Free Republic

Tell me this isn’t coordinated.First, for a while now, some theologian friends and I have watched with a measure of distaste and concern a “queering of theology”.I see today via Corrispondenza Romana a story entitled: “Papa Francesco apre le porte alla “teologia queer”?  Is Pope Francis opening the doors to “queer theology”?A little bit of the initial part in my translation: Is Pope Francis opening the doors to “queer theology”?  The question rises spontaneously after having found out that the Portuguese priest and poet José Tolentino de Mendonça, a known fan of Sr Maria Teresa Forcades i Vila – a...

Parents are furious after a California elementary school posted a bulletin board that addressed issues like sexual identity and encouraged children as young as four-years-old to break out of gender stereotypes. The bulletin board at Rancho Romero Elementary School also featured nationally-syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage as a role model for children. Mr. Savage also hosts an annual porn festival. “For him to be a role model for four-year-olds to 11-year-olds is utterly disgusting, one anonymous parent said on the Todd Starnes Radio Show. “He’s not someone you want to put up at an elementary school.” The bulletin board included...

In the early 2000s, when I was a middle schooler in Florida, I was subjected to a trauma that was meant to erase my existence as a newly out bisexual. My parents were Southern Baptist missionaries who believed the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy could “cure” my sexuality. I sat on a couch over two years and endured emotionally painful sessions with a counselor. I was told that my faith community rejected my sexuality; that I was the abomination we had heard about in Sunday school; that I was the only gay person in the world; that it...

For youngest readers, a teddy bear named Thomas would rather be called Tilly — it's 'child abuse,' says one doctor of this overreach. The Wall Street Journal editorial board recently called out Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee for overstepping his executive authority on climate change. But it turns out he’s not the only one in the Evergreen State guilty of overrreach. Teachers in a dozen elementary schools across Seattle have been testing a new set of books and lessons on gender diversity, expression and identity — topics many would agree are outrageously inappropriate for the classroom, especially for young children,...

The State Department announced a new $600,000 taxpayer-funded study that suggests "ideals of masculinity" in Kenya are contributing to terrorism.The department's Bureau of Counterterrorism is seeking a nonprofit group to "explore gender identities of boys and men in Kenya." The grant proposal states that men being "tough, heterosexual, aggressive, unemotional, and achieving" can make them vulnerable to joining Islamic extremist groups."Gender is increasingly recognized as an essential aspect to understanding and countering violent extremism throughout the world," the State Department said. "To date, research and interventions on gender in Kenya have predominantly focused on the role of women and girls...

A recent trend in many states is to outlaw "conversion therapy," where people who are unhappy with homosexual inclinations go through therapy to dispense with those inclinations.  Even though the process is voluntary, liberal states cannot tolerate the idea of someone with same-sex attractions wanting help to get rid of them. In the U.S., state governments are beginning to outlaw conversion therapy in growing numbers.  California became the first to do so in 2012.  Eight other states have banned it in some form since.  In 2017 alone, Nevada, New Mexico, and Connecticut have signed their own bans into law. Now New Hampshire, by...

January 3, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Fewer than half of 18- to 21-year-olds worldwide think others should be free to express non-violent opinions that are offensive to minorities, according to a study highlighted by The Economist. The data come from the Varkey Foundation and was released in February 2017. Only about half of the world’s young people support free speech, it revealed, but nearly two-thirds support same-sex “marriage.” The study asked two questions about free speech: whether “people should have a right to non-violent free speech in all circumstances even when what they say is offensive to a religion” and whether...

Vice President Pence arrived in Aspen, Colo., this week for a holiday vacation — but not without encountering a silent protest from his neighbors in the liberal ski resort town. “Make America Gay Again,” reads a rainbow banner posted on the stone pillar at the end of the driveway of the home where Pence and his wife, Karen, are staying. A dispatcher with the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office referred The Washington Post to the White House press office Saturday, but Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Buglione told the Aspen Times that Pence’s next-door neighbors posted the banner shortly after the vice president...

Starting in January, Illinois will bar a rare criminal defense allowing the use of a victim’s sexual orientation as justification for violent crime, a ban gay rights advocates say they will attempt to replicate in about half a dozen states next year. Defense attorneys will no longer be able to mount the so-called “gay panic defense” in Illinois, the second state after California to prohibit the tactic. It isn’t common, but one study shows it has surfaced in about half of all U.S. states and has been used with some success. Advocates say bans are necessary because crimes against gay...

Stage and screen star Sir Ian McKellen has spoken out about the sex scandal in film and theatre,claiming women are partly responsible because some tell directors they'll sleep with them to win roles. 'People must be called out and it's sometimes very difficult for victims to do that,' the Lord Of The Rings star said in a talk at the Oxford Union recently. 'I hope we're going through a period that will help to eradicate it altogether. But from my own experience, when I was starting acting in the early Sixties, the director of the theatre I was working at...

It’s astounding how many defenses of the state’s position in Masterpiece Cakeshop depend on misrepresentation and misconceptions. Last week I wrote about the most common misrepresentation — that Jack Phillips discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation when he refused to design a custom cake for a same-sex-wedding celebration. After all, he served all customers — regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation. He just consistently refused to design cakes that advanced messages he disagreed with. No person of any identity has the legal authority to compel an artist to use his talents to advance a cause the artist...

That case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, takes aim at a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on perceived sexual orientation in places serving the public. Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, says the law violates his free speech rights by forcing him to “create expression that violates his sincerely held beliefs about marriage.” The dispute has attracted a lot of attention from the business community, including an amicus brief signed by 35 companies including Amazon (AMZN), Pfizer (PFE), and Apple (AAPL), which asked the court to rule against Phillips. Another group with an interest in the...

Are you a straight man who likes women? Do you kiss and cuddle with your male friends just for funsies? No? Well apparently, you’re the weirdo. Because according to Attitude Magazine, it is totally normal – common, even – for straight men to canoodle with their straight male friends. To the confusion of straight men and people of logic everywhere, Attitude ran a befuddling article entitled: "New Study Finds Straight Men in Bromances Often Kiss and Cuddle." (For those unfamiliar, a "bromance" is a slang term for a close friendship between two heterosexual guys.) Attitude claims:

Australia's "marriage equality" campaign triumphed in this month's referendum under the slogan "Let's Get It Done". In other words, it's inevitable, so why waste another five years arguing about it? Let's get it done, and over, and move on to transgender bathrooms or whatever's next. That's how "progressives" think about progress. As a certain author wrote long ago in a certain bestselling book: We assume that social progress is like technological progress: it can't be reversed. Just as you can't disinvent the internal combustion engine, so you can't disinvent women's rights. Just as the horse and buggy yielded to the...

British singer Morrissey said in a new interview he would kill President Trump if given the option. During an interview with Der Spiegel, Morrissey, the former The Smiths frontman, was asked: “If there was a button here and if you pressed on it, Trump would die dead [sic]– would you push it or not?” The musician responded that he would push the button. “I would, for the safety of humanity," Morrissey said. "It has nothing to do with my personal opinion of his face or his family, but in the interest of humanity I would push.”(continued)

A group of feminist professors will publish a new anthology in November extolling the merits of the emerging field of “queer feminist science.” The anthology, Queer Feminist Science: A Reader, will be released on November 16, and is edited by a team of Women’s Studies professors including New York University’s Cyd Cipolla, Wake Forest University’s Kristina Gupta, South Florida University’s David A. Rubin, and Mount Holyoke College’s Angela Willey, who specifically teaches “feminist science.

<p>In light of Anthony Rapp’s allegation that Kevin Spacey made sexual advances towards him when he was 14 years old, many are looking at Spacey in a totally new light. But while there are people that are shocked by this news, there’s also a chorus of “finallys” going around online.</p>

Actor Kevin Spacey said that he has "loved and had romantic encounters with men" and that he chooses "now to live as a gay man," after being accused of an unwanted encounter with a 14-year-old. Spacey's remarks came in a tweet posted on Sunday night after "Star Trek: Discovery” star Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey climbed on top of him in bed when he was just 14 years old. "I have a lot of respect and admiration for Anthony Rapp as an actor. I'm beyond horrified to hear this story," Spacey said. "I honestly do not remember the encounter ......

A pro-life student group at a Methodist college in Ohio has been denied a spot at the school’s upcoming sexual health fair by the school’s LGBT organization. The pro-life students were informed that their message, which shows the negative effects of abortion, does not promote “sex positivity.”Baldwin Wallace Allies denied a request for Baldwin Wallace Right-to-Life to participate in the event last week. The pro-life group intended to set up a table to talk about the negative physical and mental effects that abortion can have, and to provide students with knowledge of other options available to pregnant women.The group’s president,...

The questions must be asked when an apparent industry of pedophilia and sexual abuse has been in the open and yet kept secret for decades. Will Democrat politicians like Senator Chuck Shumer – who have long taken campaign contributions from Weinstein – disavow Hollywood’s pedophilia and sexual abuse? Or will Shumer and the Democrats stay quiet, obstruct Congressional investigations of pedophilia in Hollywood, and try to make the public forget that the entertainment business is filled with men that rape children?