Free Republic

A law professor at Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York is appealing for an end to the institution of marriage in America, which he describes as “religious, gendered, and bourgeois.” Ethan J. Leib published his essay in the Fordham Law Review. The article, titled “Hail Marriage and Farewell,” says Leib was “elated” when the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law of the land on June 26, 2015, a ruling he described as “a victory for rights, for open-mindedness, for love, and for the future.” The decision, in fact, made him feel, at least for a moment, as if...

Oglethorpe University and Rutgers University have joined the list of schools making sure students don’t get too stressed out by final exams and jobs. OU recently hosted a three-hour "Stress Free Zone" featuring lawn games, henna tattoos, and "PUPPIES!!!!," while the Rutgers "BOLD Center" hosts "coffee and chat" events on subjects like "adulting." Oglethorpe University and Rutgers University have joined the list of schools making sure students don’t get too stressed out by final exams and jobs. The Oglethorpe Counseling Center, for example, recently sponsored a three-hour "Stress Free Zone" on December 9, the last day of classes, where...

Nobody has a mother or a father, according to a certain Bill 28 recently passed in the legislature of Ontario, Canada. Got that? The law’s official title is: “An Act to amend the Children’s Law Reform Act, the Vital Statistics Act and various other Acts respecting parentage and related registrations.” Basically, the law scrubs the words “mother” and “father” from documents, and replaces them with the neutered term “parent.” The law also raises the number of legal parents to as many as four per child. In other words, the government of Ontario will cease to legally recognize the natural origins...

It's perfectly normal for new parents to have worries about raising their children. However, in a shocking new thread on secret sharing app Whisper, mothers and fathers have revealed why they regret ever giving birth to and raising their youngsters. Some of the posts are heartbreaking and reveal the emotional pressure that parenting can inflict.

A skyrocketing number of students are seeking crisis counseling at Eastern Carolina University, prompting the school to make sure it educates pupils not just on academics but also on how to cope with life's challenges. ECU reported a 16 percent increase in student counseling appointments in the past two years. Those involving a crisis were up 52 percent, according to a July report that shocked officials on the Greenville, North Carolina, campus. "It wasn't just the numbers, it was the intensity and severity," said ECU Director of Counseling Valerie Kisler-van Reede. "It felt like something very different was going on...

One in three babies in Germany are born to parents who haven’t tied the knot, according to a new report. The report by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research this week showed that 35 percent of babies born in Germany in 2014 came into the world with unmarried parents. And the study also revealed that there was great contrast between former East and West Germany, according to broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. The more religious and wealthy West saw 29 percent of new little bundles of joy born to unwed parents, compared to nearly 60 percent in the former states of socialist East...

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) says women “pay more for everything.” “For we women, it costs more to be a woman. We pay more for everything,” Mikulski said during a rally for the Paycheck Fairness Act. “We continue to have to fight the battle of more expensive, medical care, child care, even dry cleaning. They charge us more to do our blouses than guy’s shirts. We women are tired of being taken to the cleaners. Pass Paycheck Fairness,” Mikulski said. …

In oral arguments in the Supreme Court yesterday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked an attorney representing East Texas Baptist University, Southern Nazarene University, Geneva College and the Little Sisters of the Poor whether the United States government would ever be able to function if it could not demand that people do things that those people believe will cause their souls to “be damned in some way.” “Because every believer that’s ever come before us, including the people in the military, are saying that my soul will be damned in some way,” said Sotomayor. “I’m not naysaying that that is a very...

Representative Mike Honda (D-Calif.) reintroduced the Reuniting Families Act (RFA) with added language that would allow homosexuals in the United States to petition to bring their “spouse” here from countries that do not allow same-sex marriage. Even though the two persons are not legally married, the bill would allow the homosexual partner abroad to be labeled a “spouse” for immigration purposes to expedite the process. The bill defines the relationship as a “permanent partnership.” …

According to a piece in the feminist blog Bustle, the tradition of men proposing women is “problematic” because it “perpetuates rape culture.” Yes — not “problematic” because it perpetuates recklessly emotional social media posts, but because it “perpetuates rape culture.”

A Pennsylvania-based non-profit group dedicated to giving young people access to birth control and "sexuality education" has launched a free app that connects "teens and young adults ages 14-24 with accurate, timely information about sexual and reproductive health." AccessMatters launched the app, dubbed "It Matters," last week, and a spokesperson with the organization told CNSNews.com that the app was funded by grants from Health and Human Services' Title X Family Planning and the Centers for Disease Control's teen pregnancy prevention program. "Users can find answers to common questions on topics such as relationships, birth control options, LGBT health, STDs (Sexually...

Americans "have to be sensitive" to people who are working two jobs and barely making ends meet, Republican John Kasich said Thursday night at a CNN-hosted town hall. He used the example of a single, working mother with a couple of children: "Think about that mother -- gets up early in the morning; gets the kids off to school; goes to work; comes home; makes dinner. They're the heroes. They're really -- these single women with children are the real heroes in America, in my opinion." [...] "Well, the one thing we want to make sure is they have healthcare,...

When Debra Aldridge became her grandson's primary caregiver, she was making $7.50 per hour as a cook. The alternative for the newborn, she was told, was to put him up for adoption. "I took one look at the little fella, and that was it," said Aldridge, now 62. "I couldn't let go." For more than 11 years, Aldridge, who is divorced and lives in Chicago, has struggled to feed, house and clothe her "baby," Mario. As she ages, she is sinking deeper into poverty. Nationwide, there are 2.7 million grandparents raising grandchildren, and about one-fifth have incomes that fall below...

Nearly two out of three of these oral cancers in the United States and most western nations are caused by infection with the HPV 16 strain of the virus, and incidence of cancer is on the rise in recent years, said Gypsyamber D'Souza, who teaches epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Middle aged white men are at particularly high risk compared to other races. ... The reason may be that when women are first exposed to HPV vaginally, they mount an immune response that prevents them from getting an oral HPV infection, she said. But men do not...

(CNSNews.com) – A couple who hosts occasional wedding ceremonies on their New York farm have lost an appeal to overturn the $13,000 in fines levied against them by the state’s human rights agency, which ruled that their refusal to host a wedding for two women was discriminatory. On Jan. 14, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, upheld the agency’s order and the fines, a decision the Alliance Defending Freedom - which represented Robert and Cynthia Gifford - said amounted to confirming, “that the government can punish the Giffords for declining to coordinate a ceremony that conflicts with...

Democrats in the Arizona Legislature want a law that requires judges to give preferences to married heterosexual couples in adoption stricken from the books. The legislation introduced in both the Senate and House removes current language giving preferences to a husband and wife over others in adoptions. Backers say the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year legalizing same-sex marriage bans laws giving preferences to heterosexual couple over gay couples. Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, also said single parents shouldn't be given second-tier status on adoptions so the proposal completely eliminates preferences for married couples. He said single parents are just as...

Female employees in California are poised to get new tools to challenge gender-based wage gaps and receive protection from discrimination and retaliation if they ask questions about how much other people earn. A bill recently passed by the Legislature and that Gov. Jerry Brown has indicated he will sign won’t suddenly put all women’s salaries on par with men’s or prod employers to freely disclose what every employee makes, which could make it easier for workers to mount pay discrimination claims. But the legislation expands what supporters call an outdated state equal pay law and goes further than federal law,...

Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, a candidate for the 2016 Republican nomination, sounded off on Planned Parenthood, as the so-called women’s health organization has been under fire in recent weeks for a series of videos suggesting they were open to selling aborted fetal tissue for profit. (snip) “Well, maybe I’m not objective when it comes to Planned Parenthood. But you know, I know who Margaret Sanger is, and I know that she believed in eugenics, and that she was not particularly enamored with black people,” Carson said. “And one of the...

Last week, Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would remove the words “husband” and “wife” from the language used in federal law—a move that had drawn ire from faith leaders and family advocacy groups that see this legislation as expected fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. “It is as if a collective madness has settled over our nation's elite and they are trying hard to bring everyone under the same cloud of confusion,” Bishop E.W. Jackson, president of STAND (Staying True to America’s National Destiny), told...

The city needs to move away from the idea that all families can live in their own home on a piece of land, according to a draft letter from a Seattle advisory committee. If adopted, ideas being considered by a Seattle housing committee would be devastating to the city's appeal, KIRO Radio's Dori Monson said. Get rid of single-family zoning in Seattle. That's the big message in a draft report being worked on by Mayor Ed Murray's housing committee, obtained by The Seattle Times. According to a draft letter, the city needs to move away from the idea that all...