Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 13, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - The next Republican president will "respect" different forms of marriages, including same-sex "marriages," South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said in last night's Republican response to the State of the Union address. "If we [Republicans] held the White House," she said, "we would respect differences in modern families, but we would also insist on respect for religious liberty as a cornerstone of our democracy." Even the terminology "modern families" evokes the ABC sitcom featuring a homosexual couple raising a child. The GOP has been uncertain how to respond to the Supreme Court's Obergefell v....

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 12, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A leading pro-life congressman said today that there will be at least three empty seats at tonight's State of the Union address. In a press release, Congressman Steve King, R-IA, said that in addition to the gallery seat left empty by President Obama in honor of victims of gun violence, "There will be another empty seat in the gallery during Obama’s last State of the Union address. I have reserved it to commemorate the lives of more than 55 million aborted babies, ‘the chorus of voices that have never been heard in this...

Or is it the consequence of a crisis of government?There is certainly a dis-ease here and it has spread for quite a long time. Justin Dyer makes the attempt to diagnose.On a stage in St. Paul, Minnesota (in 2008), the first-term Illinois senator (Barack Obama) positioned himself as a visionary leader ushering in a new era of American politics, shedding past partisan divisions and uniting a generation around the promises of hope and change. So what went wrong?Perhaps we were just not willing to work for that vision, to fight for it and believe in it. Or perhaps—as James Piereson suggests...

Could abortion become a wedge issue in North Carolina-the South’s last semi-swing state-in 2016? That's question raised by a New York Times piece published Sunday about an anti-abortion law that took effect on Jan. 1. The new measure requires doctors who perform abortions after the 16th week of pregnancy to send an ultrasound of the fetus to the State Department of Health and Human Services. The state says that demanding the ultrasounds, which can be used to determine "probable gestational age," is a legitimate way to make sure that clinics are complying with the cutoff for legal abortion in North...

At a political rally on Sunday, pro-abortion presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accepted the endorsement of the Planned Parenthood abortion business and told its leadership that it would have her unqualified support as president. Fresh from months of expose' videos catching its top officials selling the body parts of aborted babies, the abortion business plans to spend as much as $20 million to elect Clinton as president. Before a fired-up crowd of primarily pink-clad women, Clinton alluded to the controversies the group has faced since a series of videos by anti-abortion activists were released in 2015. Clinton argued that Republicans would...

SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa, January 11, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Texas senator Ted Cruz is doubling down on his criticisms of President Obama for suing schools that don't let boys use the same showers as girls. According to video provided by NBC, Cruz addressed an effort by President Obama to "force a junior high to let a teenage boy shower with teenage girls," which consists of a new interpretation of Title IX that says not allowing teenagers access to restrooms and other facilities restricted to the opposite gender is sex discrimination. The administration has filed lawsuits against at least two school districts,...

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 11, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – In the United States, it is illegal for someone with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) to keep that fact from his or her sexual partners. Planned Parenthood says that law is against the civil rights of people living with HIV. The International Planned Parenthood Federation published in 2010 a guide for youth infected with HIV titled "Healthy, Happy and Hot." The pamphlet is being introduced overseas in new areas, recreating controversy by teaching that those with HIV do not have to disclose their infection status to those they could infect. HIV is the...

OLYMPIA, Washington, January 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Washington State will now require public buildings, including schools, to allow individuals to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex. Having taken effect on December 26, the transgender bathroom rule was created by the State Human Rights Commission and has been in the works since 2012. It eliminates a previous separate standard for schools, which allowed them to look at locker room use for transgender students on a case-by-case basis. Human Rights Commission executive director Sharon Ortiz, along with ACLU staff attorney Margaret Chen, said the rule clarifies law that previously...

MONTGOMERY, Alabama, January 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Alabama's top justice has ordered the state's judges to uphold the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment, despite the U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision last June redefining marriage. Chief Justice Roy Moore said probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue marriage licenses in conflict with the state marriage amendment pending a decision from the Alabama Supreme Court. "Confusion and uncertainty exist among the probate judges of this State as to the effect of Obergefell on the 'existing orders' in API," Moore said in a January 6 administrative order. "Many probate judges...

Widespread corruption destroys empires. By way of example, corruption was one of the main causes of the collapse of the Roman Empire: The Praetorian Guard—the emperor’s personal bodyguards—assassinated and installed new sovereigns at will, and once even auctioned the spot off to the highest bidder [and see this]. The political rot also extended to the Roman Senate, which failed to temper the excesses of the emperors due to its own widespread corruption and incompetence. As the situation worsened, civic pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership. The Ottoman Empire started its decline when the sale of...

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...