Free Republic

More than 110 prominent members of the legal profession shared stories about their abortions with the U.S. Supreme Court this week to try and persuade it to rule against a Texas law that they say limits access to the procedures. Their stories are part of a campaign encouraging women to talk openly about their experiences. In addition to the amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court (PDF), women have also been sharing their stories online. "People are just hungry for breaking the silence that has sadly, unfortunately surrounded abortion for years and years and years by speaking out about their...

DES MOINES, Iowa, January 6, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The Reverend Franklin Graham believes the United States of America is in danger, and will only be saved by turning back to God. And this can only be accomplished by Christians praying and bringing their faith to the public square. America’s problems are across the board, Rev. Graham said; spiritual, economic, and even racial, an area in which he believes the country is actually going backward. And he insists the answer is not found in politics. “We have economic problems; we have political problems,” Rev. Graham stated yesterday in Des Moines, IA....

January 6, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The father of GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz minced no words recently, telling an audience of evangelical Christians abortion is murder and that there are moral absolutes pertaining to life and sexuality. Reverend Rafael Cruz called on Americans to reject the politically correct language of liberals, such as “gay” for “homosexual” and “pro-choice” for abortion support. “We have to stop being politically correct,” Rev. Cruz said in a report from CNSNews.  “We have to stop acquiescing even to the wording that the liberals use.” Rev. Cruz was forthright in calling out the duplicity of culturally...

METAIRIE, Louisiana, January 5, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- The Supreme Court's longest-serving justice, Antonin Scalia, says "there is no place" in the U.S. Constitution for privileging secularism over religion. The idea of banishing religion from the public square is “absurd,” said the jurist, known for his straightforward style and “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution. "To tell you the truth, there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from? To be sure, you can't favor one denomination over another but can't favor religion over non-religion?" The 1986 Reagan appointee said there is "nothing wrong" with invoking...

SOMERSET COUNTY, New Jersey, January 5, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A Jewish group that provides counseling to teens and others with same-sex attractions will be no more on February 1, thanks to a court agreement reached last month. In an email to supporters, New Jersey-based Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) co-directors Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Silodor Berk said that on December 18, a New Jersey judge ordered their group to "permanently cease operations, including providing referrals and operating its website and listserv," as well as "dissolve as a corporate entity and liquidate its assets by the middle of May."...

The headline read: “Planned Parenthood’s Patients, Services Drop as its Federal Funding Jumps” and the crowd went wild. Well, not exactly, but all of us at American Life League joined in a universal high five because finally the painstaking work that Jim Sedlak and American Life League’s Stop Planned Parenthood International (STOPP) accomplished has received the public recognition necessary to bring down the abortion giant. The reason for our glee is the analysis that STOPP completed after Planned Parenthood issued its latest annual report. The Planned Parenthood report reveals that the number of services PP provided to its customers fell...

In her recent essay “The New Dignity: Gnostic, Elitist, Self-Destructive Will-to-Power”, Roberta Green Ahmanson highlighted “a rapid and radical transformation in our culture’s understanding of what it means to be human, and, in particular, what it means to have dignity”. This transformation can also be highlighted by looking in particular at what it means to have rights.To do this we first need to recognise the difference between natural and legal rights.Given that the human person is endowed with certain properties and potentials, there are certain things it would be wrong to prevent a person from doing. As a human person,...

January 4, 2015 (MassResistance) -- This is where the radical “non-discrimination” laws are taking us, unless we stop them. On Dec. 21, New York City’s Commission on Human Rights announced that it has re-interpreted the city’s transgender anti-discrimination law. The result is more radical and oppressive than we’ve seen so far in the U.S. It covers all people in the areas of employment, public accommodations (i.e., restaurants, theaters, stores, health clubs, etc), and housing. Included are fines of up to $250,000 for each violation. MassResistance recently documented how the LGBT movement is working to leverage “transgender anti-discrimination” laws to force radical...

On the Demise of the True Love of Friends in an Age of Lost Innocence Msgr. Charles Pope • January 3, 2016 • One of the casualties of the sexual revolution has been the love that is friendship.The Greek language has several different words for love. The love between friends is phileo, and is different from eros (physical, sensual love), storge (family love), and agape (selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love of God or another). Modern English sadly lacks such distinctions. However, in the past we were pretty well able navigate the different types of love and not read inaccurate motivations into...

This week, Bill Cosby was charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault. The felony charges stemmed from an incident more than a decade ago, in which Andrea Constand says Mr. Cosby drugged and assaulted her in his home. Mr. Cosby says he intends to fight the charges, and no court has found him liable for sexual misconduct. The timing of the criminal charges was not arbitrary. The date of the alleged assault was Jan. 15, 2004, and Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations for rape and sexual assault is 12 years: If prosecutors had delayed two and a half weeks, the...

The Glee actor, who was arrested yesterday and charged with possession of child pornography, had his laptop, desktop computer, cell phone and tablets seized by the LAPD's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. T.

Sarah Winter's book decrying the harmful effects of feminism Sara Winter once bared her chest for Femen. Now she’s fighting for the unborn December 28, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Sara Fernanda Giromin first made herself known to Brazil and to the world under the alias “Sara Winter” in 2012, when she became the founding member of Femen Brazil, and led a trio of girls in a number of topless protests that garnered much media attention. However, only three years later, the young activist has done an about-face and has declared war on feminism and abortion, and is apologizing to Christians for...

A Winlock man was arrested Tuesday after an FBI investigation revealed that he was allegedly using a social networking site and public library Internet service to send and receive child pornography. .... Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt ordered Schnacker held on $100,000 bail. "This is clearly a community safety issue," he said. Hunt said he was particularly concerned about the allegation that Schnacker had used public Wi-Fi to access the images. .... Further investigation showed that Schnacker accessed his Kik account from an IP address assigned to the Timberland Regional Library. ....

Fernande Grudet, who under the name Madame Claude operated a deluxe call-girl ring in Paris in the 1960s and ‘70s that attracted the patronage of world leaders, business executives and playboys and made her a byword for sophisticated sex, died on Saturday in Nice. She was 92. * “Two things in life sell,” she once said. “Food and sex. And I was not meant to be a chef.” Precisely how she built her business remains a mystery, despite two memoirs, larded with colorful and eminently uncheckable stories. But build it she did, grooming a finishing school’s worth of beautiful young...

HOUSTON - Eleven months ago George Pickering II was in a very different place in his life. He was in jail, charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. "I felt hopeless," said Pickering. In January, Pickering grabbed a gun, marched into Tomball Regional Medical Center and became locked in an hours long stand-off with police. During interviews with police, hospital staff told officers Pickering threatened them. Pickering's son, George Pickering III, was in the critical care unit on life support. Pickering said his son had a history of seizures but in January suffered a massive stroke....

December 22, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Alfred Kinsey. That name ought to evoke outrage. If it doesn't, then you don't know the man, his work, or his legacy. I am one of those persons who had never heard of Alfred Kinsey, the so-called father of sexual education. I, like many of my generation, went through sex ed at school and never really thought of the reason I was learning what I was learning. My experience was with the Fully Alive program in a Catholic school in Ontario, where I learned about the detailed parts of the male and female genitalia in grade 6...

June 18, 2015 (ThePublicDiscourse) -- I’m growing weary of being told that I must either support gay marriage or disavow my own marriage. I refer not to anything my wife and I did that would violate the traditional norms of marriage, but to something we had no control over: our ongoing inability to conceive a child. My wife and I, along with all other childless heterosexual couples, often find ourselves presented as exhibit A in the court of public opinion. Our plight has become a standard response to the main reason for traditional marriage, a reason that until lately was...

BOSTON, Massachusetts, December 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – A Massachusetts judge sided with a practicing homosexual who sued a Catholic school for acting to uphold its Catholic identity. In a first of its kind case, Norfolk Superior Court Judge Douglas Wilkins ruled that Fontbonne Academy discriminated against Matthew Barrett for his sexual orientation and gender in violation of State law when it withdrew a job offer in 2013. Barrett had been offered the position of food services director at the all-girls Catholic prep school in Milton, MA, but the offer was later rescinded after Barrett had listed another man as his...

The Food and Drug Administration has lifted the ban on blood donations from men who have engaged in sexual relations with another man. Now, in order to donate blood, a man will have had to have been abstinent for the period of one year prior to donation. This new policy is similar to the deferral period for a woman who has engaged in sexual activity with a man who had previously sexual activity with another man, or for someone who has traveled to a country where malaria is prevalent. The Food and Drug Administration released final rules on Monday that...