Free Republic

Amid unending political horserace punditry — who’s up, who’s down in the wake of Supreme Court rulings, Congress’ trade-promotion votes, Iranian nuclear negotiations and the racist Charleston massacre — let’s Think Again about the most important concern: Are the American people winning or losing? Are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — the national promise Americans celebrate on July Fourth — secure in this year of the Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary? That watershed moment in the annals of human liberty curbed a tyrannical monarch, like the American founding it helped inspire. Initially an agrarian backwater in a socially stratified...

WASHINGTON -- If you dutifully read the weekend newspapers and watched the Sunday morning gasbags on television, I suspect you departed the chaos with a terrible headache. Possibly you departed for the bar. Typical of the news stories was one The Washington Post headlined: "GOP Struggles For Footing As Cultural Ground Shifts Leftward." Who was doing the shifting? Well, a couple of delusional Supreme Court justices supported by a homicidal maniac seated in someone's backyard flying the Confederate flag over his puny shoulder and a narcissistic self-promoter who recently changed his/her name to Caitlyn. Such are the dynamic forces driving...

Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz are suggesting there might be ways for states and cities to nullify the justices’ ruling. They’re wrong. The Supreme Court’s decision last week did make gay marriage legal nationwide. Unfortunately for social conservatives, it did not, however, make nullification legal around the nation. Nullification is the historical idea that states can ignore federal laws, or pass laws that supercede them. This concept has a long but not especially honorable pedigree in U.S. history. Its origins date back to antebellum America, where Southern states tried to nullify tariffs and Northern states tried to nullify fugitive-slave laws....

Speaking as a somewhat ideologically removed observer of the gay marriage battle still raging in the national discourse, I have to say that there are some very amusing elements to the current “GAY POINT 2″ argument taking place. I say this with all due respect for my traditional marriage supporting, conservative brethren who consider the matter a cornerstone of faith and a rightly viewed threat to the religious liberty rights of Christians who would opt to not participate in such ceremonies, but even you must surely be able to see some comedic value to the arguments currently coming from the...

Via Newsmax, skip to 4:20 for the key part. He’s not saying anything here that, say, Marco Rubio hasn’t but the McConnell endorsement surely cinches this among grassroots righties as the official RINO position. (Sorry, Marco!) Meekly submitting to the will of the Court isn’t what warriors do. Which raises the question: What should the GOP, as a party, do to resist?Should they encourage county clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gays? That might work short-term, until other state officials can be found who’ll grant the licenses, but it’s likely to bring a lot of legal grief...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)BILLINGS - Given the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling that same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states, a Lockwood family is now looking to solidify rights of its own. We first told you about the Colliers in January of 2015 when the polygamist family appeared on an episode of the TLC show, "Sister Wives."The polyamorous movement is a national push to allow marriage between multiple partners. Nathan Collier and his two wives, Vicki and Christine, said Tuesday that they are simply looking for equality. Nathan is legally married to Vicki, but also wants to legally wed Christine. On Tuesday,...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says there's not much Congress can do in the wake of the ruling by the Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. In an interview Tuesday night on Kentucky television station WDRB, McConnell restated that he still holds to the traditional view of marriage. "I’ve always felt that marriage is between one man and one woman and the Supreme Court has held otherwise. That’s the law of the land," the Kentucky Republican said. When he was asked if there is anything Congress can do, he answered: "I don’t think so. I think the courts have pretty well...

More unsettling than the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges directing states to recognize same-sex marriage is the reasoning that went into the decision. It would be nice to believe that the men and women who wear black robes and occupy seats on America's highest court are serious people -- or that they are wise. But going forth, unfortunately, it should be clear that the real thought leaders of America are in Hollywood, and that our Supreme Court, save three conservatives, is just a ship that rides the wave of public opinion. A good deal of the court's...

During the re-election cycle in 2012, President Obama sent seismic shock waves through the news media when he became the first American president to publicly support marriage equality. On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court sided with the president’s views in a 5-4 decision, sending a ruling “like a thunderbolt” through American society in favor of marriage equality in all 50 states[1]. As the longtime advisor, David Axelrod revealed in his recent book[2] that candidate-Obama was in favor of same-sex marriage (when running for the US Senate[3]) before he was against it (while running for the Presidency[4]), and then he...

According to a new CNN poll, majorities support both SCOTUS’ ObamaCare and its gay marriage decision: "According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 63% support the Court’s ruling upholding government assistance for lower-income Americans buying health insurance through both state-operated and federally-run health insurance exchanges. Slightly fewer, 59%, say they back the ruling which made same-sex marriages legal in all 50 states." It’s not surprising that a majority of voters like ‘free money – which is undoubtedly what they think about ObamaCare subsidies – or that they support legalizing gay marriage. Previous polls showed that already. No, what’s shocking here is...

What a silly bunch of people our Founding Fathers were. They worked for months to create the Constitution to give birth to a republic. What a waste of time. All they really needed to do was to create the Supreme Court with instructions to make it up as they go along. But no, those silly men foolishly tried to create a nation of laws, not a nation of men. Anyone can see that all we needed was a dictatorship of nine people called the Supreme Court. So throw that foolish Constitution in the fire. We never needed it. One of...

What can it possibly matter to you, they were asked, if two men or two women who love each other call their relationship marriage? We learned that it matters a great deal. It matters to Brendan Eich, who was forced to resign last year as CEO of the company he co-founded after it became public that he had donated $1,000 to Proposition 8, the successful California ballot measure banning same-sex marriage. It matters to Chick-fil-A, which in 2012 saw the mayors of Chicago and Boston declare the restaurant chain had no place in their cities because its chief executive held...

The U.S. Supreme Court today took no action on a dispute over a Mississippi abortion law that requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. As a result, the law will remain on hold for several more months — perhaps until the court decides whether to take a similar law from Texas. The Supreme Court Monday blocked enforcement of the Texas law while it's on appeal.

It’s the first post-ruling poll I’ve seen in either case. There wasn’t much mystery about where the public was on ObamaCare subsidies — “free” money! — but there was a little suspense around the SSM decision in light of this YouGov poll last week showing a plurality of the public opposed to having the Court decide the issue. That raised the question of whether a backlash might be brewing around process. Sure, Americans support gay marriage in principle, but what happens when the judiciary wrests that issue out of the states’ hands and settles it as a matter of...

“The Nightly Show” host also took on presidential candidate Bobby Jindal and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In response to Friday’s ruling by the Supreme Court declaring same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, Larry Wilmore promised a #BigGayMonday episode of “The Nightly Show” to celebrate. The episode, dubbed “Larry Wilmore’s 2015 YAAASSSS KWEEN YAAASSSS MARRIAGE-TRAVAGANZAAAAAAAA: A SLIPPERY SLOPE TO HAPPINAAAAAASS,” was opened by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus performing a song called “It’s About [expletive] Time.” Declaring it “too momentous a day to spend a lot of time focusing on the haters,” Wilmore addressed some of the...

I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy. The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance. Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to...

With a liberal court, we get the rulings we deserve. Or, in other words, elections have consequences. It's safe to say that without the election of Barack Obama, we would not have had to endure liberal Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor sitting in judgement of marriage. (Both appointed by Obama in his first term, and both voting to legally redefine marriage.) Of course, the election of a republican, especially the likes of John McCain, gives no guarantee of conservative appointments to the Supreme Court. However, justices Roberts and Alito, appointed by George W. Bush, both voted against...

San Francisco changed America. When then-Mayor Gavin Newsom opened City Hall to same-sex marriages during the 2004 Winter of Love, he had determined to "put a human face on discrimination." The long line of couples eager to tie the knot appealed to the public's romantic side. When two people are in love and want to commit to each other for the rest of their lives, activists asked, how can the government say no? That sentiment permeates Friday's Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. "In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were," wrote...

Texas' attorney general has released an official opinion declaring that state employees can refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples if they hold a moral or religious objection. Attorney General Ken Paxton released the statement Sunday following the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide. In his statement, Paxton denounced the 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, but noted that the decision "acknowledged there are religious liberty protections of which individuals may be able to avail themselves." "County clerks and their employees retain religious freedoms that may allow accommodation of their religious objections to issuing same-sex marriage licenses....

Leading Evangelist Franklin Graham is warning Christians nationwide that they should be ready to face persecution if they wish to stand by the biblical definition of marriage following last Friday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States. Despite President Barack Obama claiming that the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges is a "victory for a America," Graham, the president of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, asserted in an interview with Fox News' Todd Starnes last weekend that the United States is really the true "loser" because the ruling could bring...