Free Republic

A federal appeals court has upheld an Indiana law banning the use of puberty blockers and hormones for transgender children under the age of 18, one of numerous such laws passed by Republican-controlled states. The 2-1 decision from the seventh US circuit court of appeals on Wednesday comes as the US supreme court prepares to hear a challenge to a similar law in Tennessee, which may ultimately determine whether all such state laws around the country can be enforced. The seventh circuit had already allowed the law to take effect in February while it considered the challenge by families of...

I have inherited my late grandpop's stamp collection from my late mother's estate. We're talking about 8 banker's boxes of tightly packed volumes. His son, my uncle, had previously taken them to a stamp appraiser but was told that the stamps were not mounted or handled correctly, and therefore have no marketable monetary or collector value beyond their face value. This was about 20 years ago, so I don't know if the landscape has changed since then. Can anyone in the know direct me to an authority or resource for determining the best move to make on these? I'd don't...

The Tarrant County Sheriff is up for re-election following a contentious year filled with controversy surrounding deaths at the Tarrant County Jail. Sheriff Bill Waybourn, who first took office as a Republican in 2017, is facing a challenge from Democrat Patrick Moses, a retired law enforcement officer. Waybourn won with 53% of the vote, according to unofficial results. Since Waybourn took office, more than 60 people have died in the Tarrant County Jail, about half from natural causes, which has spurred numerous calls for Waybourn to resign.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — The longtime music director at a northern Michigan church said he was fired just a few months before retirement after officials learned that he was in a same-sex marriage, a dismissal that has angered members and led to sidewalk protests by the choir. “He’s extremely talented, he’s perfect on the piano, he has perfect pitch and because of him, I look forward to going to church every week,” said Bob Holden, a chorister at St. Francis Church in Traverse City. “I’m divorced. Do I get thrown out next?” Holden told the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

I'm an occasional lurker at the DUmp, trying to catch a whiff of the putrid attitudes and convos in that deranged bunch. Recently, the site returns this message on their home page: Democratic Underground is currently open to Star members only They give some excuse about some technical error, but I've seen this operation before and they usually are just trying to hide a civil war raging among members. Not a good look. (A great look for us.)

Ballot boxes were set on fire early Monday morning in Portland Oregon and neighboring Vancouver, Washington. The ballot box in Portland was firebombed with a device that blew a small hole in a side of the metal container, according to police. The interior of the Vancouver ballot box was set on fire, a “device” was found next to that drop box by police.

Americans have been told by their government and media that disinformation is all around them, and that is not entirely false. One of the corporate media’s favorite tactics for swaying public opinion is to isolate a small part of a story, claim to debunk it, and then to declare the larger point of the story also to be without merit. We saw a glaring example of this recently with the story out of Springfield, Ohio. The town of less than 60,000 residents between Dayton and Columbus has been swamped over the last few years with more than 20,000 migrants from...

U.S. — With the presidential election less than two weeks away, top Democrats warned the American people that it could be some time before we know who the winner is because it may take at least four years to count all of the ballots. Though other, far less-developed countries have been able to count all ballots by hand in much shorter periods of time, Democrats stressed the very real likelihood that counting all the ballots in swing states would probably last until the 2028 presidential election. "You just can't rush this type of thing," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer....

On May 10, the Canadian Blood Services (CBS) issued an apology to 2SLGBTQIA+ communities for the role its former donor eligibility policy played in contributing to “discrimination, homophobia, transphobia, and HIV stigma within society.” From 1998 until 2013, CBS had a lifetime blood donation ban for any man who had sex with another man, even once. This ban then became a deferral period of five years, then 12 months, and finally, three months. Under their most recent screening policies updated in late 2022, both CBS and Héma-Québec ask every potential donor if they have had anal sex with a new...

I have some questions for Christians of the "instant glorification" theological belief after death. Do the departed Christians retain some conscious awareness of the goings-on in creation, on Earth, and popular entertainment often depicts? Do they "look down on us," particularly their loved ones? Are they even able to? Are they able to see, and grieve over, how truly bad the ones still remaining really are? I know this opens a lot of theological questions regarding the nature and fate of the dead, but it has intrigued me for a long time. Personally, I think they are unaware of the...

In 2020, a gay Thai man living with HIV sparked controversy with a Facebook post. He was on antiretroviral therapy and had gotten lab tests to check the level of virus in his blood. Since his viral load was undetectable, he wrote, he was going to stop using condoms. The public responded with a mix of contempt and disbelief. How could he? So selfish! So reckless! The resulting debate spilled from social media onto national radio and TV. “There was a huge backlash,” remembered Dr Nittaya Phanuphak, the Executive Director of the Institute of HIV Research and Innovation (IHRI). She...

FRIDAY, Oct. 11, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Infection with the mpox virus is five times more likely among gay and bisexual men who engage in unprotected anal sex as the receptive partner, a new analysis reveals. The study dovetails with the release of a second report on clusters of mpox cases in California and Illinois of a strain of mpox that's resistant to treatment with the first-line drug tecovirimat. Because not all viruses from mpox cases are genetically scrutinized, "these findings likely underestimate the prevalence of this newly recognized drug-resistant variant," noted a team led by Crystal Gigante. She's an...

Politicians and activists repeating platitudes in support of the transgender agenda have become accustomed to going unchallenged. Their casual endorsement of sex change procedures on minors has resulted in scores of children having their genitals mutilated, other parts of their bodies surgically disfigured, and their fertility extinguished before they even reach adulthood. At best, these children become lifelong consumers of the services offered to them by the same medical industry that brutalized them. Too often and too late to reverse them, they regret the “choices” they made and are forced to reconcile themselves to a body which the adults in...

Universities across the country have transformed at the command of anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) legislation. At the University of Texas-Austin, the legislation led to resource cancellations, office closures, and staff firings -- pushing some students to create alternatives to their school’s defunct diversity programs. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 17 into law in 2023, barring public institutions of higher education from having diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, as well as programs, activities, and training conducted by those offices. The law also restricts training or hiring policies based on race, gender identity or sexual orientation.

he Colorado Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit against Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, who has been embroiled in legal battles for more than a decade over his refusal to create certain custom cakes due to his religious beliefs. The decision comes as a relief for Phillips, who has faced ongoing legal challenges since 2012, when he first declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, citing his faith.

Fans of the popular Call Her Daddy program witnessed a historic event as Vice President Kamala Harris did not require a teleprompter for the first time ever while appearing on the sex podcast. As part of her campaign's media push, the Democratic candidate for president made a guest appearance on the graphic sex-themed podcast and wowed everyone by not needing to use a teleprompter for the first time in her political career. "She was one hundred percent in her element," said one member of the podcast's production team.

Law enforcement authorities have arrested a former Brite Divinity School employee on suspicion of possession of child pornography. Charles Bellinger, 62, was taken into custody on Oct. 2 after Fort Worth police Internet Crimes Against Children Unit detectives, TCU police officers and United States Secret Service special agents served a search warrant at Bellinger’s house in Arlington and at his university office on the TCU campus. Bellinger was a theological librarian and professor of theology and ethics in TCU’s Brite Divinity School, according to the university’s website. References to Bellinger on the school’s webpages appear to have been removed, but...

Calling it a “dangerous practice,” Gov. Andy Beshear signed an executive order Wednesday that bans conversion therapy on minors in Kentucky. Speaking in Frankfort, Beshear said such attempts to alter a young person’s gender expression or sexual attractions have “no basis in medicine” — a view supported by experts in medicine and mental health. Conversion therapy has been condemned by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), among other medical and psychological organizations. AACAP says conversion therapies “lack scientific credibility and clinical utility” and “there is evidence that such interventions are harmful.”

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission today (Wednesday, Sept. 25) announced two separate lawsuits alleging harassment in the workplace. Both cases involved transgender employees who were fired after reporting harassment by their supervisors and coworkers. One of the cases involved a transgender housekeeper at a hotel in Buffalo, N.Y., and the second involved a transgender employee at a pizza restaurant located at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. In the Buffalo case, according to an EEOC press release, “Eight related entities operating Boxwood Hotels LLC, Holiday Inn Express and Hampton Inn hotels in Western New York violated federal law when they fired a...

Friday, September 27, marks National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (#NGMHAAD) 2024. The awareness day was founded in 2008 by the now-defunct National Association for People with AIDS as a way to focus attention on the unique challenges of gay and bisexual men affected by HIV. Although the annual rates of new HIV diagnoses among this population are decreasing, gay and bisexual men still account for most new cases, and African-American and Latino men are disproportionately affected.