Free Republic

A Republican state lawmaker faces criticism for a Christian prayer she delivered in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Monday, the same day the body swore in its first female Muslim member.

We have now learned more about Google’s decision last year to ban my ministry from advertising our video “Can You Be Gay and Christian?” on YouTube. According to a new report, “Google banned a video explaining Christian teaching on same-sex marriage from advertising on YouTube after backlash from upset employees, according to internal Google communications reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.” So, enough employees got upset about our video — the dreaded “microagressions”! — that the complaints made their way to Google VP Vishal Sharma, who agreed that YouTube had no business accepting advertising for a video like this...

On a Sunday morning at Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, N.J., a bearded pastor named Jonathan Cahn stood on an elevated platform, gazing over a full house. Stage lights shifted from blue to white as the backing band played a drifting melody. Two men hoisted curled rams’ horns and let out long blasts. “Some of you have been saying you want to live in biblical times,” Mr. Cahn said, pacing behind a lectern. Then he spread his hands wide. “Well, you are.” Sitting at the end of a sleepy drive an hour from Manhattan, Beth Israel may look like...

The Democrat-controlled House Committee on Natural Resources may soon strike the reference to God in the oath given to witnesses testifying before the panel, according to a draft, Fox News reports. Rather than including “so help you God,” at the end of the oath, it would instead read: "Do you solemnly swear or affirm, under penalty of law, that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"> The rules proposal places the words "so help you God" in red brackets, indicating they are slated to be cut. The words...

Former US president Barack Obama lied to Saudi Arabia when violating the redlines he famously declared regarding Syria’s use of chemical weapons and then not acting when they were used, a former senior Saudi official said in an interview with Independent Arabia. Bandar bin Sultan served for years as head of Saudi intelligence as well as the Saudi ambassador to the United States. In the interview, he recalled a last phone call between the late Saudi King Abdullah and Obama, during which the Saudi leader told the US president: “I did not expect that [after] this long life, I would...

ST. PETERSBURG — Tropicana Field will become the first cashless sports venue in North American, the Rays announced Friday. The Rays said tests with analytics and emerging tech firm E15 showed that switching to cash-free will cut transaction times in half. Payment forms to be accepted at Tropicana Field this season include major credit cards, Rays gift cards, mobile payments such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay and season-ticket holder Rays Cards, the team announced in a press release. Fans without electronic forms of payment can exchange cash at all retail locations and through roaming gift-card vendors in $10 and...

A Presbyterian pastor in California has resigned his church after congregants abandoned him over a sign he placed in front of the church building declaring that “homosexuality is still sin.” In early January, the Reverand Justin Hoke, pastor of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in the small town of Weed, California, posted a sign in front of the church facility pointing out that “Bruce Jenner is still male,” referring to the high-profile U.S. Olympic Gold Medal athlete who changed his name to “Caitlyn” and now portrays himself as a woman. The sign went on to declare that “Homosexuality is still sin....

They took the cross off the church wall. That’s the detail that caught my attention when I heard about the Millbourne Community Life Centre, a church that reinvented itself as a neighbourhood meeting space, open to anyone, and a drop-in centre for youth in what is sometimes a rough neighbourhood. These days, the world can seem so polarized. To see the centre take down such a significant religious symbol to ensure Muslim and Sikh neighbours feel welcome is a beautiful gesture. The 1.8-metre (six-foot cross) came down off the outside wall in 2011, and it’s a decision that still doesn’t...

Good Morning America surprised "Desmond is Amazing" with three fierce drag queens and some amazing gifts.

A new billboard campaign in Scotland is calling out “homophobes” and “transphobes,” focusing in particular on religious “bigots.” In reality, it is the billboard campaign that is fear-based and bigoted. One billboard reads: “Dear bigots, division seems to be what you believe in. We don’t want your religious hate on our buses, on our streets and in our communities. We don’t want you spreading your intolerance. Or making people’s lives a misery because of their religious dress. You may not have faith in respect and love, but we do. That’s why if we see or hear your hate, we’re reporting...

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.(Luke 22:31-32)Everywhere I turn lately I have been seeing brothers and sisters in faith undergoing intense trials in many areas of their lives. Of course we know that the Christian life consists of manifold trials, for as the book of Acts tells us, “through many tribulations shall we enter into the Kingdom of heaven” . But recently it seems to me that...

A number of U.S. multinational companies, including Coca-Cola, IBM, and Citi, have signed onto an open letter that calls on the British Government to legalize homosexual “marriage” in Northern Ireland. The companies claim this is necessary “to attract the best talent to Northern Ireland” and because the multinationals want LGBT employees “to be themselves.” The open letter was created by Amnesty International and it is headlined “Businesses for Love Equality,” and has the Twitter hashtag #Businesses4LoveEquality. […] Some of the U.S.-based multinationals that signed the letter include Coca-Cola, IBM, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Citi, Allstate Northern Ireland, Santander Bank, and Baker...

More than 100 U.S. Marines launched an air assault in the southern Syrian desert backed by artillery fire to send a “strong message” to Russia not to send their forces inside a restricted area near an American military outpost, two U.S. defense officials have told Fox News. The show of forces comes as the leaders of Iran, Russia and Turkey are meeting Friday in Tehran to hammer out their next steps in the seven-year Syrian civil war ahead of an expected offensive led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces into the country’s northwest Idlib Province. On two separate occasions this...

French politicians have reacted with anger after Emmanuel Macron asserted that “true” Frenchmen and Danes “do not exist”, and attacked the people he rules over as stubbornly resistant to change while on an official visit to Denmark. The French president made the remarks while on a three-day tour of Denmark and Finland, where he is hoping to establish a “progressive arc” of nations supporting his vision of a globalised EU superstate, which would revolve around a liberal conception of human rights, ahead of European Parliament elections next year. Speaking before a gala lobster dinner on Wednesday, at which Denmark’s Queen...

A research project by an international Catholic think tank, to be launched today by Mary McAleese, is to challenge the theological evidence for church teaching that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disorder". Plans for the study by Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research will be unveiled at Trinity College by McAleese, a former president and an outspoken critic of the Vatican. The institute will call on Pope Francis to question official church teaching on same-sex relationships. "I am hoping the project will advance an intelligent and scholarly debate about the warped, damaging, unchristian, unscientific, fake gender ideology which currently underpins Catholic teaching...

Amid tensions and mass protests over equal surrogacy rights for gay couples in Israel, tens of thousands of people marched in what is being billed as the largest-ever Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. The march, which began at Liberty Bell Park under heavy police protection, marks three years since an ultra-Orthodox zealot, Yishai Schlissel, stabbed teenage marcher Shira Banki to death and wounded several others. Organizers said an estimated 30,000 people joined the march, which ended at Independence Park after winding its way down Keren Hayesod, Hillel and Moshe Ben Yisrael streets.

Russia’s ambassador to Israel said in an interview Monday his country cannot force Iranian forces to withdraw from Syria, despite Israeli calls for Iran to withdraw from the country. Speaking with Channel 10 news, Anatoly Viktorov said the Iranians are “playing a very, very important role in our common and joint efforts to eliminate terrorists in Syria. Viktorov said Russia can talk to its “Iranian friends” about a full withdrawal from Syria, as Israel demands, but “we cannot force them.” “The Iranian presence in Syria… is fully legitimate according to the UN principles and the UN charter,” he added. He...

Full title................'You wouldn't dare attack': Tehran goads 'passive' Trump and says he 'can't do a damn thing to Iran' after his all-caps warning to president Rouhani...............Iran has hit back at Donald Trump after the President warned Tehran to 'never, ever threaten the US again' in an all-caps Twitter outburst that raised the specter of war. A top Iranian general bragged on Monday that America 'won't dare' attack despite Trump threatening 'consequences few throughout history have ever suffered' a tweet-storm late on Sunday night. General Gholam Hossein Gheibparvar, chief of the Revolutionary Guard's Basij force, dismissed Trump's message as little more...

Six LGBT activists have found a way to fly the Pride flag in Russia - by wearing football shirts in the rainbow colours. The country has had a law banning the spreading of "gay propaganda" among under-18s since 2013. The Pride flag is a symbol celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, but displaying it in Russia can get you arrested. The group got together and wore their nations' football tops around Moscow. It meant the shirts of Spain, the Netherlands (who weren't in the World Cup), Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia collectively made the colours of the stripes of...

Comedian Michelle Wolf saluted abortions on her Netflix show, declaring at the end of a sketch, "God bless abortions and God bless America," while donning the colors of the American flag and tossing confetti. In the clip for the July 4 week episode of "The Break with Michelle Wolf," published Sunday on YouTube, Wolf decried President Trump's forthcoming Supreme Court pick as someone who would be "almost certain" to rule in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal nationwide. “Look, access to abortion is good and important,” Wolf said. “Some people say abortion...