Free Republic

Minneapolis — Target cut its profit and comparable-store sales outlook amid stiffer competition and its own stumbles in areas like grocery sales. The discounter’s second-quarter net income fell nearly 10%, though that was better than what most had expected. Sales at stores open at least a year fell 1.1%, reversing seven straight quarters of gains. Target shares were down more than 6% in mid-morning trading Wednesday. The quarter underscores challenges that Target and other retailers face from Amazon.com and shoppers who remain cautious about spending.

On June 28, 1969, patrons at a gay bar in New York City's West Village neighborhood decided they had finally had enough after yet another police raid. As the NYPD attempted to enforce a law making it illegal to serve alcohol to "homosexuals," the resistance of the bar patrons turned into an uprising - the Stonewall Uprising - an event now widely credited with sparking the modern LGBTQ rights movement in the U.S. Now, nearly 50 years later, that same location - where members of the community stood up to government injustice - has been designated a new national monument...

Mitt Romney blasted the Republican Party on Saturday for not doing more to stop presumptive nominee Donald Trump, saying that the prospects for the party are bleak. During a discussion in Park City, Utah, where Romney is hosting his annual conservative summit, the 2012 presidential nominee singled out Trump’s former rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), the last two candidates to drop out of the race against Trump. "Ted Cruz was basically praising Donald Trump through the whole process," Romney told discussion host and CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. And Kasich “was in well after the time...

A growing number of Americans are having gay sex, or at least admitting to it. And that's OK with more and more of us. "People over time are reporting more same-sex sexual experiences than ever before," said Brooke Wells, a social psychologist at Widener University's Center for Human Sexuality Studies. ....an annual survey conducted between 1973 and 2014, was fueled largely by people who had sex with both men and women. There has been little change in the number of people reporting exclusively homosexual behavior. from 3.6 to 8.7 percent for women and from 4.5 to 8.2 percent for men....

When Australia's most successful Olympian, Ian Thorpe, came out as gay in an interview with Sir Michael Parkinson in July 2014, he was inundated with messages of support. At the time, some posed the question: does this even count as news? Is homosexuality today not a simple biographical detail rather than a sensational scandal? And yet, it is significant that on the same night that Thorpe came out, Australian Rules Football commentator Brian Taylor used a homophobic slur on air, referring to Geelong player Harry Taylor as a "big poofter." The two events accentuated perfectly why it remains the case,...

<p>Wal-mart Stores reported quarterly earnings and revenue that beat analysts' expectations on Thursday.</p> <p>The company posted first-quarter earnings per share of 98 cents, compared to $1.03 a share in the year-earlier period.</p> <p>Revenue for the quarter came in at $115.9 billion, against the comparable year-ago figure of $114.83 billion.</p>

An openly gay pastor who claimed that a grocery store bakery wrote a homophobic message on his cake has dropped his lawsuit against Whole Foods, claiming he made up the story, according to news reports.

The Texas Republican Party considered a platform Friday that would soften support of widely rebuked “reparative therapy” for gays while still preserving some of the toughest anti-gay language on any party plank in the U.S. The new platform also would oppose bathroom rights for transgender persons — an unsurprising move after the state’s Republican lieutenant governor said Friday that Texas is ready to forfeit billions of federal dollars rather than comply with a new Obama administrative directive on transgender rights in public schools. …

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has suspended all city-sponsored travel to North Carolina and Mississippi due to the states’ new transgender laws. Rawlings-Blake made the announcement Tuesday in a letter to city officials, saying she hopes the city’s efforts combined with those of other governments and companies “will push North Carolina and Mississippi” to change. …

We are in the midst of a top-down sexual revolution, being forced on the public by the massed power of media, corporations, and governments in thrall to the small but powerful sexual minority intent on redefining sexuality.  Those who dare to oppose them, especially with mockery, can see their livelihoods destroyed.  They cannot handle mockery, because their latest cause is absurd and based on lies. Curt Schilling, a hero to Red Sox Nation and a highly regarded baseball analyst for CNN, dared to protest and mock the forcible intrusion of males on women’s restrooms.  As The New York Times...

Manipulated Conservatives: Transgendered Bathrooms are Trivial As I watch people get involved with dramas over this issue, I think: What is it that we are not supposed to pay attention to? What is it that the elites, the media and the government don't want us to notice? Is it the loss of our history and culture with the change with monies, another knife in the gut by the Obama administration? Is it the subtlest of this election? Is it the lousy depression like statistics in some areas of the country? Is it the invasion of western Civ and our country...

A proposal to name a street after pioneering gay leader Harvey Milk is the latest display of Salt Lake City standing out as a blue dot in a deep-red state where the prevailing Mormon faith still has a fraught relationship with the LGBT community. Utah's capital city recently elected its first openly gay mayor and its second sitting gay councilman, creating an increasingly friendly atmosphere for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in the home of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The conservative religion's tone on gay issues has softened in recent years, but it still...

Target Corp. made it clear that transgender people in its stores are welcome to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. The statement Tuesday by the Minneapolis-based retailer comes amid debates in many state legislatures over restricting public restroom use to the sex listed on a person’s birth certificate. While many of those conversations have centered around restrooms in public schools and government buildings, Target appears to be one of the first big-box retailers to take a proactive stance in declaring its position on the matter when it comes to its own restrooms. While they may not be...

A Tennessee transgender bathroom bill has failed after a sponsor pulled the measure until next year. The move Monday comes after intense opposition from businesses and gay, lesbian and transgender rights’ organizations that called the measure discriminatory and amid questions of whether the state would lose more than $1 billion in federal education funds. …

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said Monday the company is reshaping its product lineup to better reflect the growing interest in healthy eating and noted it has reduced its reliance on colas for sales. The maker of Frito-Lay snacks, Mountain Dew, Naked juices and Quaker Oats now gets less than 25 percent of its global sales from soda, Nooyi said. And she said just 12 percent of global sales comes from its namesake soda. Representatives for PepsiCo were unable to provide how those figures have changed in recent the years.The remarks underscore PepsiCo’s recent shift in tone as the world’s biggest...

The head of Britain’s digital espionage agency has apologized for the organization’s historic prejudice against homosexuals, saying it failed to learn from the treatment of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing. In a rare public speech, GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan told a gathering organized by the rights group Stonewall that the agency’s ban on homosexuals had caused long-lasting psychological damage to many and hurt the agency because talented people were excluded from working there. […] The speech offered a poignant tribute to Turing, the gay computer science pioneer and architect of the effort to crack Nazi Germany’s Enigma cipher. Turing...

More than 60 businesses including some of Missouri's biggest corporate names joined a coalition opposed to state legislation that would protect businesses objecting on religious grounds to same-sex marriages, the latest sign of a backlash against such proposals across the country. Agricultural giant Monsanto, prescription drug benefits manager Express Scripts, and pet food maker Nestle Purina are among employers to join the recently formed Missouri Competes, according to gay rights advocacy group PROMO, which released the list just hours before a House committee heard testimony from business, sports and religious groups. Dozens crammed in the Capitol basement for the late-night...

PayPal sits on remittances for up to a month, money they use as Float on the back of small merchants and businesses. PayPal is a nuisance. Don't use PayPal. Sorry to WCPE listeners who aren't leftists, your station is great, North Carolina is a great state despite UNC Raleigh-Durham. Take back your country.

The Obama administration is considering whether North Carolina’s new law on gay and transgender rights makes the state ineligible for billions of dollars in federal aid for schools, highways and housing, officials said Friday. Cutting off any federal money — or even simply threatening to do so — would put major new pressure on North Carolina to repeal the law, which eliminated local protections for gay and transgender people and restricted which bathrooms transgender people can use. A loss of federal money could send the state into a budget crisis and jeopardize services that are central to daily life. Although...

The Christian owners of an Illinois wedding venue have vowed that they will never host same-sex wedding ceremonies at their family-run bed and breakfast even after they were forced to pay over $80,000 in fines. Jim and Beth Walder, the owners of Timber Creek Bed & Breakfast in Paxton, Illinois, were fined by the state's Human Rights Commission on Tuesday for declining to host the wedding of Todd and Mark Wathen in 2011. After the Wathens reached out to Timber Creek to express interest in having their wedding there, Jim Walder responded with an email saying that they could not...