Free Republic

Warren Jeffs must be banging his head against the walls of his prison cell these days. If he had only waited a few years before starting his Texas polygamy compound, he’d have ended up a civil rights trailblazer and Twitter-verse superstar, enduring nothing more than a little good-natured teasing from Jimmy Kimmel about his new show, “79 Wives and Counting.”Actually, that scenario’s not hard to imagine, given that the last vestiges of “repressive Christian morality” are being swept away by a tsunami of “progressive” dogma, its doctrines flowing from an absolute certainty that there are no absolutes — that all...

A 54-year-old Vancouver man has been arrested for allegedly assaulting a 15-year-old North Vancouver youth after using a new mobile GPS technology designed to help gay men hook up. Brent Tynan, 54, of Vancouver, faces charges of sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching and sexual assault, RCMP Cpl. Marlene Morton said in a press release. Police said the 15-year-old youth said he met the suspect through an application called Grindr, a social networking tool that connects users to gay and bisexual men who are nearby, Morton said. The application works on mobile devices that have a built-in GPS function to...

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” organization was revealed last fall to include a long list of mayors who, because of their convictions, were no longer eligible to own weapons themselves. Now another embarrassment has surfaced for the organization. According to a report from the Second Amendment Foundation, Mayor James Schiliro, of Marcus Hook, Pa., now is facing a long list of charges for allegedly trying to force an underage boy to perform sex acts – and then firing one of three handguns he grabbed at a wall when the boy refused. “Mayor Schiliro is one more...

Also, “it’s just bad faith to forbid the brother and sister on these putative health grounds” The words in the title and subtitle were spoken by one of the leading thinkers and advocates in favor of gay marriage, University of Chicago Professor Martha Nussbaum, in a speech she gave at Cornell Law School in 2009 (video and discussion below). I was reminded of those words after Dr. Benjamin Carson created a stir when, during a television interview, he made the following comment (emphasis added). Marriage is between a man and a woman. It is a well-established fundamental pillar of society,...

A coalition of Eagle Scouts, Scoutmasters, and parents have launched a new organization vowing to keep sex and politics out of the Boy Scouts of America. “The Boy Scouts are one of the great jewels of American culture,” said John Stemberger, an Eagle Scout and the founder of OnMyHonor.net. Representatives from more than a dozen states gathered in Florida to announce the opposition to any attempt to allow open homosexuality in the BSA. The BSA is expected to offer a proposal that would remove the national rule banning open homosexuality -- and replacing it with a local option. That...

(Massachusetts) Auditor finds 119 matches between day cares and sex offenders "A shocking state audit released today revealed 119 cases where addresses for registered sex offenders matched those of child care providers licensed by the beleaguered state Department of Early Education and Care. .... But Bump’s audit also discovered EEC — whose $197,585 a year commissioner Sherri Killins resigned earlier this month amid a Herald investigation — failed to ensure child-care providers run required CORI checks on staffers. .... In a one-year period, EEC didn’t perform a single unannounced inspection of a home-based child-care center, which are required by law,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's Art in Windsor, Connecticut, as we go back to the phones. Hello, sir. CALLER: Rush, how you doing? RUSH: I'm fine, sir. Thank you. CALLER: Look, I just think, you know, there used to be laws that said black people can't marry white people. I don't think this is any different. I mean, if you're gay and you want to marry somebody who's gay, marry somebody who's gay. That's your business. What is the business of the state government or the federal government telling me who I can and can't marry? RUSH: You are serious with...

Should the Right embrace gay marriage? Yes or No.

Betty DeGeneres, 82, is a gay rights campaigner and the mother of the world's most famous lesbian, not necessarily in that order. Ellen DeGeneres has a TV audience of at least 4 million viewers per episode in the US alone and is here in Australia to film segments for her show. Betty is here, too, and addressed a PFLAG meeting at Westmead last Saturday. PFLAG is a worldwide organisation providing information and support to the families and friends of gay and lesbians.* Betty says it was hard enough for Ellen to come out once, at age 20, to her family...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I'm just waiting for the printer to spit something out here. It's about the chief justice. Here's the headline: "Chief Justice John Roberts Compares Gay Marriage To Forcing A Child To Call Someone 'A Friend.'" They have released the audio of the oral arguments now, and this is the story from Mediaite. "The optimism that Jean Podrasky, cousin of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, displayed when she told The Los Angeles Times that she 'trust(s) he will go in a good direction' in deciding whether same-sex couples have the right to marry may have been misplaced....

As the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in two high-profile cases this week - California's Proposition 8 and the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act - 60 percent of Americans think the federal government should legally recognize existing same-sex marriages and provide them the same federal benefits the government provides to heterosexual married couples. Just 35 percent do not think the government should do this. The legality of same-sex marriage varies by state. When it comes to who should decide this issue, most Americans- 62 percent - think the decision should be left up to each individual state government, while just...

Supreme Court justices signaled on Tuesday that they are reluctant to embrace a broad ruling finding a fundamental right to marriage for gays and lesbians across the United States. As sign-waving demonstrators massed outside, the court completed more than an hour of oral argument on whether to let stand a California ban on same-sex marriage without indicating a clear path forward. Swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy raised concerns about the court entering "uncharted waters" on an issue that divides the states. Kennedy even raised the prospect of the court dismissing the case, a relatively unusual move that would leave intact...

The United States of America is facing the definition of marriage. (The original amicus brief before SCOTUS, with its supporting documentation, can be found here.) Why the big push in the USA? Follow the money trail. Some are calling this the "trials of marriage." Perhaps we should consider instead "marriage on trial." Other countries call this same-sex civil "partnership" and this is legally equal to marriage between a man and a woman. So the issue is not equality before the law, but redefining marriage. Norway has had "registered partnerships" since 1993. Sweden has called them "registered partnerships" since 1994.

The United States of America is facing the definition of marriage. (The original amicus brief before SCOTUS, with its supporting documentation, can be found here.) Why the big push in the USA? I say follow the money trail. Some are calling this the "trials of marriage." Perhaps we should consider instead "marriage on trial." Other countries call this same-sex civil "partnership" and this is legally equal to marriage between a man and a woman. So the issue is not equality before the law, but redefining marriage. Norway has had "registered partnerships" since 1993. Sweden has called them "registered partnerships" since...

This week’s Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage cases owe much to Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 ruling that overturned anti-sodomy laws. However, the story behind Lawrence isn’t what many suppose. Anne Hendershott A cake for a same-sex wedding at Morfey's Cake Shoppe in Seattle in 2004 (CNS photo from Reuters) The recent endorsement of same-sex marriage by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came as no surprise. She joins a long list of politicians—mostly Democrats, but increasingly more Republicans—who claim to have been “recently� converted to the cause. Earlier this month her husband, the former President William Clinton, published...

It can only be replaced by something else that's different entirely. That's what's happening now.I've acknowledged that this is a losing fight so long as the Christian church continues to allow the culture to be ceded a totally godless element...note that it's not the wrong side of the fight.Found at Super Conservative.

During oral arguments today at the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia and attorney Ted Olson had a pointed exchange over whether same-sex marriage is a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Scalia's argument, which was advanced by Chief Justice John Roberts before him, was that when the institution of marriage developed historically, it was not done with the explicit intent of excluding gay and lesbian couples. "We don't prescribe law for the future," Scalia said. "We decide what the law is. I'm curious, when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868? When the Fourteenth...

A shot across the bow of Beltway Republicans on Gay Marriage Day at the Supreme Court.Alternate headline: "Huckabee's running in 2016." When asked if he believes the Republican Party will change its position and support gay marriage in a Wednesday Newsmax interview, Huckabee remarked, "They might, and if they do, they're going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk."..."And it's not because there's an anti-homosexual mood, and nobody's homophobic that I know of," he continued, “but many of us, and I consider myself included, base our standards not on the latest Washington Post...

The debauchery at the Huffington Post knows no bounds. On Monday, the website actually offered readers a slideshow of the best places to lose one's virginity in San Francisco, and coming in seventh was under the Mount Davidson Cross, one of the city's most beloved religious landmarks: To the right of this slide was the following: For those unfamiliar, here's how this landmark is described at MountDavidsonCross.org: Set atop the highest geographical point in San Francisco, the Mt. Davidson Cross is one of the world’s tallest crosses and among the city’s most cherished landmarks. Today, the Council of Armenian-American Organizations...

As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a landmark case that seeks to establish “marriage equality” as the law of the land, my thoughts turned to Kody Brown, David Epstein and Kenneth Pinyan. Brown, who appears with his four brides and 17 children in the TLC reality show “Sister Wives,” faces prosecution for violating Utah’s ban on polygamy. Epstein, a Columbia University political science professor, was charged last year with one count of incest for his three-year consensual sexual relationship with his 24-year-old daughter. And Pinyan, the subject of a documentary film, “Zoo,” which won an award at...

By our count - and the day is still young - four Democratic U.S. senators have flipped on gay marriage in the past few days. Senators Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Mark Begich, D-Alaska - have joined Senators Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Mark Warner, D-Va., in renouncing their previous opposition to gay marriage, just since Sunday. They follow, of course, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio - still the only Republican senator to endorse gay marriage - to flip as the Supreme Court takes up the issue today and tomorrow.

Link only per FR posting rules

As a leftist lesbian professor, I despised Christians. Then I somehow became one. The word Jesus stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no matter how hard I choked, I couldn't hack it out. Those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. As a university professor, I tired of students who seemed to believe that "knowing Jesus" meant knowing little else. Christians in particular were bad readers, always seizing opportunities to insert a Bible verse into a conversation with the same point as a punctuation mark: to end it rather than deepen it.

In a historic argument on a challenge to state laws that limit marriage to heterosexual couples, the Supreme Court indicated Tuesday that it might be hesitant to strike down such laws. Following the oral argument, Pete Williams of NBC News reported that it seemed “quite obvious that the U.S. Supreme Court is not prepared to issue any kind of sweeping ruling” declaring that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.

The Supreme Court has finished hearing the arguments in the Proposition 8 case, and prognosticators are busy reading the tea leaves for what they might be thinking. Here's what went down: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and, perhaps surprisingly, John Roberts, peppered Charles Cooper, the lead attorney for Proposition 8, with questions about whether California voters had the authority to appeal a lower court ruling blocking Prop 8, USA Today reports. Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito came out sounding "very hostile to the idea of the court imposing same-sex marriage," CNN's legal analyst says, and they were consistently...

Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for about 80 minutes in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which is the lawsuit regarding California's Proposition 8. Two gay couples brought suit on the grounds that the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits the State of California from defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Since the State of California refuses to defend Proposition 8, opponents of gay marriage sought to enforce it in Hollingsworth v. Perry. Generally, citizens do not have legal standing to enforce laws with which they agree. Several justices expressed doubt that gay marriage...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court suggested Tuesday it could find a way out of the case over California's ban on same-sex marriage without issuing a major national ruling on whether gays have a right to marry, an issue one justice described as newer than cellphones and the Internet. Several justices, including some liberals who seemed open to gay marriage, raised doubts during a riveting 80-minute argument that the case was properly before them. And Justice Anthony Kennedy, the potentially decisive vote on a closely divided court, suggested that the court could dismiss the case with no ruling at all.

Between 1973 and 1990, when my beloved mother passed away, she and her female romantic partner raised me. They had separate houses but spent nearly all their weekends together, with me, in a trailer tucked discreetly in an RV park 50 minutes away from the town where we lived. As the youngest of my mother’s biological children, I was the only child who experienced childhood without my father being around. After my mother’s partner’s children had left for college, she moved into our house in town. I lived with both of them for the brief time before my mother died...

A new study that finds children of a gay or lesbian parent may be more likely to have social and emotional problems has sparked controversy on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate. The study, from Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at The University of Texas at Austin, surveyed more than 15,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 39, asking them questions about their upbringings. Its findings are published in the July issue of Social Science Research. One survey question asked whether a parent had been in a same-sex relationship during a child's upbringing; Regnerus wanted to...

Three opponents of same-sex “marriage” spoke at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Monday, including the gay co-founder of the National Capital Tea Party Patriots who argued that children are entitled to a biological mother and a father, and that if the government seeks to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples, it will necessarily also be redefining children. “The redefining of marriage, quite frankly I think it’s nuts,” said Doug Mainwaring, co-founder of the National Capital Tea Party Patriots and a homosexual. “Being gay, I’ve had a long time to consider this, look at it.” “I used to be pro-same-sex marriage,...

.... Over the next two days, the justices will consider two of the weightiest civil rights cases in years, both about the continuing struggle of gay men and lesbians to obtain equal recognition under the law. On Tuesday, the court will consider the constitutionality of Proposition 8, .... On Wednesday, the justices will turn to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law enacted in 1996 that bars the federal government from offering benefits to same-sex couples, even if they were legally married in their home state. The justices have many options as they consider how to rule. But more...

They say politics makes for strange bedfellows, but now the bedfellows are making for strange politics. The alleged conservative politicians are willingly selling their sexual mores for cash. One major motivation in the flip-flopping of so many Republicans, it appears, is the belief that there are loads of campaign cash to be had on the side of the homosexual marriage issue. The professing conservatives can’t line up on the street corners fast enough advertising themselves for whatever position the sodomites would like them to assume. Choose ye this day whether ye shall stand for your beliefs, or be pimped out...

The kids these days on the right are full of a great libertarian notion that “hey, let’s just get the government out of marriage.” “Rock on,” say other libertarians. They then all smugly self-congratulate themselves, pat themselves on the back, and move on to other issues. What they ignore is that the left will never take marriage out of the hands of the government. The left cannot. But it goes beyond that. The left cannot take marriage out of government because for so long it has been government through which marriages were legitimized to the public and the left must...

Today the U.S. Supreme Court begins to decide if the people of California were wrong to decide that marriage is between a man and a woman. It also begins arguments that the people, through the Federal Government, could were wrong also. Interesting that this is beginning on Holy Week, when we remember when the Lord went to the Cross to pay for the sins of folks like us. All we, are truly going 'Astray' like sheep. In this case, in a bad way.

DUBLIN, March 25, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – An Irish sex-education group’s state funding is being called into question after lawmakers became aware of an article on the website SpunOut.ie offering advice about sexual threesomes to their teenage audience. The Sunday Independent called attention to the article over the weekend, reprinting quotes from the piece that suggested threesomes were a way for teens to “inject serious passion into their bedroom shenanigans.” According to the Independent, the group warned readers not to pick anyone for whom they have real feelings. “If you are in a relationship, but secretly have a thing for someone...

The effort to normalize child sex continues: "there is a growing conviction, notably in Canada, that paedophilia should probably be classified as a distinct sexual orientation, like heterosexuality or homosexuality. Two eminent researchers testified to that effect to a Canadian parliamentary commission last year, and the Harvard Mental Health Letter of July 2010 stated baldly that paedophilia “is a sexual orientation” and therefore “unlikely to change”. Child protection agencies and many who work with sex offenders dislike this. “Broadly speaking, in the world of people who work with sex offenders here, [paedophilia] is learned behaviour,” says Donald Findlater, director of...

With the Supreme Court set this week to hear two historic challenges to the traditional definition of marriage, pro-family advocates are charging that legalizing gay marriage would “inevitably” lead to the legalization of polygamy as well. “No question about it,” Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview Monday afternoon. “If you make the ultimate value a person’s right to express their sexuality with another person and to have that identified as marriage, then how do you keep polygamy from happening? “How do you keep consensual...

The day before the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on the constitutionality of gay marriage, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tells Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview that the issue should be decided by the states. “I would prefer it to be a state-by-state issue,” Bush tells Newsmax. “That’s how we have dealt with a lot of issues in the United States. “Our federal system is a spectacular way to deal with changing mores—and states can take advantage of opportunities much better than federal government,” Bush says. “This could be a place where the states play a role, as is...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — More than four out of five Boy Scout leaders in the Salt Lake City area say they are opposed to Boy Scouts of America lifting its ban on gays, a new survey shows. Nearly half said they would quit the Boy Scouts if the ban on gays is lifted, according to results of a survey of 4,700 adults involved in the Boy Scouts' Great Salt Lake Council. The respondents included leaders and parents. The council is one of the largest in the country, with 5,500 troops and 73,400 youth members. Nearly all of the troops,...

4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Jesus’ words in Matthew 19 constitute the awkward rhetorical cornerstone of why gay marriage cannot be legal. A popular aphorism among anti-conservatives is: “What does Jesus say about homosexuality?” The unspoken argument warrant...

A Chicago man has been charged with disorderly conduct for making a telephone threat to a state representative who called gay couples "disordered" on a Catholic radio show, authorities said. Wheaton Police Chief Mark Field said 49-year-old Stephen Bona was charged Friday, hours after Republican state Rep. Jeanne Ives reported getting a threatening voice mail at her district office. "Your Tea Party brethren Sarah Palin put up a map that included the names, locations and faces of Democratic candidates and put them in the cross hairs of a gun," a caller says on the voice mail, a recording of which...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people would be added to the lengthy list of social and ethnic groups that public schools must include in social studies lessons under a landmark bill passed Thursday by the California Senate. If the bill is adopted by the state Assembly and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, California would become the first state to require the teaching of gay history. Supporters say the move is needed to counter anti-gay stereotypes and beliefs that make children in those groups vulnerable to bullying and suicide. Opponents counter that such instruction would further burden an...

“They have secret files (here in Canada) as they do down there (in the U.S.) of guys that had abused kids that they hadn’t reported. There were investigations into the abuse of boys, which never really produced anything in Canada.� – Brian Rushfeldt, president, Canada Family Action. IRVING, TX, February 8, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – David Watkins, a former Boy Scout leader, has been charged with sodomizing a boy under 13 years of age in his troop. The news broke on the same week as the Boys Scouts of America’s (BSA) decision on whether or not to continue their long-standing...

A majority of American voters want the Boy Scouts to lift its ban against gay members and leaders, a new Quinnipiac poll finds. The Boy Scouts of America announced last week that it was considering changing its policy of banning gay scouts and troop leaders. On Wednesday the organization said that decision would be delayed until a national meeting in May. In the Quinnipiac poll, 55 percent of respondents said the scouts should drop the ban, while 33 percent said it should remain. There is a significant gender gap in the results. Women back gay scouts by a 61 to...

I'm on a rant at the moment, so I thought this would be as good a time as any to go on the record with my humble opinions about Obama's efforts to destroy America morally, culturally, financially, socially, politically, militarily, economically, etc. (My, my, Obama's a busy little dictator wannabe, isn't he?) I have been saying for several months that the gays in the military agenda is not the final objective, but just another link in the chain that will ultimately weaken and enslave America's citizens and destroy our country and way of life as we once knew it. The...

(NOTE: This letter is a response from Mark Alexander to his son, a Cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, concerning the Boy Scouts of America national board proposal to allow homosexual Scout leaders. Alexander is both a Troop Scoutmaster and member of his area Boy Scout Executive Council.) I received your note about news of an upcoming proposal before the Boy Scouts of America national board, which meets Wednesday, February 6th. According to the news release regarding that proposal, "The BSA is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation." You are correct, the removal of this...

National Officers: Rex W. Tillerson Irving, Texas President Tico A. Perez Orlando, Florida National Commissioner Aubrey B. Harwell Jr. Nashville, Tennessee Treasurer R. Thomas Buffenbarger Upper Marlboro, Maryland Assistant Treasurer James S. Turley New York, New York International Commissioner Terrence P. Dunn Kansas City, Missouri Vice President— Council Operations Wayne M. Perry Bellevue, Washington President-Elect Randall L. Stephenson Dallas, Texas Vice President—Finance Lyle R. Knight Billings, Montana Vice President—Human Resources Nathan O. Rosenberg Laguna Beach, California Vice President—Marketing Jack D. Furst Dallas, Texas Vice President— Outdoor Adventures O. Temple Sloan Jr. Raleigh, North Carolina Vice President—Supply Earl G. Graves New...

The Boy Scouts of America, one of the nation’s largest private youth organizations, is actively considering an end to its decades-long policy of banning gay scouts or scout leaders, according to scouting officials and outsiders familiar with internal discussions. If adopted by the organization’s board of directors, it would represent a profound change on an issue that has been highly controversial -- one that even went to the US Supreme Court. The new policy, now under discussion, would eliminate the ban from the national organization’s rules, leaving local sponsoring organizations free to decide for themselves whether to admit gay scouts....

In August 2011 I posted an article titled Academia Normalizing Pedophiles With Minor-Attracted Persons: Hebephile, Ephebophiles and Pedophiles. The Hebes and the Ephebs were new to me. "Hebe" was the goddess of youth and cupbearer for the gods; Epheb, also from Greek mythology, and generally referring to an adolescent, but who knew this ancient mythololgy could legitimize the abuse of our children in the 21st Century. I missed most talk radio this week, but a reader emailed and told me Rush Limbaugh was talking about Academia and Pedophilia and their attempts to drag it into accepted mainstream thinking, and the...

BELLEFONTE, Pa. – Jerry Sandusky wore bright red jail garb on Tuesday, looking like a quarterback in practice, untouchable and protected. Except Sandusky was about to get hit, a 30- to 60-year sentence coming from Judge John Cleland here at the Centre County Courthouse stemming from 45 guilty counts of sexual molestation. It's enough, given Pennsylvania's parole guidelines, to keep the 68-year-old Sandusky confined to prison for life. [snip] Sandusky dismissed everything presented, every shred of evidence, every emotional witness-stand session. Three of his former victims mustered the courage to come and address him directly, and he responded with a...