Free Republic

Would like your opinions...but consider this: Saudi Arabia has treated women and homosexuals like sub-human beings for DECADES....and the Hollywood elite has said virtually NOTHING. BUT now, suddenly they are concerned about Islamic views in these issues? I am not certain they are REALLY interested in this particular hotel....rather, I suspect they are using this as a "test case" in order to attack Christian-owned businesses that do not celebrate infanticide, abortion, or homosexuality. Am I wrong, wearing a tin foil hat?

‘Two, four, six, eight. Stop the violence. Stop the rape.” So chanted a group of Ohio University students calling themselves “f***rapeculture” at a protest a couple of years ago. Rape-culture activists have become a fixture on campuses throughout the country, and now, 55 colleges — including Harvard, Princeton, and Berkeley — are under federal investigation for mishandling sexual-assault complaints. Some of my conservative/libertarian sisters have pointed out that the statistics on sexual assault are wildly inflated. Christina Hoff Sommers notes that the “one in five women are victims of rape” statistic that the Centers for Disease Control popularized (and that...

At the Brookings Institute, a center-left think tank, Washington Post contributor E.J. Dionne, theological professor Gary Dorrien, and Columbia University professor Dorian Warren discussed the future of religious progressives in American society and how it could influence community organizing. “The Romney coalition is actually made up, a religious make-up that is even more white and Christian of Americans over 65 years old” while the “Obama coalition [has] more religiously unaffiliated [voters] …[a] higher proportion of non-white Christians…much closer to the younger cohort.” He claimed, “The Obama coalition is much more diverse.” Yet, Dionne admitted, “Only 13% of Democrats are religious...

Throughout history, religion has sanctioned and fueled the persecution of homosexuality. That dynamic may be drawing to an end. Polls, clerics, and denominations are shifting. Theology is adapting. Resistance to same-sex marriage is dwindling, and there’s no end in sight. For 15 years, the Ethics and Public Policy Center has hosted the Faith Angle Forum, a regular conference on religion and public life. Several weeks ago, the group met again to discuss current issues. Transcripts of the conference have just been posted on EPPC’s website. They underscore the extent of the anti-gay collapse. The first session, led by papal biographer...

Gene Robinson made headlines in 2003 as the first openly gay Anglican bishop. Eleven years later, the Episcopalian has announced that he is filing for divorce from his partner of 25 years. In a post published by the Daily Beast, Robinson explained the situation. Recently, my partner and husband of 25-plus years and I decided to get divorced. While the details of our situation will remain appropriately private, I am seeking to be as open and honest in the midst of this decision as I have been in other dramatic moments of my life—coming out in 1986, falling in love,...

Writing for TFP, Peter Miller reports: Officials at the University of Notre Dame revoke permission for pro-marriage table, tell young Catholics to “cease and desist” promoting natural marriage on campus. Sound Bend, Indiana: April 29, 2014 -- Young volunteers with Tradition Family Property Student Action were ordered to “cease and desist” promoting traditional marriage at the University of Notre Dame on Friday, April 25. “Permission to have a table had been granted through an officially recognized on-campus student group,” said TFP Student Action director John Ritchie. “But that permission was revoked for some odd reason. Police officers arrived soon after...

A short time ago I learned of a church building in our neighborhood that was for sale. For years now Grace Fellowship Church has been looking for a building of our own, so we thought we should go and give it a look. This had once been a thriving congregation. Faithful Christians had given sacrificially to construct that building. They had consecrated it to the Lord and had worshipped there for many years. Yet now that building was deserted, decaying, and up for sale. What happened? How did that church go from thriving to dying? How did it slide from...

BOSTON, MA, April 24, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Three “married” lesbians in Massachusetts have announced they are expecting the first of several children intended for their polygamous union. But marriage advocates say the story confirms their warnings about the slippery slope created by redefining marriage and granting legal privileges based on a self-identified characteristic like sexual orientation. The three women – Doll, 30; Brynn, 32; and Kitten, 27 – are not legally married to all the members of the polyamorous coupling, something not permitted under state or federal law. Brynn and Doll have been together since 2009. However, it is Brynn...

A faded fragment of papyrus known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” which caused an uproar when unveiled by a Harvard Divinity School historian in 2012, has been tested by scientists who conclude in a journal published on Thursday that the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery. Skepticism about the tiny scrap of papyrus has been fierce because it contained a phrase never before seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife...’ ” Too convenient for some, it also contained the words “she will be able to be my disciple,”...

Pink Brick Award Posted on April 7, 2014 by Pastor Scott Tonight I was informed by a writer at the Bay Area Reporter that I have been “awarded” the Pink Brick Award by the San Francisco LGBT Pride organization.From their website: “The Pink Brick is a symbol of the first brick hurled at the Stonewall Riots in 1969. This faux award is an opportunity to highlight an individual or organization that has done significant harm to the LGBT community. It is also an opportunity to educate the community and the Pink Brick recipient about relevant issues.” http://www.sfpride.org/pink-brick/Here is his...

Did anyone see the latest episode of Rake where the lead character, a lawyer, made a case for the acceptance of beastiality, and won, clearing his client of wrong doing?

A president struggling in the polls at home recently traveled to the Vatican. He was hoping that a photo with the wildly popular Pope Francis might boost his dismal approval ratings. But because the president had been championing historic LGBT legislation to appeal to his base, some wondered if the pope would actually use their meeting to chastise the president — reminding him how the policies he favors are out of sync with church teachings. Barack Obama, right? No — the president was Nigeria’s embattled leader, President Goodluck Jonathan. As we all know, the media reported, analyzed, critiqued, conjectured and...

As parents in Germany have protested a new pro-homosexual “sexual diversity” curriculum in their schools, homosexual activists have attacked them by hurling feces and destroying their property, according to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, which documents anti-Christian incidents in Europe. "Protesters were physically attacked and it was felt that the police failed to protect the parents’ basic right of assembly," said a statement from the Observatory describing incidents at recent rallies in Baden-Württemberg and Cologne. According to eyewitnesses, says the Observatory, "Christian parents were shouted at with obscenities.” "They were spit at, eggs were thrown, and little...

Recently, I was a panelist on MSNBC. The topic was same sex marriage. A fellow panelist called for a Marriage Spring. We know what that means. Or we think we do. The unmarriage advocate wants us to hurry up and overthrow the existing order. Do it as the Arab Street has been doing it: Assemble a vast mass of people entering the square to insist on change. Demand an end to an oppressive old order. And it will all happen with stunning suddenness—just as the winds of change have blown through the Arab world. Or so they say. We all...

WARNING: Graphic language… Joe Newby at The Washington Examiner has found a real doozy of a “comedian.” Her name is Laura Levites – with obviously no connection to the priests of the Old Testament. (She’s an atheist with a fondness for Ricky Gervais.) “I would personally like to castrate every Male Conservative Christian so that they have NO reproductive rights,” she wrote on Twitter, using the hashtag “#HobbyLobby.” She certainly knows how to draw attention to herself. Newby said that’s not all. She also expressed her hatred of Christians in a tweet calling conservative Christians “scumbags,” claiming they are “really...

The English version of Spain’s The Local is reporting that five activists belonging to controversial feminist group Femen have staged a protest against an anti-abortion demonstration in Spain’s capital by baring their breasts and painting skulls on their faces. The five Femen members shouted out “Pro-life is genocide” as they interrupted the anti-abortion march in Madrid’s emblematic Puerta del Sol square on Sunday morning. topless3As usual, the feminist activists appeared topless as part of their protest modus operandi, but this time they also painted their faces and upper bodies in black and white to replicate a skeleton. Bystanders vented their...

Last June, World Vision U.S president Richard Stearns stated that, “No one ever died of gay marriage,” thereby trivializing the importance of the issue, as if it contrasted with the organization’s mission of providing tangible relief to suffering humanity. Today, he went much further, claiming that this radical, unbiblical move is actually a “very narrow policy change” that should be viewed as “symbolic not of compromise but of [Christian] unity.” What? World Vision redefines the nature of marriage – the most fundamental institution of society, ordained by God in Genesis 2 as the lifelong union of a man and a...

“The existing abuse of females is the worst and most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on earth,” says former President Jimmy Carter, who is making the rounds of various news shows to promote his new book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.Carter—repeating something he’s stated previously—said the abuse is “indirectly” derived “from the fact that religious leaders say that women are inferior in the eyes of God, which is a false interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. But when they see that the pope, and the Southern Baptist Convention and others say that women can’t serve as...

PALO ALTO, CA, March 21, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A group of about 100 homosexual activists at Stanford University have successfully intimidated the Graduate Student Council (GSC) into withdrawing $600 in previously-approved funding for a pro-marriage conference to be held on campus in April. The university administration also tried to charge the organizers $5,000 for security costs, but backed down amidst public pressure after the organizers accused them of “impos[ing] a tax on free speech.” The Stanford Anscombe Society (SAS) is sponsoring the event, called “Communicating Values: Marriage, Family and the Media.” Featuring prominent pro-family speakers, the event’s goal is “to...

To most ears, it probably sounds inoffensive. A little outdated and clinical, perhaps, but innocuous enough: homosexual. But that five-syllable word has never been more loaded, more deliberately used and, to the ears of many gays and lesbians, more pejorative. “ ‘Homosexual’ has the ring of ‘colored’ now, in the way your grandmother might have used that term, except that it hasn’t been recuperated in the same way,” said George Chauncey, a Yale professor of history and an author who studies gay and lesbian culture. Consider the following phrases: homosexual community, homosexual activist, homosexual marriage. Substitute the word “gay” in...