Free Republic

THE PHILADELPHIA Police Department will soon implement a new set of guidelines for how officers interact with transgender people. Deputy Commissioner Kevin Bethel worked with members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community to fine-tune the nine-page directive, police spokesman Lt. John Stanford said. "The times have evolved, and not just within the Police Department," Stanford said yesterday. "You see it across the board in so many different areas. We have to learn to adapt to the times."

I've gotten a number of messages in the last few days — from both supporters and opponents of gay rights — expressing sympathy over the rude and hateful messages I've been getting (and publishing) ever since I started writing about Phil Robertson. This is sweet, but misplaced. The worst of my problems from being openly gay is that I get some nasty email. That means I have it really easy. In a country where gay teenagers are being bullied at school and thrown out of their homes by their parents and told by their clergy that they're going to Hell,...

Good Morning America host Robin Roberts publicly acknowledged that she is gay on Sunday for the first time. The 53-year-old cancer survivor thanked her girlfriend of ten years as part of a heartfelt end-of-year thank you addressed to fans and loved ones posted to her Facebook. 'I am grateful for my entire family, my long time girlfriend, Amber, and friends as we prepare to celebrate a glorious new year together,' Roberts wrote. Amber, reports Media Bistro, is Amber Laign, a message therapists who helps patients recuperate from injuries. Roberts' sexuality has been known to her family, friends and co-workers for...

MSNBC host Thomas Roberts said Monday that “many people consider President Obama to be the first gay president.” Roberts was speaking to Shawn Gaylord of Human Rights First, a group fighting discrimination against homosexuals and other sexual minorities. The organization is pushing the White House to defy Russia’s harsh anti-gay laws by sending openly gay delegates to next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. “It’s not about asking for special protection,” Roberts claimed. “It’s about asking and seeking equal respect. We do know as we look at the larger picture here, Shawn, that LGBT rights is just one of the...

President Obama is expected to nominate former Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson as the next Homeland Security secretary, ABC News has learned. --SNIP-- Johnson has called working for the Obama administration "the highlight of [his] professional life." "I have been on an incredible journey with Barack Obama ... going back to November 2006 when he recruited me to the presidential campaign he was about to launch," Johnson said in a speech at Yale Law School last year. "I remember thinking then, 'This is a long-shot, but it will be exciting, historic, and how many times in my life will someone personally...

AUDIO Interview at link. (CNSNews.com) – Many commanders in the Department of Defense are violating the religious rights of service members, forcing them to be quiet about their moral opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage, for instance, and, in effect, imposing a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on Christians, said Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William “Jerry” Boykin, the former commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command. In an interview, CNSNews.com asked Gen. Boykin, now the executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), “Given the violation of religious liberties that have been going on, do you think that, ironically, Christians...

Tuesday, on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” Michael Ritrovato spoke at length about his friend, suspected Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis. After expressing his condolences to the victims and their families, Ritrovato then expressed his shock over the actions of a man he described as being “like a brother to me” and a “good-natured guy.” Ritrovato went on to explain that two of them had a close relationship based in part on their differences, specifically race and politics. Alexis was black, Ritrovato is white. Ritrovato described himself as conservative and Alexis is “more of a liberal type” who supported...

Can chaplains committed to historic biblical Christianity serve in the United States military? That question, though inconceivable to our nation’s founders, is now front and center. And the answer to that question will answer another, even more important question: Can religious liberty survive under America’s new moral order? The repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, coupled with the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, set the stage for this crisis. The full normalization of same-sex relationships within the U.S. military is part of the unprecedented moral revolution that is now reshaping American...

Darren Manzella, a gay combat medic discharged from the Army after criticizing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in a 2007 television interview, has died in a traffic accident in western New York. He was 36. His aunt, Robin Mahoney, on Friday confirmed his death. Manzella lived in the Chautauqua County town of Portland; he and his partner were married in July. …

ENID, Oklahoma - A class of U.S. Air Force airmen learning how to fly at Vance Air Force Base near Enid is becoming an internet sensation, thanks to a patch. Every class of pilots in training at Vance Air Force Base picks its own patch. Class 14-05 picked one that's based on the cartoon "My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic". The patch reads "My Little Pilot, Flying Is Magic". According to Air Force Times, My Little Pony has become popular with some members of the military, as well as other adults. These older fans are called "Bronies," short for "bro...

U.S. soldiers deployed to Afghanistan are using Craigslist to meet and have sex with each other on bases across the war-torn country, leading to concerns about a breakdown in discipline overseas. Military commanders have forbade any service members who are not married to each other from having sex while deployed to the combat zone. As a result, each of the covert meetings is a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The vast majority of the posts on Craigslist involve male soldiers seeking sex with other men - a practice that could have resulted in the discharge of both...

It's reported that Bradley Manning has been found guilty of five counts of espionage and five counts of theft, all of which means a very long time in prison. And he deserves it. Ignore for the moment the fact that he's not been found guilty of aiding the enemy. They key thing here is that the court has, rightly, found him guilty of betraying his country. Lock him up and throw away the key. There are whistle-blowers and then there are traitors, and Bradley Manning falls into the latter category. Of course, there are also different categories of traitors and...

U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is a whistleblower who wanted to inform the American public about the troubling things he saw in the war zone, and the soldier is willing to pay the price for giving secrets to WikiLeaks, his defense attorney said Friday. During closing arguments, attorney David Coombs disputed what prosecutors said a day earlier, that Manning was a traitor whose only mission as an intelligence analyst was to give classified information to the anti-secrecy website and bask in the attention. “He’s not seeking attention. He saying he’s willing to accept the price” for what he has done,...

Beneath a rousing flyover of decades-old warbirds, 1,024 newly commissioned second lieutenants graduated Wednesday from the Air Force Academy - saluting the military's past while looking to its future. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, in one of his last acts as the Air Force's top civilian, implored the cadets to tackle the service's many challenges, a lingering war, fiscal uncertainty and the "scourge" of pervasive sexual assaults during the ceremony at Falcon Stadium. "Each of you is responsible for the character of this Air Force, and its reputation," Donley said. "And I therefore charge you to serve with integrity, and...

WASHINGTON — Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton was never questioned by investigators looking into the attack on the US mission in Libya that claimed the life of the US ambassador, a head of the internal probe said Sunday. Ambassador Thomas Pickering said he and retired admiral Mike Mullen interviewed Clinton near the end of their investigation into the September 11 attack in Benghazi but saw no need to question her about her role. He said they knew and understood what she had done "because we had questioned people who had attended meetings with her what went on at those...

If there hasn’t been a Color Run 5k or 10k race near you, there probably will be soon. And with all that color, you certainly want to take some pictures, right? Not with your camera you don’t. I’m never one to worry much about lens dust, but the color bombs they throw out at Color Runs are different. In the last month my lens rental business has had over 20 lenses and several cameras nearly ruined by these things. For what it’s worth, all of the renters tell us they really weren’t near any of the major ‘color bombs.’

Bradley Manning, the Army private arrested in the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history, pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that could send him to prison for 20 years, saying he was trying to expose the American military’s “bloodlust” and disregard for human life in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military prosecutors said they plan to move forward with a court-martial on 12 remaining charges against him, including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence. … It was the first time Manning directly admitted leaking the material to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and detailed the frustrations that led him...

The equal treatment of gay spouses in the military took a step forward after the Fort Bragg spouse’s club offered full membership to the wife of a female officer. Ashley Broadway, who is married to Lt. Col. Heather Mack, was offered full membership to the Association of Bragg Officers’ Spouses on Friday, after initially being offered a guest membership. “In order to immediately support all military officer spouses who are eligible for ABOS membership, a more inclusive definition of spouse was needed,” the group wrote on its website. Moving forward, the group said any spouse of an active duty commissioned...

One of the items on Obama’s second term agenda is to root out traditionally Christian chaplains from the military. He sees them as bigots unworthy of conscience protections. Like Chick-fil-A, they don’t uphold Obama’s “values.” Obama’s mouthpieces in the military have already blurted this out. In 2010, Admiral Michael Mullen told a Christian chaplain who opposed the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that “If you cannot get in line, resign your commission.” That same year Lieutenant General Thomas P. Bostick, the Army’s deputy chief of staff in charge of personnel, said military members who dissent from Obama’s...

In a landmark settlement, the Pentagon has agreed to give full back pay to U.S. service members who were discharged due to their sexual orientation under the military's “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The payouts will be granted to service members dismissed from the military under the now-repealed policy on or after November 2004. “This means so much to those of us who dedicated ourselves to the military, only to be forced out against our will for being who we are,” former Air Force Staff Sgt. Richard Collins said in a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought...