Free Republic

A Kentucky pastor was stripped of his right to minister to youth while using the Bible at a Juvenile Detention Center in Bowling Green earlier this year after he refused to sign a new policy that would prohibit him from referring to homosexuality as sinful. The pastor, David Wells of Pleasant View Baptist Church in McQuady, has helped sexually abused youth at Warren County Regional Juvenile Detention Center for 12 years, and is being represented by the Liberty Council, a Christian law firm that's filing a lawsuit against the state on his behalf for refusing to reinstate him. "They have...

The Potter's House Pastor Clarifies Positions After HuffPost Live Interview Prompts Confusion Among Some. Bishop T.D. Jakes has clarified that his method of ministering to gay people who choose to attend The Potter's House church was "evolving" and said he does not endorse same-sex marriage, after a recent HuffPost Live interview led some viewers to believe he had "shifted" in his biblical convictions regarding human sexuality and marriage. Christians and Americans in general remain divided in their opinions on the morality of homosexuality and the legality of same-sex marriage, and the Supreme Court's ruling in June effectively affirming same-sex marriage...

Craig James, a longtime football analyst for several networks and a 2012 Senate candidate in Texas, is suing Fox Sports Southwest for firing him for his religious beliefs on homosexuality. James's 2012 candidacy unraveled after he made several controversial statements about gays and gay marriage. The Daily Signal: Craig James, a former professional football player and respected sportscaster, is suing Fox Sports Southwest, alleging that the broadcast network fired him because of his religious beliefs on homosexuality and marriage. After working at the network for only a few days—and hosting one broadcast—James was terminated by Fox Sports on Sep....

"Earlier this year, I had the privilege of attending the Ligonier National Conference in Orlando, Florida. One of the speakers was Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. She proceeded to give one of the best gospel presentations I have heard. This was more than a change of lesbianism to heterosexuality, but a true Jesus-encountering and life-altering experience marked by total transformation. Her memoir The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert is outstanding and is the free audiobook of the month for August. -Todd Hoyt, eChristian"

Megachurch leader and author T.D. Jakes says that homosexuals should attend congregations that affirm their lifestyle and that politics do not need to reflect biblical ethics, adding that his position on homosexuality is both “evolved and evolving.” During an interview with the Huffington Post on Monday, Jakes was asked by a viewer if he believes that homosexuals and the black church can co-exist. “Absolutely… I think it is going to be diverse from church to church. Every church has a different opinion on the issue and every gay person is different,” he replied. “And I think that to speak that...

Hillsong Church founding pastor Brian Houston insists that his Sydney-based megachurch has made "absolutely no change" in regard to its "stance on homosexuality and gay marriage," after a critical blog post claimed that two engaged openly gay men were leading Hillsong NYC's choir. (Photo: The Christian Post) Hillsong Church senior pastor Brian Houston issued a statement Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2015, "correcting" reports that two openly gay men were leading the choir at Hillsong NYC. "There has been absolutely no change to Hillsong Church's stance on homosexuality and gay marriage," Houston wrote on his Twitter account early Tuesday morning. The Hillsong Church...

(VNRN) - Any new U.S. Ambassador will always attract the attention of Vietnamese everywhere, but when President Barack Obama nominated Asia pro Ted Osius, it generated a little more than the usual high interest. You see, Osius is openly gay. Regardless of whether the nominee’s sexual orientation was a factor, the nomination hopefully will usher in more LGBT rights in Vietnam. Certainly Osius is qualified to be ambassador. He has served as Deputy Chief of Mission before, in Indonesia from 2009 to 2012. For the past year, he has been an Associate Professor at the National War College. Osius had...

Aaron and Melissa Klein of Gresham, Oregon, have learned how dangerous it can be to fail to support “gay marriage” in this day and age. The now-infamous bakers refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple and were subsequently slapped with a $135,000 fine from the state of Oregon. Negative national publicity forced them to shut down their bakery, Sweet Cakes by Melissa. Outrage from progressives has essentially ruined the Kleins’ lives, but journalist and author Jack Cashill, who wrote the forthcoming “Scarlet Letters: The Ever-Increasing Intolerance of the Cult of Liberalism,” believes this incident ultimately is not...

President Obama has wrapped up his tour of Africa. It was notable, insofar as that word can be applied to the trip, for his somewhat condescending and neo-colonial lecture to his hosts on the need to ease up on the old homophobia. Certainly, Africa is not terribly gay-friendly. But nor are other parts of the planet. In his ardent wooing of Iran, for example, he doesn't seem to have been perturbed in the least by his new best friends' executions of homosexuals, anymore than he is by the brutalization of gays elsewhere in the Muslim world. You might deduce in...

If the Boy Scouts of America approve gay adult leaders, as they are expected to do late Monday (July 27), does that mean troops based at churches may end up in court if they ban gay Scoutmasters? Scout officials predicted that would be “unlikely” in a document they released earlier this month to BSA members and leaders. “We live in a litigious society, and frivolous lawsuits are threatened and filed every day,” reads the 14-page memo from the Boys Scouts’ law firm, Hughes Hubbard & Reed. “However, any lawsuit challenging the religious requirements in a Scouting unit chartered by a...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has said it will be re-evaluating its long-standing participation in the Boy Scouts of America, following the latter's decision to end its blanket ban on openly gay adult leaders. "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today's vote by the Boy Scouts of America National Executive Board. In spite of a request to delay the vote, it was scheduled at a time in July when members of the Church's governing councils are out of their offices and do not meet. When the leadership of the Church resumes...

One hundred and twenty-five members of Congress asked Secretary of State John Kerry in a letter Monday to deny visas to diplomats’ spouses if the envoys come from a country that doesn’t recognize same-sex spouses of State Department personnel. House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) led the letter, which got one GOP signature — Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who has a transgender son. The lawmakers argued that countries not granting accreditation to same-sex spouses of American foreign service...

It took only a moment and it was over. But in that moment, much changed. In a warehouse near the river in downtown Detroit, on the eve of the feast of St. Anne, patroness of Detroit, a statue to the demon Baphomet was unveiled. The event was sponsored by the Satanic Temple and was described as the "largest public satanic ceremony in history." Whether that claim is true or not, hundreds of people turned out for the event by first being directed by e-mail to a decoy location — a deserted bank in a seedy Detroit neighborhood — where they...

After weeks of speculation and protests by Christian leaders in Detroit, the unthinkable took place.Just after 11p.m. on July 25, a satanic organization unveiled a 9-foot statue of the goat-headed Baphomet, a pagan symbol of Lucifer. The 1-ton statue features two young children looking up adoringly at the devil.Leaders of the Satanic Temple have been saying for weeks they planned to unveil the statue somewhere in Detroit and leave it there temporarily before moving it to Arkansas, where they plan to set it beside the Ten Commandments at the State Capitol. This is the same statue they attempted to erect...

“Son of Kenya,” Barack Obama, proved once again that his patience with people, nations, and world leaders that disagree with his view of the world registers a big fat zero on the liberal Tolerance Meter.  When Obama finds out anyone (other than a Muslim) disagrees with his social policy focus, it becomes his personal mission to convince them otherwise. And if the mere awesomeness of his presence fails to change minds, Obama will attempt to humiliate his ideological adversaries into submission by getting in their face. For example, after Barack ‘LGBTQ’ Obama was specifically asked by the Evangelical Alliance...

A congregation in Pennsylvania has voted overwhelmingly to leave the United Methodist Church over the growing debate that the mainline denomination is having regarding its position on homosexuality. Wesley Church, a congregation in Quarryville that has an average weekly worship attendance of about 650, voted to leave the UMC after months of discernment. Chris Lenhart, associate pastor at Wesley Church, told The Christian Post that leadership for the congregation saw a "considerable chasm forming between what Wesley believed and affirmed about the nature of God's word and what the denomination believed and affirmed about the nature of God's Word. "The...

Moral decline (or degeneration) refers to the process of declining from a higher to a lower level of morality. The condition of moral decline is seen as preceding or concomitant with the decline in quality of life, as well as the decline of nations. In the words of British lawyer and jurist Judge Devlin (1905 -1992), "an established morality is as necessary as good government to the welfare of society. Societies disintegrate from within more frequently than they are broken up by external pressures."[1] Contents[] 1 Moral standards2 Causality 2.1 Biblical theology2.2 Secular ideology 3 Examples of development and decline...

The state of Kentucky has begun imposing a religious test on volunteer pastor counselors in its youth division, insisting that they refrain from calling homosexuality “sinful” and dismissing those who cannot bend their religious faith to accommodate the state requirements. The policy was uncovered by Liberty Counsel, which has sent a letter to Bob Hayter, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice, demanding that the state religious test be dropped and that a dismissed counselor be reinstated.“Liberty Counsel writes regarding the blatantly unconstitutional revocation of volunteer prison minister status of ordained Christian minister David Wells, who has provided voluntary...

This country talks a lot about terrorist attacks—and rightly so. Almost anybody in America can give you some kind of a listing of the most destructive acts of terror that have happened in our country. But let me suggest to you this: The two greatest attacks of terror on America were perpetrated by the Supreme Court. Not by any Muslim, but by the Supreme Court of the United States. The first one was the legalizing of abortion. Subsequent to that, there have been millions of babies slaughtered in the wombs of their mothers. It’s incalculable to even comprehend that. The...

With the recent SCOTUS decision, homosexuality is a hotter topic than ever before. It seems that everyone is talking about it right now. Well, in a recent Big Think video, Bill Nye “the Science Guy” was asked about homosexual behavior in an evolutionary worldview: “If the purpose of a species is to reproduce and survive how would it make sense evolutionarily for humans to have same-sex preferences? Are humans the only ones who practice homosexuality? And if this is so, does this mean that homosexuality is the product of humans personal whim as opposed to instinct?”Bill Nye basically answered this...