Free Republic

We have yet to see the Keller Center’s fruit, but we can hope it will meet the cultural and moral fights on the political battlegrounds they’ve fallen on.“The historical Christian positions on social issues do not fit into contemporary political alignments,” wrote superstar Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller in a September 2018 op-ed for The New York Times titled “How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don’t.” Keller, who pastors a large church in New York City and has long characterized his intended approach to evangelism as “winsome,” has been critiqued by other thinkers such as James R. Wood...

So, a San Francisco reparations panel pitches $5 million — each — to black residents. This totally blows out the recent California Reparations Task Force proposal for reparations of $223,000 per recipient according to their recent report. Adding insult to injury is the contradiction that California has always been a Free State since statehood. If such reparations are actually made, then send the bill to one major remaining guilty party responsible for slavery, Jim Crow discrimination, and the KKK terrorism inflicted upon freed slaves and their descendants. Of course it would be the Democratic Party, whose sordid history is consistently...

Comedian Louis C.K. suggested during an episode of Joe Rogan's podcast that Americans should not ‘sequester’ themselves by caring more about each other than they do about other countries. The controversial comedian Louis C.K., appeared on Saturday's episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience," where he hammered Americans for prioritizing their safety. "You’re not supposed to be happy, and you’re not supposed to be safe, I think that that’s the problem is that people expect that-you’re not happy when you’re safe, you’re not happy when you’re secure," Louis C.K. said.

Are movies still relevant? ... Even as Hollywood rebounds a bit at the box office (up 21 percent in 2022), critics rightly observe that innovation is suffering. Sequels, reboots, and franchises rule the day and artsy “prestige films” can’t find audiences. Part of the problem: audiences have a growing (and justifiable) sense that Hollywood is increasingly less interested in entertaining them than in force-feeding them progressive ideals.As I put together my list, I focused on films that didn’t pit entertainment against artistry or confuse the difference between having something to say and telling audiences what to think. The best movies...

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust,” saying God loves all his children just as they are and called on Catholic bishops who support the laws to welcome LGBTQ people into the church. “Being homosexual isn’t a crime,” Francis said during an exclusive interview Tuesday with The Associated Press. Francis acknowledged that Catholic bishops in some parts of the world support laws that criminalize homosexuality or discriminate against the LGBTQ community, and he himself referred to the issue in terms of “sin.” But he attributed such attitudes to cultural backgrounds, and said bishops in...

More than half of trans women who have 'bottom' surgery are in so much pain years later they need medical attention, a study suggests. Up to a third of patients also struggled to use the toilet or suffered sexual issues 12 months after the operation, which sees patients transitioning from male to female given a surgically constructed vagina.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota convenes its most diverse Legislature to-date in January, with some of its newest members saying they plan to use their history-making elections to pass policies to protect the minority communities they represent. Solidifying transgender rights, banning “conversion therapy,” safeguarding abortion access and legalizing marijuana are among the goals shared by some of the newly elected lawmakers and seasoned legislators who have been working for years on issues important to underrepresented communities. Now, they feel there is momentum to push the issues forward. “It’s really going to change the dynamics of what people expect lawmakers...

The idea that right-wing extremists are inherently dangerous or violent has a long history in Britain. It is a myth which is still flourishing.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A transgender woman in New Hampshire filed a discrimination complaint Friday against the manufacturing company where she works as a machinist, challenging its exclusion of gender-transition health coverage. The complaint against Barrington-based Turbocam, which makes parts for the HVAC, automotive, aviation and space exploration industries, asks the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission to investigate and cross-file it with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Bernier is represented by GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, a Boston-based advocacy group. The complaint alleges that Turbocam and Health Plans Inc., which administers Turbocam’s self-funded health coverage plan, is violating employment...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday dismissed a challenge to Connecticut’s policy of allowing transgender girls to compete in girls high school sports, rejecting arguments by four cisgender runners who said they were unfairly forced to race against transgender athletes. A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City upheld a lower court judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the policy. The panel said the four cisgender athletes lacked standing to sue — in part because their claims that they were deprived of wins, state titles and athletic scholarship opportunities...

BOSTON (AP) — The Boston City Council voted Wednesday to form a task force to study how it can provide reparations for and other forms of atonement to Black Bostonians for the city’s role in slavery and its legacy of inequality. The unanimous vote means Boston now joins a conversation about reparations that is happening across the country from Providence, Rhode Island to California. Boston will be closely watched given its troubled racial history, including its role in supporting and financing slavery even after Massachusetts abolished the practice in 1780. Supporters of reparations cited its history of segregated housing as...

A new city analysis shows that a huge chunk of high-income earners fled in 2020. Yet progressives refuse to hear the alarm bell: They’re pushing to “tax the rich” yet again instead. The study by the city’s Independent Budget Office shows a 10% plunge in taxpayers who made over $750,000, and 6% of those with incomes between $150,000 and $750,000. These now-former New Yorkers will no longer pay hefty taxes to the city or state, leaving significantly less revenue to fund progressives’ pet projects. Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City calls the trend “ominous.” Clearly, many taxpayers...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania government regulations would be revised with extensive definitions of sex, religious creed and race under a proposal set for a vote Thursday — a change some Republican lawmakers see as an overreach on a subject they think should not be addressed without legislation. The proposal would define “sex” as including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, sex assigned at birth, gender identity or expression, affectional or sexual orientation, and differences in sex development. “Race” discrimination would include ancestry, national origin, ethnic characteristics, interracial marriages and association, traits such as hairstyles that are historically associated with race, and national...

The Colorado Springs shooting suspect’s gender identity will not stop the authorities from bringing in hate crime charges against them, legal experts claim. … The suspect’s gender identity is “not relevant," Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, told Insider. "Obviously the defense will want to get it in, but it’s not a defense." "It’s certainly something that the defense would try to use, but it’s not in and of itself a bar from hate crime charges depending on what the other evidence is," Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice at California State University,...

Moscow (AFP) – Russian lawmakers unanimously approved a bill banning all forms of LGBTQ "propaganda" in a final reading on Thursday, as Moscow presses ahead with its conservative drive at home while its troops fight in Ukraine. The legislation passed by the lower house of parliament, the Duma, bars all mention of what authorities deem "gay propaganda" in the media, cinema, books and advertisement. It also prohibits "the propaganda of paedophilia and sex change". If also approved by the upper house of parliament and signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, rights groups say it effectively bans all public promotion...

Elizabeth Pixie is angry. She’s angry that her friend Daniel Aston died in a shooting at Club Q. She’s angry that she had to move to Colorado from Texas because she felt unsafe as a trans woman there. And she’s angry with people who have spread anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online — some for years — leading up to the shooting. “They can call it religion, they can call it politics, they can call it saving people,” Pixie, who lives in Colorado Springs, said. “Whatever fluff or s--- they want to sprinkle on it, they can do that, but at the end...

Tucker Carlson was among the conservative media figures that continued attacking LGBTQ people in the wake of the Club Q shooting. Some right-wing media figures and influencers have doubled down on the use of inflammatory rhetoric against the LGBTQ community in the wake of Saturday night’s shooting at a Colorado gay club that killed five. The rhetoric mirrors what LGBTQ advocates have warned about for months, most notably false claims that children are being sexualized or “groomed” by LGBTQ people and events. The Colorado shooter’s motive is unknown, but the primary suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich is facing five counts of...

White supremacist banners were recently displayed on a pedestrian walkway in Walnut Creek, disturbing local residents and city officials. The banners reportedly displayed slogans such as "It's OK to be pro-white" and "White Lives Matter," NBC Bay Area reported. "White Lives Matter" as a slogan was first circulated by neo-Nazi groups in a backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. "It was like a gut punch to turn a corner and see that," resident Maya Borgueta told NBC. Walnut Creek is home to some of the Bay Area's active white nationalist hate groups....

(Reuters) - President Joe Biden's administration on Tuesday reversed restrictions imposed under his predecessor Donald Trump on retirement plans considering environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors such as climate change and racial justice when selecting investments. The Labor Department announced a final rule first proposed last year after Biden, a Democrat, ordered government agencies to assess climate-related risk to retirement and pension investments. The rule will make it easier for retirement plans to invest in socially responsible funds and companies, though it requires investment decisions to be based on traditional financial factors. The rule, which the department said covers plans...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — While LGBTQ candidates and their supporters celebrated several milestone victories around the nation in this year’s midterm elections, California quietly reached its own: At least 10% of its state lawmakers identify publicly as LGBTQ, believed to be a first for any U.S. legislature. The California legislators, all Democrats, are proud of their success but say it underscores the hard work that remains in their own state and elsewhere, such as handling the fallout from measures such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans some lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity, or laws in other...