Free Republic

Ugandan lawmakers have passed a new version of an anti-gay bill that removes penalties for those who identify as LGBTQ. The country’s national assembly previously passed a sweeping bill criminalizing those who identify as LGBTQ, engage in homosexual acts, disseminate information about homosexuality, or advocate on behalf of LGBTQ causes. But Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni sent the bill back, demanding changes to the bill. Among those changes were a distinction between those who identify as LGBTQ and those who advocate on behalf of LGBTQ rights or present homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle. Another change suggested by Museveni was clemency for...

Yesterday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that “it’s not for us to decide” if last week’s deadly mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville — a shooting that left six innocent people dead — was a hate crime. The Biden administration can’t say one way or another whether a women who identified as a trans man and shot up the school she once went to after reportedly expressing her resentment toward her parents for having sent her there was motivated by hate. But you’d better believe that the White House knows hate when they see it. And where...

Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has signed a deal to give an Israeli government post to an openly homophobic ultra-nationalist party leader. It is the latest development set to give far-right parties unprecedented power within Israel's ruling coalition. Avi Maoz will be a deputy minister and run a "Jewish identity" authority. He heads Noam, a religious-nationalist, anti-Arab and anti-LGBTQ party that argues for a strict interpretation of Jewish religious laws in Israel. The agreement has added to a growing sense of alarm over the composition of Mr Netanyahu's likely government. Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid has described it as "full-on crazy",...

Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, tweeted out a since-deleted, unfounded and anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory Sunday morning about the attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from a website that has a history of publishing false information. Musk responded to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she tweeted out an L.A. Times story about how the suspect in the attack on Paul Pelosi, David DePape, spread far-right conspiracy theories. Clinton tweeted the link to that story along with the message: "The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is...