Free Republic

As it has for decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week released its annual National Health Interview Survey on the health of Americans. But this year, there was a difference: For the first time, the respondents were asked about their sexual orientation. Of 34,557 adults ages 18 and older, the survey reported, 1.6 percent said they were gay or lesbian. Some critics say the numbers are low, but they fall in the range of other surveys. In the new survey, however, only 0.7 percent of respondents described themselves as bisexual; other studies have reported higher numbers.

Dear Mr. President, I write to you today as a concerned citizen of our great nation, standing as a witness against your historic actions on the morning of July 21, 2014, actions which I hope you will one day repudiate with deep remorse and regret. I am referring, of course, to your signing an executive order Monday banning “discrimination” by federal contractors against LGBT people, allowing for no religious exemptions of any kind. This was an outrageous act of discrimination against religion in the name of anti-discrimination, an act of bullying people of faith in the name of the prevention...

President Barack Obama issued an executive order Monday prohibiting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity for federal contractors. What does this mean for Christian organizations that remain faithful to the biblical teaching on homosexual behavior? Here are two main points that those groups need to be aware of: First, the order only applies to government contractors and sub-contractors, it does not apply to groups that receive government grants. Most religious non-profits that provide services for the government do so through a government grant. They would not be affected. A grant recipient is awarded money for general purpose,...

President Barack Obama's executive order of July 21 has installed workplace rules forbidding the firing of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people by the federal government and federal contractors -- a key provision in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act languishing in Congress. The U.S. bishops have opposed the bill, known as ENDA, which was passed by the Senate last November but was never scheduled for a vote in the House. The bill has been introduced in almost every Congress since 1994. "Today's executive order is unprecedented and extreme and should be opposed," said Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of...

There is good news in Tuesday’s release from the CDC’s National Health Information Survey. No, it’s not the revelation that the gay and lesbian population may be slightly smaller — 1.6 percent — than many scholars have believed; population-based surveys tend to fluctuate. The results of the report make sense to me, and since others have already described them, I will refrain from repeating them at length here. The good news is that the survey’s questions were administered to over 34,000 Americans, randomly sampled, enabling scholars to get quality information about even small communities. And since the NHIS didn’t...

Blogging for the Ruth Institute, Jennifer Johnson recounted her experience of growing up with five parents. The piece responds to claims by Masha Gessen, a prominent LGBT activist who was recently honored by the state department, who has famously celebrated her own unorthodox family as the shape of things to come: I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally… I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage....

AURORA, Ill. – A Hobby Lobby store in Illinois is facing a discrimination complaint after a ‘transgender’ employee was told that he may not use the women’s restroom until he has reconstructive surgery to switch from male to female reproductive organs. The employee, who goes by the name Meggan Sommerville, also professes to be a Christian. He has worked for Hobby Lobby since 1998, at which time he identified as male.However, in 2009, Sommerville began transitioning to look like a woman and changed his name. According to Sommerville, Hobby Lobby accommodated him by changing his gender in the company records...

HIV infections are rising among gay men in many parts of the world, the World Health Organization warned Friday, urging all men who have sex with men to take antiretroviral drugs to prevent infection. "We are seeing exploding epidemics," warned Gottfried Hirnschall, who heads WHO's HIV department. Infection rates are rising again among men who have sex with men -- the group at the epicentre of AIDS pandemic when it first emerged 33 years ago, he told reporters in Geneva. While images of skeletal men dying of AIDS in the 1980s pushed the world to act, a younger generation that...

Can I pose a serious question? At what point does replacing the American flag with the rainbow flag, a symbol of gay/LGBTQ(RSTUVWXYZ) pride from embassies abroad become an impeachable offense in itself? Last time I checked, the official flag of the country was the Stars and Stripes, not the same rainbow that is found on the doors of gay bars downtown. A friend sent me this picture of the U.S. Embassy in London...

A JP Morgan Chase bank employee says he’s not only puzzled by an internal company survey that asked workers if they considered themselves friend of the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community — he’s fearful of losing his job. The unnamed employee reported to Professor Robert George of Princeton, who runs a law blog, that this year’s company survey — which is distributed to employees annually as a means of gauging work satisfaction — asked respondents to note if they were disabled, had children or spouses and domestic spouses with disabilities and were members of the LGBT community, Breitbart reported. But the last question...

The Hobby Lobby case has produced some ridiculous hysteria and pronouncements, especially from lawmakers and Obama administration officials, and that may have just produced some significant backfire on their own side of the aisle. The White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill put a lot of effort into pushing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) on behalf of the LGBT community, a bill that would prohibit employment discrimination for a wide range of sexual-orientation categories. It passed the Senate with Republican votes that came after adding a clause that protected religious expression similar to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA),...

In the George W. Bush years, liberals were routinely shocked and awed that the Bush administration would obliterate their sacred wall of separation between church and state. They frowned on federal faith-based initiatives and worried about the bureaucracy being invaded by frightening people with college degrees from Christian schools like Liberty University, Regent University or Catholic University. Government was no place to be spreading a dangerous Christian majoritarianism with a swaggering certitude that wouldn't tolerate opposing views and respect minority opinions. The media presented the Bushies as -- to quote a slur from NBC anchor Brian Williams -- "anti-gay, pro-Jesus...

(Must see video...Ugh) The limitless imagination of the American marketing mind came to the fore again this week, as a San Francisco Burger King franchise unveiled its “Proud Whopper” in honor of LGBT Week. It’s exactly the same as a regular flame-grilled Whopper, but inside its rainbow-colored wrapper read the words, “We are all the same inside.” Senior Vice President Fernando Machado told Fox News, “It showcases who we are as a brand. It shows how we, as a brand, believe in self-expression.” The fast food chain even produced a video to highlight the campaign, ending with a little girl...

Video at link

Monday at the White House while hosting a reception to observe LGBT Pride Month, President Barack Obama call his White House Pastry Chef Bill Yosses "the crust master"

The TV reporter was caught up in a discussion about the rarity of openly gay CEOs when he said, ‘I think Tim Cook is open about the fact he’s gay.’ Simon Hobbs is likely wishing he could press rewind. The CNBC co-anchor spoke too soon during a live segment of "Squawk on the Street" Friday when he accidentally outed Apple CEO Tim Cook. New York Times columnist and CNBC contributor James B. Stewart spoke about his recent column dealing with the "tortured life" former BP chief John Browne led as a closeted gay CEO. "I just found it very, very...

The rapid decline in Americans' tobacco use has leveled off, and now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling for new taxes, regulations and warnings to force Americans to kick the habit. In a new report, the CDC found that 50 million, or one in five, Americans use tobacco every day or some days, and 60 million, or one in four, “every day, some days or rarely.”It also revealed that the use of electronic cigarettes is surging, and and e-cigarettes now account for nearly 5 percent of the smoking market.Worse: Americans aged 18-24 showed up as the top...

While some might find the story laughable, I personally find it tragic: Don Ennis, an experienced TV news producer was fired from his job, allegedly for performance-related issues, after reappearing as Dawn Stacey Ennis, marking his third gender change since last year. With little sympathy, one website reported, “A television producer who has changed his gender three times has now more time on his hands to know who she or he is.” Worse still, the New York Daily News, apparently forgetting that Ennis had lived almost all of his life as a male, announced, “Dawn Ennis was canned weeks after...

A bill introduced June 12 by Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), would establish a special envoy at the State Department to coordinate America’s “global response” on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues and allow LGBT individuals “who have a well-founded fear of persecution...to seek protection in the United States.” The International Human Rights Defense Act of 2014 would reinforce the Obama administration’s already established foreign policy position on LGBT rights, including the public funding of overseas LGBT groups. In addition, the bill would require annual congressional briefings on “the status of the human rights of LGBT people internationally” and institute...

With much of the Obama administration's foreign policy in tatters, John Kerry is clear on at least one goal he hopes to achieve by the end of his time as secretary of state: having lesbian, bisexual, and transgender ambassadors representing the United States. In remarks to a GLIFAA (formerly Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies) Pride event in the Ben Franklin Room at the State Department, the secretary ran through a litany of accomplishments by the Obama administration that benefit the "LGBT/gay community." During his speech, Kerry said that, if confirmed, Ted Osius (nominated by President Obama for the...

The Department of Defense celebrates LGBT Pride month in June 2014. Here is the month-long announcement of this fact on an internal website at a U.S. Navy facility: In January 2014, the U.S. Navy celebrates homosexuality via the euphemism of rainbow-colored "diversity." Here is the several-week announcement of this celebration on an internal U.S. Navy facility: The Department of Defense celebrates LGBT Pride month in June 2013. Here is the month-long announcement of this fact on an internal website at a U.S. Navy facility:

President Obama took a much-deserved victory lap on LGBT equality Tuesday night, declaring before an adoring crowd in New York City that his administration has “been able to do more to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans than any administration in history.” And he’s right. As President Obama prepared to celebrate his historic record on advancing LGBT equality, dozens of protesters gathered on the street to point out one major black mark. Under this administration, approximately two million undocumented immigrants – many, LGBT – have been deported to countries where their sexual orientation or gender identity...

Some Christian groups are worried that President Barack Obama's forthcoming executive order guaranteeing the protection of LGBT individuals from employment discrimination with businesses that have federal contracts may not have sufficient religious liberty protections. While the order has not yet been written up, concerns have been leveled by various individuals that the order might not include a religious exemption and would force faith-based groups to engage in hiring practices that are in opposition to the teachings of their faith. "The big question is: will the Executive Order drive out faith-based organizations out of federal contracting?" Stanley Carlson-Thies, founder and president...

Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the U. S. House of Representatives Minority Leader, and one of the most powerful Catholic politicians in the United States, has recently warned the Most Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, the Archbishop of San Francisco, to cancel his plans to speak at the June 19 National Organization for Marriage march on the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. Calling the event “venom masquerading as virtue,” Pelosi urged Archbishop Cordileone to stay away from the event, and “join us in seeking to promote reconciliation rather than division and hatred.” Pelosi has partnered with other self-described Catholics including California Lt. Governor Gavin...

Author's Note: The idea for this column isn't terribly original, as this YouTube video attests.Some readers have written questioning my series of columns lampooning the lavender graduation at UNC-Wilmington. That is the ceremony where UNCW graduates are given purple cords to show that they are gay and lavender cords to show they approve of homosexuality. Students then wear these cords when they get their degrees at the university-wide graduation ceremony. Some self-proclaimed conservatives have reasoned that since participation in the ceremony is optional, lavender graduation isn't a topic worthy of column space. That view is misguided as it fails to...

NY Magazine is reporting that “Before she was married to New York City public advocate and Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, Chirlane McCray was a lesbian. “ How is this possible? “Once gay, always gay.” Isn’t this what we’ve always heard? “I was born that way. . . Homosexuality is not a choice. . . You didn’t choose to be heterosexual. I didn’t choose to be homosexual.” The claims go on and on. Gm When someone leaves the same-sex lifestyle, the homosexual community goes into recovery mode: “The person’s in denial.” Is Mrs. De Blasio in denial? The homosexual...

Happy Fathers Day, everyone. (I know it sucks to spend the day with civilians…) And on that note you should know that Disney and Warner Bros are sorting out the rights to Father Of The Bride 3 with Charles Shyer to write and direct (Nancy Meyers passed) and Steve Martin to return. (What else does he have going?) The twist in this threequel is that Little Matty is now 29 and gay and getting married to a Navy SEAL’s son. Father of the bride George is "thunderstruck and speechless" and has problems with the whole gay thing. So wife Nina...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took the lead this week in a high-profile lobbying effort to pressure San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone not to attend the controversial March for Marriage event, which she characterized as "venom masquerading as virtue." Pelosi, who is one of the country's most powerful Catholic politicians, made a passionate appeal to the archbishop not to participate in the National Organization for Marriage's June 19 march on the Supreme Court in Washington. Cordileone, who is one of the featured speakers at the event, was a leader in the campaign for Proposition 8, the 2008 California anti-gay-marriage initiative....

If you sense things are getting crazier at a faster rate lately you’re not alone in that feeling. Some of this is no doubt due to the fact that long ago the “LBGT” movement locked arms with the T’s — the Transgenders. Much like Vladmir Putin and the supporters of an Islamic state in Iraq, the transgenders believe they need to strike now while Obama is still in office. It’s their turn to demand acceptance. There’s a history behind all of this insanity. To learn more about it you should read BarbWire contributor Michael Brown’s book A Queer Thing Happened...

A study conducted earlier this year is being manipulatively utilized by LGBTQ activists to promote their pro-homosexual propaganda. After testing the DNA of 400 “gay” men in the U.S., scientists claim that they have found more evidence for the genetic causation of sexual orientation. However, they are now conveniently replacing the phrase “caused by” with “influenced, affected by” or “contributes to.” Unless paying close attention, the undiscerning reader might not notice the intentionally nuanced language. Moreover, the results of this new research, like all of the other studies that preceded it, are not compelling. The UK Guardian, reporting that “at...

The Justice Department will be having a grand celebration today of being gay. The event will take place in the prestigious Great Hall and will feature an appearance by none other than Attorney General Eric Holder. All DOJ employees are invited to attend. A Justice Department employee snatched a flyer advertising the event from the walls of the DOJ and provided it to PJ Media. A full copy can be had at this link. If you cannot attend the pride party in person, Justice Department employees can sit at their desks and watch the fete unfold on JTN – the...

Robert Reilly is one of the more respected men in Washington, DC. As a very young man, he was a special adviser to President Reagan. He is a longtime music critic, specializing in teaching the emergence of amazing new orchestral music. He was a spokesman behind the green line during the Iraq war, reporting directly to Paul Bremer, head of the occupational authority. He led the Voice of America. Reilly's new book cannot get a hearing; there is a media blackout, a stonewall even among the conservative press who, according to a high-ranking think tank scholar at the Hudson Institute,...

On the 70th anniversary of D-Day, President Obama commended "the brave sacrifice of those who stormed ashore that day," but advised that "we must temper our admiration by the realization that the combat units involved were not racially integrated, no women were among the ranks, gays were still in-the-closet, and transgenders were not yet accorded full social acceptability they deserve." Obama congratulated himself "for having the fortitude and initiative to move forward on these critical fronts so that we can finally glimpse the goal that the men who died here 70 years ago gave their lives to help secure." if...

LGBT rights just got another big push from the president himself. The White House on Friday issued a proclamation by President Barack Obama calling on Americans to eliminate prejudice “everywhere it exists,” declaring June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.

Read at link.

After Minnesota became one of the first states in the Midwest to legalize same-sex marriage, it became a new travel ‘hot-spot.’ According to the New York Times, Minneapolis is now on the list of “up and coming LGBT” places to visit, especially with the Pride celebration coming up. New York Times completed the survey after talking with gay and lesbian travel experts. It estimates the annual economic impact of LGBT travelers to be about $70 billion a year in the United States. Other cities on the hot spot list include Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the Big Island on Hawaii, and Pittsburgh.

...Regardless of the question of whether he has had his genitals amputated, Cox is not a woman, but an effigy of a woman. Sex is a biological reality, and it is not subordinate to subjective impressions, no matter how intense those impressions are, how sincerely they are held, or how painful they make facing the biological facts of life. No hormone injection or surgical mutilation is sufficient to change that. Genital amputation and mutilation is the extreme expression of the phenomenon, but it is hardly outside the mainstream of contemporary medical practice. The trans self-conception, if the autobiographical literature is...

The National Park Service announced Friday that it will launch a study to identify places of historical significance to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. Secretary Sally Jewell made the announcement at The Stonewall Inn, which was the site of the 1969 riots that helped launch the modern gay rights movement. It is currently the only site in the country designated a national landmark. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/30/obama-administration-launches-250k-study-identify-/#ixzz33FmB3H9X Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

The National Park Service announced Friday that it will launch a study to identify places of historical significance to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. Secretary Sally Jewell made the announcement at The Stonewall Inn, which was the site of the 1969 riots that helped launch the modern gay rights movement. It is currently the only site in the country designated a national landmark.

Continuing their commitment to silence anyone who might stand in the way of their agenda, gay and lesbian groups are now beginning to criticize supporters who are thought to be insufficiently loyal. The most recent case involves Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor, who is married to the University’s president, Teresa A. Sullivan. A man with impeccable progressive credentials, Laycock has been a longtime supporter of gay rights and same-sex marriage—filing an amicus brief in the 2012 Supreme Court case, United States v. Windsor that urged the court to extend same-sex marriage benefits to every state in...

In California, it may soon be legal for gay men to list themselves as “mother” on birth certificates, and similarly, for lesbians to cite themselves as “father.” Or, the gay parent could simply opt for the more generic label of “parent,” The Associated Press reported. That’s because lawmakers on Thursday passed through the state Assembly with a 51-13 vote a measure to “modernize” the definition of the family to reflect same-sex unions.

The first openly gay Episcopal bishop, who became a symbol for gay rights far beyond the church while deeply dividing the world's Anglicans, plans to divorce his husband. Bishop Gene Robinson announced the end of his marriage to Mark Andrew in an email sent to the Diocese of New Hampshire, where he served for nine years before retiring in 2012. Robinson would not disclose details about the end of their 25-year relationship but wrote Sunday in The Daily Beast he owed a debt to Andrew "for standing by me through the challenges of the last decade."

A national organization is launching a three-year, $8.5 million campaign to promote LGBT equality and push for new legal protections in three Southern states dominated by conservative politics and religion and known for resistance to change: Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi. Decades after groups used boycotts, marches, sit-ins, pickets and mass rallies to end legalized racial segregation and push for equal protection for blacks, the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign is planning a new kind of civil rights movement. It’s one based on using chats and front-porch visits between relatives and friends to foster an environment more welcoming toward people of all...

The Hemlock Society Compassion and Choices has no shame. Now, they have bootstrapped assisted suicide onto the recent success of LGBT issues. From one of its ubiquitous emails: 1994 was a different time in America. A vicious plague was erasing entire communities across America and hope was scarce. The dark specter of HIV/AIDS loomed large as treatment options were unreliable, and many research programs were starved for funding. Too many in the LGBT community in the later stages of this disease–seeing their friends and loved ones torn apart by it–turned to desperate acts of violence to escape the inevitable, and often excruciating...

Addressing an event on “global LGBT rights,” a senior State Department official on Wednesday sounded a note of caution about how the U.S. promotes such issues in religiously or culturally conservative countries, warning of the risk of a backlash there. “We should maintain enough humility to remember that we are terribly new at promoting LGBT human rights as U.S. foreign policy. Of course we want to do good – but we should do it, with patience, in a way that results in the maximum benefit for those we want to help.” The Obama administration’s State Department has made promotion of...

PORTLAND, OR, April 8, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A soon-to-be opened natural foods store in Oregon is in danger of never opening its doors after homosexual activists publicized remarks its Mormon owner made online supporting true marriage and organized a boycott targeting not just the store, but its suppliers. Chauncy Childs had planned to open Moreland Farmers Pantry, an organic, locally-sourced grocery store, in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland. But because of comments she made under a pseudonym during a discussion on Facebook last year in which she defended true marriage and said business owners should have the right to refuse...

The Christian organization Focus on the Family is releasing a movie in theaters May 6 called “Irreplaceable” about the value of traditional families, the importance of fathers being engaged in their children’s lives and the healing power of forgiveness. But apparently to some advocates for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community, that’s a cardinal sin. LGBT advocates have launched an effort to disparage the movie online, petition against it and work to make sure “Irreplaceable” isn’t seen in your local theater. Focus President Jim Daly reports in a blog post that some of the more than 700...

Just ten days after becoming CEO of web company Mozilla, Brendan Eich resigned after drawing the ire of LGBT advocates. In 2008, Eich donated money to the Proposition 8 campaign, an effort around legislation to make same-sex marriage illegal in California. When he was announced as the new Mozilla head, members of the LGBT community and even Mozilla employees expressed their dissatisfaction through social media and called for Eich’s resignation. Many have since spoken out against the backlash calling it unfair. On Monday’s “NewsOne Now,” Roland Martin was joined by a panel of guests to discuss the news, whether the...

I have written about the incident at the High School in Charlotte, where Dominican Sister Jane Laurel gave a talk on human sexuality that produced sparked a mob reaction. Spittle-flecked nutty, bullying, intimidation ensue. From LifeNews: Charlotte diocese backs nun who gave school talk promoting Church teaching on homosexuality CHARLOTTE, NC, April 7, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The bishop of Charlotte is backing a Dominican nun who has been at the center of a fiery controversy since last month when she gave a speech promoting Catholic teaching on sexuality to students at Charlotte Catholic High School. After a public meeting with...

As we enter this golden age of tolerance and diversity, the nation’s gay rights community is sending a warning message to Americans: If you don’t support gay marriage, you don’t deserve a job. Apparently, Brendan Eich did not get that message. He’s the former chief executive officer at Mozilla, the technology group that gave us the Firefox Web browser. Eich resigned under a firestorm of controversy after it was revealed he had donated $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that protected traditional marriage. It’s unclear who outed Eich. But that really doesn’t matter. Once his donation...