Free Republic

Germany celebrates its first gay marriages on Sunday as same-sex unions become legal after decades of struggle, but campaigners say the battle for equal rights isn't over yet.Wedding bells will ring out in Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover and other German cities where local authorities will exceptionally open their doors on a Sunday to allow gay couple to say "I do" on the day the law comes into effect. Bodo Mende, 60, and his partner Karl Kreile, 59, who have been together since 1979, will be the first to tie the knot in the German capital. "It will be an emotional but...

John Haller is in Facebook prison. Clearly, he must be saying the right things. Help spread the word and get his message out. We may be experiencing to advent of two classic novels in our lifetime. Were Orwell and Rand modern day prophets? Consider this: In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, the Thought Police (Thinkpol) are the secret police of the superstate Oceania, who discover and punish "thoughtcrimes" which are defined as personal and political thoughts unapproved by "the Party." Thinkpol used criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance to monitor and arrest all citizens of "Oceania" who would commit...

It’s been a beautiful spring day in the suburbs of Pennsylvania on this Thursday, June 7th, 1961. You just got home from work and your wife is almost finished preparing one of her typically delicious dinners. Your kids, a boy and two girls, aged 15, 13, and 9, have been out all day riding their bikes around the neighborhood and playing with friends. Now everybody’s hungry and ready to sit down for the family meal. Last night was game night, and you barely emerged with a victory in Monopoly. Your kids are getting good, and your wife, normally the more...

You might have thought after the politicization of football and children’s library books there would be nothing left to politicize but you would be wrong. Robin Givhans has managed to make the case that even clothing is political – not to mention racist. Before we get into the specifics, allow me to establish Ms. Givhan’s credentials. A Detroit native, she graduated from Princeton, holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan and has been a fashion writer – for the Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, The Daily Beast, and currently the Washington Post - for...

A Catholic university in Wisconsin has drawn outraged criticism for agreeing to host an LGBT-themed dance on its campus next spring. Marquette University, a Jesuit-run university located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will feature an event called “Pride Prom” next April in one of its campus ballrooms. Nearly 20,000 people have signed a petition condemning the planned celebration. The building in which the dance will take place also contains a chapel in which resides the Eucharist, which Catholics believe to be the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

United Methodist Church bishop Dr. Karen Oliveto is not only a lesbian, she also believes (and publicly teaches) that Jesus was a bigot filled with prejudices. She does say that Jesus grew and changed, and that's her point. Bishop Oliveto admonishes, "If Jesus can change, if he can give up his bigotries and prejudices, if he can realize that he had made his life too small, and if, in this realization, he grew closer to others and closer to God, than so can we."

OutRight Action International has published quotes from speakers at the meeting of the LGBTI Core Group during the recent United Nations General Assembly.The LGBTI Equal Rights Association for Western Balkans and Turkey held its annual conference in Podgorica, Montenegro on September 20-23. AP reported that police provided protection for “an LGBT pride event” in a country “noted for its macho culture.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that an event organizer “says LGBT right activists want harsher penalties for antigay attacks that he says currently are treated as ‘ordinary fistfights.’”Activists around the world marked Celebrate Bisexuality Day (Bi Visibility Day) on...

Since Donald Trump was elected, marginalized communities have understood that life could become more difficult, but no one could have imagined just how difficult. From the moment Trump was inaugurated, we have borne witness to the ways in which his presidency has negatively affected our lives. From instituting a Muslim ban to emboldening and supporting white supremacists; from banning transgender people from serving in the military to ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, it’s clear to anyone looking that this administration isn’t acting in the best interests of marginalized communities.

Who's next in North Korea? By Choe Sang-Hun International Herald Tribune TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2005 SEOUL Kim Jong Il, the "Dear Leader" of North Korea, is pushing an age - 63 - when he is widely expected to designate a successor who will carry the mantle of power he inherited from his own father in the Communist world's first and only dynasty. But he has problems. His eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, 34, has not been home for years, wandering in self-imposed exile overseas and reportedly on the run from hit men hired by supporters of his stepbrothers. His second...

Senior cadet Steven Fox from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs is accused of assaulting a date he brought to an AFA dance back in 2015, KKTV reported. Court papers accuse Fox of penetrating the man with a finger without his consent and rubbing himself against the man’s leg for sexual gratification, The Gazette reported. Fox’s defense lawyers say the acts were consensual and the two men were dating at the time.

FULL TITLE: Lesbian couple who beat their 5-year-old son with a hammer, duct-taped his eyes shut and kicked him in the groin in a brutal attack that caused him to suffer two strokes are jailed for 20 years A lesbian couple from Oklahoma have been jailed for 20 years after they tortured one of the women's five-year-old son's, beating him with a hammer and kicked him in the groin in a brutal attack which causes him to suffer two strokes. Rachel Stevens, 29, and her partner Kayla Jones, 26, pleaded no contest on Friday to child abuse and child neglect...

White House attorney Ty Cobb was overheard talking about the Russia probe and some of his colleagues at a Washington steakhouse by a New York Times reporter, the publication reported Sunday night. Cobb, who was hired to oversee the White House's legal and media response to the investigation into Russian meddling, was heard talking openly about the Russia investigation with John Dowd, a Washington lawyer with experience in high-profile political cases. "The White House counsel's office is being very conservative with this stuff," Cobb reportedly told Dowd at BLT Steak in Washington last week. "Our view is we're not hiding...

Do Senate President Robert Travaglini (D-East Boston) and his Democratic Senate colleagues even have a copy of the Massachusetts Constitution? They probably figure they don't need the 227-year-old document since it's easier to make up the rules as they go along. It's now up to the Supreme Judicial Court to remind them of their constitutional duty to properly set a special election date to fill the seat of Sen. Cheryl Jacques (D-Needham). Notice, by the way, we didn't refer to the former Sen. Jacques or the recently retired Sen. Jacques. Jacques is still the senator of the Norfolk, Bristol and...

Scandal: The person who leaked the confidential data of a conservative group to its political foes has been identified by investigators. But he's protected by the very law he broke and an attorney general who doesn't care. In March 2012, someone at the Internal Revenue Service released the confidential donor lists of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which supports traditional marriage, to its political opponent, the liberal Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a supporter of gay marriage. At that time, Joe Solmonese, a left-wing activist and Huffington Post contributor, was the president of the HRC. Solmonese also became a 2012...

ONE of the "bundlers" who has raised $50,000 to $100,000 for the Barack Obama presidential campaign is Terrence Bean, who once controlled the biggest producer of gay porn in America. Bean, the first gay on Sen. Obama's National Finance Committee, is the sole trustee of the Charles M. Holmes Foundation, which owned Falcon Studios, Jock Studios and Mustang Studios, the producers of about $10 million worth of all-male pornography a year. Chuck Holmes, who founded Falcon in 1972, died of AIDS in 2000. San Francisco's new gay and lesbian community center was named after Holmes two years later, thanks to...

It's every parent's nightmare, but true: Major U.S. corporations are funding a campaign of sophisticated, psychologically intrusive "gay" indoctrination programs targeting very young children in elementary schools across America. It’s part of a very well-planned and well-funded effort to reach children as young as possible without their parents’ intervention. The national program, called “Welcoming Schools”, skillfully works on the minds of young children in three ways: (1) Introducing the concept of homosexuality to children. (2) Telling them that homosexuality is normal and natural. (3) Telling them that their parents or friends who portray homosexuality in a less than positive way...

Facing backlash from high-ranking current and former CIA officials, the Dean of the Kennedy School of Government withdrew an invitation for Chelsea Manning to serve as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics in late-night reversal Friday. “I now think that designating Chelsea Manning as a Visiting Fellow was a mistake, for which I accept responsibility,” Kennedy School Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf wrote in a statement posted to the school’s website shortly after midnight. The school withdrew the invitation to Manning—a transgender activist and former U.S. Army soldier who was imprisoned after disclosing over 700,000 classified government documents— after...

Bishop E.W. Jackson, who heads Exodus Faith Ministries in Virginia and is a former U.S. Senate candidate for Virginia, said that liberals constatntly seek to mock Christians who view natural disasters as divine punishments and they do this, along with groups like the KKK and the LGBT community because they all share a "virulent hatred of true Christianity." “What is the similarity between the Ku Klux Klan and the left?" said Bishop Jackson on his Sept. 12 radio show The Awakening. " And I’ll include the LGBT community in this. What do they have in common? What do the...

One day in 2012, Charles Craig and David Mullins entered Jack Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, to order a wedding cake. Phillips, a Christian and self-described “cake artist” who custom-designs cakes for various occasions, politely declined, citing his religious beliefs.Having previously, in the words of his lawyer, refused to bake cakes for Halloween, or with anti-American, anti-family, or what he considered profane messages, Phillips also would not design a cake to celebrate an event in violation of his understanding of Leviticus XX, 13.Craig and Mullins promptly filed a complaint alleging discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation...

The response to the Nashville Statement continues with some scholars now saying it damages the church's already negative reputation with homosexuals, and lacks pastoral wisdom even though they agree with the document theologically.Writing on his website Sunday, New York Times bestselling author Preston Sprinkle, who is currently a full-time speaker, noted that although he stood with the authors and signers of the Nashville Statement — a document published last week by the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission that promotes the long-held Christian view of marriage and sexual ethics — it falls short on important...