Free Republic

French President Emmanuel Macron met Twitter owner Elon Musk on Friday in New Orleans, and said they discussed environmental issues and freedom of speech in the context of content moderation on the global social media platform. I'll say it here, on Twitter, because it’s all about the blue bird. This afternoon I met with @elonmusk and we had a clear and honest discussion: — Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) December 2, 2022 "We will work with Twitter to improve online child protection," Macron tweeted. "Elon Musk confirmed it to me today. Let’s better protect our children online!" To which Musk tweeted, "Absolument,"...

The Navy Command of Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit THREE ZERO THREE Mainbody forced all of its members on a gay pride hike last week. According to a woman whose husband is active duty Navy the attendance on the hike was mandatory. They all hiked while waving a rainbow-themed American Flag. ..... Snip..... Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit THREE ZERO THREE Mainbody posted photos from the hike on its Facebook page. But Facebook is censoring who can see the post.

President Obama will meet with several LGBT groups during his trip later this week to St. Petersburg, a move likely to ruffle Russian President Vladimir Putin after the recent passage of a series of anti-gay laws. The president will meet with human rights activists Lev Ponomarev and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, legal aid NGO director Pavel Chikov, and Coming Out, a St. Petersburg-based LGBT organization, according to a report in BuzzFeed. The decision to meet with the activists in not unprecedented — Obama also met with human rights leaders in 2009 — but comes amid a period of heightened tension with the...

A host of Israeli celebrities are taking part in a unique project that is meant to raise awareness to the string of strict anti-gay laws that have recently become a reality in Russia. The project, led by David and Jonathan Marketing, consists of a series of images showing celebrities dressed as Soviet soldiers, with blood running from their mouths. This is a play on the iconic Pierre et Gilles photograph depicting a soldier with a tear streaming down his cheek. Titled RED FLAG, the project is a response to the seeming anti-gay crusade Putin has been spearheading in Russia. …

I am a Canadian economist who has worked on family issues in Canada and the U.S. for the past 26 years. Although I’ve mostly studied matters of divorce, custody, child support, and the general institution of marriage, for the past few years I’ve been working on series of empirical projects related to same-sex marriage. I’ve been using a special data set in Canada that is large (over 300,000 individuals) and random (with weights), that directly identifies sexual orientation, and that was designed by Statistics Canada. In the process of working on same-sex marriage I have read almost every study...

One too many political tea-leaf readers say that Sarah Palin, with her rock-star personality, loyal following and outsized influence on the Republican Party, could jump into the 2012 presidential race at the last minute and run off with the GOP nomination for president. This is in defiance of consistent and plain evidence that Palin is going nowhere fast. Now a new poll from the University of New Hampshire only adds to the brief against her running. Among likely Republican voters, the former governor of Alaska garnered just six percent support. Blowing out the field was former next-door Gov. Mitt Romney...

According to The Boston Globe, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is working with state Democratic leaders in Massachusetts to kill a constructional amendment there that will finally give the citizens of the state the opportunity to vote on same-sex marriage, which was imposed by the state's high court in 2003. Pelosi, a supporter of same- sex marriage, is apparently concerned about the impact a vote on the marriage amendment would have on the 2008 elections. In the May 17 edition of The Boston Globe, reporters suggest that Pelosi has burned up the phones in recent days, warning Massachusetts legislators that...

I managed to arrange my schedule over the last week to watch three adults and I forget how many kids play John Paul II on the dueling docudramas from ABC and CBS.//Having read Weigel's biography, I can see how it would really take a year-long miniseries to truly capture all the drama and importance of this great man's life and teachings, but for the time allotted I must give CBS applause for an outstanding and faithful effort. *************** Unfortunately, due to the football-delayed Sunday schedule I was forced to endure what is truly one of the most grueling hours on...

Social conservatives are working overtime to argue that gay marriage would imperil straight matrimony. They say that if Jack and Joe were united, till death do them part, they would jeopardize husbands and wives, from sea to shining sea. "We will lose marriage in this nation," without constitutionally limiting it to heterosexuals, warns Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. The Traditional Values Coalition, meanwhile, sees "same-sex marriage as a way of destroying the concept of marriage altogether." It would be far easier to take these claims seriously if gay-marriage critics spent as much energy denouncing irresponsible heterosexuals whose behavior undermines...

New HBO Series Presents Not-So-Angelic AgendaCal ThomasSyndicated Columnist HBO's latest film, Angels in America, is a two-part, multi-hour production that aired Sunday and Monday nights and will continue being broadcast all week. Angels is based on the Tony Kushner play about the American homosexual experience. I didn't want to watch it, but I did, and must admit it is one of the most effective pieces of propaganda I have encountered. Gays and lesbians are portrayed as victims -- not of their own choices but of Republicans and specifically the Reagan administration during whose second term the drama is set. British...