Free Republic

"What I'd like to say is, just relax," Kasich said on CNN. "If you don't like what somebody's doing, pray for them, and if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just for a second get over it? You know?" Kasich's comments were a reply to a question about his harsh reaction to Mississippi's new law that allows companies not to serve gay couples. Last week, Kasich asked "What the hell are we doing in this country?" in reaction to that law.

Georgia Republican Governor Nathan Deal recently vetoed H.B. 757, the Georgia Religious Liberty Bill. The governor warned that he would veto any legislation that "allows discrimination in our state in order to protect people of faith." He went on to tell fellow Republicans, who shepherded the bill that they should "recognize that the world is changing around us." Governor Deal wasn't alone in issuing warnings about the bill. Large corporations with a presence in the state threatened to pull operations out of Georgia if the bill passed. Perhaps this was more on Governor Deal's mind than our changing world. This...

The hissy-fit hysteria from opponents of Mississippi’s new Religious Freedom Protection Act is deeply disturbing. The lies and deception being used to completely mischaracterize the law could hardly be more outrageous, and while this is par for the course with God-hating leftists, the shrill, growing volume of deranged opposition tells me that we are in bigger trouble in this nation than we can imagine. I have read the law. I know what it’s about, and I am certain many, if not most, of the people railing against it have not even read it. To a man, every opponent of this...

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Republican presidential candidate Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) said religious liberty laws that allow refusal of services based on sexual orientation like the ones vetoed in Georgia and passed in North Carolina and Mississippi are unnecessary.

Last week, a line was crossed in the ongoing campaign of liberals to criminalize freedom of expression. The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands subpoenaed a decade of materials and work by a private advocacy group that had dared to question the orthodoxy of climate change.The group is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the attorney general is Claude E. Walker, who had recently signed on to a campaign of over a dozen attorneys general to ferret out so-called climate change “deniers.” It is possible that CEI was being targeted by Walker precisely because one of its attorneys, Hans Bader,...

"I believe that religious institutions ought to be protected and be able to be in a position of where they can live out their deeply held religious purposes," Kasich, who's running for the Republican presidential nomination, told host John Dickerson in an interview for Sunday's "Face the Nation." "But when you get beyond that it gets to be a tricky issue. And tricky is not the right word, but it can become a contentious issue." "In our state, we're not facing this, so everybody needs to take a deep breath, respect one another, and the minute we start trying to...

The Governor of my home state of Georgia, Nathan Deal, has been soundly, and frequently, taken to task for his recent “Craven Capitulation” on religious liberty. I don’t wish to rehash the merits of the very weak bill Deal rejected (it only protected churches, religious schools, and “integrated auxiliaries”), nor do I wish to highlight again the rampant ignorance and hypocrisy of those who lobbied Deal to veto religious liberty in Georgia. What I would like to do here is give some explanation as to why I believe Deal caved on the defining moral issue of his governorship.

"The former employee who filed a complaint with the EEOC was at all times free to dress as desired outside of work," added ADF Legal Counsel Caleb Dalton, "but was required, as all other employees are, to abide by the dress policy while on the job." . . . The funeral home hired the biologically male employee as a funeral director and embalmer at its Garden City location in 2007. Funeral directors at the company regularly interact with the public, including grieving family members and friends. After informing Rost of an intention to begin dressing as a female at work,...

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson has sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, urging the Department of Justice to file a lawsuit against the state in the wake of Gov. Phil Bryant signing House Bill 1523, also known as the religious objection bill, into law. The law allows certain businesses and religious organizations to deny services to gay, lesbian or transgender people, citing religious beliefs. "I don't want my state to participate in any form of discrimination," Thompson, who represents the Second Congressional District in Mississippi, said. Thompson also called the so-called “religious freedom” act overreaching and unconstitutional. A...

Ever since Walmart pressured Arkansas to reject civil rights protections for Christians, and the #BoycottIndiana movement roped in huge companies like Apple, there’s been a confrontation brewing between Americans who demand the free exercise of religion, and big business lobbyists who want to keep their gay customers and stockholders happy. We saw it in Georgia recently, and now PayPal is getting in on the act in North Carolina.The question is whether politically active Christians can motivate churchgoers and other fans of the First Amendment to counteract high-dollar blackmail of the sort the NFL and Disney employed to cow the governor of Georgia...

The Tennessee House passed a bill on Wednesday allowing mental health counselors to refuse service to patients on religious grounds, the latest in a list of U.S. state measures that gay rights activists have criticized as discriminating against the LGBT community. A vote by the state House of Representatives protects therapists and counselors from civil lawsuits and criminal action if they deny services to clients whose religious beliefs conflict with their own. The bill passed by a 68-22 vote and sent to Gov. Bill Haslam for his signature. The state Senate passed the bill earlier this year. Supporters of the...

JACKSON, Miss. — The Latest on Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signing a bill law that allows religious groups and some private employers to refuse service to gay couples based on religious beliefs (all times local): New York's governor has banned nonessential state-funded travel to Mississippi after that state's governor signed a law allowing religious groups and some businesses to refuse service to gay couples. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the ban Tuesday, the same day Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed the measure, which supporters say will protect those who have religious objections to same-sex marriage. . . . Last week Cuomo,...

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is the latest U.S. politician to ban nonessential travel to North Carolina in the wake of the state’s enactment of the anti-LGBT House Bill 2 last month. Reed's office issued a statement on Monday saying the travel ban is "a result of Governor Pat McCrory's decision to sign discriminatory and unnecessary legislation into law." Under the travel ban, all Atlanta city departments will no longer be able to make nonessential, publicly funded trips to North Carolina. . . . Other mayors of major U.S. cities have also cut travel to the Tar Heel State. Soon after...

This current impasse over the "Bathroom Law" provides North Carolina with a unique opportunity to be a leader not only in standing up to the radical leftist agenda and the bullying of the gay lobby, but also in advancing liberty Recently, the state of North Carolina has found itself squarely in the cross hairs of the radical gay lobby and its social justice warrior (SJW) allies in business. The reason is a new law, passed by wide margins in both houses of the legislature and signed by Governor McCrory, which prevents local governments from passing ordinances allowing, among other things,...

ATLANTA — The Rev. Wayne Cofield says he’ll sit in a jail cell before he presides over a same-sex wedding. He would rather have the state’s legal protection in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that gays and lesbians can marry. But, he said, he will follow his convictions. “I would never — no matter what it cost — perform a same-sex marriage. Never,” said Cofield, pastor at Whitfield Baptist Church in Dalton. While it seems unlikely that Cofield will end up in handcuffs — or that a gay couple would ask him to officiate at their wedding —...

<p>Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has vetoed legislation he said would legalize discrimination against LGBT people.</p> <p>The Democratic governor signed his veto of Senate Bill 41 Wednesday morning while on WTOP.</p> <p>"We're not going to tolerate discrimination. Virginia will be open and welcoming," he said.</p>

Gov. Nathan Deal on Monday vetoed the controversial Religious Freedom bill, saying it "contains language that causes me concern." “I do not think we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia of which I and my family have been part of all of our lives,” Deal said.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Monday said he will veto legislation shielding opponents of same-sex marriage, after a groundswell of opposition from companies threatening to boycott the state if it became law.The Republican announced his decision during a news conference in his office at the Georgia Capitol, saying, “I have examined the protections that this bill proposes to provide to the faith based community and I can find no examples of any of those circumstances occurring in our state."Deal added, “I do not think that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in...

In 1804 an Ursuline nun in New Orleans asked Thomas Jefferson to clarify in writing her religious community’s right to retain their property and to continue their ministries without government interference following the Louisiana Purchase. As French Catholic Louisiana was being incorporated into the Anglo-Protestant United States, the nuns were concerned about the status of their institutions under U.S. law. President Jefferson assured her that the government would not interfere with the sisters’ property, ministries, and way of life. In a letter dated May 15, 1804, he wrote: “I have received, holy sisters, the letter you have written me wherein...

Despite his hundreds of rallies, his many interviews and his hyperactive Twitter feed, it’s still really hard to tell the difference between what Donald Trump actually believes, what he says to whip up his crowds, and what he says merely because it popped into his head one afternoon. Not so with Senator Ted Cruz, the arch-right Texan who is one of Mr. Trump’s two remaining Republican opponents. Americans can be sure he believes what he says, and that is pretty terrifying. His calls for carpet bombing Muslims to punish the Islamic State, and more recently for putting Muslim neighborhoods under...