Free Republic

SALTILLO, Mexico – Gabby and Ana are in love. So are Marco Antonio and Juan Carlos. Under a sweeping new law allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions, they are planning to turn their love into a legal commitment. Legislators in the dusty northern border state of Coahuila have stunned Mexico by giving same-sex couples property and inheritance rights long reserved for married heterosexuals. It is a first for this predominantly Roman Catholic country, a measure so swift and so bold that it surprised even the gay community. All of a sudden, gay rights are on the national agenda. Since...

Two Catholic universities have some of the worst climates for free speech in the United States, according to a recently released report that analyzed more than 250 campuses, most of which continue to maintain lackluster free speech protections. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, formerly the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, released its 2024 College Free Speech Rankings on Wednesday.The research is based on interviews with 55,102 students from 254 colleges and universities conducted between Jan. 13 and June 23. The margin of error for the overall undergraduate respondents is +/- 1 percentage point, while the margin of...

Fordham University, a Jesuit institution, has published a 68-page report, Taking Responsibility: Jesuit Educational Institutions Confront the Causes and Legacy of Clerical Sexual Abuse.The report, while faulting the Jesuits for stressing discretion in handling abuse cases, states that sexual abuse “is rooted not in individual pathologies but in systemic problems related to sex, gender, and power. Jesuit institutions generally appear to be ahead of diocesan seminaries and can provide healthier models for formation and ministry” (p. 46). The report also states: The only way to adequately address the causes and legacies of clergy sexual abuse is through deep and sustained...

Yale University announced it will now require students to get a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster by the start of the 2023 spring semester. “Based on recent CDC recommendations, the university will require all undergraduate, graduate, and professional students—other than those with an approved medical or religious exemption—to receive an updated, bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster by the start of the spring semester, even if they have previously received a monovalent booster,” Stephanie Spangler, Vice Provost for Health Affairs and Academic Integrity, wrote in a message to the Yale Community. She explained that the booster is necessary because “experience and research have...

As the story goes, he called some folks the wrong name. Per his written explanation sent to the entire Composition II class, the man was distracted and accidentally erred. While “reading the work of another student,” he recalled, two female students walked in late. In a “confused” moment, he mismatched the pair’s monikers. But the duo was less than laughing. They issued him a written complaint. Fordham paper The Observer reports: [The two] sent [Christopher] an email after class expressing that they felt disheartened and disrespected… The instructor insisted it was an “innocent mistake.” But as it happens, Christopher is...

Mayor-elect Eric Adams is entirely right to slam the “professional” rioters and anarchists who pour into the city’s streets after events like the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. Unfortunately, though, many of them are anything but outsiders. He was commenting on the crews who in the name of “justice” caused chaos across the city. They vandalized vehicles in Queens, even marking a car with handicapped plates with “F—k you” graffiti in black spray paint. They jumped on cars, stole American flags and vandalized innocent strangers’ homes. Roughly 300 other protesters gathered outside Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, where the Nets played the Orlando Magic...

A New York City college has barred a Chinese immigrant from campus and demanded he apologize for posing with a legally owned rifle in a social media post that criticized China for the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Fordham University administrators are demanding that rising senior Austin Tong submit an apology letter to the school by July 23 after he posted to Instagram a photo that shows him holding a firearm in honor of the Tiananmen Square protests, according to a disciplinary letter from the school. Tong risks suspension or expulsion if he refuses to apologize. The school is arguing that...

A college student at Fordham University in New York was punished and forced to undergo “political reeducation” this summer for two Instagram posts – one of which depicted the student holding an AR-15. Austin Tong is a rising senior at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, and he accused the school of “Soviet-style interrogation and punishment.” “I am no longer permitted on campus, with public safety coming to my home at midnight to question me on the day of the post, and face forced political reeducation through mandatory courses and to write an apology letter, or will face full suspension...

Curfew-defying looters with free rein beat a cop to the ground in a disturbing scene caught on video, set fires on streets and ransacked stores in the Bronx late Monday into early Tuesday. The chaos finally prompted Mayor Bill de Blasio to dispatch extra police officers to the area, the New York Post reported Tuesday. “Fordham is on fire,” Uptown Collective tweeted, showing a half dozen fires burning along a trash-strewn Fordham Road in the West Bronx. “This is an ominous sign familia,” the tweet said, the Post reported. “This is not good for communities of color. Protest is called...

A student at Fordham University in New York died Sunday just a few hours after falling three stories from the campus clock tower, according to news reports. Monfries somehow fell through an opening in a landing and plunged 30 feet down the inside of the tower. She was critically hurt, with injuries to her head and body, police said. Although Keating Hall is locked and closed at night and access to the tower is restricted at all times, students still manage to find a way in to climb to the top of the Gothic tower to see the skyline, school...

On September 5, 2017, Fordham University will host “a conversation” between James Martin, S.J., and Dr. Patrick Hornbeck. A similar event with Martin and Hornbeck took place at Fordham in 2014. Hornbeck is currently Associate Professor and Chair of Fordham’s Department of Theology. In 2015, he married his same-sex partner at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York City. During the 2014 event, Martin discussed “the law of gradualism” at it relates to possible Catholic pastoral practices with LGBT men and women. He explained:John the Baptist’s model is essentially conversion first and then Communion. You repent, you convert, and then you...

I was about to dip a nugget in some Chick-fil-A Sauce the other day when I received an urgent message on my phone. “Student Groups Shut Down Chick-fil-A Proposal,” one headline blared. “Catholic University Caves to LGBT Pressure, Rejects Chick-fil-A,” screamed another. A cavalcade of anti-chicken headlines blurted from my phone – but the most succinct came from Food and Wine magazine:  “Fordham University Rejects Chick-fil-A after LGBT Student Concerns.”However incredulous it may have been, the Jesuits had indeed banished the Chick-fil-A cows. As I pondered that reality, I nearly choked on a delicious, hand-spun Chick-fil-A Icedream milkshake topped off with whipped...

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...

Fordham University’s refusal to recognize a campus chapter of the pro-Palestine group — Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — as an official student club has drawn widespread criticism from civil and constitutional rights groups, who claim the decision was politically motivated. […] In a joint 11-page letter to the Jesuit institution, released last week, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal affirmed that the denial not only violated free associated principles but was a blatant case of discrimination in violation of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act, pointing that all four applicants for the SJP chapter’s executive...

The Episcopalian marriage of Fordham University’s theology chairman to his same-sex partner, just one day after the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, begins a new flood of challenges to Catholic identity that most Catholic colleges and universities are unprepared to face, warns Cardinal Newman Society President Patrick Reilly.“Even if a Catholic college leader wants to uphold Catholic teaching on marriage, the persistent embrace of dissent and opposition to the Church at many Catholic universities makes it highly unlikely that the law will now permit them to uphold moral standards for professors,” Reilly said.“The fact that a theology chairman at a...

The chairman of the theology department at Fordham University has gotten married—to another man. The New York Times, which up until a few years ago, declined running wedding announcements involving same-sex couples, reported that J. Patrick Hornbeck II “married” Patrick Anthony Bergquist Saturday at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan. The ceremony took place June 27, just a day after the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex “marriage” nationwide. That would not have been necessary legally, since New York State has allowed gay "marriage" since 2011. But the ceremony was conducted before the Episcopal Church in America voted this week...

Hopelessly confused about how the Catholic Church and leaders at Jesuit universities view birth control, and blissfully unaware that a 36-count pack of Trojan-enz lubricated, latex condoms can be purchased at Amazon.com for just $13.97, student activists at Fordham University are demanding that the school provide free condoms on campus.The activists at Fordham, which bills itself as “the Jesuit University of New York,” belong to a group called S.A.G.E.S. (The acronym stands for Sex and Gender Equity and Safety.) On its Twitter page, SAGES has an image of an erect condom.In a Change.org petition, the group proclaims that a lack...

Research confirms that the “acting white” charge is a real problem that intimidates some black students. Our job is to confront it. As kids go back to school this week, when it comes to black ones, it’s time to do some myth-busting. This week’s topic: black teens calling their nerdy black peers “white” for liking school. It’s a problem, because too often, black kids who want to fit in end up letting their grades slip. The social scientists John Ogbu and Signithia Fordham first called attention to this phenomenon in the 1980s. But over the past 10 years, a myth...

Is there a religious obligation not to eat meat? Is there an obligation of faithful Catholics to become vegetarians or even vegans? Quite astonishingly, Professor Charles Camosy of Fordham University says yes in his new book For Love of Animals: Christian Ethics, Consistent Action.Genesis, according to Camosy, makes it clear that God intended only for us to eat green and grain because that is what He gave mankind to eat. God did not say we could eat the animals. Camosy argues that recent popes, when they have called for the care of creation, implicitly endorse this view. He also cites...

Updated: Nov. 19, 2012 at 2:02 PM EST to include a statement from Dr. Charles Camosy, the organizer of the panel discussion featuring Peter Singer, and to include more information about the panel. NEW YORK, November 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Days after popular American conservative pundit Ann Coulter was disinvited from Fordham university amidst accusations that she is too “hateful”, the world’s most notorious promoter of infanticide, Dr. Peter Singer, was welcomed at a conference at the university, the Jesuit order’s premier university on the east coast. Fordham hosted Dr. Singer as the main attraction at a one-day conference titled,...