Free Republic

In a dramatic shift in tone, a Vatican document said on Monday that homosexuals had "gifts and qualities to offer" and asked if Catholicism could accept gays and recognize positive aspects of same-sex couples. Roman Catholic gay rights groups around the world hailed the paper as a breakthrough, but Church conservatives called it a betrayal of traditional family values. The document, prepared after a week of discussions at an assembly of 200 bishops on the family, said the Church should challenge itself to find "a fraternal space" for homosexuals without compromising Catholic doctrine on family and matrimony. While the...

It was either Francis Parkman or Frederick Jackson Turner or the composer of the theme from F Troop who first laid down an essential truth about the American experience: In the end, Paleface and Redskin both turn chicken. Now the same white male power structure that made Black History Month the shortest month in the calendar and sabotaged the Susan B. Anthony dollar by making it indistinguishable from a quarter is at it again. And the oppression is coming from the supposedly sympathetic, progressive side: The city of Seattle, Washington, has designated an “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” on the second Monday...

One Saturday afternoon last month, six second graders from P.S. 295 in Brooklyn got a head start on the fine-dining life when they visited the acclaimed French restaurant Daniel. There, five waiters presented them with a seven-course tasting menu (after the trio of canapés and an amuse-bouche, naturellement). The meal was overseen by the star chef and eponym himself, Daniel Boulud, whose goal was, he says, “for the children to really discover a lot of flavor, a lot of layers, a lot of texture.”

Scientists and others on a team assembled by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which focuses on free-market solutions to today’s problems, say the “scare” of global warming from the use of carbon fuels and other human activities “is over.” It’s “past time” for the world to realize that and “stop the madness of wasting great sums of money on EPA’s imaginary threat,” contends Kenneth Haapala, the executive vice president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project at the Heartland Institute. Institute experts said Thursday the Remote Sensing Systems, which provide data to NASA, NOAA and the National Science Foundation, have confirmed...

Recently in a cave on a remote island in the Pacific anthropologists found this document sealed in a stone coffer. After months of hard work they translated it from an ancient tongue almost lost to history. I, the official scribe of my people, write this with full authority of the ruling body for those of you who should come upon it in good time. It is the story of a long-ago Emperor about whom you ought to know. The father of the Emperor was said to be a god from an ancient land across the sea who often imbibed too...

Thousands gathered Saturday for a second day of organized rallies and marches protesting Michael Brown’s death and other fatal police shootings in the St. Louis area and nationwide. The events remained peaceful but boisterous gatherings into the night. Vietnam-era peace activists, New York City seminarians and hundreds of fast-food workers bused in from Chicago, Nashville and other cities marched alongside local residents, spurred by a national campaign dubbed Ferguson October.

To prove my point, I have compiled a list of yummy quotes from a website called What Liberals Say, highlighting the extreme intolerance of the “tolerant” left, beginning with Vice President Joe Biden. Do Biden’s racist remarks represent intolerance? Yes, considering what would happen if a Republican had said anything similar. Joe Biden’s racist statement about Obama: “I mean you’ve got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean that’s a storybook, man.”

A senator. A House member. A former presidential campaign manager. An adviser to President Obama. All Democrats, these officials have made it a habit to call or email me almost every week of Obama's second term to share their concerns about the course of his presidency. They ask only that I don't identify them. Some fear retribution; others don't want to compromise their financial or political standing inside their party. These Democrats speak admirably about the president's intellect, integrity, and intentions, but they question his leadership—an admittedly squishy term that can be unfairly deployed against people with the guts to...

Liberals increasingly want to enforce a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of the human good. And they see alternative visions of the good as increasingly intolerable. Liberalism seems to have an irrational animus against Christianity.

Today marks 47 years since the death of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara—an international terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent people. Despite Che’s murderous history, the Left continues to glorify and idolize him. Images of Che’s face can be seen on t-shirts, coffee mugs, keychains, and sweatshirts—ironic because he wasn’t a proponent of free-markets. Students walk around their campuses wearing shirts with Che’s image on it, yet they have no idea of the atrocities he committed. Unfortunately, most students either ignore this part of his story or are never truly informed about his actions. Every year Young America’s...

Kroger is the latest retailer in the cross-hairs of Moms Demand Action, a stridently anti-gun group funded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But so far, the Cincinnati, Ohio-based grocery chain has not succumbed to the relentless assault of phone calls, text messages, petitions, emails and social media barbs tossed its way from the pressure group. Costco, Starbucks, Target, Chipotle and Jack in the Box all have capitulated to the Moms’ demands by at least partially changing their policies on guns. The companies all announced they would “ask” or “request” that their customers not carry guns while shopping...

My 86-year-old preacher dad told me a great story. Surprisingly, it was a new parable rather than one dad forgot that he told me numerous times before. Dad said a prospector worked his land digging for gold. Every Saturday, the prospector would take his gold/gold dust to town and cash it in. One Saturday, he bumped into an old high school friend who had fallen upon hard financial times. The prospector graciously invited his friend to bring a shovel and dig for gold on his land. Generously, the prospector told his friend that he could keep all the gold...

Every year, as October comes around, many breast cancer victims like me find themselves inwardly groaning. How can efforts purportedly for our benefit be so tragically off the mark, and even immoral? Yet every year, it seems that the public is somehow transported into a fake pink world of good intentions.Instead of telling you my particular story, or that of my daughter, IÂ’d like to share some thoughts and facts with you. Perhaps, slowly, we can get the charitable care of cancer victims out of the merchandising field and into the human support arena. Most of all, I urge you...

President Barack Obama has issued a statement on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, which commemorates the Muslim belief that Abraham was willing to sacrifice to God his son Ishmael (rather than Isaac, as related in the Old Testament). “Michelle and I would like to extend our best wishes to Muslims in the United States and around the world who are celebrating Eid al-Adha, and to congratulate those performing the Hajj [pilgrimage to Mecca] this year,” he said. “As our Muslim neighbors and friends gather for Eid celebrations, Muslim Americans are among the millions of pilgrims joining one of the world’s...

Dilar Gnecxemis, Kurdish fighter who carried out the "suicide bomb attack" on Sunday against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Kobane, was a 20-year-old mother of two and, commander in the the People’s Protection Unit (YPG), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Dilar had run out of ammunition, a lone servitor in a gun battle with ISIS on a hill outside of Kobane, prompting her to thumb down a grenades hammer and present to the ISIS thugs. Dilar’s attack was the first reported instance of a female Kurdish fighter blowing herself up against the group...

This story begins almost four months ago, when Washington Post columnist George Will challenged the Obama administration’s attempts to use debunked data to push a narrative of an epidemic of sexual assaults on American college campuses. Will also criticized the expansion of the term “sexual assault” to a nearly meaningless definition, and the demand by the White House for colleges to use a minimal standard of evidence to “convict” the accused. For being one of the first to call foul on the Department of Education’s efforts, Will earned the ire of progressives and activists, and one newspaper stopped carrying...

According to former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, the Democrats have a linguistics “Jedi” named George Lakoff (rhymes with back off), a Professor of Linguistics at U.C. Berkeley. He advises Democrats on how to win in the political arena by controlling the language. Lakoff's theory -- according to his Little Blue Book -- is that people use metaphors or narratives make decisions about politics. The way liberals frame issues in narratives undermines conservative’s positions in a subtle way that lets Democrats easily defend their disastrous policies.Here are ten examples: 10) ObamaCare – At one point, the president embraced the word...

<p>COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied appeals from five states seeking to preserve gay-marriage bans. The move doesn’t mean same-sex marriages will begin immediately in South Carolina, but experts say such unions probably aren’t too far off.</p> <p>WHAT WILL THE ATTORNEY GENERAL DO?</p>

Contrary to the assertions of critics of the original intent approach to the Constitution, super majority rules, such as requiring a two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution, “tend to produce desirable constitutional provisions” such as granting blacks voting rights and women as well, Michael Rappaport, a law professor at the University of San Diego, said recently in remarks at the Cato Institute. Rappaport coauthored the recently released book, Originalism and the Good Constitution, with John McGinnis of Northwestern University’s Law School, who also appeared in the seminar at Cato. McGinnis also noted that the problem with the original Constitution, regarding...

ABC’s political drama “Scandal” focuses on a Washington DC crisis management firm that serves the White House and the fictional presidential administration. In the second episode of the show’s fourth season, in what is going to be the fictional president’s state of the union address, a school shooting mirroring the Sandy Hook shooting happened. The fictional president used his entire State of the Union address to come out against guns. Here are some quotes: