t yet learned how to handle cards, and “Copwatch,” an important scholarly offering that, according to one description, advises students “how to safely and effectively assert their rights when interacting with the police.” The pièce de résistance, however, was a women’s studies course in male sexuality in which students visited strip clubs, wrote papers about their sexual fantasies, and watched an instructor having sex. Well,...

<p>The spokesman for U.S. bishops hashing out a sex-abuse policy for the church protected homosexual priests who joined a pornographic Internet chat room, where participants railed against Pope John Paul II's policies against homosexual clergy and one eagerly anticipated his death.</p>