Free Republic

Australian District Court Judge Garry Neilson was recorded as saying that sexual contact between adults and children or siblings may no longer be regarded by society as “unnatural” or “taboo.” Just as same-sex relationships were once considered socially unacceptable, “a jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now ‘available,' not having [a] sexual partner,” he said, as quoted by Australia’s Fairfax Media. Neilson said that the primary reason for incest still being a crime is the high risk of genetic...

In what sounded more like a gay activist screed in a high-school publication than a serious editorial in a major newspaper, the Charlotte Observer has officially declared war on people of faith and conservative moral values, mocking those who believe there is the slightest rational reason to resist the radical redefinition of marriage.Making no attempt to hide its disdain for the conservative, historic position, and gleefully mocking the views of the majority of North Carolinians, the editorial begins with three sentences ending in exclamation points – when is the last time you have seen that in a major editorial? –...

A few weeks ago, I was in New York City to meet someone for drinks, and got on the subway at 34th and 7th to head downtown. I dislike the New York subway for many reasons. It is the only such system in a major Western city to look as if it had been swapped with the metro of a third-world backwater. Pick any otherwise dodgy country on Earth, and chances are the subway of its capital city is a gleaming tube with smooth rolling stock and palatial stations. Not New York. The trains lurch between filthy platforms like...

A recent study comparing views on morality of religious and non-religious people found something surprising: Religion doesn’t make our everyday lives more moral. Suppose you actually do have an angel over your shoulder telling you the right thing to do. That angel probably wouldn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. A recent study in Science aimed at uncovering how we experience morality in our everyday lives suggests that religious people are no more moral—or immoral—than non-religious people. Whether or not we believe that divine precepts give us guidance, our behavior is remarkably similar. The fact that atheists are apparently...

People don't like to talk about America's culture for the same reason that a man who just had a heart attack doesn't want to discuss the double bacon cheeseburger he's eating. He knows what he's doing is killing him, but it's easier not to deal with it. We’re in the same boat. * We treat success as an accident or a cheat while defending people who make bad decisions, who won't educate themselves or who won't work. * We've allowed pornography to become so accessible that it's practically universally viewed, even among teenagers. * We love victims so much that...

I am the proud father of a new book entitled simply The Ten Commandments (see at right). And you’ll be surprised, knowing me, at how brief it is—just 104 pages. But I wanted to keep it short, readable, connected to the catechism, and very practically related to living the Commandments on a daily basis. You can get it at the usual booksellers and there is also a Kindle version. I hope many will find it helpful, and it even fits neatly in your coat pocket.A couple of thoughts on moral law, which is a very precious gift to us from...

One of the fundamental problems in our society is that we argue with one another from positions of moral parochialism: we assume that the other party shares our frames of reference. That may have been true in the earlier years of our nation, but I propose that this is no longer the case. Today, we argue from different and fundamentally incompatible moral codes and value systems. It is the dichotomy between the two that confuses our discourse and creates great dangers for our country.

Back in March, I wrote a piece for CatholicVote about FDA evaluation of a process that would create multi-parent embryos: Things like this always begin for such seemingly noble scientific reasons, don’t they? But they rarely stop there. And of course in addition to creating tri-parent offspring, which creates ethical and genealogical nightmares in its own right, virtually every instance of embryonic modification involves a slew of violations of the moral law, from in-vitro fertilization to the destruction of fertilized human embryos — human life — deemed imperfect or unnecessary to achieve the desired outcome. This morning, I read...

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”-The Princess BrideWe are now reaping a bitter generational harvest in America, sown into the ground because we have permitted: Marxists almost unchecked dominance of the influential platforms of pop culture and the classroom. Too many of our churches to retreat into some “comfortably numb” seeker-friendly Xanadu, where they building suburban palaces instead of culture. The Republican Party to be taken over by a feckless political class either unwilling or incapable of defending and advancing our principles. One of the most rotten fruits of this...

What people find morally acceptable and unacceptable depends on where they live in the world.The charts below from the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project show people's views on eight topics, often considered moral issues: extramarital affairs, gambling, homosexuality, abortion, premarital sex, alcohol consumption, divorce, and contraceptives.Pew surveyed 40,117 respondents in 40 different countries in 2013 to obtain the data.The first graphic below gives the median response across the world. People were the most disapproving of extramarital affairs, with 78% calling them morally "unacceptable," while 14% of respondents, the lowest in the survey, felt contraceptive use was "unacceptable." Topics like premarital sex and alcohol...

We live in reductionist times, which is another way of saying that we live in times that have often cast aside the deeper, sacramental, and mysterious meaning of things and people.Many human beings reduce themselves and others to merely biological realities. Gone is the soul and the mysterious spark we call life. Gone is the metaphysical, there is only the physical. Even our longings, our thirst and hunger for justice, our attraction to what is good, true and beautiful, even these soulful expressions and their reaching what is not material and “understood” by many today merely as emanations of the...

There is this notion, one we hear more and more, that the Republican Party has to shed the social issues to seize the future. "Social issues are not the business of government!" says thoroughly modern millennial. It's a seductive cry, one repeated this past Tuesday in an article about how some young libertarians dubbed the "Liberty Kids" are taking over the moribund Los Angeles GOP. Oh, wouldn't the political landscape be simple if we could just boil things down to fiscal responsibility? But life is seldom simple. If you would claim to be purely fiscal, or assert that "social issues"...

For the second time in eight days, a South Florida circuit judge has declared the state's gay marriage ban unconstitutional and ordered that same-sex couples be allowed to marry.

Americans who oppose same-sex marriage often face "intolerance" from those who support it, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said Wednesday in a speech about values that appeared aimed at wooing social conservatives. In remarks he said were likely to get him criticized as a bigot, the Florida Republican told an audience at Catholic University that a strong America is impossible without Americans who hold strong values. Seeming to seek a debate over those values, he criticized liberals who defend abortion rights for women but not protections for "the unborn."

Efforts to proclaim moral equivalence are not always misguided; sometimes each side is equally at fault or close enough. But these efforts are often misguided and unhelpful -- and sometimes harmful. Throughout my life, there has been an increasing trend to attach moral equivalence to all kinds of disputes and conflicts, such as Israel vs. Hamas, which is the subject of a future column. I assume this is mostly an outgrowth of our culture's descent into moral relativism, but it's also a product of our intellectual laziness. We see it everywhere. It is a common practice in describing marriages gone...

People who disagree with same-sex marriage and birth-control use have been met with accusations of bigotry. Are some Christians being unfairly shamed out of the public sphere? Is evangelical Christian morality still viable in American public life? This is the question lurking in recent debates over religious-liberty issues, from the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision to the Christian bakers who object to baking cakes for gay weddings. In discussions of these cases, objections to same-sex marriage and contraception are described as a retreat from “secular society.” And in some cases, evangelicals actually have retreated: Since the Boy Scouts of America...

‘New analyses of the human genome establish that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional,” writes Nicholas Wade in his recently published book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. That sounds reasonable, and Wade, a science reporter and editor for many years at Nature and the New York Times, seems an unimpeachable source. But many well-meaning people will regard his words as provocative and even dangerous. For they fatally undermine the idea, widely shared by so-called progressives, that any apparent differences between groups of people are the product of nurture rather than nature, of social conditioning rather...

Shoe thief sends SR500, asks victim for forgivenessA thief with a guilty conscience has asked for forgiveness from a Saudi man whose shoes he had stolen eight years ago. The guilt-ridden thief sent SR500 in an envelope alongside the apology note. The victim, Abu Abdul Rahman,said that his shoes were stolen as he was having dinner at a wedding reception hosted by a relative, local news site Sabq reported on Thursday. In keeping with the local tradition, food is served on in a majlis and guests and hosts leave their shoes at the door. Abu Abdul Rahman said that he...

A common criticism of the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual morality has to do with the largely unmarried clergy who are charged with preaching the message.  The accepted wisdom is that celibate males have no business telling married couples how to live their lives: “What do they know about the subject?”   I remember a particularly egregious example. In 1974, Earl Butz, then U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, ridiculed Pope Paul VI’s opposition to contraception, “He no playa the game, he no maka the rules.” He later apologized, but in reality he was only saying publicly what many, including many Catholics, were saying...

In an interview with KABC radio last week, Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA) offered the liberal world view of globalism before nationalism last week during an interview about the on-going crisis in Iraq. Hahn said she was "kind of uncomfortable" with the concept that the United States could claim any moral authority in using military action. "I'm kind of uncomfortable with, you know, with the United States feeling that we do have some moral authority to go into these other countries and use military power to solve problems," the California lawmaker said. Hahn also invoked the United Nations as a basis...