Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The stacks of Supreme Court briefs filed on both sides of the same-sex marriage cases to be heard this month are roughly the same height. But they are nonetheless lopsided: There are no major law firms urging the justices to rule against gay marriage. Leading law firms are willing to represent tobacco companies accused of lying about their deadly products, factories that spew pollution, and corporations said to be complicit in torture and murder abroad. But standing up for traditional marriage has turned out to be too much for the elite bar. The arguments have been left to...

The Army made her feel “like a joke” — but they couldn’t keep her silent. Chelsea Manning — formerly known as Bradley E. Manning — the ex-Army intelligence analyst sentenced to 35 years for leaking a treasure trove of secret documents to WikiLeaks, has given her first public interview with the press from military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Speaking through the mail to Cosmopolitan magazine, Manning opened up about her recent experience behind bars and her lifelong desire to live as a woman. “I don’t know how [this struggle] shaped my life and who I am, but it’s absolutely...

North Dakota’s Republican governor sent a memo to 17 government departments on Monday saying discrimination against anyone is unacceptable, just two hours before every Democrat in the Legislature delivered a letter calling on him to go further and issue an executive order prohibiting bias against gays and lesbians. Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s chief of staff sent the letter to all agency directors appointed by the governor. “This administration expects all cabinet agencies to hire employees and to maintain agency staff based on ability and performance,” Chief of Staff Ron Rauschenberger wrote. “Ours remains a policy of non-discrimination, including no discrimination based...

Her -- I think her -- twitter page says that her interests include "helping the world." Helping the world includes reporting as fraudulent a crowdfunding effort for a Christian family put out of business by leftwing hate.

The Boy Scouts' New York chapter said Thursday that it has hired the nation's first openly gay Eagle Scout as a summer camp leader, which is in public contrast to the national scouting organization's ban on openly gay adult members.

Best Trutherism ever. Nothing else comes close. Or, alternate theory: The more excitable members of the left’s gay-marriage mob can’t cope with how this Two Minutes Hate for O’Connor and her business played out. So, as conspiracy theorists are wont to do, they’re reaching for an explanation that makes them feel better about it. What I can’t figure out is whether it’s malice or actually some vestigial pangs of remorse about the mob atmosphere that are driving the conspiracy. Maybe they’re angry that the family hasn’t been utterly ruined for their thoughtcrime — or maybe on some level they think,...

If you have been following mass media over the past few days, you will have learned from an economist at the U.S. Department of Labor that defenders of religious freedom are “Nazis.” Take a moment to ponder that assertion. Roll it around in your head for a while. You’ll be hearing a lot more fighting words as we enter the next phase of Christian life in America. Sample the hate that has been spewed at the state of Indiana in the past week, and faithful Christians in recent years, by gay activists and their allies. We are “bigots,” “Neanderthals” and...

The governor of Indiana last week signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, modeled on similar federal legislation. The Indiana statute states that a person’s religious beliefs may not be “substantially burden[ed]” by anti-discrimination statutes. In other words, if anti-discrimination laws could be construed as forcing a person to violate his own religious conscience, then the law allows for an exemption in that case to anti-discrimination mandates. The response from the left has been fierce, and multiple CEOs of major firms, including Apple and Salesforce, have come out against the legislation with Salesforce announcing that it will impose a partial boycott...

Salesforce CEO: We're Helping Employees Move Out of Indiana Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Wednesday that he is helping employees who are uncomfortable with Indiana's controversial religious freedom law to transfer out of the state. The move is in response to a law signed last week by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence that allows businesses to refuse service to gay, lesbian and transgender people on religious grounds. Benioff had already pledged to reduce his company's investments in Indiana, calling the law "brutal," "unfair" and "unjust." The cloud computing CEO said he is working with state officials in hopes of changing the...

A Michigan woman's gym membership was revoked because she refused to stop complaining about a transgender patron. According to Michigan Live, the incident started when a Planet Fitness member named Yvette Cormier went to use the women's gym's locker room at the Midland location. "I was blocked, because a man was standing there," Cormier told Michigan Live. "It freaked me out because why is a man in here?" Cormier sought out a gym employee to complain, but was told that members are allowed to use whatever locker room they want to, based on the gender they identify themselves as, ABC...

The greatly anticipated “fix” to the Indiana religious freedom law has been released by the Indiana legislative committee, and it is far worse than conservatives feared. According to law professor Mark Rienzi, the new fix will allow the state to prosecute Christians criminally for denying gay weddings their professional affirmation.Rienzi, of the Becket Fund and Catholic University School of Law and who was lead attorney in the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case that upheld a claim under the federal religious freedom law, said this would “criminalize religious objectors.”

Earlier this month we reported the official Star Wars canon would get its first LGBT character in the form of Moff Mors. She makes her debut in Paul S. Kemp‘s upcoming novel Star Wars: Lords of the Sith next month — but it seems her presence might ultimately stretch beyond the books. According to a new rumor, Moff Mors will make the leap to the big screen in one of the spinoffs, and might even appear in a live-action series. More on the LGBT Star Wars character’s possible screen debut after the jump. The report comes from Cinelinx. They’re the same...

The world is going nuts. I have often felt a bit like Cassandra, but … Cassandra was right.Here is another take.From the pen of John Zmirak at The Stream with my emphases and comments: The expected Supreme Court decision imposing on 50 states an entirely newunderstanding of marriage, and the frenzy of hatred that gay activists have stoked against Indiana for trying to shelter religious believers from crippling lawsuits should wake us to a cold and stark reality: The age of tolerance in America is vanishing before your eyes. The question is how Christians and other people of faith and good will...

The students’ union at Maynooth University has described a postcard it received this morning, which compares those who support gay marriage with people who have been convicted of sexual abuse and pedophilia, as “sick”. The postcard calls for a No vote in the same sex marriage referendum in May. It states that Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter and Rolf Harris all propagated Homosexual marriage and it calls itself the “No Way is Ireland Gay” campaign. The college voted this afternoon on whether or not to raise a Pride flag on the campus in support of equality. …

After litigating religious liberty issues for more than 20 years, I’m used to utter hysteria erupting on the Left when Christians try to assert conventional and traditional religious liberty rights. Perhaps my favorite example was the claim — by a Tufts University student panel — that a Christian group had to be thrown off campus without due process, in part because the Christian group’s insistence on selecting only Christians as leaders placed Tufts students at greater risk of suicide. Yes, suicide. But for national freakouts, it’s tough to beat either the sky-is-falling rhetoric around the idea that a few Hobby...

So-called “religious freedom” laws in Indiana, Arkansas and other states are merely thiny veiled discrimination that harkens back to the days of segregation, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. “There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country,” Cook wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Monday. “The days of segregation and discrimination marked by ‘Whites Only’ signs on shop doors, water fountains and restrooms must remain deep in our past,” the head of the world’s largest company wrote. “We must never return to any semblance of that time.” The op-ed from Cook, who is gay and grew up...

Gay activists and corporate leaders assailed a new Indiana allows that extends legal protections to religious business owners and individuals and vowed to boycott the state, according to CNBC. The law, signed by Pence on Thursday, allows businesses to use an owner's faith as a reason to refuse service to customers, including same-sex married couples. The law risks setting off a business chill in the state, with money-making conferences and major corporations threatening to pull out. Big corporations were among the loudest critics. Columbus, Indiana-based Cummins, the world's largest diesel engine maker, opposed the new law in strong terms. "Cummins believes...

Attention, hotels…if you’ve got a “Sir Ian McKellen” on your list of incoming guests, you should probably remove the Bible from the bedside table drawer in his room and read this recent Q&A with Details magazine (quoted on PopEater): “The openly gay ‘Lord of the Rings’ star admits to a habit of tearing out the Bible passage that condemns homosexuality — (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” – Leviticus 18:22) — every time he finds one in his hotel room.[…] “I’m not proudly defacing the book,” he asserts, “but it’s a choice between removing...

“How can you call yourself a Christian, let alone a minister?!” I get asked that question frequently and the questioner is hostile more often than not. Still, I like to answer it if I believe the questioner is sincere. Though I self-identify as a Christian and I am an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), I raised eyebrows a few years ago when I posted an article on my website about how my personal beliefs don’t align with those of most Presbyterians. For example, I believe that: - Religion is a human construct - The symbols of faith are...

The University of Minnesota Duluth will begin offering a minor in LGBTQ studies so that students can be better prepared for life in “an increasingly diverse society.” To complete the minor, students will have to take classes such as “An Introduction to LGBTQ” (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer), “Queer Theory,” “Queer Media,” “Queer Cinema in International Perspective” and “History of the Homosexual Rights,” Campus Reform reported. “This minor will prepare students for life,” Gesa Zinn, head of the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department, told Campus Reform. ” ‘The job’ the LGBTQ minor prepares students for is to understand and...