Free Republic

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is taking heat for his anti-gay views and vocal opposition to marriage equality by none other than a fellow Republican figure. Prominent Republican lawyer, Ted Olson, who is a strong supporter of LGBT rights, thought Cruz's comments on marriage equality were "very, very sad." Cruz had a lot to say to the crowds at the Texas GOP convention about the "threat" that is gay marriage. His speech appeared on an article of The New Yorker (emphasis mine): "Marriage is under assault," Ted Cruz said to the crowd. "It is under assault in a way that is...

The normalization of polygamy would undermine our commitment to human dignity—our sense that each human being is to be valued as an end in him- or herself, and not merely as a means to others’ ends. Conservatives have long warned that the redefinition of marriage sought by the proponents of same-sex unions will prepare the way for a further redefinition of marriage to include polygamy. Some liberals have already done their part to fulfill this prophecy by assuming that the argument over same-sex marriage is over and by beginning to argue for a normalization of plural marriages. As I have...

The Rev. Peter Gregory of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne said he’s not surprised by Wednesday’s court ruling that overturns Indiana’s ban on same-sex marriages. “It’s a disappointment, but not a surprise the judge ruled in this way,” Gregory said. “The disappointment is that he failed to recognize what marriage is – a union between one man and one woman – and the unique social good that marriage between a man and a woman is.” While the courts may be sending the nation in a headlong rush toward gay marriage, Gregory said they will not be the final...

In a 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Kitchen v. Hebert affirmed a lower court’s ruling holding that traditional marriage laws violate the Constitution. The case will likely soon go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Breitbart News examined this case last year when an Obama-appointed federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah invalidated that state’s law providing that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, comparing such laws to racism and saying they are literally irrational. Despite the fact that neither marriage nor homosexuality is mentioned...

As the battle for marriage equality rages on, a different, more obscure kind of sexual immorality is slowly rearing its ugly head: polygamy. Polygamy is defined as the "the custom of having more than one wife or husband at the same time," a practice which directly violates the Biblical commandment instructing marriage to be between a single man and wife (1 Timothy 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6). However, the secular media is increasingly attempting to normalize, and even glamorize this kind of perverted lifestyle. Showtime is airing an original series called Polyamory: Married & Dating, which follows two polyamorous families...

The Obama administration will work to ensure that gay and lesbian Americans are eligible to take leave from their jobs to care for a same-sex spouse, regardless of whether they live in a state that recognizes gay marriage, the White House said Friday. President Obama is directing the Labor Department to start drafting rules making clear that the Family and Medical Leave Act applies to same-sex couples, allowing gay and lesbian employees to take unpaid leave to care for a sick spouse regardless of where they live. The move comes three years after the Obama administration stopped defending the Defense...

For years, Gov. Scott Walker has been a rock-solid proponent of traditional marriage between one man and one woman. As Milwaukee County executive, he opposed efforts to provide health care benefits to the gay partners of county employees. He also spoke out in favor of a 2006 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In 2010, he campaigned for governor as a supporter of traditional marriage. He also opposed a law that allowed gay couples to register with counties to get certain benefits, such as hospital visitation rights. "My position has been clear," Walker said Thursday. Indeed, it was. But that is...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Clinton: 'You are playing with my words' Hillary Clinton lost patience with an NPR radio interviewer who asked her several times to clarify the evolution of her views on gay marriage. “Would you say your view evolved since the 90s, or that the American public evolved, allowing you to state your real view?” asked radio host Terry Gross. Clinton at first avoided directly answering the question, replying, “I think I’m an American, I think that we have all evolved, and it’s been one of the fastest, most sweeping transformations that I’m aware of.” “I understand,” Gross said, “but a lot...

Is there anything more intolerant than the Tolerance Brigade? At the Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin agrees with Bloomberg’s Stephen Carter on the rise of a new McCarthyism, this time imposing penalties for dissent from progressive orthodoxy rather than tolerating debate on a broad range of issues. Both use attempts to silence argument in academia as the flash point that exposes this thought-police mentality. Carter recently wrote about the attempts to intimidate Douglas Laycock, an opponent of same-sex marriage, and explicitly invokes McCarthyism as the dynamic in play: A law student and a recent graduate, spurred on by the advocacy group...

Petition for a charter amendment to prohibit men (who perceive or express themselves as women) from using the women's restroom.

If conservatives don’t embrace the inevitable, they'll become irrelevant.Since last year, the progress toward marriage equality has been nothing less than stunning. Nearly a year ago, the Supreme Court granted full federal recognition of married same-sex couples in declaring the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. In rapid succession since then, federal judges in 13 states have overturned their state’s respective bans on same sex unions. The latest was last week in Pennsylvania, when Judge John E. Jones III, a G. W. Bush appointee, overturned the ban, writing, “We are a better people than what these laws represent.” Because...

With a federal judge declaring a Pennsylvania ban on gay marriage unconstitutional on Tuesday afternoon, every state in the Northeastern corner of the country—Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and now Pennsylvania—has legalized same-sex marriage. Judge John Jones invoked the 14th Amendment to invalidate a 1996 Pennsylvania law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Like many of the other judicial decisions bringing down state marriage bans, this one framed the issue as a matter of civil rights. Jones wrote: In future generations the label same-sex marriage will be abandoned,...

HARRISBURG - A federal judge on Tuesday struck down Pennsylvania's ban on same-sex marriages, a landmark ruling that could clear the way for the Commonwealth to become the 17th state to legalize gay marriage. The decision by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III marked the first and most significant to date in a series of court challenges to the state's 1996 ban. It was not immediately clear if Gov. Corbett, whose administration had defended the law, would appeal the decision. The lawsuit, Whitewood v. Wolf, was brought by 23 plaintiffs who said Pennsylvania's law violates the state constitution by...

<p>Like those who stood against civil rights for African-Americans, gay-marriage foes are fighting a battle they can't win.</p> <p>LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Nine slender statues stand beneath a window to the Arkansas governor's office – bronzed, life-sized images of the black children who integrated Little Rock Central High School on Sept. 25, 1957 and helped ignite the Civil Rights era. "They defied prejudice," says Gregory Donaldson, an African-American Baptist minister from St. Louis visiting the display with his wife Nanette. "They defied bigotry."</p>

Did Donald Sterling ever try to use the power of the state to annul the marriages of thousands of people he never met because he disapproved of them? Ex-Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich did.We’ve heard a lot recently about what constitutes “going too far” when it comes to holding people accountable for their offensive beliefs—a lot of stuff about “freedom of speech,” a lot of stuff about “tolerance,” a lot of stuff about “political correctness run amok.” Predictably relatively little of this has been said about Donald Sterling, of the Los Angeles Clippers. Sterling bears the dubious honor of being The...

Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Bishop of the Episcopal church, publicly announced he is divorcing his husband, Mark Andrew, on May 3. The couple had been married since 2010, when New Hampshire legalized gay marriage. The union created an international uproar, and many Episcopalians broke away from the main church. "As you can imagine, this is a difficult time for us - not a decision entered into lightly or without much counseling," Robinson wrote in a letter to the Diocese of New Hampshire. "We ask for your prayers, that the love and care for each other that has characterized...

Notre Dame University employed the police to order a group of traditional marriage advocates off its campus late last week. Volunteers with the Tradition Family Property Student Action were given permission by an official campus student group to set up a table, according to TFP director John Ritchie. The police arrived shortly after the group began handing out pro-family literature and told them to “cease and desist.” On its website TFP Student Action claimed: The TFP handout, 10 Reasons Why Same-Sex “Marriage” is Harmful and Must Be Opposed, was being warmly received by students and faculty members alike. However, several...

On the Friday, April 18, All In show, during a discussion of the firing of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich for simply donating to a political campaign opposing same-sex marriage, guest Richard Kim of the far left The Nation magazine intoned that he found it "disturbing" that gay activist friends of his have expressed interest in "targeting" more people who have made similar donations, and who have declared they should "find out where they live." Kim: Here's a disturbing thing. I did ask some of my gay activist friends, I was like, "Look, here's a list; 6,500 people gave the...

Republicans will nominate someone younger than her, and it won't make a difference to young people.Our old colleague Patrick Caldwell has an interesting article up at Mother Jones about the way the Hillary Clinton campaign—or whatever we can call it at this point, since it isn't actually a campaign but it isn't exactly just a bunch of independent people doing their own thing either—is going after college students. I had forgotten how idiotically hostile the Hillary '08 campaign was toward college students in Iowa, but that's just one of innumerable mistakes that one presumes she'll attempt to correct this time...

CINCINNATI — A federal judge on Monday ordered Ohio to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples performed in other states, and civil rights attorneys and gay marriage supporters immediately began looking ahead to their next fight: a lawsuit seeking to force Ohio to allow gay couples to marry. Judge Timothy Black’s ruling was a partial but significant victory for gay rights supporters, who called it a stepping stone for full marriage equality in Ohio....