Free Republic

A Brazilian man is to wed his pet goat – but has promised not to consummate the marriage.Former stonecutter Aparecido Castaldo, 74, has decided to end his days as a single man to marry his beloved Carmelita.The happy couple will walk, or trot, down the aisle on October 13 in Igreja do Diabo, or Devil’s Church, in the city of Jundiai, Brazil.Aparecido has been in love with the pet for two years and says a goat has advantages over a human companion.‘She doesn’t speak and doesn’t want money,’ says the father of eight children – four women and four men...

Ten months after Mitt Romney shuffled off the national stage in defeat — consigned, many predicted, to a fate of instant irrelevance and permanent obscurity — Republicans are suddenly celebrating the presidential also-ran as a political prophet. From his widely mocked warnings about a hostile Russia to his adamant opposition to the increasingly unpopular implementation of Obamacare, the ex-candidate’s canon of campaign rhetoric now offers cause for vindication — and remorse — to Romney’s friends, supporters, and former advisers. “I think about the campaign every single day, and what a shame it is who we have in the White House,”...

California inmates are eligible to marry non-incarcerated partners of the same sex, according to a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation memo addressing questions arising from a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Proposition 8. Inmates will not, however, be permitted "at this time" to marry another inmate, in part due to "safety concerns," according to the memo.

ALBANY | Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has given a former Republican senator who was a key to the legalization of gay marriage a $90,000-a-year job in a move a religious conservative group called payback for the critical vote. "The moral of this story is that no matter what, Governor Cuomo will protect his own," said the Rev. Jason McGuire, of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms. McGuire's group had strongly opposed the landmark 2011 measure, which narrowly passed in the Senate, and unsuccessfully sued to try to strike it down. Good-government groups say the job given to former Sen. James Alesi...

As the screeching against morality, the wailing against truth and the outrageous bully tactics of the militant homosexual Left continue to escalate, we are seeing more and more conservatives buckle under fear of maniacal, homosexual wrath. So, it is quite refreshing to find a man who is unafraid to stand and tell the truth about the homosexual movement's anti-freedom campaign and its push for an unnatural, impossible definition of "marriage" between members of the same sex. That man is Dean Young, candidate for U.S. Congress in Alabama's 1st District. Mr. Young is running for Congress in a fairly large field...

A Gresham bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, prompting a state investigation, shut its doors. On Sunday, KGW stopped by Sweet Cakes by Melissa and found the bakery completely empty. All counter tops, display cases and decorations were gone. Hanging in the window was a sign from the Oregon Family Council that read "Religious freedom is under attack in Gresham." As first reported in Willamette Week, Sweet Cakes by Melissa posted on its Facebook page, “This will be our last weekend at the shop we are moving our business to an in home bakery....

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will become the first Supreme Court member to conduct a same-sex marriage ceremony Saturday when she officiates at the Washington wedding of Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser. The gala wedding of Kaiser and economist John Roberts at the performing arts center brings together the nation’s highest court and the capital’s high society and will mark a new milepost in recognition of same-sex unions. Such marriages were virtually unheard of a little more than a decade ago but now are legal in the nation’s capital, 13 states and in all or part of 17 other countries....

The homosexual lobby claims the majority of Americans favor same-sex marriage and that marriage should be only about love. Even if that were true, favoring homosexual marriage by definition means being “for” anything outside what the Bible calls a sacred union—between one man and one woman. According to a recent article on Prospect.com by Boston College School of Law professor Kent Greenfield, opponents of same-sex marriage have been right all along. Government approval of same-sex marriage will eventually erode bans on polygamous and incestuous marriages as well. As a matter of constitutional rationale, there is indeed a slippery slope between...

"Hold high the great red banner of Mao Zedong Thought--thoroughly smash the rotting counterrevolutionary revisionist line in literature and art" - 1967 During the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976 – the time when the greatest damage was being done in the name of the Spirit of Vatican II) people were bullied into rejection of the sì jiù, the Four “Olds”: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas.  The Four Olds were equated with monsters and demons, “cow ghosts and snake spirits”, that had to be purged.The conforming hoards, taken up in a frenzy of fear and zeal, marched in...

The state of Oregon has launched a discrimination investigation against a family bakery owned by Christians who refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. The Bureau of Labor and Industries will investigate whether Sweet Cakes by Melissa violated a 2007 law that protects the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people in employment, housing and public accommodations. Aaron and Melissa Klein told Fox News they turned down requests to bake cakes for gay weddings because it goes against the Christian faith and their right to religious freedom. “I believe marriage is between a man and a...

PROVIDENCE — Addressing a wide range of issues posed to him Tuesday night at a meeting of the state’s Young Republicans, Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin said he was not only deeply disappointed by the passage of same-sex marriage in Rhode Island, but that he felt a sense of personal failure on his part as well as a failure of the Catholic Church in Rhode Island to keep it from becoming law. “I was profoundly disappointed that the state moved in that direction and that so many Catholic politicians abandoned ship on this issue,” the bishop said, speaking to...

Colorado’s first recognized same-sex divorce is final. Supporters of Colorado’s civil unions law say the court ruling means gay couples married in other states can legally terminate their relationships here without uprooting their lives. Juli Yim and Lorelei Jones wed in Massachusetts in 2009, where same-sex marriage is legal. … Colorado is one of several states that treat gay and straight couples the same in almost every respect through civil unions or domestic partnerships. Gay couples are not allowed to marry in Colorado but can get divorced under state statute. …

Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II used to be on record supporting a federal constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, but now that he is running for governor, he refuses to take a stand. “You want to drag me out of Virginia,” Mr. Cuccinelli recently told editors and reporters of The Washington Times when asked to weigh in on the thorny issue. Indeed, Republicans across the country are trying to confine the marriage issue to the states, as the tide appears to be going against the Republican Party and its lawmakers try to calculate how to best limit the damage,...

Under the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages even in states that have legalized it. This week, the Supreme Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional. There are two possible grounds, distinct and in some ways contradictory, for doing so. The curious thing about the court’s DOMA decision is that it contains both rationales. The first is federalism. Marriage is the province of the states. Each state decides who is married and who is not. The federal government may not intrude. It must therefore recognize gay marriage where it has been legalized. If that were the essence...

Looks like there is a slippery slope after all and gay marriage really could lead to polygamy. According to U.S. News and World Report, polyamory advocate Anita Wagner Illig said that gay marriage is setting the standard to make polygamy and polyamory legal. “We polyamorists are grateful to our [LGBT] brothers and sisters for blazing the marriage equality trail,” said Illig, who is the head of polyamory advocacy group called Practical Polyamory. Anticipating the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage this week, US New’s reporter Steven Nelson interviewed Illig to see how polyamorists and polygamists feel about the possibility of...

Amid all the emotion over same-sex marriage, the limited-government argument for marriage as uniting a man and a woman keeps getting short shrift. It fell to me to make that case during a discussion of marriage law and the Supreme Court with the worthy S.E. Cupp on a recent installment of “Real News from The Blaze,” and I’d like to flesh out those thoughts here. For starters, virtually every political community has regulated male-female sexual relationships. This is not because government cares about romance as such. Government recognizes male-female sexual relationships because these alone produce new human beings. For highly...

David Cameron’s government has admitted under scrutiny from the House of Lords that they want to give commercial employers to be able to sack staff who refuse to participate in same-sex marriage. The Coalition for Marriage reports:‘Up until now, officials in the equalities office have been telling Government ministers that the Bill won’t harm the liberty of people who disagree with it. But after pressure in the House of Lords, Government ministers have admitted they want commercial companies to be able to sack staff who refuse to be involved with same-sex marriages.The Government thinks commercial chauffeurs who object to a...

As the Supreme Court considers overturning California’s ban on same-sex marriage, gay people await a ruling that could change their lives. But the case has already transformed one gay man: Ken Mehlman, the once-closeted Republican operative who orchestrated President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election on a platform that included opposition to same-sex marriage. Now Mr. Mehlman, a private equity executive in Manhattan, is waging what could be his final campaign: to convince fellow Republicans that gay marriage is consistent with conservative values and good for their party. His about-face, sparked in part by the lawyer who filed the California lawsuit,...

Yesterday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) became the third Republican in the Senate to endorse gay marriage. Conservative media outlets haven't been attacking her for it. They haven't been praising her either. They've been ignoring her ... So what's going on? A substantial share of the staffers at these publications, especially the younger ones, are now supporters of gay marriage ... Those who oppose gay marriage are sick to death of talking about the issue. They know they are losing the fight over public opinion and that their complaints are not going to convince anybody ...

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska publicly backed gay marriage on Wednesday, becoming the third Republican senator to do so as she spoke out ahead of potentially landmark rulings from the Supreme Court on the issue. Murkowski, 56, wrote in an essay posted on her Senate website that her decision was swayed, in part, by meeting a lesbian couple from Anchorage, one of whom was in the National Guard, who had adopted four children. "This first-class Alaskan family still lives a second-class existence," Murkowski said in her essay. Her announcement comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule...