Free Republic

Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear a collection of marriage-equality decisions and deferred for another term what seems now an inevitable ruling for marriage equality. The very next day, the Ninth Circuit handed down an opinion, Latta v. Otter, striking down a number of same-sex-marriage bans. In doing so, the appeals court provided the first of what will surely be many such decisions from which the Court can choose when the justices consider what cases they might hear in the future—and so offers potential rationales by which they might make marriage equality the law of the land. The...

Friday on PBS's "News Hour," syndicated columnist Mark Shields pointed out, "among young Republicans, 61 percent of Republicans -- young Republicans under the age of 30 are in favor of same sex marriage." New York Times columnist David Brooks "applauded," the GOP for "doing absolutely the right thing in withdrawing" and letting the country have its way. Brooks said "I sort of applaud the minimalism here. Sometimes you let the country have its way and you don't try to determine the shape of the country, you sort of modestly step back and let the country figure out what it believes....

Exclusive: Matt Barber warns, 'The courts are tossing around spiritual nitroglycerin' It’s called Pandora’s Box. And the Supreme Court just opened it. Did you actually think the debate over “gay marriage” was about marriage? Have you really come to believe that this cultural kerfuffle has anything to do with “civil rights” or “equality”? Have you bought into the popular premise that this is a legitimate discussion on federalism – that it’s a reasonable disagreement over whether the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause requires that newfangled “gay marriage,” something rooted in same-sex sodomy, a deviant and disease-prone behavior our Constitution’s framers...

<p>The Supreme Court on Friday night allowed same-sex marriages to begin in Idaho, ending a dramatic week in which the right of gay couples to marry expanded dramatically across the nation.</p> <p>In a one-sentence order, the justices denied a request from Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter (R) to delay the unions so the state could continue its appeals. The court gave no reason for the action nor were there recorded dissents.</p>

Gay blades, weary of the indulgent life of easy gratification, want the courts to guarantee their right to marry. Stuffy straights demand that politicians legislate their partner's sexual intentions. The times, they are indeed a-changin'. The Supreme Court delays making gay marriage legal in every state, and its passive-aggressive approach enables a man to marry a man, and a woman to marry a woman in 30 states, and rising. Gays have succeeded in getting the state out of their bedrooms and into the maze of matrimony. Liaisons between men and women are more complicated. In California, which in the past...

Now Open - WWAY News Poll on the question: Do you think state leaders should continue to fight gay marriage in NC?

According to the Pew Research Center, half of Americans think business owners should be required to provide their services for same-sex weddings even if doing so violates their religious beliefs. In a September poll from the group, respondents split down the middle on the following question: If a business provides wedding services, such as catering or flowers, should it be allowed to refuse those services to a same-sex couple for religious reasons, or required to provide those services as it would to all other customers? The number saying businesses should be required to provide such services included a majority of...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee threatened to leave the GOP and run for the White House in 2016 as an independent if Republicans “capitulate” and support same-sex marriage. “If the Republicans want to lose guys like me, and a whole bunch of still God-fearing, Bible-believing people, go ahead and just abdicate on this issue—and go ahead and say abortion doesn’t matter, either,” Huckabee told Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, on Wildmon’s “Today’s Issues” radio show. “Because at that point, you lose me; I’m gone.” “I’ll become an independent,” he vowed in an interview on Tuesday. “I’ll start...

Dennis Floyd, left, and Terence Bartholomew are planning to wed. No offense to those couples who rushed to city hall in late June, eager to take advantage of an unexpected federal court ruling that struck down Indiana’s same-sex marriage ban. It’s just that Terence Bartholomew and Dennis Floyd aren’t the spur-of-the-moment, jeans-and-T-shirts, get-hitched-over-the-lunch-hour types. They want a wedding with a capital W. The local couple, who celebrated 22 years together on Sept. 12, were thrilled Monday to hear that the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Indiana’s challenge, effectively ending the state’s temporary hold on same-sex marriage. In other...

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected gay marriage appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin, in essence allowing lower courts to legalize same-sex couples. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), an institution that has vigorously opposed gay marriage for some time now, conceded that the political battle over marriage is over. “As far as the civil law is concerned,” the Mormon Church admitted, “the courts have spoken.” Actually, nothing is over until God says it’s over. At least, this is my understanding of how religion operates. So while I don’t want to accuse Mormons of...

Recently, my colleague Eric Metaxas told you about how the city of Lynn, Massachusetts, no longer will allow student teachers from Gordon College to teach or mentor inner city students. Why? Because Gordon's president dared to sign a letter to the President requesting that religious institutions be exempt from federal gay rights laws. The city's outrageous and shortsighted action brings more harm to its inner city students, who are now without mentors, than it does Gordon College. But the same cannot be said about the latest challenge the college is facing in fallout from the letter. In late September, the...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says its doctrine on marriage will remain unchanged despite Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized gay marriage in five states, including Utah, and opened the door for legalization in six more. “As far as the civil law is concerned, the courts have spoken,” the church said in a statement reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision. “Church leaders will continue to encourage our people to be persons of good will toward all, rejecting persecution of any kind based on race, ethnicity, religious belief or nonbelief, and differences in sexual orientation.” In...

Legal momentum for extending U.S. marriage rights to same-sex couples accelerated on Tuesday as a federal appeals court struck down bans on gay matrimony in Idaho and Nevada a day after the U.S. Supreme Court let stand similar rulings for five other states. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled the bans in Idaho and Nevada violated the constitution and cannot be enforced, adding to a growing list of states where same-sex unions are now legal. "Idaho and Nevada's marriage laws, by preventing same-sex couples from marrying and refusing to recognize same-sex marriages celebrated elsewhere, impose...

Conservative officials in some of the six states where Supreme Court action this week likely cleared the way for same-sex weddings say they won’t issue marriage licenses to gay couples until their hands are forced. Now, gay rights advocates are preparing to do just that. James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Project, called the court’s action a “watershed moment for the entire country,” and other gay rights activists described plans Tuesday to challenge remaining bans. …

WASHINGTON—The San Francisco-based Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday struck down same-sex marriage bans in Idaho and Nevada, setting the stage for legal gay marriages in five more Western states. The unanimous decision comes a day after the U.S. Supreme Court let stand lower-court rulings that ended bans in five other states, a move that effectively expanded the right to gay marriage to 30 U.S. states. The Ninth Circuit decision will apply to five states with marriage bans in that appellate circuit, likely expanding to 35 the number of states with legal same-sex marriage.

“Putting the paddles on the chest of a divisive issue with absolutely no hope of the outcome he promises is a hallmark of Ted Cruz,” says GOP consultant Rick Wilson acidly, the memory of last year’s doomed “defund” effort firmly in mind. Okay, but the fine print on what Cruz wants to do is interesting. Typically when social conservatives start talking up amendments aimed at gay marriage, they’re thinking of a substantive change — namely, a new law of the land that says marriage involves one man and one woman and no other combination. Once that’s in the Constitution,...

The star of TV's The Cosby Show and That's So Raven sat down with Oprah Winfrey and attempted to clarify the misconceptions about who she is. One of the topics the women addressed occurred in August 2013, when the Supreme Court ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. At the time, she tweeted, "I can finally get married! Yay government! So proud of you." Many people saw it as her way of publicly coming out. Asked to explain, Raven replied, "That was my way of saying I'm proud of the country. But, I will say that I'm in...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) conceded that the state of Wisconsin lost its fight to ban same sex marriage on Monday when the Supreme Court declined to hear gay marriage cases in multiple states. With the Supreme Court's punt back to the appeals court that struck down the ban, county clerks in Wisconsin have started issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. And Walker seems to have accepted that this is the end of the road for the state's ban....

RICHMOND — The Supreme Court on Monday effectively allowed same-sex marriage to go forward in Virginia, deciding not to take up a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriages. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a mandate to remove the last barrier to same-sex marriage in Virginia. The first same-sex marriages were performed in Charlottesville and Richmond shortly after 1 p.m. At the same time, the commonwealth recognized marriages already performed in states as legal. ---snip--- Virginia state Del. Bob Marshall (R-Prince William), co-author of the state’s marriage ban, decried the move...

Add 11 more states to the list where same-sex marriage is legal. Gay marriage supporters have had a lot to cheer over the past two years thanks to a series of landmark rulings that have paved the way for marriage equality in an ever-increasing number of states. But on Monday morning (October 6), it was something the Supreme court didn’t do that will make same-sex marriage the law in the majority of the country. At the start of the new Supreme Court term, the justices announced that they had rejected appeals from five states that were seeking to prohibit same-sex...