Free Republic

A group of House Armed Services Committee Democrats is demanding answers from the Pentagon on why it is “backing away” from its annual Pride celebration. “We write to express our concern that Pentagon leadership is backing away from supporting and celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) service members and Department of Defense (DoD) employees,” the eight Democrats wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis. “The fight for dignity and inclusion for LGBT individuals in our Armed Forces should remain a steadfast priority for the Department of Defense.” The letter was organized by Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.). This...

A Catholic church in Lexington is making a statement that's getting attention. St. Paul Catholic Church on W. Short Street put up a banner letting members and supporters of the LGBTQ community know they are welcome at their church. "This is a church that's open to all people and hopefully, this sign gets that across," said Stan "JR" Zerkowski, facilitator of Catholic LGBT ministry. The sign reads, "LGBTQ+ Catholic - Family, Friends & Allies - All Are Welcome." The banner has been up for weeks and will continue to stay up through Lexington's Pride Festival.

Sweden is set to open the country’s first “LGBT-certified” sports stadium with dressing rooms and bathroom facilities specially adapted to be inclusive of everyone “regardless of gender identity”. Teams and sports associations wishing to use the Studenternas stadium in Uppsala, which local media reports will be ready for the 2019 soccer season, will have to undergo training in LGBT legislation and ideology.

The Chicago Dyke March, an LGBT pride parade, prominently featured Palestinian flags one year after ejecting marchers waving Jewish flags. Participants in Sunday’s march can be seen waving Palestinian flags in a video posted by the Windy City Times, a newspaper serving Chicago’s LGBT community. Marchers also waved Mexican, Puerto Rican and rainbow flags, and chanted “No pride in occupation, no pride in deportation,” according to the newspaper. The march this year was explicitly “a very pro-Palestinian event,” according to the Windy City Times. Last year, three women were ejected from the Dyke March for waving rainbow flags emblazoned with...

A Washington, D.C., restaurant issued an apology to a transgender woman who said she was kicked out for trying to use the women’s bathroom. Charlotte Clymer, a communications staffer for the Human Rights Campaign, wrote about the incident on a Twitter thread Saturday afternoon. Clymer wrote that she was at Cuba Libre Restaurant and Rum Bar on Friday night for a bachelorette party when a staff member asked for her ID. She said he told her the identification needed to read “female” in order to use the women’s restroom. Charlotte Clymer🏳️‍🌈 ✔ @cmclymer Last night, I was told by the...

Cynthia Nixon saluted her son Samuel today as the pair celebrate the 14th Annual Trans Day of Action. The proud mom and Sex and the City star, who is currently running for Governor of New York, took to Instagram to post a picture of the pair and openly share for the first time that 21-year-old Samuel, born Samantha, is transgender.

A 10-year-old boy dressed in “drag” as a sexy woman stars in a new campaign video for the upcoming New York Pride event this June. The 30-second promotional video released February 21 shows Desmond Napoles, also known as “Desmond is Amazing,” dressed as a woman, wearing eyeshadow, and putting on lipstick for a drag show

And a big shoutout to Progressives for helping us redefine fatherhood: TV Fathers Before the Progressive EnlightenmentTV Fathers After the Progressive Enlightenment Any questions?Happy Father’s Day to all the good Dads out there who somehow managed, with or without the manual.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

Like many new dads, Sabastion Sparks knew parenting would come with serious challenges. But most new dads didn't give birth to their child. They didn't breastfeed them. And they don't endure glares from strangers when they go shopping with their wife and their toddler son. Sabastion, 24, is a transgender man who lives with his wife Angel in suburban Atlanta. Assigned the female gender at birth, he began transitioning five years ago . It's a process that felt more complete last month when he had surgery to remove his breasts.

. Earlier this week Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was forced to apologize after eating at Chick-fil-A… during Pride Month! The horror! Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey ignited a backlash online after revealing that he ate at Chick-fil-A this month. On Saturday, Dorsey posted a photo on Twitter with the caption "Boost @ChickfilA," showing he had saved 10% on a $31.58 order at the fast-food chain. A "boost" is a cashback reward Square users can earn when using a Cash Card, which is a debit card from the payment platform. Critics immediately seized on Dorsey's support of Chick-fil-A — whose...

British LGBT campaigner Peter Tatchell has been detained by Russian police in Moscow ahead of the opening ceremony of the World Cup. Mr Tatchell was detained for what Russian police described as an illegal protest. He had attempted to hold a solitary demonstration near the Red Square to draw attention to human rights abuses against gay men in Chechnya.A Reuters reporter saw a Russian policeman inform Mr Tatchell that it was illegal to hold such protests during the tournament. Mr Tatchell was holding a sign which said: "Putin fails to act against Chechnya torture of gay people." The policeman told...

7-year-old trans child Milan Tyler won the Los Angeles Pride Parade with a fierce strut in heels on the streets of West Hollywood, California, on June 10. Thousands cheered on participants at this year’s parade for LGBT Pride Month in June, and Tyler received some of the biggest support. “I’m not deciding what my kid wants to wear and how to behave when it comes to the things he likes,” his mother Maggi said. Tyler was born Ryder but recently asked to be called Milan instead. His mother and sister London were asked to attend the parade by Brits...

The five flag poles that line the entrance sidewalk to the VA Northern Indiana Health Care System at 2121 Lake Ave. typically fly flags of the country's five branches of military:  Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard. On Tuesday, through, those flags were taken down and just one was flown in their place: an LGBT pride flag. -snip The VA Northern Indiana Healthcare System issued the following statement: "Logistically, we could not add a flag without removing a flag from the poles outside our VA. Rather than single out one military branch's flag to be temporarily replaced with the LGBT flag, we...

So you can imagine how upsetting it was for me when Chick-fil-A’s president, Dan Cathy, proudly came out as a homophobe in 2012 by claiming, “We are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,’ and I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.” Even worse, the company put its money where Cathy’s vile mouth was by donating millions of dollars each year...

During a TV interview in 2011, I quoted the words of a Christian lawyer who said that just as gay activists were once put in jail, they now want to put us in jail. For making this comment, I was vilified by Right Wing Watch, mocked by gay activists, and ridiculed by others. I wonder what those critics are saying today in light of a recently proposed California bill that would send nursing home caregivers to jail for “misgendering” their nursing home patients. As a Daily Caller headline announces, “California Could Start Jailing People Who Don’t Use Transgender Pronouns.”

A resolution submitted to the Southern Baptist Convention for its annual meeting in Dallas, Texas, has called on the nation's largest Protestant denomination to reject "homosexual identity politics" and state bans on conversion therapy. Titled "On Ministry and Counseling to Lead People from Homosexuality to Heterosexuality," the resolution, among other things, asks the SBC to "offer loving assistance to people suffering from same-sex attraction, so that they may turn from homosexuality to heterosexuality" and to reject "as heresy any claims that God makes people homosexual." "... the movement against so-called 'conversion therapy' poses an immediate threat to Christian obedience to...

President Trump didn't play along with the usual narrative at the G-7 summit, and the liberal media predictably characterized him as the villain: Even before then, Mr. Trump had left himself the outlier in the annual session. By departing before the end, he skipped sessions about climate change, oceans and clean energy — ceding not only America’s leadership on those topics, but also its very seat at the table. Lost in this breathless "transcription" of events is the question of whether America should lead on so-called "issues" such as climate change, oceans, and supposedly "clean" energy.

Got this in my Email today. The beat goes on. https://www.harrys.com/en/us/products/shave-with-pride-set?utm_source=penpal&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20180608_pride_set_us_learn_gif&utm_content=shop_now

Well, as a reader points out, we have our first court ruling on religious liberty since Masterpiece Cakeshop. An Arizona appeals court even cited the ruling in its own ruling against two Phoenix calligraphers who said that doing same-sex wedding invitations was a violation of their constitutionally protected religious beliefs. Here’s a link to a PDF of the full text of the ruling. Excerpts:

The most talented and subtle politician in the country showed this week, once again, that he has L.G.B.T. Americans’ back. Justice Anthony Kennedy led a seven-member Supreme Court majority in a decision that superficially looks like a defeat for gay and lesbian people — but is, in reality, one more rung quietly added to the rising ladder of equality. For years, legal scholars and some of his fellow jurists have disparaged Justice Kennedy’s opinions as muddled and vague. But the justice, to their frustration, has proved to be a brilliant politician, possessed of a seemingly infallible feel for how to...