Free Republic

Diversity -- We have, what I fondly refer to as, a "rainbow" family. My husband is of German/Dutch descent. I am a Puerto-Rican/Hungarian. My first child is pure Russian as far as we can tell, and my second child has the blood of the mighty African flowing through her small veins. My second and third children are genetically ours & as such may qualify for the genus of being total "mutts." We are diversified. We are as different as night and day in many ways. However, and herein lies the 'political' controversy, we will not -- nor will we ever ...

<p>One Sunday morning during Thomas Jefferson's presidency, a friend stopped him on his way to Christ Church, then meeting on Capitol Hill. The president had a prayer book tucked under his arm. The man was incredulous. "You do not believe a word in it," he said.</p>

TOLEDO, OH, December 14, 2001 (TB) -- One of the two artificial Christmas trees stolen from a Greek Orthodox church near downtown Toledo has been located. The Rev. Aristotle Damaskos, pastor of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral at Walnut and Superior streets, said he was contacted yesterday morning by a woman who came forward and said she had purchased one of the trees late Monday night from a man in the courtyard of the Cherrywood Apartments near the church. The woman, Erica Benton, 22, said she had no prior knowledge that the tree had been stolen. She said she called ...

<p>What if Jesus had never been born? Western culture would not exist in its current form, scholars say, were it not for that event that demarcated world history two millennia ago.</p> <p>"Christianity has gotten a bad rap from people who have not done their homework," says retired Illinois College sociology professor Alvin J. Schmidt, author of the recent book "Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization."</p>

The King's English Bible Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired by Benson Bobrick New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001 (379 pages; $26.00, cloth) In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture by Alister McGrath New York: Doubleday, 2001 (340 pages; $24.95, cloth) Have you, from time to time, seen a man fall flat on his face and lick the dust? I don?t mean to put words in your mouth, but, here in the land of the living, have ...

<p>I am saddened to read that Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays, or P-FLAG, is discriminating against the Salvation Army in such an extreme manner ("P-FLAG targets Salvation Army," Dec. 10).</p> <p>Evidently, P-FLAG has decided to harass the Salvation Army and cause monetary damage to its good cause because P-FLAG members have opposing beliefs. That P-FLAG would go to the extent of printing fake money to put in Salvation Army kettles demonstrates P-FLAG's intolerance for anyone who holds a different point of view. Where's the tolerance here? I urge P-FLAG to show compassion to everyone, including those who do not agree with P-FLAG's doctrine.</p>

Arlington Resident Applying for D.C. Foster Child Has Waited Two Years.An Episcopal priest asked an Arlington court yesterday to force Virginia to allow her to adopt a foster child from the District, contending that the state is stalling on her application because she is a lesbian.Click on source for the full article.

Police Arrest, Charge Contractor Renovating Man's Washington Home District police investigators have discovered a body believed to be that of Douglas Alexander Small, the 38-year-old AOL executive who had been missing since Nov. 6. Authorities said they have arrested a Virginia contractor who was renovating Small's house and charged him with second-degree murder. Click on Source for full article.

Pro-‘gay’ lawyer: “If you don’t have the money you have no business being in court” Tres Kerns, co-chairman of TakeBackMaryland.org, said ACLU-Maryland’s campaign to force pro-family groups to pay for a “Special Master” report resulting from a “gay” lawsuit contradicts the ACLU’s own First Amendment values — and will have a chilling effect on people getting involved in electoral politics. TakeBackMaryland leaders expressed dismay that the ACLU is not satisfied that Kerns and two other pro-family advocates will be forced to pay a total of $4,000 (out of $40,000) toward a “Special Master” report — which recently ruled that thousands ...

The recently released "Intimate Partner Violence" statistics from the Justice Department contain a new category: gay-on-gay crime. According to newly released Justice Department statistics on crimes between people who are involved in a sexual relationship, 10 percent of cases dealing with male victims involved a male attacker. John Paulk, of Focus on the Family, a former homosexual, said such gay-on-gay violence has been going on for a long time. "I know from my own relationships in homosexuality, there was lot of domestic violence," Paulk said. "We see a lot of gay relationships just riddled with turmoil." According to the report, ...

<p>ANNAPOLIS — Opponents of a homosexual-rights law will have to pay part of the cost of reviewing signatures collected during a petition drive to put the law before the voters, a judge ruled yesterday.</p> <p>Circuit Judge Eugene Lerner directed the three men to pay $4,000 of the $40,000 cost. The three intervened as parties in the suit so they could oppose attempts by supporters to invalidate enough signatures to keep a referendum on the law off the ballot next year.</p>

<p>Today is Reformation Day — a bench mark for Lutherans and the 484th anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing of his famous "95 Theses" to the wooden doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. That defiant act of airing public disagreements against the all-powerful Catholic Church kicked off the Protestant Reformation on Oct. 31, 1517, and propelled the 34-year-old monk into becoming the founder of a Christian denomination named after him.</p>

Few people know about anal Pap smears, but what you don't know can cause cancer. I've been a practicing homosexual for more than two decades now and consider myself reasonably well-educated on gay men's health issues, but I'd never heard of anal Pap smears until very recently. Nor had most of the friends -- practicing homosexuals all -- to whom I mentioned the topic. Live and learn. No one bats an eye when a woman says she has had a Pap smear to check for signs of cellular changes that can lead to cervical cancer. But ask the average ...

ANNAPOLIS -- People who gathered signatures in opposition to Maryland's homosexual rights law have been interviewed under oath. The Rev. Matt Sine, co-chairman of TakeBackMaryland.org, a group opposing the law, called the depositions by lawyers for the law's supporters "search and destroy political tactics." But Charles Buffer, an attorney for Free State Justice, a group supporting the law, said questioning was proper. "We're just questioning people in an official setting, which is a deposition, and basically that's got them scared, because they know they didn't follow the proper procedures;' said Mr. Buffer, who represents Free State Justice. Mr. Buffer said ...

We've all heard the new Air Force calypso song, but these guys have gone with new lyrics and video.You'll need Macromedia Flash to run this.

Our War over Homosexuality Better than newspaper headlines or sound bites on my radio or television, the best way for me to gauge the ebb and flow of battle in the societal war over homosexuality has been to open my daily mail. Over the last nine years of my quixotic life as a former gay activist turned Christian it seems as if every group directly involved in sparring over the issue, from militantly gay and lesbian to conservative Christian, has written to ask for my money to use against the other. On days when missives from the National Gay and ...

Curtis Chang on Evangelicals & the Egalitarianism of Sin One morning two springs ago, I woke up to find myself the campus minister of a banned Christian fellowship. In a trial held over the preceding midnight, the Tufts University student judiciary met secretly to "derecognize" the Tufts Christian Fellowship for its refusal to allow a gay advocate into leadership. We were politically isolated on the Tufts campus and abandoned even by other Christian groups at Tufts. And so we sounded the alarm more broadly. While principled civil libertarians and political conservatives rushed to our defense, I was disturbed by the ...

ZAGREB, Sep 28, 2001 (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) Six former Croatian military police officers were apprehended Thursday evening in the Adriatic town of Split on suspicion of war crimes, state-run HRT television reported. Two other police officers, also suspected in war crimes, remain at large. According to police sources, eight man are suspected in the killings of two Croatian Serb civilians, Nenad Knezevic and Gojko Bulovic, as well as two prisoners of war. Allegedly, all the murders took place at the former Yugoslav National Army (JNA) "Lora" military base in Split during the 1990s Balkan war, after JNA withdrew its troops from ...

>From: Francisco Gil-White fjgil@CATTELL.psych.upenn.edu Subject: NIGHTLINE's analysis. Below follows an email I sent today to Nightline, ABC. **************************************************** Dear NIGHTLINE, It is commendable that you seek to explore the causes of the hatred against us. Please do your best to turn this into a history lesson. I implore you to avoid trivialities. Nobody wants to destroy America because it produces porn, or because it does not cover its women. Much less because it supposedly promotes individual liberties. Even to suggest such a thing will distract the minds of Americans who need to understand what their government has been doing over ...

NEW YORK, NY -- As Metropolitan Theodosius made his way to "Ground Zero" on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 19, he witnessed countless fire fighters, police, military personnel and civilian volunteers digging through the rubble of what had once been the World Trade Center. Gone were the "walking wounded." Few of the concerned relatives and friends of missing WTC employees remained in the area. As Metropolitan Theodosius and his companions drew closer to the massive heap of twisted steel and concrete, they encountered a lone woman keeping vigil for her three grown children, from whom she had heard nothing since ...