Free Republic

There are few politicians who've been more outspoken on LGBT rights in a gut-level, passionate way than Vice President Joe Biden. Nor has there been any politician so public in his or her opinions and so close to a president who catapulted LGBT rights during his two terms, profoundly making history. Political strategists still debate whether Biden forced President Obama to move more quickly on marriage equality -- something Biden surely would like us to believe -- or if he was part of a trial balloon days before the president finally announced support in the spring of 2012 (most reports...

SNIP According to a New York Times interview the Republican frontrunner did with Maureen Dowd (for some inexplicable reason), Donald Trump believes that Heidi Klum, a former Victoria's Secret angel and one of the world's most beautiful women, has lost some of her luster as of late. According to Donald, "she's no longer a 10." SNIP

The South Carolina church that was founded by the Southern Baptist Convention's first president has adopted a new non-discrimination policy that will allow for the congregation to not only marry same-sex couples but also ordain openly gay, lesbian and transgender ministers. Dr. Jim Dant, senior minister of the 184-year-old First Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina, explained in a recent interview with Greenville Online that his church, which is no longer Southern Baptist, voted earlier this year to take up a new policy that does not allow the church to discriminate in any facet of its ministry on the basis...

A custom cake baker in suburban Denver can’t cite his religious convictions in declining to make a wedding cake for two men, a Colorado appeals court ruled today. “Cake artist” Jack Phillips said he gladly serves gays and lesbians in his family business. But, Phillips said, he could not in good conscience design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple when, as a Christian, he believes that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. A three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that not doing so amounts to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation, the...

A vote to include protections for Keller ISD students and employees based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression has been postponed for further consideration, according to a release sent by the district. “There have been many passionate pleas on both sides of the issue from parents, community members, and current and former students,” district superintendent Randy Reid said in a statement.

Betsy Layne High School in rural Kentucky this year had a two-page yearbook spread that featured all of the seniors on the boys basketball team. Except, one senior was left out of the tribute: Dalton Maldonado, the team's starting point guard who came out publicly as gay a couple months ago.

Megachurch leader and author T.D. Jakes says that homosexuals should attend congregations that affirm their lifestyle and that politics do not need to reflect biblical ethics, adding that his position on homosexuality is both “evolved and evolving.” During an interview with the Huffington Post on Monday, Jakes was asked by a viewer if he believes that homosexuals and the black church can co-exist. “Absolutely… I think it is going to be diverse from church to church. Every church has a different opinion on the issue and every gay person is different,” he replied. “And I think that to speak that...

The Republican National Committee’s resolutions committee quietly rejected a pair of resolutions critical of homosexuality Wednesday. The controversial resolutions dealing with sex education and same-sex marriage threatened to cast a shadow on the first GOP presidential debate Thursday in Cleveland, as the party looks toward expanding its base in the key swing state. According to a member of the committee, both failed to gain support to be recommended to the full 168-member party governing body on Friday.

The idea of a "nuclear family"—white picket fence, a kid or two, friendly golden retriever—has been under siege for a while now. No longer do stories of step-parents or half-siblings shock us, and children being raised by parents of the same gender (so-called "pink families") are becoming increasingly common. Another new, lesser known family structure that has emerged is that of multi-parenting—or raising a child with more than two legal parents. For instance, a lesbian couple and a gay couple bringing up a child together as a single family, but in separate households. That's more or less the family unit...

(VNRN) - Any new U.S. Ambassador will always attract the attention of Vietnamese everywhere, but when President Barack Obama nominated Asia pro Ted Osius, it generated a little more than the usual high interest. You see, Osius is openly gay. Regardless of whether the nominee’s sexual orientation was a factor, the nomination hopefully will usher in more LGBT rights in Vietnam. Certainly Osius is qualified to be ambassador. He has served as Deputy Chief of Mission before, in Indonesia from 2009 to 2012. For the past year, he has been an Associate Professor at the National War College. Osius had...

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — A pair of small explosions just 20 minutes and a few miles apart shocked congregants Sunday morning at two churches in southern New Mexico. There were no injuries or deaths from the blasts outside Calvary Baptist and Holy Cross Roman Catholic in Las Cruces, Las Cruces police spokesman Danny Trujillo said. Each building sustained minor damage. Authorities are working to determine who planted the explosives, what materials were used and whether the blasts were related. "It doesn't appear to be coincidental because of the timing, but you never know," Trujillo told The Associated Press. Several agencies...

Aaron and Melissa Klein of Gresham, Oregon, have learned how dangerous it can be to fail to support “gay marriage” in this day and age. The now-infamous bakers refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple and were subsequently slapped with a $135,000 fine from the state of Oregon. Negative national publicity forced them to shut down their bakery, Sweet Cakes by Melissa. Outrage from progressives has essentially ruined the Kleins’ lives, but journalist and author Jack Cashill, who wrote the forthcoming “Scarlet Letters: The Ever-Increasing Intolerance of the Cult of Liberalism,” believes this incident ultimately is not...

Some highway billboards are the same wherever you go across this great land of ours: McDonald’s, Target, Walmart. Others are more regional (where is the line at which Carl’s Jr. becomes Hardee’s, anyway?). Some are particular to states, and those road-tripping through Oklahoma will likely see billboards directing them to visit online adult toy shops and to alert law enforcement about any methamphetamine use they come across. And in one small part of the state—the town of Durant, in the southeast corner—visitors and residents may now feast their eyes upon a message against marriage equality. The plea comes from Betty...

In 1939, a young German exile wrote a book about how the Nazis took over his country. The manuscript was placed in a drawer and forgotten until his death 60 years later, when it was found by his son and became a best-seller under the title Defying Hitler. It was an amazing discovery because the author, Sebastian Haffner, had by then grown into one of Germany's most popular journalists. The narrative is also a gem of social commentary, showing how historical circumstance, political inertia and moral cowardice combined to produce one of humanity's greatest disasters. This article will follow his...

Because you've seen enough, heard enough and had enough. We believe in the Constitution. The fundamentals of freedom and liberty for ALL including LGBT citizens. And we espouse conservative values and support limited government. We are not about a candidate, but a set of principles. We may not agree on every line item. but we all fundamentally agree, that enough is enough. Our group is about networking, particiating in supportive causes and social acitivities for the like minded.

Life is getting heavy for a world champion bodybuilder. Matt Kroczaleski has come out publicly as transgender and has adopted the name Janae Marie Kroc, but is still living in both genders and has not fully transitioned from male to female. “In a perfect world I could snap my fingers and go back and forth at will but of course that world does not exist,” Kroc wrote in an Instagram post Wednesday. “That being said if I am forced to pick a gender I identify with more it is female. However, this really isn’t about me being a boy or...

President Barack Obama on Saturday lectured Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta about his country's gay rights record. "When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that's the path whereby freedoms begin to erode," Obama said at a joint press conference with the Kenyan leader in Nairobi. "And bad things happen." Under Kenyan law, sexual activity between men is illegal and punishable with a maximum imprisonment of 14 years. Many Kenyan leaders had encouraged Obama not to discuss gay rights on his first trip to the country as President....

John McCain will spend next weekend campaigning around New Hampshire with his pal Lindsey Graham. The Arizona senator, who twice won the state’s Republican primary, will headline a barbecue at the VFW post in Littleton on Aug. 1 for the dark horse GOP presidential candidate and South Carolina senator, according to the Graham campaign. Then the duo will travel to additional events, which campaign officials said are still being planned. McCain’s trip will be his first foray out on the campaign trail since Donald Trump, leading in the national polls of Republicans, suggested he is not a true war hero...

I was born into a family of famous gay pagan authors in the late Sixties. My mother was Marion Zimmer Bradley, and my father was Walter Breen. Between them, they wrote over 100 books: my mother wrote science fiction and fantasy (Mists of Avalon), and my father wrote books on numismatics: he was a coin expert.

President Obama said he will voice support for gay rights during his Friday trip to Africa, despite warnings from some leaders to steer clear of the issue. In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Obama said he has delivered a "blunt" message on gay rights to African leaders in the past and the topic will be "front and center" when he visits Kenya and Ethiopia.