Free Republic

Hobby Lobby, the arts-and-crafts giant whose evangelical Christian owners won a landmark religious-freedom ruling in U.S. Supreme Court several years back, is now under fire for selling signs that a customer alleges “glorify and encourage gun violence,” with some calling for a boycott of the chain. Shopper Leslie Ruffing, 39, was at her local Hobby Lobby in Aurora, Ill. when she came across two gun-themed wall decorations. One of the metal signs read “We don’t call 911,” framed by two opposing pistols with their barrels crossed, and with bullets embedded in the number “1.” The other yellow metal placard says...

Kyle Harper’s From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Harvard, 2013) is an impressively learned and important book. Still a youngish man (which means younger than me), Harper is already a professor of classics and letters and senior vice president and provost at the University of Oklahoma. As an expert in the history of the late Roman world, Harper explores in this volume how the Christian sexual ethic, so despised and seemingly inconsequential in the first century, came to be codified in law by the sixth century. Harper does not take sides in this...

Gender-neutral toilets in schools have left girls feeling unsafe and even put their health at risk, parents and teachers have warned. Girls who are menstruating are so anxious about sharing facilities with boys that some are staying at home for fear of being made to feel 'period shame'. With a growing number of both primary and secondary schools installing unisex toilets, some girls are risking infections by refusing to urinate all day. Others are so fearful they have stopped drinking liquids at school.

This cohort leans Republican now more than ever; a Gallup poll this year shows they favor the GOP by a whopping 25 percentage points. It was as if the Democratic Party didn’t understand how much they needed labor. Oddly, it appears they still don’t. “The working-class voters in my county tend to wonder if the party still wants them,” says Mark Hackel, the Democratic chief executive of Macomb County, Mich., where voters favored Trump over Clinton by 11 percentage points. “They’re not really sure where they fit in.” Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist who helped guide Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s...

[Catholic Caucus] Rome Roundtable: Catholic Experts Sound Alarm Over Current Papacy Panelists touch on controversial themes of Amazon Synod ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - On the eve of the Amazon Synod, 10 Catholic lay leaders warned of the revolutionary designs against the Catholic faith, many of them rooted in the current pontificate. Hosted by the international pro-life group Voice of the Family, the roundtable, titled "Our Church — Reformed or Deformed?" took place Oct. 4 at the Hotel Massimo D'Azeglio, and featured a number of Catholic luminaries, including John-Henry Westen of LifeSiteNews, author Dr. Taylor Marshall, Italian Vaticanistas Roberto de Mattei and Marco Tosatti,...

Trump’s 'lack of decorum, dignity, and statesmanship' By Evan Sayet in his article "He Fights" My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.” Here’s my answer: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on...

A federal judge has torpedoed the city of Tampa’s attempt to block licensed counselors from helping patients overcome unwanted same-sex attractions. Similar laws have been defeated in other jurisdictions. In Tampa, U.S. District Judge William Jung granted summary judgment to Liberty Counsel in its lawsuit against Tampa’s ordinance prohibiting “licensed counselors from providing voluntary talk therapy to minors seeking help to reduce or eliminate their unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors, or identity.” The ruling, which permanently strikes the ordinance, was based on the fact that cities don’t have the authority to regulate health care.

The CW’s Batwoman has added a surprising name to the call-sheet, as MSNBC host Rachel Maddow joins the cast. Maddow will take on the role of Vesper Fairchild, a snarky Gotham City radio and TV personality with ties to the superhero world in both the DC Comics source material and the CW’s Arrow-verse. In the comics, Vesper becomes romantically involved with Bruce Wayne before she is murdered on the orders Lex Luthor, who is the President of the United States at the time. Classic scenario. The character has a much smaller presence on the small screen, where she is only...

Rahm Emanuel raised taxes to get city worker pension funds on a ‘path to solvency.’ The shortfall still ballooned by $7 billion. ... A record-high property tax increase. A new tax on water and sewer service. A higher 911 emergency fee on telephone lines... Emanuel’s series of tax hikes was painful, but he promised the extra money was part of a plan to get the woefully underfunded city worker pension funds on a “path to solvency.”.. in the four years since .. The pension funds are actually worse off. When Emanuel pushed through the tax hikes, the city worker retirement...

San Diego MassResistance parents who were protesting a horrid “Drag Queen Story Hour” at the library strongly stood up to a rabid crowd of LGBT activists who came to intimidate and harass them with anti-Christian bigotry. In fact, the LGBT activists were clearly surprised and disheartened that the parents were ready for them.

[snip] [T]he Vatican's own prosecutors and police have raided the powerful Vatican Secretariat of State [snip] the raid was conducted in connection to suspicious transactions at the Vatican Bank. [snip] Vatican Bank didn't even rise to the level of "probity" of the formerly Nazi-infested Bank of International Settlements!   Another big surprise there, given the Vatican bank's connections to the Loge Propaganda Due scandal, Michelle Sindona, Banco Ambrosiano and Roberto Calvi (remember him?) and all the other wondrous financial goings-on during the marvelous era of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Iran-Contra, the whole Inslaw-PROMIS scandal (which, among many...

A Virginia teacher has filed a lawsuit saying he was wrongfully fired for refusing to use male pronouns for a transgender student. In 2018, a student at West Point High School began identifying as male. He and his mother asked for him to be referred to with his preferred name and pronouns: he, him, his.

President Donald Trump slammed socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Thursday after a woman had a meltdown over climate change and suggested that people “start eating babies!”. Trump responded to a tweet from his son, Donald Trump Jr., that showcased the video in which Trump Jr. wrote: “Seems like a normal AOC supporter to me.”

Student government refuses to condemnLast Thursday, an unauthorized sign with the words, “There is Queer Blood on Homophobic Hands,” was placed outside DeBartolo Hall and widely shared accross social media. The sign contained many articles from the Irish Rover and the Observer which reflect Catholic doctrine regarding human sexuality, implying that the authors of these were responsible for the deaths of “queer” people nationwide. Most shockingly, the sign’s message was painted in blood red, and the names of the articles’ writers were all circled in blood-red paint, drawing hostile attention to individual members of the Notre Dame community. Among the...

Napolitano: Trump’s Behavior is ‘Criminal and Impeachable’ — And His ‘Allusions to Violence are Palpably Dangerous’ Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano argued in a column and video published on FoxNews.com Thursday morning that President Donald Trump’s “criminal behavior” with regard to Ukraine is impeachable, and that his threats against the whistleblower are dangerous. The column opens by noting that “the criminal behavior to which Trump has admitted is much more grave than anything alleged or unearthed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and much of what Mueller revealed was impeachable,” before outlining the specifics of the Ukraine scandal currently...

INDIANAPOLIS - The U.S. Justice Department is supporting Catholic Church leaders in Indianapolis who are being sued over the firing of a teacher in a same-sex marriage. Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband says the First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion and gives faith-based schools the right to associate with some people and not others. The government filed a statement Friday in Marion County court. Joshua Payne-Elliott says the Archdiocese of Indianapolis illegally interfered in his contract with Cathedral High School where he had worked for 13 years. The school fired him in June on orders from the archdiocese....

Contested United Methodist Church (UMC) Bishop Karen Oliveto recently spoke on transformational leadership at Yale Divinity School. The primary thrust of this talk was the need for a community focus in the UMC. She also took questions about the current state of the denomination. Oliveto attempted to avoid controversy in her comments, though her personal views were visible. When asked about the decline of the UMC in recent years, she obliquely blamed, “All the infighting we’ve been doing” as well as, “an erosion of the grace that’s foundational to who we are.” This idea of an “erosion” of what Methodism...

Joe Biden called Trump voters the “dregs of society” during an impassioned speech at an LGBTQ+P for Pedophile charity event. Donald Trump Jr. has hit back at the former vice president saying his statement went “too far”. Democrats want you to know two things right off the bat. First thing is pretty obvious, Donald Trump lives in their heads and they hate him for it. Second, the Democrats hate you if you voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Hillary Clinton referred to you all as “deplorables” and now Creepy Joe Biden wants you to know he thinks that you are...

The city of Portland apparently has a gender problem with bathrooms. According to KGW-TV, the city decided when they remodeled the Portland Building that urinals would be banned. Last February Chief Administrative Officer Tom Rinehart emailed employees: We will continue to have gender-specific (male and female) multi-stall restrooms that are readily available to any employee that prefers to use one. But, there will be no urinals in any restroom in the building. This will give us the flexibility we need for any future changes in signage … I am convinced that this is the right way to ensure success as...

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a filing to the Supreme Court on Wednesday that the company disagrees with President Trump’s decision to terminate DACA, the Obama-era program that shields some immigrants without documentation from being deported. ″We are distressed at the prospect of ripping our DACA colleagues from the fabric of our company,” Cook and HR head Deidre O’Brien wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief. Apple said it employs 443 dreamers, or people that DACA protects from deportation. The Trump administration’s effort to undo DACA is part of a broader effort to restrict immigration, whether it’s through family separation at...