Free Republic

A new Connecticut Supreme Court ruling is adding to the debate on whether gay marriage rights should be applied retroactively and qualify same-sex couples for rights and benefits for which they weren’t entitled before state laws allowed them to marry. Although no states that allow gay marriage have made their laws retroactive, many same-sex partners believe they should have received Social Security survivor payments, tax breaks, inheritances and other benefits that were afforded only to heterosexual married couples before gay marriage laws were passed. …

Leave it to a liberal CNN commentator to find the connection between chicken and gay sex. She applauded the chain for providing more healthy options, but warned that the move somehow equals being...er, gay? “But psst! Don’t you know ‘skinny’=gay?” What? She also informed everyone that “chicken is also the nickname for a young man seeking the attention of an older man.” How does this information add to the article? The Daily Beast writer expressed her pleasure with the company’s recent decision to start moving toward anti-biotic free chicken and eliminating things like high fructose corn syrup. But rather than...

The Bureau of Prisons has rejected the Army’s request to accept the transfer of national security leaker Pvt. Chelsea Manning from the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to a civilian facility where she could get better treatment for her gender-identify condition. The military will instead begin the initial treatment for her. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has approved the Army’s recommendation to keep Manning in military custody and start a rudimentary level of gender treatment, a defense official said Thursday. The initial gender treatments could include allowing Manning to wear some female undergarments and also possibly provide some hormone treatments....

Attorney General Pam Bondi said she would appeal, and spokeswoman says: "With many similar cases pending throughout the entire country, finality on this constitutional issue must come from the U.S. Supreme Court." Sen. Bill Nelson: "We’ll see whether the state appeals. Meantime, as I’ve said, I believe it's wrong to discriminate against any class of people including on civil marriage.” Democratic candidate for governor Charlie Crist: "Today was a great step towards equality in Florida. It is my hope that Governor Scott and Attorney General Bondi will accept the decision of the judge and allow all Florida adults to marry...

Monroe County Circuit Judge Luis Garcia overturned Florida’s 2008 constitutional gay-marriage ban on Thursday, and ordered that two Key West bartenders be allowed to wed but not before Tuesday. Aaron Huntsman and William Lee Jones, who met at a gay pride celebration and have been a couple for 11 years, sued Monroe County Clerk Amy Heavilin in April for a marriage....

People who disagree with same-sex marriage and birth-control use have been met with accusations of bigotry. Are some Christians being unfairly shamed out of the public sphere? Is evangelical Christian morality still viable in American public life? This is the question lurking in recent debates over religious-liberty issues, from the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision to the Christian bakers who object to baking cakes for gay weddings. In discussions of these cases, objections to same-sex marriage and contraception are described as a retreat from “secular society.” And in some cases, evangelicals actually have retreated: Since the Boy Scouts of America...

There is good news in Tuesday’s release from the CDC’s National Health Information Survey. No, it’s not the revelation that the gay and lesbian population may be slightly smaller — 1.6 percent — than many scholars have believed; population-based surveys tend to fluctuate. The results of the report make sense to me, and since others have already described them, I will refrain from repeating them at length here. The good news is that the survey’s questions were administered to over 34,000 Americans, randomly sampled, enabling scholars to get quality information about even small communities. And since the NHIS didn’t...

Anthony Mason spotlighted the death of comic book character Archie Andrews on Wednesday's CBS Evening News, and pointed out that "it all ends...when an adult Archie takes a bullet aimed by a stalker at a gay friend." Mason turned to the comics' publisher, Jon Goldwater, and wondered if he was "trying to make a political statement with this comic book" [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]. Goldwater denied that he was doing so, even though he underlined that "gun violence is too prevalent in this country, and we should do everything we can to prevent it." However, just...

For years the political left at the UN has gotten its way on issues related to the family, but not recently, and they are upset.The issue is over language. The left does not like the use of the singular “family,” believing it is “patriarchal” and does not recognize same-sex couples. In its place and for many years UN member states have used a compromise, “various forms of the family.” However, this phrase has been rejected twice in the past few months, most recently two weeks ago in Geneva. A coalition of states led by the Russian Federation called for a...

The American Bar Association will vote on the controversial notion that being and acting LGBT is a human right protected in international law. The resolution will be considered by the ABA House of Delegates at their annual meeting this August in Boston. The resolution, proposed by James J.S. Holmes, Chairman of the Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, cites a number of international treaties as justification, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Holmes resolution relies on a broad reading of all the cited documents because none of them mentions LGBT, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Holmes claims,...

A Finnish citizen who wanted the state to recognize her new gender after surgery and remain legally married to woman at the same time lost her case at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday (16 July). Heil Hamalainen underwent male-to-female gender reassignment surgery in 2009, years after she married her partner. But Finnish law does not recognize same-sex marriages. State authorities said that for Hamalainen to have her new gender recognized, she would need to turn the marriage into a civil partnership or get a divorce—something the couple refused. …

VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. - A decade-old allegation accusing a local teacher is being re-investigated after the teacher was arrested for similar charges. Matthew Graziotti, who works at the Warner Christian Academy in South Daytona, was arrested on Monday for producing and distributing child porn. Graziotti had been accused of misconduct with minor children in 2004, according to Edgewater police, but no evidence was discovered at that time. With this new arrest, the past allegation is being re-investigated, police told Local 6.

To cleanse the palate. He’s got long blonde hair, wears an elaborate costume, and is forever swinging around a large phallic totem. If it was a guitar, I’d have assumed he’s in a hair-metal band and left it at that. But a hammer? The man’s overcompensating. He’s got a secret. A big one, as it turns out. Who’s up for a 37-issue series in which Thor quietly contemplates how much harder life is as a woman? This October, Marvel Comics evolves once again in one of the most shocking and exciting changes ever to shake one of the “big three”...

A group supporting the North Carolina Pastors Network demanded the state's governor defend the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the state despite lawsuits from same-sex couples at the local and national level at a rally on Tuesday. Leaders from the group of about 30 people who gathered on the steps of the old Capitol building, are sending North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory a petition asking him to use his executive powers to defend the amendment that was approved by 61 percent of voters in 2012, The Associated Press reported. In a recent column for The Christian Post, Rev....

The First Lady of these United States has declared war on Chick-fil-A. It seems the home of plump juicy breasts and hot buttered buns has run afoul of the new Smart Snacks in School program. The program is a component of Mrs. Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

When President Barack H. Obama visited Austin yesterday, he set off yet another social media tailspin. On a visit to Franklin Barbecue, the President of the United States of America encountered Daniel Rugg Webb – comedian, artist, musician (and friend of Gay Place), and part-time Franklin employee – and, of course, sparks flew.

In the wake of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s recent decision to celebrate same-sex “marriages,” celebrity pastor John MacArthur of “Grace to You” has come out with some strong statements condemning “false churches” that abandon Biblical teachings against homosexual behavior. “They have no allegiance to the Bible,” MacArthur told The Blaze online news service. “You go back to every one of those seminaries … for a century [they] have been deniers of biblical authority, they have no relationship to scripture, they are the apostate church, they are Satan’s church.” While it seems clear MacArthur was implying that self-professed Christians who accept...

Robert R. Reilly has penned one of the most important books on same-sex ‘marriage’ to date, yet the book has seen little coverage even from conservative media. Making Gay Okay, published by Ignatius Press earlier this year, has answered how and why the movement for gay “marriage” has swept America and the only way to defeat it – a way that has been largely ignored, with predictable results. In an interview with LifeSiteNews, Reilly, who served as senior advisor for information strategy for the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2002 to 2006 and has taught at the National Defense University,...

Major League Baseball has hired openly gay former ballplayer Billy Bean as their new Ambassador For Inclusion. Bean's job will be to assure all MLB stakeholders of an inclusive and equitable workplace and provide awareness and educational resources that help mandate the league's workplace code of conduct. "It's ironic that I am returning to baseball to help erase the same reason I left," Bean told Outsports in an exclusive interview. Bean left baseball in 1995 shortly after his then-partner passed away. Bean skipped his partner's funeral to play in a game for the Padres, lest someone discover he was gay.

Burke, who came out to team-mates in the 1970s and to the public in 1982, died of AIDS in 1995 aged just 42.More than two decades after Glenn Burke abruptly retired from Major League Baseball, the former LA Dodgers outfielder will be honored at Tuesday night’s all-star game as one of the few professional athletes to have come out. Burke's four-and-a-half year career is remembered for his charismatic attitude and the pressures he faced as a gay athlete in the late 1970s. Burke, who played for the Dodgers and the Oakland A's, was the first professional ball player to come...