Free Republic

CHELSEA, MICH. — Kristi and Michael Burns have a lot in common. They love crossword puzzles, football, going to museums and reading five or six books at a time. They describe themselves as mild-mannered introverts who suffer from an array of chronic medical problems. The two share similar marital résumés, too. On their wedding day in 2011, the groom was 43 years old and the bride 39, yet it was marriage No. 3 for both. Today, their blended family is a sprawling, sometimes uneasy ensemble of two sharp-eyed sons from her two previous husbands, a daughter and son from his...

Mark Driscoll has attempted to briefly answer a very pressing and important question that should be on the radar screen of each and every Christian. The post is titled "Does God hate cotton blend T-shirts?" and deals with the prohibition against mixed threads in Deuteronomy 22:11 and Leviticus 19:19. Deuteronomy 22:11: “You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.”Leviticus 19:19: Nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.” Driscoll, in his post, deals very superficially with the above question and basically ends up appealing to the classic three-fold division of the...

The owners of a Christian guesthouse who were ordered to pay damages for turning away a gay couple have lost their UK Supreme Court fight. Hazelmary and Peter Bull refused to let civil partners Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall stay in a double room at Chymorvah House in Marazion in Cornwall in 2008. The couple, who had already lost cases at Bristol County Court and the Court of Appeal, said they were "saddened". Mr and Mrs Bull have said they regard any sex outside marriage as a "sin". Steven Preddy (l) and Martyn Hall Steven Preddy (l) and Martyn Hall...

Pope Francis lays flowers at the foot of the statue of Our Lady of Lujan on May 8, 2013. Credit: Stephen Driscoll/CNA. Vatican City, Nov 26, 2013 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis reaffirmed Catholic teaching on male priesthood in his first apostolic exhortation, while calling for a broader application of the “feminine genius” in Church life. “The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion,” he said, “but it can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified...

Dr. Donna Freitas, perhaps the nation’s leading expert on university hookup culture, has being doing research among college students and on college campuses regarding sex, the hookup culture, and student religiosity for several years.  She has produced many scholarly publications and studies.  One consistent finding she has observed is that evangelical college students are significantly less likely to hookup than any of their counterparts (Catholic or secular).  Why?  An excerpt from an interview: The attitudes toward sexuality on evangelical campuses were remarkably different from everywhere else. Everyone is struggling with sex, but they do it in very different ways.It’s impossible on...

Hawaii has legalized same gender marriage. The Aloha State Gays have been handed everything they demanded, but alas they are not happy. It seems like they never are. During the public hearings on the question of Gay marriage (SB 1) people lined up and in some cases waited four days to exercise their right to speak for just two minutes as they expressed their opinion on the matter. Although everyone knew the outcome was a foregone conclusion that would see the Gays winning the day, the hearings and subsequent final vote produced an unexpected result. After actually listening to the...

If Signorile and other "LGBT" activists get their way, this would mean that churches, mosques, synagogues, religious schools, Bible bookstores, as well as any and every other business in America with 15 or more employees, would be forced, under penalty of law, to abandon the biblical and traditional-values viewpoint on human sexuality, and hire (and otherwise not offend) those who openly flaunt expressly sinful and demonstrably self-destructive sexual behaviors.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America has just announced a new insidious Internet presence referred to as “mobile interactive tools to help teens make healthy decisions.” STOPP’s national director, Rita Diller, joined ALL’s Jim Sedlak on his Radio Maria “Armed for Battle” broadcast November 1 to warn about what lurks within the many webpages of this new “tool” for indoctrinating both children and parents. “By ‘mobile interactive tools,’ Planned Parenthood means it is on its website so that kids can access this stuff from their smart phones or their computers when their parents aren’t looking,” Diller said. “And by ‘helping teens...

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, November 7, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The New Zealand Family Planning Association is trying to save face after public backlash over the Association’s plan to release a sexuality resource for children aged 5 to 8 later this month. The resource has drawn attention to the fact that “sexuality” is already included right through each year level of the health curriculum. Even in Catholic schools “sexuality” education is compulsory, although parents do have the right to be informed and are given the option of removing their children from these classes. The Ministry of Education’s 2002 document “Sexuality Education –...

In true Marxist form, the ludicrously named "Affordable Care Act" mounts an all-out attack on marriage. In 2010 the Heritage Foundation pointed out under the bill couples would face massive financial penalties if they marry or remain married. Conversely, couples who cohabit without marriage are given highly preferential financial treatment. If the Senate bill becomes law, saying 'I do' would cost some couples over $10,000 per year.

<p>NEW YORK (AP) Actors Jonah Hill, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kristen Bell are among a batch of celebrities donning Russian-language "Love Conquers Hate" T-shirts to show support for gays in Russia alarmed by a new law banning pro-gay "propaganda."</p> <p>It's part of an initiative launched Monday by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S. gay-rights group.</p>

If Octo-Mom annoyed you, then you haven't seen welfare mom Angel Adams, a 39 year old Black single mother of 15 young children, 12 of which were in her care.

Note: I did not write this. Rather it was posted on Facebook by the good folks at Monergism Books. _____________________________________________________ I have not historically spent much time, if any, obsessing on the various sexual liberation agendas in our culture. But it has come to my attention that perhaps the most troubled people in our current society are those who accuse Christians of hate speech and homophobia for simply wanting to share the gospel with them. Such groundless declarations of hate betray the speakers themselves as a people driven by irrational prejudice. in doing so they are creating a cultural, educational...

A new survey suggests that marriage is actually more important to men than it is to women. In fact, just since last year, the number of women who say their definition of success is not linked to marriage (or relationships at all) has nearly doubled. According to the third “Professional Women Report” (h/t the Atlantic), a survey of over 1,000 male and female professionals released yesterday by LinkedIn and Citi, 9 percent of women say that marriage and relationships do not factor into their consideration of success, compared to 5 percent last year. It turns out that men are more...

I'm pretty sure I'm bisexual. I say "pretty sure" because I was raised Mormon, a religion that proclaims homosexuality is a terrible sin, so I never really experimented until my twenties. Residual guilt kept me from fully exploring that side of myself that had been so repressed all those years. Mormon hangover, I call it. So I had a few encounters with women in my twenties and then fell in love with and married my husband. So that's that. Except we all know that marriage doesn't stop us from being attracted to other people, it's part of life. I often...

Link Only (then boil your computer) <-- WARNING: Language

Here's a fascinating chart that probably comports with what you're seeing in real life. The age at which people are first getting married is soaring. (Via John Podhoretz). The jump in the last decade is particularly notable. There are various theories for why people are getting married later, but one notion has to do with cultural attitudes towards marriage, and the growing perception that marriage is a "capstone" of life achievements, rather than a cornerstone.

If you happen to do anything other than sleep in a cave today, chances are you have Ada Lovelace to thank for it. She is responsible for the first ever computer program. And she came up with it long before the computer even existed. Today is the fifth annual Ada Lovelace Day, celebrating the achievement of a Victorian mother-of-three who would change the world. Let’s travel back through time for a moment. Before the ZX Spectrum and before the Atari 2600, there was a thing that historians like to call the 19th century. The computer may have existed as a...

Three-quarters of handprints in ancient cave art were left by women, study finds.Women made most of the oldest-known cave art paintings, suggests a new analysis of ancient handprints. Most scholars had assumed these ancient artists were predominantly men, so the finding overturns decades of archaeological dogma. Archaeologist Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University analyzed hand stencils found in eight cave sites in France and Spain. By comparing the relative lengths of certain fingers, Snow determined that three-quarters of the handprints were female. "There has been a male bias in the literature for a long time," said Snow, whose research was...

QUEBEC CITY, October 2, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Three members of the radical feminist topless protest group Femen disrupted proceedings in the Quebec legislature on Tuesday. After shouting from the gallery and removing their shirts, the trio was quickly hustled away by security. The group said they were protesting the presence of the crucifix on the wall of the National Assembly in light of the Quebec government's proposed secular “charter of values,” which seeks to ban “overt and conspicuous” religious symbols in public institutions. The Femen protesters being detained after disrupting the Quebec legislature. One of the "Femen Quebec" members, Julie-Anne...