Free Republic

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...