Free Republic

Standing against same-sex marriage is not at all like supporting slavery and Jim Crow laws. In part I yesterday, I addressed two of the three most common efforts to undermine the legitimacy of Christian doctrine on marriage and homosexuality. Part II deals with the third. The third major avenue of attack on Christian teachings on same-sex marriage and homosexual sex, and a particular favorite of anti-religious progressives, is to compare Catholics and other Christians who defend the New Testament’s teachings on marriage and sex to the defenders of Jim Crow and American slavery. This argumentum ad Wallace, mainly advanced by...

Did You Hear About The Time Ben Franklin Wrote a Column For The National Gazette, Quoting From the Koran, and Calling For The Enslavement of Christians? I bet you think I'm kidding. I'm not. The first thing we need to understand is Ben Franklin was petitioning Congress for the abolition of slavery in the USA: Author, "Theodore Parker" wrote “Historic Americans” in which he describes founding father, Benjamin Franklin, abolitionist extraordinaire, quoting the koran in defending his abolition petition to Congress You see the young nation in its infancy. “Hercules in his cradle, “ said Franklin; but with a...

A number of years ago I came across a good image of the above Slave's Friend abolitionist pamphlet.   It was published sometime between 1836 and 1860, most likely in the earlier years.    Freeper Ruy Dias de Bivar was kind enough to send me the image above, which is from MAN AT ARMS, published by the NRA, August, 1997, page 12. I intend to make this pamphlet easily available on the Internets, but I need a better image than the one above.   I know at least one better one exists, because I saw it in a reference book on weapons...

We are hearing a multitude of broadcasts, blogs, and stories about Mandela. Hosts fill their alloted time with stories of Mandela, and cannot help but slip into comparisons with modern politicians. It is also appropriate to compare him with our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, who faced some of the very same challenges as Mr. Mandela.

On September 3, 1838, Frederick Bailey undertook the riskiest journey of his life. The 20-year-old slave made a daring escape from his master in Baltimore, and with his newfound freedom came a new name -- Frederick Douglass... After Douglass’ attempt to escape slavery two years prior was betrayed by a fellow slave, he had been jailed, sent to Baltimore by his master and hired out to work in the city’s shipyards. Undeterred, Douglass vowed to try to escape again on September 3, 1838, although he knew the risk. "I felt assured that if I failed in this attempt, my case...

Who We Are When great evils arise in the course of human history and become legally sanctioned, socially normalized, and morally justified, the Spirit of God working within his Body and Bride will move people to stand up and speak out against them. Following in the footsteps of former abolitionist movements, we aim to end one of the greatest human miseries and moral evils to ever be entrenched in our world. To this end we seek to encourage informed, rigorous, and consistent thought and action in response to the rampant occurrence of abortion within our community. We seek to instigate...

EqualProtectionforPosterity.comUnited States Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Your demeanor and plain words on many subjects have been refreshing, Senator, since your election. But your support for the so-called 'twenty week' or "fetal pain" abortion legislation that was just passed in your home state, and which is similarly being proposed in the great national legislative body in which you now serve, is a huge disappointment. Such support destroys your credibility and disqualifies you. Do you think it would be right, or just, or moral, or constitutional, if a "law" were passed that explicitly allowed all paraplegics to be shot to death,...

Sarah Cleveland: Thinking about the people I met this morning while on the sidewalk. It was so bitterly cold... Dozens of parents and grandparents went inside today. It was so busy.. There were several of us counseling and praying outside of the mill today and as always, we spoke to as many people as we could going in, reaching out equally to the people standing on the steps having a cigarette, the workers, and the people walking out of the building. I spoke with Renee, a mother of two. A child, age 5 at home, and another, age 4 months,...

Freemasonry has not figured prominently in most of the displays and debates on slavery and abolition in 2007. Yet the society was an important eighteenth century institution and one whose extensive archives have the potential to offer interesting - and sometimes unfamiliar - insights into social processes and relationships that shaped the Atlantic world of which slavery and abolitionism were prominent features. This review of the exhibition at the Library and Museum of Freemasonry begins to uncover this complex and sometimes ambiguous history. As well as being an age of slavery, slave-trading, slave resistance, abolitionism and eventual abolition, the eighteenth...

A diary written 140 years ago by Scots explorer David Livingstone can now be read for the first time after experts shed new light on the badly-faded text. Scientists used spectral imaging to recover the account of the massacre of 400 slaves, which had been written on old newspaper with makeshift ink. The manuscript, written in central Africa, deteriorated rapidly and is now virtually invisible to the naked eye. It has gone on show at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. An international team of experts took part in the 18-month project to uncover Livingstone's personal account of the...

Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois September 15, 1858 MR. DOUGLAS' SPEECH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him the leading political topics that now agitate the country. Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties known as Whig and Democratic. These parties differed from each other on certain questions which were then deemed to be important to the best interests of the Republic. Whig and Democrats differed about a bank, the...

THE death penalty has been abolished forever in Australia after Federal Parliament yesterday passed laws ensuring it could never be reinstated. Both sides of politics supported the move, which is largely seen as symbolic. The last time the death penalty was used was the hanging execution in 1967 of Ronald Ryan, guilty of shooting and killing prison officer George Hodson while escaping from Pentridge Prison in Melbourne.

Slavery still stalks the American consciousness, its wounds yet festering in many hearts. If Barack Obama were to set his mind to it, he could heal much of the damage this peculiar institution wrought on our national soul. This great and tragic error that must be given justice. Obama is the best person in the world who can recognize, remember and honor the deaths of 125 million and the enslavement of tens of millions of people. His unique qualifications can be found in his names. Until he was 20 years old, he went by the first name Barry. Then he...

THE LAW OF INTENDED CONSEQUENCESThe Constitution Of The United States. Article III, Section 3. Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted. The Congress shall have...

TRENTON, N.J. - The New Jersey Public Defender's Office said Tuesday it won't challenge Gov. Jon S. Corzine's decision to commute the death sentences of eight men now that the state's death penalty has been abolished. The office had questioned whether Corzine had authority to do that because the penalty of life imprisonment without chance of parole didn't exist when the men committed their crimes. But spokesman Tom Rosenthal said legal research has shown that the governor does have the authority. Corzine commuted the sentences Monday as he signed a law making New Jersey the first to abolish the death...

Quakers started the British campaign against the slave trade and invented modern campaigning, championing the petition and the consumer boycott, and mastering the use of images and logos. Not that they like to shout about it. It is perhaps the defining image of the battle to end the slave trade. Not a picture of a shackled slave, or some gruesome punishment, but a cross-section of a ship. It is a ship packed so full that the mind boggles at the sheer logistics of inhumanity. The engraving of the Brookes, fully-loaded, slave ship The use of the engraving of the...

The framers of the United States Constitution believed that people of African descent “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” and that “the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit…. [to be] bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it.” With reference to the words “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence: “It is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race was not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people...

WASHINGTON - The House's top tax writer revealed a proposal Monday to reduce taxes on inherited estates and rewrite a quirky law that repeals the tax for only one year. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., introduced the bill after Senate Republican leader Bill Frist of Tennessee asked House GOP leaders for help reducing the estate tax before this fall's midterm elections. Frist lost a bid this month to push forward legislation repealing the tax, unable to overcome opposition from most Democrats and a pair of Republicans. Under President Bush's first tax cut, the estate tax decreases...

The key to understanding Lincoln's philosophy of statesmanship is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice. By Dinesh D'Souza Most Americans -- including most historians -- regard Abraham Lincoln as the nation's greatest president. But in recent years powerful movements have gathered, both on the political right and the left, to condemn Lincoln as a flawed and even wicked man. For both camps, the debunking of Lincoln usually begins with an exposé of the "Lincoln myth," which is well described in William Lee Miller's 2002 book Lincoln's...

A Glimpse Ahead Timothy Snodgrass The Impossible Will Come Alive In 2005 01/28/05 In January of 2004, as we began to intercede for the New Year the Holy Spirit gave us the prophetic slogan, "The Seas will Roar in 2004". This year we were given a new slogan, "The Impossible will come Alive in 2005". As the veil of darkness begins to come down over nations and regions, along with great shakings will come great breakthroughs; signs, wonders, healings and a spectacular release of miracles in impossible circumstances. This year, although we are ultimately poised to gain much ground, there...