Free Republic

As Americans, it is our birthright that all people are created equal and deserve the same rights, privileges, and opportunities. Since our earliest days of independence, our Nation has striven to fulfill that promise. An important chapter in our great, unfinished story is the movement for fairness and equality on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This month, as we recognize the immeasurable contributions of LGBT Americans, we renew our commitment to the struggle for equal rights for LGBT Americans and to ending prejudice and injustice wherever it exists. LGBT Americans have enriched and strengthened the...

To set up the video at the end of this article, I need to take you back to February 23, 2009  when Arizona State Senator Jonathan Paton (R-Tusgon) invited law enforcement officials to the Capital for a hearing.  Paton asked the officers to describe how bad the border violence has become in Arizona.  What the Senate Judiciary Committee learned was that Pima and Cochise counties were seeing an alarming increase of more and more "Rape Trees".  These are memorials, if you will, that are left behind by Mexican drug cartel members, and illegal male immigrants who have raped illegal...

President Obama today signed into law The Daniel Pearl Freedom of Press Act, which expands efforts to identify countries that don’t share our love for the First Amendment. He also took time to honor the man the bill is named after, journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamic extremists in 2002 in what the President — with nary a teleprompter in sight — called a moment that ‘captured the world’s imagination.’ The Obama administration has pushed to have Pearl’s professed killer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, tried in civilian court.

Political Correctness: While New York City OKs construction of a "monster mosque" at ground zero, the feds pay rent to a D.C. mosque tied to the Pentagon attack. Have we gone totally soft? Imagine on the 10th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, we let the Japanese erect a cultural center at the site of that attack. Exactly. It would never happen. So why are Manhattan officials bowing to demands by a group called the American Society for Muslim Advancement to open — on of all days, Sept. 11, 2011 — a 13-story shrine to Islam in the shadow of the beautiful...

As the toddlers say, I don't want to share. ___ A few years ago, my daughter and I were browsing through the card kiosk, trying to select a Mother's Day card. "Mom you're the best!" read one. "#1 mom" raved another. "Queen mother!" pronounced yet another. I got to choose because she couldn't yet read, and I chose none of the above. Let's go home and make homemade cards, OK? On cream-colored card stock, those bards at Hallmark have put their finger on the problem I have with Mother's Day: For me, it can't be about bests and greatests and...

Angie Jackson has taken micro-blogging to a whole new level. In an attempt to “demystify” abortion, the 27-year-old shared her experience on Twitter, YouTube and her personal blog. “I’m doing this so other women know, ‘Hey, it’s not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was.’ It’s just not that bad,” Jackson said on her YouTube video. Her ordeal began on February 13, when she discovered that her IUD, a contraceptive device placed in the uterus, failed. Jackson, a mother of a four-year-old son with special needs, decided to terminate the pregnancy. "I had made...

HAMILTON, Ontario, February 15, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Public school children in Hamilton, Ontario will not be permitted to withdraw from classes that promote homosexuality, according to the Hamilton Mountain News. At the same time, according to a leaked document obtained by a local journalist, teachers are being instructed to tell parents who object to the curriculum that “this is not about parent rights.”At the end of January, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) hosted a professional development day dedicated to “equity” training, where they distributed a sheet to teachers with “quick responses” they can offer to parents who object to...

Newly-elected Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown on Sunday defended his nude photo spread from his college days - and said the racy pictures helped get him where he is today. "If I hadn't done that ... I never would have been sitting here with you," said Brown in an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC News' "This Week." "It's all connected," added Brown, a Republican who was elected to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy in an upset that has put President Obama's agenda in turmoil. Brown, who took it all off for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1982, said the...

Friday January 29, 2010 Judge Gives Miller 30 Days to Transfer Daughter to Former Lesbian Lover or Face Arrest By Matthew Cullinan HoffmanRUTLAND, VERMONT, January 28, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Ex-Lesbian Lisa Miller has been given 30 days to transfer custody of her daughter to her former lesbian partner, or possibly face criminal penalties.Although Vermont Judge Richard Cohen has so far refused to issue an arrest warrant for Miller, he has set a deadline of February 23rd for the transfer to take place.If Miller does not appear during that time, Cohen said on January 22, "I will consider all possible...

A transgender couple have revealed they are expecting their first baby in a month’s time. Scott Moore - thought to be only the second ‘pregnant man’ to go public - is due to give birth to a boy in February, with husband Thomas by his side. The couple were both born girls and have undergone surgery to transform their sex. Scott, 30, who is legally married to Thomas because he still has a female birth certificate, says he is eagerly looking forward to giving birth. They have decided to call the child ‘Miles’. ‘We know some people will criticise us...

Vt. Judge: Birth Mom Must Give Child To Ex-Partner By WILSON RING Associated Press Writer Dec. 29, 2009 MONTPELIER, Vt. -- The birth mother of a 7-year-old Virginia girl must transfer custody of the child to the woman's former lesbian partner, a Vermont judge has ruled. Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen ordered Lisa Miller of Winchester, Va., to turn over daughter Isabella to Janet Jenkins of Fair Haven at 1 p.m. Friday at the Virginia home of Jenkins' parents. Miller and Jenkins were joined in a Vermont civil union in 2000. Isabella was born to Miller through artificial insemination...

On that still-quiet Tuesday morning, the sales staff was in a basement room eating breakfast, waiting to open the doors to the first shoppers at 10 a.m. There was no immediate sign of the fiery cataclysm that erupted overhead starting at 8:46. But out of a baby-blue sky suddenly stained with smoke, a plane’s landing-gear assembly the size of a World War II torpedo crashed through the roof and down through two empty selling floors of the Burlington Coat Factory. The Sept. 11, 2001, attack killed 2,752 people downtown and doomed the five-story building at 45 Park Place, two blocks...

Out of the Closet; Into the Church Homo McGreevey Finds Higher Calling thelastcrusade.org What does a gay governor do after he resigns from political office in disgrace? He becomes an Episcopalian and enters the priesthood. Jim McGreevey, the former New Jersey love gov, has gone from Turnpike truck stops to All Saints Church in Hoboken, where he is known as “Father Jim.” Last Sunday, the ex governor administered the sacrament of baptism to a bevy of babies, blessed the Eucharist, and carried the cross during the processional. In 2004, Mr. McGreevey resigned as Governor of New Jersey after revealing...

Fort Hood Tragedy -- Barack Obama Gives "Shout-Out" Before He Comments on Shooting -- FOX News

Rosie O'Donnell has confirmed that she and longtime girlfriend Kelli Carpenter are on the rocks. In a new interview with USA Today, she says, "We're a family. We will remain a family forever. And we are working on our issues." The 47-year-old O'Donnell -- who has been suggesting a split on her blog -- wouldn't confirm a National Enquirer report that Carpenter, 42, has moved out of their Nyack, NY, home and into Manhattan. (USA Today notes that Carpenter was not at the house during the interview.) Meet Rosie O'Donnell and other stars' surprise BFFs "We're a family, we remain...

Al Sharpton issued a statement this evening claiming a "moral victory for all Americans" on the dropping of Rush Limbaugh as part of a group of investors seeking to buy the NFL St. Louis Rams franchise.The AP reported Sharpton's statement and a follow up comment he made in an interview:"It is a moral victory for all Americans — especially the players that have been unfairly castigated by Rush Limbaugh," Sharpton said in a statement. "This decision will also uphold the unifying standards of major sports." Sharpton added in a telephone interview that major sports leagues shouldn't welcome owners who are...

"Kids are being aggressively recruited to become heterosexual in this country." Editor's note: This audio is from the speech Kevin Jennings gave at a GLSEN event in Iowa in 2000.

Another gold nugget buried in that LA Times piece that Ed linked earlier, even purer and finer than the quote from Harvey Weinstein trumpeting Hollywood’s famous, er, moral compass. Honestly, at the rate we’re going, it can’t be long before some celebrity and/or liberal tells us that the kid was asking for it. Jonathan Kuntz, a visiting professor in UCLA’s Cinema and Media Studies school, said the local reaction may be a version of the “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” “I think that there are a lot of folks in Hollywood in the late ’60s and...

Mackenzie Phillips is claiming in her new book, High on Arrival, that on the eve of her 1979 wedding she slept with her musician father, John Phillips. “My father was not a man with boundaries,” writes the actress, who is appearing on Oprah this afternoon. “He was full of love, and he was sick with drugs. I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father.” Singer-songwriter Phillips was, of course, the founder of the Mamas and the Papas who enjoyed an extraordinary run of hits in the late ’60s, including “California Dreamin’,”...