Free Republic

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.

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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.