Free Republic

This week, Abigail Shrier, author of the new book "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters," found herself at the center of a firestorm. Her great crime: writing an assessment of the psychological phenomenon known as rapid onset gender dysphoria, where groups of psychologically vulnerable young girls begin to self-diagnose as transgender after one member of a peer group does so. The book is sober and evenhanded. Nonetheless, all hell broke loose after one person on Twitter -- one! -- tweeted at Target, prompting the retailer to pledge not to make Shrier's book available (a decision it later reversed)....

One of the great liberal (in the true sense of the word) decisions by the Supreme Court is West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, the 1943 case where the justices struck down a law that forced school children of the Jehovah’s Witness faith to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance or face punishment for declining to do so. [...] Today’s “liberals” have forgotten the wisdom of Barnette. They care little about liberty and instead desire to impose their ideas by force. We see their authoritarianism popping up all around, and one place is mandatory speech. A...

During a recent tour for traditional marriage in Maine, volunteers with The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) saw pro-marriage yard signs get unlawfully removed or destroyed by pro-homosexual advocates. Some of the unsettling incidents occurred on Congress Street, downtown Portland, from October 29—31 and were caught on video. The blue and yellow yard signs read:  “Don’t redefine marriage.  Vote NO on question one.  Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman.” Same-sex “marriage” advocates ignored state law which protects such signs:  “A person who takes, defaces or disturbs a lawfully placed sign bearing political messages...

You can keep ObamaCare, the Commerce Clause, and the Tenth Amendment. As far as I’m concerned, truck nuts are the only constitutional game in town. Threshold question: If it’s okay to ban these things as indecent symbols of American culture at its seediest, can we also ban The Waffle House? On July 5, Virginia Tice, 65, from Bonneau, S.C. pulled her pickup truck into a local gas station with red, fake testicles dangling from the trailer hitch. The town’s police chief, Franco Fuda, pulled up and asked her to remove the plastic testicles. When she refused, he wrote her a...

You would be excused for thinking that the Wahabbi religious establishment of Saudi Arabia and the religion guarantees of our First Amendment have no more in common than fire and water. But I think this oddest of odd couples helps to explain two recent events involving American Muslims and the rest of us -- instances of so-called “home-grown” Islamist terrorism, such as the Fort Hood murders, and the resentment being reported among American Muslims at FBI and other law-enforcement-agency activities at U.S. mosques. To be sure, the religious values the First Amendment protects -- freedom of worship, the nonestablishment of...

Introduction to the Free Speech ClauseThe issues: What events influenced the thinking of the framers about the right of free speech?  What is the original understanding of the First Amendment? What values does the Free Speech Clause serve?  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment  of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  IntroductionAlthough First Amendment jurisprudence is almost entirely a creation that began in the 20th century, common law...

The Founding Fathers established the First Amendment to protect two forms of speech: political and religious. Yet in a typically perverse irony of our time, these blameless exercises of the First Amendment are regarded as "shocking" violations of it while a growing culture of obscenity not protected by the framers receives its imprimatur. Daily we're told of sinister "outside groups" churning out...political speech. "Outside groups" is treated as a discussion-ending epithet by both the Bush and Kerry camps. Why the existence of independent groups should strike fear into the hearts of Americans is never explained. Is the United States of...

<p>NEW YORK - MSNBC on Monday fired Michael Savage for anti-gay comments.</p> <p>The popular radio talk show host who did a weekend TV show for the cable channel referred to an unidentified caller to his show Saturday as a "sodomite" and said he should "get AIDS and die."</p>