Free Republic

If you were totally avoiding the internet today, or if you live under a particularly pleasant and comfortable rock, maybe you don’t know that the federal government and a bunch of nuns are duking it out before the Supreme Court over birth control. More to the point, they’re fighting over the Little Sisters of the Poors’ refusal to subsidize contraception and abortion-causing drugs for their employees via their health insurance coverage, all of whom, by the way, are mandated by the President Obama’s signature eponymous government overreach law to purchase their own health insurance. Well, fair’s fair, right? I mean,...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Moments ago, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a 175-year-old religious order of women who care for the elderly poor. The Little Sisters have asked the Supreme Court for protection from a government mandate that is forcing them to provide services against their beliefs. Little Sister gives landmark statement following Supreme Court hearing The following statement can be attributed to Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, Mother Provincial for the Little Sisters of the Poor: LITTLE SISTERS POOR “Hello, my name is Sister Loraine Marie Clare. The Lord has given me...

Why I Believe Ted Cruz Is Religious Liberty's Only Hope By Todd Starnes Published March 24, 2016 America’s Christian bakers and florists and wedding planners will be safe under a Ted Cruz presidency. “I am absolutely convinced in my discussions with the senator that religious liberty will be a lot better off in America with a Cruz administration,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and Chair of Cruz’s Religious Liberty Advisory Council The council released exclusively to me its initial recommendations for both legislative and executive actions that will restore the nation’s First Freedom – the freedom...

Georgia is the latest to enter the national mayhem surrounding a state-sponsored religious freedom bill.  Its also the latest group to be the target of media obfuscation.  Several versions of #HB757, The Religious Freedom Act have been debated by the legislature of Georgia.  The most memorable was the February version that allowed businesses to cite their faith as a reason not to conduct business with lifestyles that conflict with their values..  The was a far-right version that conflated our for-profit roles in commerce with projecting our religious beliefs on our customers and clients.  If sinners are banned from commerce, then...

I suppose none of us should be surprised that the apologists for homosexuality are also capable of rampant and unrepentant hypocrisy. Nevertheless, the duplicity recently on display in Georgia belongs in the hypocrisy hall of fame. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous Obergefell decision, and after previous efforts at a religious liberty bill failed, and in order to protect its citizens from the militant homosexual agenda, legislators in Georgia felt renewed urgency to join over 30 other U.S. states which have similar religious liberty legislation or provisions.

Judge Merrick Garland, Barack Obama's choice to be the next justice on the Supreme Court, ruled against Priests for Life in a case involving the HHS mandate. He also gave ObamaCare subsidies a second chance at life in a separate case. The two rulings give a window into the philosophy of Judge Garland, whom the National Organization for Women referred to as a “cipher” with little paper trail on issues related to abortion or other feminist concerns. ObamaCare's HHS mandate opt-out does not violate the Constitution Priests for Life sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over...

President Barack Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy on the United States Supreme Court once joined an opinion that rejected an evangelical Christian defense based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was recently tapped by President Obama as a nominee to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. In a case decided in June 2001, Judge Garland joined an opinion authored by fellow appellate judge A. Raymond Randolph that rejected a RFRA argument for a pair of evangelical Christians who wanted to...

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland, March 7, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Minutes after addressing a packed room at the 2016 CPAC, two leading social conservatives told LifeSiteNews that sexual agendas are putting religious liberty at risk. The Family Research Council's Travis Weber told LifeSiteNews that "for a lot of us, religious liberty's only been a hot-button issue recently, we're seeing in the news. Why is that? It's driven by agendas affecting matters of sexuality – marriage, abortion, contraception, and all sorts of other issues." "So what do we do about this? Some of these claims are going to be dealt with in the...

Let’s take a break from the primary battles and check in on the latest antics unfolding out in California. This month, having solved all other problems plaguing their state, the California legislature has taken up a new measure which would ban government funded travel to states which they deem to be insufficiently supportive of LGBT rights. The author of the bill, Evan Lowe, seems to feel that such a move will be a way to take a stand for the little guy, I suppose. (Time) A California lawmaker has introduced a bill that would ban government-funded travel to states with...

A small town bakery owned by a Christian family is under siege after they declined to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. Edie and David Delorme own the Kern's Bake Shop in Longview, Texas - known around town for their petit fours and sugar cookies - and also their custom-made wedding"> cakes. The Delormes are also devout Christians - faithful members of a nearby Baptist church - and they run their bakery according to the tenets of their religious beliefs. That became a problem on Feb. 17 when Ben Valencia and Luis Marmolejo requested the bakers make a...

Much will be written about the utter thrashing GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump took at the hands of the far-more prepared, knowledgeable, qualified and otherwise principled Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio during Thursday night's Republican presidential debate on CNN. I will, therefore, focus, instead, on another Republican candidate who's absolutely got to go: Ohio Gov. John Kasich.Many thanks to Hugh Hewitt for asking the question. In a campaign where the noise of myriad, and in many cases less critical, issues has drowned out the single greatest threat to God-fearing Americans' individual liberties - the secular left's tireless efforts to end our...

Has John Kasich blown his Christian cred? Kasich has built some of his following on his reputation as a sincere (if somewhat offbeat) Christian conservative. In November, for example, he called for a new government agency to promote "Judeo-Christian values." But tonight, when presented with a question about religious liberty, Kasich seemed to advance a rather different set of priorities. CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO ... While Kasich defended the right of religious institutions to practice their faiths however they please, he seemed to argue that people "in the business of commerce" should "conduct commerce, and if you don’t...

Presidential candidate, John Kasich has weighed in on the Oregon bakers who were driven out of business and fined $135,000 because they declined to bake the cake for a gay wedding. This is what he said: “I think frankly, our churches should not be forced to do anything that’s not consistent with them. But if you’re a cupcake maker and somebody wants a cupcake, make them a cupcake, Let’s not have a big lawsuit or argument over all this stuff — move on. The next thing, you know, they might be saying, if you’re divorced you shouldn’t get a cupcake.”...

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was more than a tragedy for his family and American jurisprudence. It was a calamity for religious liberty. The Court will soon hear Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, which challenges the Obamacare contraception mandate. Because the loss of Scalia reduces the number of justices to eight, the spectre of a tie vote now looms over the case. If the remaining justices vote as they did in the Hobby Lobby case, the result will be a per curiam decision whereby a prior miscarriage of justice by the Tenth Circuit Court of...

Four remaining Presidential Candidates Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush have pledged to push for passing the First Amendment Defense Act within their first 100 days in office, while others still in the race have not. The pledge, a joint effort of the American Principles Project, Heritage Action for America and Family Research Council Action, reads "If elected, I pledge to push for the passage of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) and sign it into law during the first 100 days of my term as President." "Our future President, whoever he or she may be,...

ORLANDO, February 4, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- "It is no longer easy to be a faithful Christian, a good Catholic, an authentic witness to the truths of the Gospel," said Princeton Professor Robert George to a large crowd at the Legatus Summit in Orlando, Florida last weekend. Professor George added that people can still safely identify as "Catholic" as long as they don't believe, or will at least be completely silent about, "what the Church teaches on issues such as marriage and sexual morality and the sanctity of human life." He said "the guardians of those norms of cultural orthodoxy that...

One of the United States' most influential evangelical leaders blasted Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. on Monday for hosting Donald Trump to give a campaign speech. Russell Moore, who heads the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, let fly a series of tweets after Falwell gave a glowing introduction to Trump, calling him "one of the greatest visionaries of our time" and saying Trump "lives a life of helping others ... as Jesus taught in the New Testament." Moore appeared incredulous at Falwell's language, which was more effusive than he had...

Celebrates Religious Freedom DayHOUSTON, Texas - Today in honor of Religious Freedom Day, memorializing the 230th anniversary of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Ted Cruz released the following video. Authored by Thomas Jefferson, the statute passed in the Virginia General Assembly on January 16, 1786. The statute recognized that all individuals have the right to live in accordance with their faith, paving the way for the First Amendment and becoming a pillar of the American tradition.See the video and transcript below:Ted Cruz: Religious Liberty Is Fundamental to Our National Character (Video)"The right to freely worship the Lord God Almighty...

With a view towards curbing abusive posts, Twitter has established new, stricter guidelines, stating, "We do not tolerate behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user's voice." So far, so good. I can't imagine that anyone thinks we need more incivility and hatred and incitement on social media, and I can understand why Twitter CEO Dick Costolo feels "ashamed" at how poorly his company has handled abusers. With that in mind, Twitter's guidelines are understandable, stating, "You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people...

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...