Free Republic

A formidable coalition of 150 Catholic, Orthodox and evangelical leaders are calling on Christians in a new manifesto to reject secular authority – and even engage in civil disobedience – if laws force them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage and other ideas that betray their religious beliefs. On Friday, these leaders released a 4,700-word document – called the "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience." The document was signed by leaders ranging from evangelical leader Chuck Colson to two of the leading Catholic prelates in the U.S., Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. and Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New...

One of the leaders of the nation’s influential Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) tells Newsmax that President Obama is “very dangerous” in his economic policies and his foreign policy is causing “severe damage” to U.S. standing in the world. Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and author of the book “The Divided State of America: What Liberals and Conservatives Are Missing In The God And Country Shouting Match”, told Newsmax.TV that the cultural war is heating up. Christians must remember that God is not partisan. “And on many of the most important issues...

Hurt by the recession and decisions by some Lutheran congregations to withhold their support, the Chicago-based Evangelical Lutheran Church in America acted last Sunday to reduce its budget by 10 percent and eliminate more than 40 full-time positions. Many Lutheran congregations, including some in Rowan County, have redirected their mission support to the ELCA in protest of the national organization's recent vote to allow gays and lesbians to serve as clergy. In October, about 450 Lutherans met at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Rowan County to discuss the ELCA's change in ministry policies. Those assembled approved a resolution to form...

OTTAWA — A lesbian soldier who deserted the U.S. army won a key court victory Friday when a judge ordered the refugee board to reconsider her failed asylum claim and take into account compelling evidence that she was persecuted and that her sexual orientation could mean stiffer punishment for going AWOL. Federal Court Justice Yves de Montigny's order for the board to consider a gay U.S. soldier as a credible refugee candidate is believed to be a first, said a spokesman for the U.S. military. "I have never heard of anybody attempting to do that before," said army spokesman Lt.-Col....

Conservatives shouldn’t just allow same-sex marriage. They should insist on it. The conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks made that argument in a 2003 column, and the liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. recalled his words when he was in Providence on Nov. 8 to speak at the Central Congregational Church. Brooks’ argument is worth revisiting now that Governor Carcieri, a conservative Republican and Catholic who opposes same-sex marriage, has vetoed a bill that would give domestic partners the right to claim the bodies of — and make funeral arrangements for — their loved ones. The bill passed...

Last June, District Attorney David Capeless of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, announced that he was dropping all charges against 44-year-old Bernard Baran, a man who has spent half his life behind bars on child molestation charges that the state no longer has the confidence to retry. Baran was convicted in January 1985 of molesting six children at a pre-kindergarten day care facility in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was released on bond in 2006 after an appeals court determined that his trial attorney had been incompetent and that the prosecution may have withheld key exculpatory evidence. Baran says that during his jail term...

When I was in 6th grade I got in trouble for cussing.  In an effort to clean up my language, I asked my teacher what the worst thing was you could call someone.  "Repulsive," he replied. I have always remembered that word, but have used it sparingly.  What I am about to report is, indeed, repulsive.  Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, released a statement yesterday morning -- "Gay Activists Bully DC Priests."  The instrument being used to bully is a Web site, ChurchOuting.org, which encourages people to report any priest, gay or straight, who may be "romantically involved," but...

A lesbian soldier who deserted the U.S. army won a key court victory Friday when a judge ordered the refugee board to reconsider her failed asylum claim and take into account compelling evidence that she was persecuted and that her sexual orientation could mean stiffer punishment for going AWOL. Federal Court Justice Yves de Montigny's order for the board to consider a gay U.S. soldier as a credible refugee candidate is believed to be a first, said a spokesman for the U.S. military. "I have never heard of anybody attempting to do that before," said army spokesman Lt.-Col. Christopher Garver....

More than 150 leaders across a spectrum of conservative Christianity on Friday released a 4,700-word document vowing civil disobedience if they are forced to take part in "anti-life acts" or bless gay marriages. Called the "Manhattan Declaration," the six-page, single-spaced document was drafted by Prison Fellowship founder Charles Colson, an evangelical, and Princeton University professor Robert P. George, a Roman Catholic, and included a bevy of Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox bishops, archbishops and cardinals as signatories along with dozens of clergy and laity. Archbishop of Washington Donald W. Wuerl is one of the signatories. "Throughout the centuries, Christianity has taught...

GAY ACTIVISTS BULLY D.C. PRIESTS November 20, 2009Catholic League president Bill Donohue addresses a serious issue involving gay activists in the District of Columbia:A new homosexual website, ChurchOuting.org, is intent on publicly disclosing who the gay priests are in the Archdiocese of Washington. The goal of this outing is to intimidate gay priests, as well as heterosexual priests who may be “romantically involved,” into voicing objections to the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage. This initiative is the work of Phil Attey, self-described as “Liberal-Gay-Ardent Obama Supporter”; he was active in the Obama Pride Metro-DC campaign. According to one...

Ah the good old days. Do you remember when right was right and wrong was wrong? I sure do but it was a long time ago.

I want to watch a sci-fi show, not a gay make out on tv.

Proposal packed with 17 new levies. Senate Democrats' health care bill would create a new marriage penalty by imposing a tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more. That's one of 17 new taxes imposed by the bill, which also creates a levy on elective plastic surgery - some call it "botax" - and places a 40 percent excise tax on those who have generous health care plans. "If you have insurance, you get taxed. If you don't have insurance, you get taxed. If you need a life-saving medical device, you get taxed....

Minneapolis, Minn., Nov 20, 2009 / 03:54 am (CNA).- Following the decision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to allow sexually active homosexual clergy, an objecting Lutheran group has begun to form a new church body for those Lutherans who want to “remain faithful to the Orthodox Christianity of the last 2,000 years.”Lutheran CORE leaders on Wednesday said their working group would immediately begin drafting a constitution and taking other steps to form the new denomination. They hope to launch the denomination by next August.Rev. Paull Spring, a retired Pennsylvania ELCA bishop and chairman of Lutheran CORE said...

The radical homosexuals are gearing up to push through the "Employment Non-Discrimiation Act" (ENDA).Here's the email the "Human Rights Campaign" is sending out to their supporters: ------------------------Dear xxxxxxxxx, Members of Congress need to hear from you today! We need 57 calls to Reps in support of an inclusive ENDA. Will you take 45 seconds to make one of them?   Then click here to report your call. The House Education and Labor Committee is getting ready to move ENDA soon, but you may have heard that the committee vote has been pushed back a few weeks. It's more important than...

Lutherans Concerned / North America (LC/NA) responded with sadness to yesterday's announcement proposing a new church body to be formed by and for former ELCA members and congregations opposing the full inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the life of the church. In August 2009, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, by a 2/3 majority, passed a social statement on sexuality. The statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" described as faithful four positions on beliefs within the denomination on the inclusion of people in same-gender relationships. The four positions ranged from the view that same-gender...

Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples. “We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,” it says. The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The chief federal appeals court judge in San Francisco bluntly ordered the Obama administration Thursday to stop resisting his finding that the wife of a lesbian court employee was entitled to government insurance coverage. The federal agency that oversees benefits for government employees "shall cease at once its interference with the jurisdiction of this tribunal," Judge Alex Kozinski said in response to the Office of Personnel Management's rejection of his earlier ruling in the case. He told the agency to let Karen Golinski, a staff attorney at the court's headquarters in San Francisco, enroll her wife, Amy...

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand. -- Romans 5:1-2a November 19, 2009 Sisters and brothers in Christ of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I greet you with the words of the apostle Paul to the Romans: "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand" (Romans 5:1-2a). Where does the Evangelical Lutheran Church in...

Hosanna! Lutheran, the Lakeville mega-church that made headlines this month with its pending decision to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, isn’t alone. Community of Hope in Rosemount, which was launched in 2002 by four local congregations, ended its ELCA affiliation on Nov. 1. According to the St. Paul Area Synod of the ELCA, those were the only of its churches to pull out as of Nov. 12. But the action that preceded the defections – the ELCA’s August decision to allow ordination of gay clergy people living in committed relationships – continues to stir debate. “Our church is...

Horrified by the deadly shooting at a Tel Aviv gay and lesbian center in August, Robert Goldstein felt compelled to do something.A Jew helping his fellow Jews?Don’t be fooled by his name. Goldstein serves as pastor of St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco. His church recently donated $2,000 to the Jerusalem Open House, one of Israel’s leading LGBT organizations. He says a similar donation to the Israel Gay Youth Organization, the target of the attack, will follow.The impetus for the gifts came after Goldstein, 65, and some of his congregants visited Israel on a 2008 tour sponsored by the...

Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl Washington D.C., Nov 18, 2009 / 06:32 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Washington’s announcement that services would have to be cut if the District of Columbia City Council recognizes same-sex “marriage” without religious exemptions was not a “threat” or “ultimatum” but a simple recognition of the policy’s consequences, the Archbishop of Washington said in an opinion essay in the Washington Post.Without strong religious freedom protections, the proposed legislation would force the Church to choose between expressing Christ’s love in service to others and defending the nature of marriage, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl wrote in his...

ELCA Council Approves Charter, Hears Secretary's Report, Elects Leaders 09-263-JB CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) approved a charter for a comprehensive study of the ELCA and its future mission. A task force will conduct the study with the goal of bringing a report with recommendations to the 2011 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Orlando. The council is the ELCA's board of directors and serves as the legislative authority of the church between churchwide assemblies. It met here Nov. 13-15. The project, "Living into the Future Together: Renewing the Ecology of the Evangelical...

TAMPA -- Men who live as women, women living as men, clergy members, mothers and grandparents packed the Tampa City Council chambers Thursday to debate a new ordinance that would protect transgender people from discrimination. Some argued that it was good for business and simply right to approve the law. Others spoke of religion and contended that the rule would give a stamp of approval to sexual deviants. Donna Kuntz read Bible passages about God abandoning people who do "shameful things," and said sexual predators are probably celebrating. "They can have access to whichever gender of children they choose," she...

Chaz Bono: Sex Change Is His ‘Best Decision’ 40-year-old says ‘This is who I am. I need to finally be who I am’ Jeff Chiu / AP file Chaz Bono said in the interview with “Good Morning America” that he always felt like a boy growing up and came out as a lesbian 11 years ago. Now he's undergone gender-reassignment surgery and hormone therapy. Nov. 19, 2009 NEW YORK - Chaz Bono said beginning the sex-change process to turn him from a woman to a man is "the best decision I've ever made." The 40-year-old writer, activist and reality-TV star,...

Barbara Ann Radnofsky,Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state. The amendment declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B: "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage." Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic...

Texas' gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages AUSTIN — Texans: Are you really married? Maybe not. Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state. The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares: "This state...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's gay daughter is a mommy twice over. Mary Cheney gave birth to a six-pound-14-ounce baby girl Wednesday morning at Washington, DC's Sibley Hospital. The newborn, named Sarah Lynne Cheney, is the second child for the 40-year-old Cheney and her longtime partner, 48-year-old Heather Poe. The couple welcomed Samuel David Cheney into the world back in 2007. His birth sent shock waves through the Republican party and rekindled the debate over gay marriage. Cheney is the birth mother for both children. The couple has not revealed who is the biological father of either child.

M-O'M DISCLOSURE CAUTION: CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS IN YOUR ARTICLE AT YOUR OWN RISK.A new Web site hopes to use the oldest trick in the book to combat the Catholic Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage: A good, old-fashioned forced outing!At ChurchOuting.org, you’re invited to scroll through a list of every Achbishop, Bishop, and Reverend in the Archdiocese of Washington, zero in on one you know is gay, and then submit your “detailed account of how you know the priest in question is being hypocritical through his silence.” (Alternately, get at them via Twitter or Facebook).ChurchOuting.Org is the brainchild...

Washington (AP) - Former Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary Cheney has delivered a baby girl. It's the second child for Cheney and her partner of more than 17 years, Heather Poe. Sarah Lynne Cheney was born Wednesday morning at Sibley Hospital in Washington, weighing 6 pounds and 14 ounces. She is the seventh grandchild of the former vice president and his wife, Lynne. Mary Cheney and Poe had their first child, Samuel David Cheney, in 2007.

San Francisco, CA (AP) -- A federal lawyer who was prevented from enrolling his same-sex spouse in his government-sponsored health plan must be reimbursed the cost of outside insurance and other medical expenses, a California judge ruled Tuesday. Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt said Brad Levenson, a public defender in Los Angeles, is entitled to the money because the Office of Personnel Management refused to authorize health coverage for Levenson's husband of 16 months. That violates both his constitutional rights and the court's anti-discrimination rules, the judge ruled. "The denial of federal benefits to same-sex spouses...

NEW BRIGHTON, Minn. – The split over gay clergy within the country's largest Lutheran denomination has prompted a conservative faction to begin forming a new Lutheran church body separate from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Leaders of Lutheran CORE said Wednesday that a working group would immediately begin drafting a constitution and taking other steps to form the denomination, with hopes to have it off the ground by next August. "There are many people within the ELCA who are very unhappy with what has happened," said the Rev. Paull Spring, chairman of Lutheran CORE and a retired ELCA bishop...

What one radical thinks...Gotta love the argument. "you're wrong" How can you argue with that? "...the world is getting crowded. According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion ... passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.” "So, as I said, you don’t believe in global warming? You’re...

font size="2" color="black">Geneva (ENI). Church of Sweden Archbishop Anders Wejryd triggered outrage from a Lutheran church in Africa when he ordained an openly lesbian woman as bishop of Stockholm on 8 November. The archbishop asserts, however, that neither his church nor his country supports promiscuity, but that Sweden is a "surprisingly moral society". He said the Swedish church encourages faithful and stable relationships between people whatever their sexual orientation may be.The Church of Sweden issued a press statement when 55-year-old Eva Brunne was consecrated as the bishop of Stockholm in a ceremony at Uppsala cathedral, the mother church of the...

The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics ruled Tuesday that a proposed ballot initiative defining marriage as between a man and a woman cannot go forward, reaffirming an earlier ruling that such a vote would be discriminatory. The board cited the city Human Rights Act, which bans discrimination against gay men and lesbians. The board decision, which will probably be challenged in court, means the D.C. Council can move forward with its plans to vote on a bill next month to legalize same-sex marriage. The council on Tuesday scheduled a vote for Dec. 1. "We have considered all of the...

The two-member elections board said it could not accept the Marriage Initiative of 2009, filed by the Stand4MarriageDC coalition, because it "authorizes discrimination prohibited under the District of Columbia Human Rights Act." "This undemocratic decision is outrageous and a slap in the face of every resident of the District of Columbia," Mr. Jackson said. "To deny the people their fundamental right to vote on such an important issue as the definition of marriage in our society is simply appalling."

The city council of Tampa, Fla., voted unanimously last week to include "gender identity and expression" as a protected class under the city's human rights ordinance, leading some to fear the council has opened the city's public bathroom doors to sexual predators masquerading as protected transsexuals.

Two weeks ago, just after the Maine’s successful reversal of the state legislature’s decision to sanction same-sex marriage, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer asked me a profound question: “Would Jesus have spent $550,000 to oppose same-sex marriage?” The question was exactly what many secular parties had been asking in Portland, Maine, where she was speaking to me by satellite. My answer was that Jesus would have given the money to oppose same-sex marriage. My reasoning was simple: Jesus would have upheld his own teaching; refusing to be a loving, permanent enabler of a misguided local government. I mentioned in the interview that...

Fairness in this case is more than a mere abstraction, since the family has a number of openly gay friends and has participated in GLBT equality events such as Pride parades. Will, who told the newspaper that he would like to pursue a career in law when he’s older, could not square the tenets of the pledge with the political realities faced by his family’s GLBT friends, whose family and individual rights are under constant challenge. "I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all," said Will. That led the young man to his decision not to...

(My thoughts: My child brought home the Scholastic form home last night, and I had to break the news to her that we wouldn't be ordering from them. I told her that we would be boycotting them. This morning I broke the news to my wife and showed her this article. She shocked me and actually went the extra mile and printed the letter telling them we would be avoiding Scholastic as long as they were selling this trash. Scholastic has no right to sell books to my children indoctrinating them to believe that homosexuality is a acceptable lifestyle.) The...

Monday November 16, 2009 Largest U.S. Homosexual Publisher Shuts Down, Closing Major Gay Newspapers By Peter J. SmithWASHINGTON, D.C., November 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The largest publisher of homosexual newspapers has shut down, leading to the closure of a string of homosexual newspapers, including the influential Washington Blade, which had just celebrated its 40th anniversary.The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that the news first broke when employees at the Southern Voice, a homosexual weekly paper in Atlanta, discovered the keys changed and the doors locked on Monday morning, with a sign informing them that their parent company Window Media LLC had...

A group called Love Honor Cherish launched an Internet-based effort today to collect enough signatures to place a measure repealing Prop. 8, the anti-gay marriage law, on the state ballot by next year. The signature-gathering drive will use social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, organizers said in a statement. “We’re taking names,” said John Henning, who is heading the SignForEquality.com effort launched to collect the signatures. "People throughout California can now help us win marriage back by the simple act of signing and collecting signatures.” Prop. 8 was approved by California voters a year ago, reversing a California...

Reinstatement Process Revision Adopted by ELCA Church Council 09-261-JB CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) adopted a revision to the reinstatement process for former clergy and other professional leaders who were removed from the church's official rosters for disciplinary reasons or resigned in lieu of discipline -- solely because they were in a lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationship. The change, adopted Nov. 15, applies to former ELCA associates in ministry, deaconesses, diaconal ministers and ordained ministers. The Church Council is the ELCA's board of directors and serves as the legislative authority of the...

ELCA Churchwide Budget Reduced, Staff Positions Eliminated 09-258-JB CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) acted Nov. 15 to reduce the 2010 churchwide current fund spending authorization by nearly $7.7 million, 10 percent less than the budget authorized by the 2009 Churchwide Assembly. The council's action eliminated 40.75 full-time equivalent positions, of which six were vacant. The Church Council is the ELCA's board of directors and serves as the legislative authority of the church between churchwide assemblies. It met here Nov. 13-15. The action reduced the current fund spending authorization for 2010 to...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) adopted a revision to the reinstatement process for former clergy and other professional leaders who were removed from the church's official rosters for disciplinary reasons or resigned in lieu of discipline -- solely because they were in a lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationship. The change, adopted Nov. 15, applies to former ELCA associates in ministry, deaconesses, diaconal ministers and ordained ministers. The Church Council is the ELCA's board of directors and serves as the legislative authority of the church between churchwide assemblies. It met here Nov. 13-15.

The largest publisher of newspapers serving the gay and lesbian community in the US has shut down. Laura Douglas-Brown, editor of Southern Voice newspaper in Atlanta, said she arrived at work today to find the locks changed and a note saying parent company Window Media LLC had closed down.UKGuardian"Window Media long provided a very special outlet for the gay community to learn about itself way before there were a lot of other places to find that type of thing," said Michael Musto, an openly gay writer for the Village Voice in New York, which is owned by Village Voice Media...

Atlanta's gay community has lost its Southern Voice. The city's gay and lesbian weekly has shut its doors after 21 years. Southern Voice, along with David Atlanta, a publication about gay men's nightlife in Atlanta, closed after a long-time financial battle to stay afloat. Southern's owner, Washington, D.C.-based Window Media LLC, shuttered the weekly newspaper and a handful of other gay publications nationwide over the weekend, the newspaper's editor, Laura Douglas Brown, confirmed to the AJC on Monday. Employees arrived at the newspaper's offices off of Briarcliff Road early Monday to find the door locked and a sign posted on...

New Ox-Am Dictionary Names 'Teabagger' Word of the Year Finalist By Noel Sheppard Created 2009-11-16 19:06 The New Oxford American Dictionary on Monday named its 2009 "Word of the Year," and listed as one of the finalists "teabagger." Fortunately, its definition was different than the sexual connotation many media members and liberal bloggers conveyed by using the term. Regardless, its inclusion is still quite offensive to millions of Americans. I guess the good folks at NOAD weren't concerned with that when they wrote the following press release [1]: Facebook fans will undoubtedly recognize the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2009 Word...

The University of North Texas' Student Government Association wants the student body to decide whether same-sex or gender-neutral couples should be allowed to run for homecoming king and queen. By a 22-1 vote, the Student Senate approved a measure calling for a referendum on the question. Voting is scheduled to take place online from Nov. 16 to 20 on the student government's Web site, www.untsga.com. The site gives no details on what the voting procedures will be. This year's homecoming royalty were already crowned, at UNT's homecoming game on Oct. 17. Initially, the Student Senate had voted not to allow...

Washington gay and lesbian newspaper The Washington Blade has ceased publication and is closing Monday, along with its parent company, Atlanta-based Window/Unite Media LLC. Window/Unite published five gay and lesbian publications, including Southern Voice, South Florida Blade, The 411 Magazine and David Atlanta. All will stop publishing, and three of the company's offices will close. The news, first reported by Washington City Paper’s sister paper Creative Loafing Atlanta, was confirmed by a Washington Blade employee. The publication has also stated the news on its Twitter feed: “Washington Blade, like all Window Media publications, is closing today. Thank you for your...