Free Republic

Thousands of people attended the 24th Jerusalem Pride Parade on Thursday, in honor of Pride Month. As part of the opening to the event, former prime minister Yair Lapid announced that in the first 100 days of the next government, they would pass a law ensuring that all couples in Israel would be equal. "Mother and father, father and father, mother and mother, all will have the same rights, all will be equal before the law," he said. "We stand here with the entire gay community today to say: The situation is not a given, reality is not a decree...

Pope Leo XIV clarified April 23 that the Vatican does not support formalized blessing ceremonies for people in same-sex relationships, responding to a question about German Cardinal Reinhard Marx’s plan to introduce such rituals in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. The Pope’s remarks came during an in-flight press conference while returning to Rome after his 11-day apostolic journey across Africa. Asked by a German reporter about Cardinal Marx’s decision, Pope Leo said the Vatican “has made it clear that we do not agree with the formalized blessing of couples, in this case, ‘homosexual couples,’ as you asked, or couples...

The Tennessee House of Representatives passed legislation on Thursday that would allow private citizens and organizations to refuse to recognize homosexual “marriages,” in a major challenge to the LGBT movement. House Bill 1473, which cleared the state House 68-24 with overwhelming support from Republicans, would exempt banks, medical institutions, and other private entities from recognizing what the bill refers to as “a purported marriage between individuals of the same sex.” The bill additionally states that government officials may not face discipline or sanctions for “declining to celebrate or officiate at a marriage or commitment ceremony that falls outside the definition...

The Church of England’s General Synod has voted to end plans for stand-alone blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples in churches after extended debate. The decision also closes a years-long process that had examined whether such ceremonies could be introduced.Members this week approved a motion from bishops to conclude the Living in Love and Faith process and halt further work toward permitting special services for same-sex couples in civil marriages, The Telegraph reported.The vote followed hours of discussion and confirmed that agreement between conservative and liberal factions had not been reached.The Synod supported forming new working groups on relationships, sexuality and...

A former Air Force Intelligence officer has pleaded guilty to lying to law enforcement when she claimed her then-estranged astronaut wife committed the first crime in space, according to authorities. Summer Worden, 50, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 maximum fine for falsely alleging top NASA astronaut and then-spouse Anna McClain accessed Worden’s bank account from the International Space Station, the US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Texas said in a press release. Worden’s guilty plea Thursday put an end to a bitter legal feud with McClain. Worden alleged McClain had guessed the password and illegally...

It was no surprise this morning when the Supreme Court turned away a petition that asked, as one part of a case, to overturn its same-sex marriage decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. Or at least, it was only a surprise if you were reading breathless coverage driven by progressive activists in the media. There are two potential arguments for taking a case to consider overturning Obergefell, and they are serious ones. One is that the decision itself is legally nonsensical, undemocratic, and should never have come out the way it did. Without rehashing all of those arguments here -- see...

Perhaps no political party has had a more loyal friend than the Democrats have enjoyed in the post-1970s black community. Just look at the 2000 election, when nine out of 10 African American voters backed the robotic Al Gore, even though he paid them little more than lip service. Their blanket support caused George Bush to set modern lows for a Republican presidential contender; he captured just 8 percent of the black vote—the worst showing since Barry Goldwater. Yet there is an underappreciated fact about black America that anyone armed with a decent survey could see: Black people vote like...

Desiree @DesireeAmerica4 🚨UPDATE: Brandon Keith Mitchell, a registered Tier 1 sex offender in Pennsylvania faced massive public backlash after a viral surrogacy video showed him raising a baby through crowdfunding, protected by silence and loopholes. Now: ▪️ GoFundMe pulled the fundraiser after outrage erupted ▪️ Lawmakers are demanding new legislation to block sex offenders from using surrogacy to obtain children ▪️ Prosecutors admit no law currently exists to stop it, calling it a “devastating loophole” The people spoke. Now the system scrambles. We will not stop until every loophole is closed. and a broken system.

A California man who plotted to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh also wanted to kill at least two other conservative justices in a bid to preserve Roe v. Wade. New court filings revealed this week are spotlighting the violent extremism that gripped abortion activists in the chaotic lead-up to the landmark Dobbs decision. Nicholas John Roske, 28, of Simi Valley, California, faces 30 years to life in prison for attempted murder of a U.S. official in his bid to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh. Roske was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s Chevy Chase, Maryland, home on June 8, 2022, where he was found...

Americans are shocked that conservative Christian Charlie Kirk was assassinated because radicals on the left could not tolerate debating the issues with him on college campuses and elsewhere. They also are surprised to learn of the deep interconnectedness and complicity of the LGBT community in the violence and hate coming from the left which has culminated in Kirk’s assassination. They shouldn’t be. I have experienced this hate and violence for nearly two decades as I have advocated for traditional marriage, the biological basis of gender, and free speech. It all began with Prop. 8 in 2008. Proposition 8 was a...

Ten years after the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same-sex couples nationwide, the justices this fall will consider for the first time whether to take up a case that explicitly asks them to overturn that decision. Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for six days in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple on religious grounds, is appealing a $100,000 jury verdict for emotional damages plus $260,000 for attorneys fees. In a petition for writ of certiorari filed last month, Davis argues First Amendment protection for free exercise of religion immunizes...

On the 10th anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges (federally mandating “marriage equality”), it’s proper to ask whether same-sex marriage is a good idea. One reason to think that it’s not is the existence of an epistemic oddity, an oddity which strongly undermines any argument for same-sex marriage (hereafter “SSM”). The oddity in question is characterized by what may be called an "underdetermination asymmetry."Start with the following very simple observation.There are two ultimate positions in the SSM debate, and only two. On the one hand, there’s love or care as the basis of marriage, as in the view of SSM’s supporters....

Colorado Democrat Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation formally repealing the state’s long-unenforced ban on recognizing same-sex “marriage,” a largely-symbolic gesture for LGBT “equality” ensuring the state status quo would remain if the national one changed in the future. Senate Bill 24-014 strikes from the Colorado legal code language stating marriages can only be recognized as valid if “between one man and one woman.” It passed the state House 45-14 and the state Senate 29-6 and was signed into law on April 7. The statutory repeal follows a ballot initiative that passed last November removing the traditional definition of marriage from...

As noted a few months ago, Mozilla -- maker of the Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client -- is facing an 80% revenue drop due to investigations into its “revenue-sharing” deals with Google. That revenue drop is apparently prompting Mozilla's all-out search for alternate revenue streams. Mozilla's changes last week to the Firefox browser's privacy notice and usage terms indicate that users' privacy may be sold out. Specifically, Mozilla's new use terms provide: “When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and...

The Obergefell ruling rode rough-shod over religions and dozens of state constitutions on the bases of a moral — not legal — opinion.In late January, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a memorandum calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to “reverse” its 2015 gay marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, “and restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman.” The memo passed 46 to 24 in the House and is heading to the Idaho Senate. If it passes the senate, it will be sent on to the Supreme Court as one more formal encouragement that...

In a shocking release from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera ahead of the release of leftist Pope Francis’ autobiography, titled Life: My Story Through History, it was shown that the pope has reaffirmed his support for same-gender civil unions. Doing so, he wrote that “it is right” that such couples “who live the gift of love can have legal coverage like everyone else.”The Amazon description of Pope Francis’s autobiography states, “For the first time, Pope Francis tells the story of his life as he looks back on the momentous world events that have changed history—from his earliest years during...

Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate: An Open Letter to President Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. — ‘The Curse on America Comes from Within Brought Down by Deep State and Deep Church’Guest post by Byzantine Catholic PatriarchateThe American people elected you both, Mr. President and Mr. Secretary, to stop the process of self-destruction of America and humanity.Apparently, your first step will be to stop the senseless war in Ukraine.But the absurdity is that the curse on America comes from within. It is brought down not only by the Deep State but also by the Deep Church, which are in unity.ADVERTISEMENTThis truth was...

Parliamentarians in Slovakia enshrined marriage as a “unique bond between a man and a woman” in the country’s Constitution May 4, with 102 National Council members backing the amendment, 18 opposing it, and three abstentions. The amendment was brought to the National Council by the Christian Democrats, and supported by the government, despite the latter being led by the socialist SMER party. A government spokesman told a press conference that the proposal simply upholds the existing situation. “The marriage amendment will not bring about any drastic changes, it only seals in the constitution what is already defined by law,” said...

Most Catholics in all seven countries want the church to allow Catholics to use birth control. In most of the countries surveyed, majorities of Catholics also say the church should allow women to become priests.Opinion is more divided on whether the church should allow priests to get married. Views on whether the church should recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples vary among Catholics in the countries surveyed. Ten years ago, nearly all Catholics surveyed there (98%) expressed a favorable opinion of Francis, compared with 74% today.

A beloved music director at a Michigan catholic church was fired after an unknown source informed church officials of his same-sex marriage — sparking outrage from parishioners, with many protesting and some renouncing their membership over the termination. Fred Szczepanski was canned from his position at St. Francis Church in Traverse City on Oct. 18 after the church officials discovered he had a same-sex marriage ceremony to his longtime partner in Nevada in 2020, according to Traverse City Record-Eagle. Szczepanski, known by churchgoers as “Mr. Fred,” was confronted by Rev. Michael Lingaur after church leaders received a letter from an...