Free Republic

<p>Lawmakers are considering bill that would make it easier to charge and prosecute teachers with distributing harmful material to minors.</p> <p>Proponents say that would give needed protection to students. Opponents say it could criminalize the teaching of biology or controversial works of literature and that communication is a better option.</p>

The U.S. Supreme Court has recently announced it will review a November decision by the Sixth Circuit Court—which represents Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee—that upheld marriage as between a man and a woman. Will the Supreme Court side with the two judges in the majority, or with the one dissenting judge? The majority ruling dismisses any possibility of a constitutional right to gay marriage, while the dissent focuses on an entirely different question of whether gay parents are as good as straight ones. The latter controversy is something that the majority decision explicitly refused to weigh in on, so...

In the United Kingdom, a mother-of-six will be taken to the hospital and forced to undergo a sterilization.In 2014, the department of health and social services applied for permission to enter the womanÂ’s home and take her to get sterilized against her will. The woman, who has not been identified, reportedly has a learning disability.At a hearing at the Court of Protection, they argued that sterilization is necessary because the womanÂ’s health would be put at risk if she had more children. However, John McKendrick, who represented a health authority, hospital trust and council said the application for sterilization was...

February 3, 2015 (CrisisMagazine.com) -- In November of 1996 First Things hosted a symposium titled “The Judicial Usurpation of Politics” in which contributors discussed the threat to American democracy posed by the Supreme Court instated imposition of abortion on America. Nothing rivals the sheer volume of innocent human beings killed by abortion and yet First Things saw fit to focus not on the babies themselves or the mothers and fathers, but on the threat to democracy and the American experiment posed by the judicial over-reach that legalized abortion.The legalization of same-sex “marriage” does not bring with it the innocent blood which cries to heaven,...

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX, February 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- A 12-year-old Texas boy who slipped into a coma after suffering a severe asthma attack has begun breathing on his own – just hours after hospital officials fought to take him off life support because they believed he was legally “brain dead.”  Now, his family has obtained a court order requiring the hospital to provide nourishment to the boy via a feeding tube, and hope to have him transferred to another facility within the week.Joey Cronin has been at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi since January 14, when he suffered cardiac...

C.S. Lewis wrote in 1952 that “perversions of the sex instinct are numerous, hard to cure, and frightful.” The good Oxford don did not live to see the times we now live in, times in which progressive extremists can state a straight face that actually there are no sexual perversions – times in which even the long-held taboos against pedophilia and incest are falling like dominoes. The evidence that in the name of absolute sexual freedom, traditional taboos are no longer to be honored is everywhere. While sexual perversion has always existed, it has never been as widely tolerated and...

During Loretta Lynch's confirmation hearing Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tried to take the attorney general nominee down the slippery-slope argument often made against the marriage equality movement by inquiring what the legal difference is between marriage of same-sex couples and that of three or more people. 'What is the legal difference between a state -- a ban on same-sex marriage being unconstitutional but a ban on polygamy being constitutional?" he inquired at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "Could you try to articulate how one could be banned under the Constitution and the other not?" Lynch, who is the current...

January 28, 2015 (ThePublicDiscourse.com) -- It reads like fiction: an estimated 50 to 75 percent of American men were infected with a sexually transmitted disease (STD); in thousands of families, an STD killed one, two, even five of their children; and an incredible 30 percent of all blindness was attributed to STDs. The transmission of STDs was an urgent concern of national health and security—so serious, in fact, that soldiers were court-martialed if they were found to be infected. These statistics are not from a third-world country in the midst of the AIDs pandemic. These are estimates of syphilis and gonorrhea...

It is no secret that the Catholic Church is under severe social pressure to promote homosexuality and to depart from the idea that holy marriage between opposite-sex couples should be the only form of marriage promoted. As well, the new “Celibacy Movement” for “Gay Catholics” is being pushed into the limelight, despite its misguided approach to growing in holiness. LifeSiteNews is proud to present a novel perspective on the debate around same-sex ‘marriage’ authored by a person who experiences same-sex attractions but who joyfully chooses to live chastely, in accordance with Catholic teachings. He is a member of Courage International,...

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 28, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- After a revolt by Republican women indefinitely delayed the House vote on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Act, Sen. Lindsey Graham has promised that when he introduces his version in the Senate he will leave out a provision requiring women to report their rapes to the authorities. “Nobody’s for rape,” Graham told Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill. Republican congresswomen led by Renee Ellmers and Jackie Walorski spiked the vote, which was to take place on the same day as the 2015 March for Life, over a legal mandate that women who...

A northern California high school where sex ed was taught by members of Planned Parenthood apparently had at least two instructors with interesting sidelines. Parents of children who attend Acalanes Union High School in Lafayette, Calif., along with local area groups, had been demanding for months the district tell them exactly who was teaching the sex education program. Some of the answers they received did not make them happy. At least two of the instructors had questionable day jobs, with one conducting sex toy workshops at a local porn shop. Another, who dubbed herself a “pleasure activist,” had attended pornography...

The “Director of Civil and Human Rights” for the United Methodist Church, Bill Mefford, posted a picture to Twitter yesterday mocking the pro-life marchers. Mefford, who works for the Church’s lobby arm, the General Board of Church and Society, ridiculed the marchers by posting a picture of himself standing before them with a sign saying “I march for sandwiches.”[...]

I will never forget the first ultrasound of my unborn child. Expecting an idle smudge on a grainy screen, my wife and I were greeted by a hyperactive baby, all four flailing limbs foiling the doctor’s attempt at accurate measurement. Our child was beautiful, and very much alive. This week marks the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and across the country pro-lifers gather to profess the humanity of unborn children. However, as Brennan Manning noted in The Ragamuffin Gospel, “the danger of the pro-life position… is that it can be frighteningly selective.” Recent events provide repeated and disturbing evidence...

I know there are many angered by the title of this post, but the truth hurts. I cannot tell you the number of times I have been to political events where a politician kisses babies and talks Jesus so the pro-lifers in the crowd get thigh sweats and send the politician to Washington. When the politician takes up with his mistress or pays for an abortion or, as Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) did, undermines the pro-life cause, they are just horrified. But still they return predictable to the GOP for more abuse and disappointment. Maybe it is time for a...

A number of thoughtful Evangelical commentators (captured here by my brave and faithful friend Owen Strachan) have responded pointedly to Elizabeth Dias's Time story, "Inside the Evangelical Fight Over Gay Marriage." They have demonstrated logically, theologically and philosophically why the movement to abandon Scripture's teaching on human sexuality in order to accommodate supposedly Evangelical advocates of normalizing same-sex "marriage" and attraction is an offense to God and the Gospel.At the Family Research Council, we have joined them in addressing the concerns of younger Evangelicals regarding homosexuality, in recognizing the uniqueness of male-female complementarity and in celebrating God's plan for sexual intimacy...

The history of human knowledge as it relates to the human body is a fascinating and terrible thing. In every age, the ability for physicians and other medical practitioners to effectively treat wounds or combat disease has been constrained by the technology – or lack thereof – available at the time. In the past, people often died from illnesses or injuries that are quite treatable today. Over the centuries, we’ve come a long way. Our understanding of human physiology and biology has enabled us to improve quality of life and extend life expectancy beyond anything our ancestors could have imagined.Despite...

In 2013, pro-abortion writer, Mary Elizabeth Williams penned an article titled, “So What if Abortion Ends Life?” Honestly, her article is probably the most outrageous piece of abortion propaganda I’ve every read. However, it was surprisingly refreshing because I don’t think I’ve ever heard an abortion advocate blatantly admit, “Yes, babies in the womb are human beings, but so what.”Williams starts by explaining that one of the most clever moves pro-lifers have ever pulled was our so-called “co-opting of the word “life.’” She writes, “Life! Who wants to argue with that? Who wants be on the side of … not-life?...

Identity theft, the Rev. David Young says, is nothing new.Its been going on for hundreds years with African Americans as its target, according to the pastor of Prevailing Word World Outreach Center. And today, he adds, it is made manifest in a disproportionately high number of black abortions.Young spoke earlier this week at the Light a Candle for Life program that followed the lighting of 1,000 luminaries on Kennedy Square. The theme of the annual pro-life event was “Black Lives Matter — Every Life Matters,” and Young painted a picture of a centuries-long effort to marginalize and diminish American blacks.Since...

FULL TITLE: Girls as young as TEN are being given the contraceptive implant - sparking fears it puts them at risk of 'horrendous abuse' Girls as young as 10 have been given the contraceptive implant, potentially exposing them to ‘horrendous abuse’. The primary school age children are among thousands of minors given the slow-release contraceptive device since 2010 despite being far under the age of consent. The implants, which have never been tested on under-18s, were given to at least three 10-year-olds in the last five years, according to figures obtained by MailOnline. East Lancashire NHS Trust, University Hospitals of...

Background: Hollywood executives have chosen to release the film version of the "erotic" novel 50 Shades of Grey in theaters this Valentine's Day - Feb. 14, 2015. While the marketing campaign is selling the movie as a "romance," there is nothing authentically romantic about the tale of a sado-masochistic sexual relationship between a young, vulnerable student, Anastasia, and an older billionaire, Christian Grey. Critics have described the book as misogynistic, pornographic, exploitative, sexually violent, and anti-romance – and there is little reason to expect the film will be anything different. Opposition to the book and movie crosses the ideological spectrum,...