Free Republic

What happens when the irresistible meme meets the unmovable politician? Governor Bobby Jindal gave a demonstration yesterday during his appearance on Meet the Press in this exchange with host Chuck Todd. This turns into a good demonstration of how politicians need to work within challenging, if not hostile, media environments on controversial topics. Todd repeatedly frames RFRA as servicing an impulse for broad discrimination, while Jindal emphasized that Christians need RFRA to defend against government force applied in such a way that specific choices on participation in events could put them out of business.Hopefully, other Republicans are paying attention...

Brilliant blasts from my Facebook. Charges against Senator Bob Menendez but not for IRS witch Lois Lerner. Why? Pretty clear. Lois Lerner oppressed Americans for the gangster. Bob Menendez dared criticize the gangster's craven Iran deal. Poignant that on the same weekend, Jews and Christians both are celebrating God's mercy in sparing the lost and doomed. No, libertarians who insist this clash is not about religion but about property rights. It is very much about religion. People are being persecuted for adhering to their religious faith. (For the record, I'd bake the cake). The First Amendment expressly protects free exercise....

If you went looking for the Apostle Paul an aeon ago, you might expect to find him mumbling platitudes in a dusty monastery, fumbling beads in some inane act of farcical devotion, locked for all time in a dingy prayer closet lit only by the nimbus of sainthood; or maybe, having assumed a vow of poverty, laboring in “full time Christian service,” whatever that means—in practical obscurity. If this is your idea of Pauline Christianity, you are profoundly wrong, and are among the majority of those who claim the nearly meaningless appellation of “Christian.” It is fashionable among those who...

If you went looking for the Apostle Paul an aeon ago, you might expect to find him mumbling platitudes in a dusty monastery, fumbling beads in some inane act of farcical devotion, locked for all time in a dingy prayer closet lit only by the nimbus of sainthood; or maybe, having assumed a vow of poverty, laboring in “full time Christian service,” whatever that means—in practical obscurity. If this is your idea of Pauline Christianity, you are profoundly wrong, and are among the majority of those who claim the nearly meaningless appellation of “Christian.” It is fashionable among those who...

While conservative Christians have long fought for the religious freedom of religious minorities, they have become increasingly concerned about their own religious freedom in recent years. Here are 8 reasons that is happening. 1. Same-Sex Marriage Some conservative Christians have long been warning that same-sex marriage presents a danger to the religious freedom of those Christians who believe true marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Those who sounded those warnings were accused of sensationalism; they were only making those claims to fan the flames of opposition to SSM, it was said at the time. We now...

For the better part of these last two years there has been coming a head on collision. In one corner is a group who define their identity by the sexual anarchy they wish to engage in. They pursue absolute societal conformity, to ensure a right that is undefined in constitutional terms. Not satisfied with merely being tolerated by the culture, the activists in their midst seek to enforce perfected preferential status permanently. In the other corner is a group who define their identity by what they believe. They pursue peace with their community, even with little belief of societal tolerance...

What’s really going on with the media’s hit job on the Hoosier state? When I retired from my tenured teaching career at a suburban Illinois college just across the border from Indiana, I was hired as a news correspondent for a large daily newspaper, located at the time in Gary, IN. I was hired, I later found out, because a very leftist editor had so alienated readers with his attacks on Republicans, especially in and around Crown Point, that readership figures had plummeted and changes had to be made at all levels. This editorialist took after the beloved mayor of...

Dear God… I am sick of hearing about gay cakes. First off, I’d like to say that pretty much all cakes are gay. Duh. No offense, of course. If you don’t believe me then Google “cakes”. After that page loads select “images” and then look at what your search yielded up and tell me with a straight face those pics don’t look absolutely fabulous. Tell me … what did you see? I’ll tell you what you saw: fluffy yellow, brown or white cake filling donned with colored icing, decorated with rosettes or candy and/or some other kind of pleated,...

I have a dream. I have a dream that I will wake up one day in a country where we don’t have to go to court or pass a law to protect our fundamental natural rights—from the government. I have a dream of a place where elected officials have so much regard for the Constitution that they memorize it like Scripture, in order to not sin against it. I have a dream about a country where it doesn’t matter if you are on the right or the left, because you have so much respect for the freedoms you were given...

Dear Bill and Ann, I deeply appreciate both of you calling out Christian leaders in recent days, challenging our courage and our willingness to stand for what is right. I too have been grieved over the moral capitulation of so many professing Christians, from pastors to politicians and from congregants to congressmen. In fact, I posted this on my Facebook page just this morning: I am so deeply grieved over what I have witnessed this week in Indiana, Arkansas, and Georgia, as governors and legislators suddenly caved the moment the threats and shouts came their way. Where are the men...

A black man shouldn't be forced to bake a cake for a KKK party. A Jew shouldn’t be forced to bake a cake for a Nazi shindig. A Muslim shouldn't be forced to bake a cake with pork. A gay man shouldn't be forced to bake a cake for a Westboro Baptist Church’s "God hates F@gs" party and a Christian business should not be forced to participate in a gay marriage. For that matter, a Christian shouldn't be forced to bake a cake for an orgy, a Satanist mass or an atheist meeting either. When you say that a Christian...

(Snip) They [Christian small business owners]are in this sense more like religious believers under compulsion in a society with an established church than like believers denied the freedom to exercise their religion. Liberals are in this respect right to say they’re not trying to kill religious liberty. They’re trying to take it back to something like the form it had in the Anglo-American world when the Anglo-American world had a formal state religion—except now the state religion is supposed to be progressive liberalism. Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416421/church-left-yuval-levin

One may reasonably wonder whether the militant left in this country is solely dedicated to manufacturing issues to keep the nation in a constant state of uproar, angst and disharmony. We're seeing lots of negativity and intolerance from those so concerned that we all love one another. Their most recent cause for hysterical urgency is Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The left has gone absolutely bonkers attempting to paint that legislation as a license for Christians to discriminate against gays for sport and is smearing anyone who supports it as a reactionary bigot. Don't you long for those days when...

On a CNN special hosted by Chris Cuomo on Thursday night about the religious freedom laws, former NBA great and TNT NBA analyst Charles Barkley offered his open on that issue. According to Barkley, he sees those laws as having more than meets the eye motivating them. “Listen, I don’t think gay people went out to try to go after, they came out as a gay people let get that straight,” Barkley said. ...more (w/video)...

The governor of Indiana last week signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, modeled on similar federal legislation. The Indiana statute states that a person’s religious beliefs may not be “substantially burden[ed]” by anti-discrimination statutes. In other words, if anti-discrimination laws could be construed as forcing a person to violate his own religious conscience, then the law allows for an exemption in that case to anti-discrimination mandates. The response from the left has been fierce, and multiple CEOs of major firms, including Apple and Salesforce, have come out against the legislation with Salesforce announcing that it will impose a partial boycott...

One of the rallying cries of opponents of Indiana's religious freedom law is that people shouldn't be discriminated against because of "who they love." But radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh flipped that around on his show on Wednesday. Critics of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act say it allows people to use their religious beliefs to discriminate against gay people. Proponents say it only allows business owners to refuse to perform their services, such as at same-sex weddings, if doing so is a violation of their faith.

Corporate leaders and chambers of commerce are at war with those evangelical Christians who have decided to reassert themselves in the Republican political process. This war is eerily reminiscent of an earlier time when there was friction between the business wing of the GOP and Christian activists. Make no mistake -- the rise of variations of "religious freedom" bills in GOP-dominated legislatures around the nation is no coincidence. They are supported and backed by skilled political pros and religious leaders who are tired of being left out of the American political process. They are especially weary of being treated as...

The Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2015 is constitutionally infirm and legally troublesome. The circuitous constitutional route that brought about this statute began in 1990 when the Supreme Court ruled that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment may not be used as a defense to violating the general laws of the land. In Employment Division v. Smith, a small group of Native Americans who had been fired from their jobs because drug tests revealed their use of peyote made applications for unemployment compensation, which the State of Oregon denied. They appealed and claimed that their use...

Like most people, I like pizza. I also like bacon on my pizza sometimes. My old neighborhood in Baltimore had five pizza places in fairly close proximity, but one was better than the others, both in price and taste. So, after a night of adult beverages with friends, we’d inevitably end up in one of them, generally the one most convenient to where we were. Sometimes that was the one with the better pizza. One time we were in there and my friends and I were in a “pizza with bacon” mood, but there was a problem: This place didn’t...

Any time a Christian organization or business owner is confronted by a liberal fascist, the Gay Gestapo, they need only say this: my salvation is far more valuable to me than your incessant desire to force me into accepting a deviant and immoral lifestyle. The truth is most Christian businesses never inquire or care about their customers' personal lives. Yet, some activists are hell bent on politicizing their sexuality and enjoy creating a contentious conflict of interest. If you already know we have irreconcilable views then your only purpose here is to initiate contempt and discord. Do I demand pork...