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AUSTIN, Texas -- Houston Mayor Annise Parker has backed down from the subpoenas the City of Houston issued to several area pastors, Breitbart Texas has learned. Breitbart Texas reported earlier about the controversy, stemming from litigation challenging the city's anti-discrimination ordinance and subpoenas asking the pastors for the content of their sermons, speeches and communications with church members. Texas Senator Ted Cruz weighed in, firmly supporting the pastors in their efforts to fight the subpoenas, while Mayor Parker initially remained adamant that the city had the right to request those records. Despite posting comments on Twitter just hours before that...

A Danish professor of criminal justice ethics has stated that he thinks consensual sex between adult siblings should be legal. According to Thomas Søbirk Petersen, a professor at Roskilde University, the rise in the number of births resulting from donor sperm, which has the potential to create biological siblings who are born into different families, has created a need to rethink the "old taboos" against incest. “In a society where more and more children are being conceived using donor sperm, the risk of falling in love with a stranger who turns out to be a biological sister or brother has...

Support for legalizing same-sex marriage dropped from 54 percent to 49 percent since February, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Analysts said they had no idea why or if it was just a random blip. I joked on Twitter that my April article “Rise of the Same-Sex Marriage Dissidents” probably was the cause. But in all seriousness, perhaps seeing the totalitarianism of extremist wings of the gay rights movement has soured some people on efforts to change marriage law — or at least given people pause about the tradeoffs involved with redefining marriage or enacting broad legislation around sexual...

The daughter of former Republican presidential candidate John McCain has celebrated equal marriage arriving in the family’s home state of Arizona. A judge struck down the Arizona’s same-sex marriage ban yesterday, and the state’s attorney general declined to appeal – allowing marriages to begin immediately. Meghan McCain – the daughter of the 2008 Presidential candidate, who had anti-gay Sarah Palin as his running mate – was jubilant at the news. The rights activist – who sits on the board of rights charity GLAAD despite her father’s opposition to equal marriage – tweeted: “Marriage equality is now legal in my home...

An openly transgender Georgia teen was elected to her high school's homecoming court in an election believed to be the first of its kind in the state. Sage Lovell, 16, of Marietta, was elected to Walton High School's homecoming court among four other women chosen out of 50 nominees at the school. 'I couldn't stop smiling,' said Lovell told CBS 46, who said she heard word of her victory while in her homeroom class. 'My entire homeroom erupted in very loud cheering. Apparently it was able to be heard from across the school.' On Friday night, the Walton High School...

Bishops Reject Shift in Tone for Gay, Divorced Catholics Bishops Reject Language Highlighting ‘Precious Support’ Committed Gay Couples Lend Each Other DEBORAH BALL Oct. 18, 2014 ROME—Catholic bishops voted Saturday to water down a report earlier this week that advocated a significant shift in the church’s approach to gays and divorced Catholics, reflecting a deep split within the church’s leadership. In a vote Saturday evening, an assembly of nearly 200 bishops, who have been discussing issues concerning the family at a special meeting known as a synod, took their final vote on a working document released Monday. That document, released...

It is one of the tenets of the current movement toward gay marriage. They get to get married, Christians are forced to provide goods and services if they demand it, but — and this is the key caveat of it all — but Christian ministers will not be forced to wed gays because of their religious concerns.

Pope Francis appeared to have lost out to powerful conservatives in the Roman Catholic church on Saturday after bishops scrapped language that had been hailed as heralding a historic opening towards gay people. In the final report of an extraordinary synod on the family which has exposed deep divides in church hierarchy, there is no mention – as there had been in a draft version – of the “gifts and qualities” gay people can offer. Nor is there any recognition of the “precious support” gay partners can give each other. A paragraph entitled “pastoral attention to people of homosexual orientation”...

... allowing the gay issue to loom large in the Synod was a massive blunder because it pits the developing world against the West. In liberal London, gayness means the gaudy print of Judy Garland that a priest friend of mine has on his wall. In Kampala it means anal sex. The worldwide Catholic Church has until now managed to bridge this cultural gulf by selective turning of a blind eye while emphasising the non-negotiability of its teachings on sex ...

Two Christian ministers who own an Idaho wedding chapel were told they had to either perform same-sex weddings or face jail time and up to $1,000 in daily fines, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court. Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Donald and Evelyn Knapp, two ordained ministers who own the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel in Coeur d’Alene. “Right now they are at risk of being prosecuted,” attorney Jeremy Tedesco told me. “The threat of enforcement is more than just credible.” The wedding chapel is registered as a “religious corporation” limited to performing “one-man-one-woman marriages as defined by...

The largest U.S. gay-rights organization Saturday endorsed efforts to promote the use of a once-a-day pill to prevent HIV infection and called on insurers to provide more generous coverage of the drug. Some doctors have been reluctant to prescribe the drug, Truvada, on the premise that it might encourage high-risk, unprotected sexual behavior. However, its preventive use has been endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and many HIV/AIDS advocacy groups.The Human Rights Campaign, which recently has been focusing its gay-rights advocacy on same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination issues, joined those ranks with the release...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) supports the elimination of rules that ban transgender people from openly serving in the military, her office told the Washington Blade. “Leader Pelosi believes there is no place for discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces, including on the basis of gender identity,” spokesperson Drew Hammill told the Blade. In May, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that the ban should be “continually reviewed.”

The gay marriage debate arrived within walking distance of the Vatican on Saturday as Rome’s mayor registered 16 gay marriages celebrated abroad in open defiance of Italy’s government. Gay marriage is illegal in Italy. […] Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino received thunderous applause as he arrived in the city hall reception room where the couples, their friends and family gathered to make their marriages official in Rome’s city ledger. One by one, the couples—gay and lesbian, some with children—were called up to witness Marino transcribe the date and locations of their weddings, including in Spain, Portugal and the U.S. …

In an exclusive interview with The Brody File, Senator Ted Cruz says pastors being hauled off to jail by the government for preaching against homosexuality is a “real risk” in the future. ““I think that is a real risk,” Cruz tells me. “Some in the media ridicule that threat saying there is no danger of the government coming after pastors. That is the usual response.” But he adds: “The specter of government trying to determine if what pastors preach from the pulpit meets with the policy views or political correctness of the governing authorities, that prospect is real and happening...

RANDLE, Wash. — When administrators at White Pass Jr. Sr. High School asked students to dress up as their favorite celebrities for Spirit Week, Mason Mudge and Chandler Krueger did just that. Mudge came as Miss America. And Krueger dressed up as Nicki Minaj.

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, 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 though I don’t want to accuse Mormons of being a...

A half-century after the historic changes of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis is showing his intent to drive a comparably ambitious agenda for the Roman Catholic Church in the 21st century. The current synod of bishops in Rome, called by Francis to encourage reform and modernization, set a ringing tone of compassion this week with an opening call for a more welcoming attitude toward gay people, unmarried couples, divorced Catholics who remarry, and children in these unions. The bishops’ report on their first week of private discussions did not immediately change church doctrine. But it signaled the pope’s determination...

Breaking News From Rome: Burke Confirms He’s Been Ousted! Pope Harming The Church Pope Francis is doing great harm to the church. Those words in public interview from Cardinal Raymond Burke. Cardinal Raymond Burke is the prefect of the Apostolic signatory of or at least he was he has also confirmed for the first time in public the rumor that he has been ousted by Pope Francis

Oct 17 20147 Comments By Church Militant TV News Headlines BREAKING: Pope Harming the Church Cardinal Burke: Pope is harming the Church by not making his position clear. To read the entire interview with Cardinal Raymond Burke, click here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLS3cOxfkJw

Twitter allegedly blocked a new online campaign designed to support the Houston pastors who were subpoenaed by the city's lawyers demanding that they turn over their sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity or the city's first openly lesbian mayor, Annise Parker. The #HoustonWeHaveAProblem campaign and petition were created by Faith Driven Consumer, the same organization that supported and helped to reinstate Phil Robertson to "Duck Dynasty" after he was thrown off the show for his comments about homosexuality surfaced from a GQ interview.