Free Republic

"There are times that lay Catholics have to step forward to say what we as priests cannot." These were the words spoken to me during a time in my life that I felt called as a Catholic to defend my Catholic Church from an assault from within. That time has come again this week. To do so is never easy. For nearly three years now Catholics have defended Pope Francis as being "taken out of context" or "misunderstood" by the media. We have watched and cringed at what has come out of the Vatican, been ignored by the Vatican, and...

SEATTLE, Washington, February 18, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - A man twice entered the changing room of a swimming pool and began disrobing, once in front of a young girls' swim team, saying transgender policies gave him the right to do so. The unidentified man entered Evans pool in Seattle near Green Lake last Monday, February 8, and began taking off his shirt in front of female patrons. When asked what he was doing, he said, "The law has changed and I have a right to be here." "Seeing this individual in the locker room, parents of swim team members (girls) and...

CHARLESTON, South Carolina, February 18, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A pivotal member of Marco Rubio's campaign actively encouraged the Supreme Court to impose gay "marriage" on the entire nation by judicial fiat. Senator Rubio's deputy campaign manager, Rich Beeson, signed a legal brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to redefine marriage in last summer's Obergefell v. Hodges case. The amicus curiae brief, which was signed by 300 Republican operatives whose names spill over 24 pages, argued that having the court discover a nationwide right to same-sex "marriage" served "conservative values." The state marriage protection amendments defining marriage as the union of...

PIERRE, South Dakota, February 18, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – In a first for the U.S., a state legislature has passed a bill that bans transgender students from using a bathroom of the opposite sex and requires schools to have "reasonable accommodation" for transgender students through single-person bathrooms and locker rooms, among other methods. The bill now goes to the desk of Governor Dennis Daugaard, who the Argus Leader reports has indicated support for the bill even as he has declined to take a formal position. Daugaard expressed theoretical support in January but has more recently said he needs to better understand...

AUSTRALIA, February 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – An Australian Christian organization is warning school principals to keep out of a federally funded Safe Schools program that is pitched as anti-bullying but is actually promoting premature sexual activity and transgenderism. The Australian Christian Lobby says many of the 500 principals who have permitted the Safe Schools program into their schools "are probably not aware of what Safe Schools is really promoting and may be unwittingly acting as agents for rainbow activists." "We are in a battle for the innocence of our children," ACL spokesperson Wendy Francis told LifeSiteNews. The program, which was...

Brittani and Ian McIntire didn't plan on having any more children, but their six-week sonogram revealed that the Kansas couple was expecting twins: Mason and Madilyn. But each successive appointment just delivered more and more bad news: Mason has a hole in his heart and an abnormal brain, and his growth development is already proceeding much slower than it should. "He's only weighing nine ounces and his sister is over two pounds," Brittani told FOX8. "His only chance of survival would be heart surgery but they wouldn't do heart surgery because of his brain." Tuesday, there was a brief glimmer...

Seattle Parks and Recreation is facing a first-of-a-kind challenge to gender bathroom rules. A man undressed in a women's locker room, citing a new state rule that allows people to choose a bathroom based on gender identity. It was a busy time at Evans Pool around 5:30pm Monday February 8. The pool was open for lap swim. According to Seattle Parks and Recreation, a man wearing board shorts entered the women's locker room and took off his shirt. Women alerted staff, who told the man to leave, but he said "the law has changed and I have a right to...

February 17, 2016 (DailySignal) -- When a 9-year-old boy who identifies as Stormi, a transgender girl, started selling Girl Scout cookies, one neighbor was not amused, according to Buzzfeed. The neighbor rebuffed him, reportedly saying, “Nobody wants to buy Girl Scout cookies from a boy in a dress.” The neighbor is being called transphobic—but perhaps the neighbor thought he was being pranked by a boy and reacted accordingly. Not everyone assumes that a boy in a dress selling Girl Scout cookies is transgender. People Can Be Genderphobic Stormi looked like a boy to the neighbor because he really is a boy....

Even in his very first years on the US Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia already was making a profound impression on the Court, on Washington, and on American life. I matriculated at Georgetown Law shortly after Scalia joined the Court, and throughout the course of my legal studies, he often was the talk of both the town and the law school. He quickly became something of a judicial folk hero to students who favored judicial restraint, a method of judicial decision-making marked by a justice’s broad deference to the decisions of the people and their elected representatives, and by...

WEST CHESTER TOWNSHIP, Ohio, February 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Cincinnati just witnessed the power of individual citizens speaking out against the sex industry coming to their town. And then Cincinnati witnessed a judge overruling their concerns. Butler County pleas judge Craig Hedric ruled that West Chester Township officials improperly rescinded a license for a sexually oriented business in their community. Melissa Warren, a Fort Wayne "Swinger's Club" owner, wanted to expand her sex trade into the Cincinnati suburbs. She and her boyfriend Eric Adams invested in land in West Chester Township and set up positive meetings with township officials to...

February 15, 2016 (AlbertMohler) -- “Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.” So advised a man who ought to know, William Howard Taft. After serving as President of the United States, Taft went on to serve — probably more effectively — as Chief Justice of the United States. But, if the Supreme Court goes on forever, justices do not. Americans were reminded of this truth on Saturday when news broke that Justice Antonin Scalia had been found dead in Texas, where he had gone on a hunting trip. The 79-year-old justice had served almost 30 years...

February 15, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – “I shall tell the Creator of the Universe you were too busy to see him,” Justice Antonin Scalia once emailed a law clerk who didn’t want to attend church with him. But it is perhaps not unfair to suspect that Scalia himself would have felt the same way, had he known his departure was so imminent. The Creator called for him nonetheless, and he is gone. A titan has fallen. The bitter rejoicing of lesser men has already begun, as is to be expected. The godfather of conservative jurisprudence was a foil to the plans...

Margaret Sanger’s dream of controlling the fertility of the poor is coming to fruition, thanks to the federal government.Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood and a population control activist. She advocated that the “unfit”—the poor and the disabled—should have their fertility controlled. In her view, “hap-hazard, uncontrolled parentage leads directly and inevitably to poverty, overcrowding, delinquency, defectiveness, child labor, [and] infant mortality.”Sanger emphasized the financial burden that the marginalized classes impose on the broader society, asserting that “if they are not able to support and care for themselves, they should certainly not be allowed to bring offspring...

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota, February 10, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Recent comments from a group of Republican South Dakota legislators on proposed legislation in the state have caused controversy among the transgender movement. In a discussion on a bill that would limit bathroom and shower facility use in South Dakota schools to students sharing the same gender, State Senator David Omdahl referred to individuals suffering from gender dysphoria as "twisted" due to their identity confusion and said they would benefit from psychological treatment. "I'm sorry if you're so twisted you don't even know who you are," said Omdahl, explaining the intent...

POWAY, California, February 11, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A state law allowing students with gender dysphoria to use the locker room of the opposite sex is causing an uproar at a California high school. According to the San Diego Union Tribune, Holly Franz spoke to school district board members on behalf of her son and "so many students" who, the mother says, have contacted her about a female student who has been using a male locker room. "My son came home from school and told me there was a girl using the boys' locker room," said Franz, whose son attends Rancho...

OTTAWA, February 9, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Canada has a “moral imperative” to fund palliative care because people have a dignity that “comes from God,” Canada’s top ranking Catholic cardinal told the special joint parliamentary committee on “physician-assisted dying” last week. The dignity of the human person is “inherent” and remains regardless of their circumstances, Cardinal Thomas Collins of the Toronto archdiocese told the committee. “That’s why we don’t believe it’s right to kill them.” This belief in the intrinsic dignity of the human person motivates the Catholic Church’s mission of providing health care, including care for the dying, he said....

A volunteer teacher’s assistant at Judge Sylvania Woods Elementary School in Glenarden, police say 22-year-old Deonte Carraway used his position to prey on children. “We believe that Carraway targeted his young victims and videotaped vile sexual acts between minors during the school day on school grounds,” said an official. Carraway faces 10 counts of felony child pornography, among other charges.

ROWAN COUNTY, Kentucky, February 9, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - A federal judge has turned down the ACLU's attempt to force Kim Davis to violate her conscience while issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Although Governor Matt Bevin granted a religious accommodation for the county clerk to issue altered marriage licenses to homosexuals, the ACLU brought a lawsuit seeking to force Davis to issue the old forms with her full name on them. "There is absolutely no reason that this case went so far without reasonable people respecting and accommodating Kim Davis' First Amendment rights," said Mat Staver, the founder and chairman...

A couple of months ago, Deerfield High School (DHS) in Deerfield, Illinois quietly changed a multi-stall girls restroom to a co-ed restroom. Worse still the administration has not notified either parents or students. Rumors are circulating that the administration chose secrecy over transparency in order to avoid controversy.

CONCORD, New Hampshire, February 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Does Donald Trump support the gay agenda or oppose it? On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, observers are still scratching their heads about where the GOP frontrunner actually stands. Trump has repeatedly and consistently said he supports the natural definition of marriage, but can a President Trump be relied on to promote it resolutely and cogently? It is this question that has many marriage activists expressing concern about his increasingly likely hold on the GOP nomination. In fact, the National Organization for Marriage has gone so far as to say...