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In a 5-0 decision, the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld a lower court determination that it is illegal for a photography business owned by Christians to refuse to photograph a same-sex wedding ceremony--even though New Mexico law does not permit same-sex marriage. The courts based their decisions on the text of the New Mexico Human Rights Act (NMHRA), which makes it illegal for “any person in any public accommodation to make a distinction, directly or indirectly, in offering or refusing to offer its services . . . to any person because of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual...

FULL TITLE: Lesbian high school cheerleader offered plea deal on her 19th birthday to avoid jail for having sex with classmate, 14, after thousands sign petition to support her A high school cheerleader arrested on felony sexual assault charges for her relationship with a 14-year-old female classmate has been offered a plea deal on her 19th birthday. Kaitlyn Hunt is being urged to accept the new deal which would keep her out of jail and prevent her from being registered as a sex offender - if she pleads no contest to two misdemeanor battery counts and one felony count for...

VANCOUVER, B.C., August 12, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When homosexual news service Daily Xtra reported last week that both Vancouver police and city officials “confirmed they had no issues with public nudity” at the city’s annual gay Pride Parade, LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) deemed necessary a fact check with the guardians of law and order. Canada’s Criminal Code makes it illegal to be nude in a “public place.” Section 174 states that a person who is “so clad as to offend against public decency or order” is “guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.” While reports about this year’s August 4 gay...

Even in his official license photo Newser) – A Czech Republic court has struck a blow for religious freedom—ridiculous, ridiculous religious freedom. Lukás Novy, 29, successfully argued that he should be allowed to wear a pasta strainer on his head in his official, government-issued ID photo, because he was required to do so by his "Pastafarian" faith, the Daily Mail reports. Novy belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a parody religion whose followers "believe" that a giant invisible monstrosity made of spaghetti and meatballs created the universe after "drinking heavily." Novy said the faith required him...

<p>A federal judge in Ohio ordered state officials Monday to recognize the marriage of two men that was performed in Maryland on the death certificate of an Ohio resident in hospice care who the judge says “is certain to die soon.”</p>

SANFORD, Fla. — There’s so much that still isn’t known about what happened on that dark, rainy night in February 2012, George Zimmerman’s defense attorney told jurors Friday in a hushed courtroom here. Speaking in a soothing, conversational tone, attorney Mark O’Mara urged jurors not to make assumptions about the defendant accused of killing an unarmed teenager named Trayvon Martin and not to try to “fill in blanks” or “connect dots.” The only conclusion jurors could reach about his client after hearing testimony for three weeks, O’Mara said, is “innocence. Pure, unadulterated innocence.” Minutes into his closing argument, O’Mara walked...

At age 80, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, leader of the Supreme Court's liberal wing, says she is in excellent health, even lifting weights despite having cracked a pair of ribs again, and plans to stay several more years on the bench. In a Reuters interview late on Tuesday, she vowed to resist any pressure to retire that might come from liberals who want to ensure that Democratic President Barack Obama can pick her successor before the November 2016 presidential election.

A judge is allowing a San Diego-area school district to teach yoga, rejecting the claims of disgruntled parents who called it an effort to promote Eastern religion. Yoga is a religious practice, but not the way that it is taught by the Encinitas Union School District at its nine campuses, San Diego Superior Court Judge John S. Meyer said in Monday’s ruling. Meyer said the school district stripped classes of all cultural references including the Sanskrit language. He noted that the lotus position was renamed the “crisscross applesauce” pose.

Well, that was quick. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday evening ordered that same-sex marriages begin again in California, and after less than a day of weddings, Prop 8 advocates filed an emergency motion to halt the unions, claiming that they still had time to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to dismiss their challenge to a 2010 ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. Kennedy, who is responsible for motions dealing with the Ninth Circuit, was swift in his response. The Associated Press reports that he "turned away the request on Sunday with no additional...

Washington (CNN) -- Justice Anthony Kennedy was among the first of his colleagues to arrive Wednesday at the U.S. Supreme Court. His chambers lit up several hours before the last-day release of monumental rulings on same-sex marriage.

SALT LAKE CITY — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released the following statement today regarding the decisions announced by the United States Supreme Court on cases involving marriage: "By ruling that supporters of Proposition 8 lacked standing to bring this case to court, the Supreme Court has highlighted troubling questions about how our democratic and judicial system operates. Many Californians will wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong when their government will not defend or protect a popular vote that reflects the views of a majority of their citizens. "In addition, the effect of the ruling is...

Same-sex marriages that were outlawed in California 4½ years ago resumed in a rush after a federal appeals court took the “unusual, but not unprecedented” step of freeing couples to obtain marriage licenses, before the U.S. Supreme Court had issued its final judgment in a challenge of the state’s voter-approved gay marriage ban. … Although the couples fought for the right to wed for years, their nuptials came together in a flurry when a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a brief order Friday afternoon dissolving a stay it had imposed on gay marriages while...

SAN FRANCISCO – The lead plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned California's same-sex marriage ban tied the knot at San Francisco City Hall on Friday, about an hour after an appeals court cleared the way for same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses for the first time in 4 1/2 years. ... The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had issued a brief order Friday afternoon dissolving a stay it imposed on gay marriages while the lawsuit challenging Proposition 8 worked its way through the courts. Sponsors of California's same-sex marriage ban said the appeals court's decision was...

<p>OKLAHOMA CITY — In California, just six years ago, Nicholas Elizondo was convicted for raping his then six-year-old daughter. He took a deal and served six years in jail. During that time his ex-wife, Lisa Knight, has been raising their daughter Sarah in Norman.</p>

Dissenting from this morning's opinion on the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Antonin Scalia – as expected – holds nothing back. In a ripping dissent, Scalia says that Justice Anthony Kennedy and his colleagues in the majority have resorted to calling opponents of gay marriage "enemies of the human race."

The U.S. Supreme Court today paved the way for same-sex couples to marry soon in California, effectively leaving intact a lower-court ruling that struck down the state's voter-approved ban on gay marriage. In a ruling that assures further legal battles, the high court found that backers of Proposition 8 did not have the legal right to defend the voter-approved gay marriage ban in place of the governor and attorney general, who have refused to press appeals of a federal judge's 2010 ruling finding the law unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruling, which found it had no legal authority to decide the...

A hallmark of democratic self-government is that the people should discuss, debate, and vote on important policy matters. And in America their votes should count, except when they clearly violate the people’s more settled will as expressed in the U.S. Constitution. Where the Constitution is silent, the task of a conscientious judge is to respect the constitutional authority of citizens and their elected officials. That’s what’s at stake in the two marriage cases on which the Supreme Court is expected to rule within the next week or so.

As Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. was struggling with how to cast the decisive vote in a 1986 Supreme Court case that would end up devastating the gay rights movement, he told his fellow justices that he had never met a homosexual. In truth, one of his four law clerks that term was gay. The atmosphere at the court today is far different from 1986, with a pace of change that may have surpassed that in the rest of society. Openly gay law clerks are now common in the chambers of both liberal and conservative justices. In January, Chief Justice...

As LifeNews reported today, the judge in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial dropped three murder charges related to babies he killed in his horrific abortion-infanticide process. One of the three charges the judge dropped includes a 28-week unborn baby who was killed in an abortion-infanticide and eventually discovered in a freezer at Gosnell’s clinic. LifeNews has identified that another charge involved “Baby B,” about whom a Gosnell staffer testified was a newborn child who survived a failed abortion and was still breathing into a shoe box. Kareema Cross told the jury she saw at least 10 children who were breathing...