Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 13, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - The next Republican president will "respect" different forms of marriages, including same-sex "marriages," South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said in last night's Republican response to the State of the Union address. "If we [Republicans] held the White House," she said, "we would respect differences in modern families, but we would also insist on respect for religious liberty as a cornerstone of our democracy." Even the terminology "modern families" evokes the ABC sitcom featuring a homosexual couple raising a child. The GOP has been uncertain how to respond to the Supreme Court's Obergefell v....

MONTGOMERY, Alabama, January 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Alabama's top justice has ordered the state's judges to uphold the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment, despite the U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision last June redefining marriage. Chief Justice Roy Moore said probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue marriage licenses in conflict with the state marriage amendment pending a decision from the Alabama Supreme Court. "Confusion and uncertainty exist among the probate judges of this State as to the effect of Obergefell on the 'existing orders' in API," Moore said in a January 6 administrative order. "Many probate judges...

Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin gave Kim Davis and all the other county clerks in the state a "wonderful Christmas gift" by protecting their religious rights and freedom. Bevin issued an executive order two weeks after taking office that removes the names of all county clerks from marriage licenses issued in Kentucky. Staver said that will enable Davis and all other county clerks to do their jobs — issue marriage licenses to everyone, including same-sex couples — without compromising their religious principles. Davis vaulted from her little county clerk's office in...

Oh, I could hear the balloon deflating all the way from the Politico headquarters.Phllloooooooopppphhtt.Last week, on the day of the highly-watched GOP presidential debate, someone gave Politico’s Mike Allen an enticing piece of catnip to put in his insidery morning email. Secret audio tape would soon be published on a conservative news site supposedly showing that Ted Cruz talks much differently to NYC moderates than Iowa evangelicals. “These leaks are designed to undermine Cruz’s authenticity,” Allen wrote.The prospect of a juicy secret recording flew around the Internet. People reported on the prospect of the audio tape, before ever hearing a...

During the question period, one of the donors told Cruz that gay marriage was one of the few issues on which the two disagreed. Then the donor asked: "So would you say it's like a top-three priority for you - fighting gay marriage?" "No," Cruz replied. "I would say defending the Constitution is a top priority. And that cuts across the whole spectrum - whether it's defending [the] First Amendment, defending religious liberty." Soothing the attendee without contradicting what he has said elsewhere, Cruz added: "People of New York may well resolve the marriage question differently than the people of...

RALEIGH, North Carolina, December 11, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Three couples are challenging the constitutionality of North Carolina's law allowing magistrates to bow out of performing same-sex "marriages." According to court documents, the plaintiffs – two lesbian couples and an opposite-sex interracial couple – argue that the state's new law is discriminatory and thus unconstitutional. They and LGBT rights activists, as well as the state's GOP governor, all argue that the intention of the law is to illegally discriminate against same-sex couples. However, ABC 11 noted that a state statute does not require couples to perform marriages, a position argued by...

December 10, 2015 (ThePublicDiscourse) -- Obergefell v. Hodges was decided by five robed justices, but only one man both wrote and signed his name to the majority opinion. The four concurring justices chose to concur silently, adding nothing more than their signatures. This case is the brainchild of one man. That man and his state of mind—indeed, his character—matter. Recently, Justice Anthony Kennedy dismissed conscientious objectors to Obergefell, such as Kim Davis, by pointing out that very few Christian judges resigned when the Nazis imposed the Nuremberg Laws on Germany. Leaving aside how offensive it is to compare gay marriage supporters to Nazis, Justice Kennedy’s...

Editor's note: Below is an excerpt from an interview with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) conducted by Professor Robert P. George of Princeton University that aired November 25 on EWTN. The interview series, titled "Candidate Conversations 2016," will pose a number of questions to presidential candidates on topics of particular concern to Catholic voters. The passage below addresses the question of how public officials should best respond to the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling on so-called same-sex "marriage" decided last summer. Here, Senator Cruz publicly endorses a position advanced by Prof. George and others who argue that unconstitutional decisions of...

Albany, N.Y. - The owners of an upstate New York wedding venue who were fined $13,000 after refusing to host a lesbian wedding are appealing the ruling. The owners of Liberty Ridge Farm north of Albany refused to host the 2013 wedding of Melisa and Jennie McCarthy, citing their Christian beliefs that marriage is between a man and a woman. The state's Division of Human Rights ruled that business owned by Robert and Cynthia Gifford violated New York's anti-discrimination law. "The policy to not allow same-sex marriage ceremonies on Liberty Ridge Farm is a denial of access to a place...

MONTGOMERY, Alabama, November 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Pockets of resistance to the Supreme Court's judicial activism in constitutionalizing homosexual "marriage" are cropping up across the United States. Not isolated pockets, either. Large, organized pockets. The latest groups to officially resist Obergefell v Hodges include Alabama pediatricians and an entire church denomination, petitioning the state Supreme Court to disobey federal law in order to "protect" churches, families, and children. The American College of Pediatricians (ACP) submitted a "Friend of the Court" brief November 6. "It is in the best interest of children and this State to preserve the fundamental and immutable...

Not all American states have placidly accepted the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges to declare same-sex marriage constitutional. Some are listening to advice from legal scholars that “state officeholders” should “refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent”.If this gathers momentum, there could eventually be some scope for state governors to ignore Obergefell as a precedent. Instead, they could argue that the Court had spoken authoritatively only for the parties involved in that case alone. It’s not likely, but a crack may be opening.Here is what happened in Mississippi.Lauren Beth Czekala-Chatham, a 52-year-old credit analyst, who already had two...

It did not take long for marriage revisionism to show its hostility to the relationship among children, mothers, and fathers. Just a few months after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that all states must eliminate from their legal definition of marriage the essential involvement of man and woman, conflicts between this redefinition and the fundamental rights of children to be connected to both father and mother are already making their way through the courts.In these conflicts, children’s rights might seem to enjoy an advantage of priority. Even states that redefined marriage several years ago have left in...

FRANKFORT, KY, November 9, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - On December 8, Kentucky will have a new governor, and Kim Davis will have a chance to do her job without denying her faith. Governor-elect Matt Bevin has promised that he will change the state's marriage forms, removing the name of the county clerk entirely - the reform Davis had pleaded with state lawmakers to enact before spending five days in jail. Davis, the clerk of Rowan County in eastern Kentucky, is a born again Christian who believes participating in a same-sex "marriage" would make her guilty of a major sin. Before the...

Two daycare workers have been fired for refusing to go along with the center’s transgender agenda. Madeline Kirksey, one of the workers who is an author of a Christian book, says her religious liberty rights have been violated. The two were fired after refusing to call a little girl a boy. The two male parents of a six-year-old little girl told employees at the school to refer to their daughter as a boy, and to call her by a new masculine name. The little girl’s hair had also been cut like a boy’s. Kirksey told Breitbart Texas in an interview,...

FOX CHAPEL, Pennsylvania, November 5, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Three years ago, Nino Esposito adopted his adult gay lover, Roland Bosee, Jr., as his legal son in order to save money on future inheritance taxes. Now that homosexual "marriage" is legal in Pennsylvania, they went to court to dissolve that legal adoption so as to "wed." Judge Lawrence J. O'Toole, of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, told the men that state law didn't give him the power to dissolve a legal adoption, unless there was fraud involved.  Now Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) is asking the Obama administration to...

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, October 29, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy told a Harvard Law School audience that government employees with religious convictions about marriage should resign. The Ronald Reagan appointee said on Wednesday that if a public official has a moral objection to homosexuality, he must either follow the law or quit public service. The judge's comment came in answer to a question a student asked about government officials who disagree with the Supreme Court's decisions on gay marriage, or abortion, and if those citizens have the constitutional right to act according to their sincerely held moral...

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky, October 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)—There was a time when Church and State cooperated – when governing powers welcomed the influence of Judeo-Christian values and sought to harmonize its laws with morality. But since the radical secularization of Western society, Christians have been forced into an adversarial, politically incorrect role, much like the early Church in times of persecution. Since a "culture of death" began to dominate the West, genuine Christians have become counter-cultural. The leader of America's largest Protestant denomination, Dr. Albert Mohler, applies this Christian counter-culturalism to the latest politically correct trend in society: the approval of sodomy...

Most liberals and even some conservatives are arguing that Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis must either issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples or quit her post. Where you stand on this issue too often comes down to a case of where you stand on the question of whether same-sex nuptials are now “the law of the land” because Justice Tony Kennedy and four of his black-robed cohorts say so. We all know about the Defense of Marriage Act. President Obama announced early in his administration that he would not enforce that law. This 1996 act had been overwhelmingly passed...

Same-sex marriage further encourages the state to encroach on the domain of that indispensable pre-political community, the family. The first in a two-part series. Same-sex marriage is often touted as a harmless expansion of individual liberty. Yet the legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples has far from innocuous consequences, particularly with regard to children’s well-being and religious liberty. Redefining marriage also strikes at our fundamental liberties in deeper though less obvious ways. A crucial aspect of liberty is respect for subsidiarity—in particular, recognition that the family, based on marriage, is a pre-political community with natural and original authority over...

The decision of the Supreme Court in Obergefell v Hodges effectively legalised same-sex marriage throughout the United States.Or did it?A group of 60 distinguished scholars, mostly lawyers, insist that it does not. They have thrown down the gauntlet, arguing that the Supreme Court is supreme in the federal judicial system. But the justices are not supreme over the executive and legislative branches of government. “And they are certainly not supreme over the Constitution.”Behind this audacious challenge is Princeton Professor Robert P. George, an eminent academic and a seasoned campaigner in the battle to stop same-sex marriage.For village pump lawyers, this...