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I’m unabashedly gay, and I certainly support gay marriage. But I nonetheless side with the Christian wedding designer who’s before the Supreme Court right now because she refuses to design a same-sex wedding website. I’m going to explain why, but first, here are the facts.What’s This Case All About?On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case called 303 Creative LLC v Elenis. The case centers around Lorie Smith, a Christian who owns a website design business. She wants to expand her business and start designing custom wedding websites, but due to her religious beliefs, is unwilling to...

Amidst all the rightful focus on government censorship and election interference, another major story is brewing over at the Supreme Court. On Monday, the Justices heard oral arguments in a case centering on a web designer who has religious objections to making websites for same-sex couples.Naturally, Lorie Smith, who runs a company called 303 Creative, is based in Colorado. That state has become ground zero for religious liberty cases, made infamous by its persecution of cake baker Jack Phillips.During oral argument, the conservative justices seemed to lean toward siding with Smith, who has asserted that it violates her religious beliefs...

Monday, the US Supreme Court heard a major religious liberty case from Colorado called 303 Creative v. Elenis. The issue to be decided is: Whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment.The case is similar to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, which was settled unsatisfactorily in 2018. In that case, Jack Phillips, the proprietor of Masterpiece Cakeshop, refused to make a wedding cake that was decorated with two grooms. While the case is often portrayed as Phillips refusing to provide service to a homosexual “couple,” all...

No matter how you define “marriage,” there is zero respect for it in the so-called Respect for Marriage Act.You may believe it serves to federally codify the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision that rejected marriage as a male-female union. Maybe it would do so temporarily. But that’s not the endgame.If you’re paying attention, you can see that the Senate’s recent 62-37 vote for cloture on HR 8404 puts us one step closer to abolishing state recognition of marriage entirely. That’s where this train is headed.This will happen the same way such things always happen — through a demonization campaign that frames...

America has increasingly defined itself as a land that lives by fictions. One of the most pervasive lies insists that Americans support same-sex marriage by ever-increasing margins. But occasionally, one of the media’s myths runs into a contradictory reality that people know is true in their bones.The belief that married people should not have sex with anyone except their spouse comes as close to a universally accepted truth as this country can muster. That sets public support for same-sex marriage on a collision course with itself.In a world of changing mores, public revulsion of cheating has remained a constant for...

Constituents of the 12 Republican senators who voted to advance Democrats’ wrongly named Respect for Marriage Act strongly oppose the legislation because they know it poses a risk to the First Amendment rights of religious Americans, a new poll from the Heritage Foundation found.Different polling in October claimed that voters in “key battleground” states including Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Wyoming were more likely to vote for senators who pledged to vote for the legislation. Heritage’s November poll, however, found that 47 percent, a plurality, of voters represented by Sens. Todd Young of Indiana,...

It’s been an interesting few days. Ever since I wrote (first in The Atlantic and then on Sunday here in The Dispatch) in support of the Senate version of the Respect for Marriage Act, I’ve been subject to an absolute torrent of online criticism, mainly from fellow Christians. The culmination of the critiques came from Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who took to the pages of World Magazine to pen a piece called “The Parable of David French.” “This is how conservatism dies,” he wrote. “This is how marriage is surrendered.” That’s dramatic! But it’s not...

I’m having some serious flashbacks this week as I read about the renewed debate over the Respect for Marriage Act. The bill would, among other things, repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and do other things to essentially codify and enforce the legality of gay marriage at the federal level. The “among other things” aspect of that description is where the real problems are found and there are poison pills tucked away in the legislation that should definitely give some conservatives pause. But the way it’s being sold in the media leaves the public with the impression that the...

In an op-ed for Christianity Today, Carl H. Esbeck, R. B. Price Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Missouri, offers a positive assessment of the Respect for Marriage Act (RMA). He writes, “All in all, RMA is a modest but good day’s work. It shows that religious liberty champions and LGBT advocates can work together for the common good.”With due respect to Prof. Esbeck’s legal knowledge, I categorically differ from his assessment.I have already challenged the Republican senators who voted to advance the bill this week. Here, I want to focus on Prof. Esbeck’s reasoning.He writes, “Some conservatives...

From time to time, just one human story becomes something akin to a modern parable. David French—writer, lawyer, public intellectual—is now that person. It is no insult to say that French, in himself, contains multitudes. In two recent articles, French defends both what is wrongly called the “Respect for Marriage Act” and his own process of thinking about same-sex marriage. He says that he has written these articles as acts of personal intellectual honesty, and I have no reason to question his integrity of mind. What I mean to criticize most strenuously is the ideas he now promotes. I do...

The United States Senate voted Wednesday to advance the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. HR 8404, which passed the House of Representatives in July, “provides statutory authority for same-sex and interracial marriages,” repealing provisions that define marriage as between a man and a woman. The legislation also “repeals and replaces provisions that do not require states to recognize same-sex marriages from other states with provisions that prohibit the denial of full faith and credit or any right or claim relating to out-of-state marriages on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin,” allows “the Department of Justice to bring...

"We’ve all heard of people being cancelled, thrown off social media, even fired from jobs … But how many years before a Christian minister [who speaks] on marriage and sexual orientation is reported [to] a government anti-terrorism program?"For Reverend Dr. Bernard Randall, that time has already come. The chaplain of a Church of England School was suspended, fired for gross misconduct, and reported to child protective services simply for restating what the Church of England believes. If his story sounds like a distant outlier, it’s not. Randall’s nightmare will be every Christian’s nightmare if our Senate passes the Respect for...

A bill to enshrine the right to same-sex marriage into federal law cleared a major procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate Wednesday, with critics saying that a religious freedom amendment added to the legislation doesn't adequately protect those with deeply held beliefs that marriage is between one man and one woman. In a 62-37 vote, the U.S. Senate invoked cloture on the Respect for Marriage Act. The support of 12 Senate Republicans enabled the bill to clear the 60-vote threshold for cloture required for most legislation to pass the Senate. Debate on the bill will continue before a final vote...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Tuesday it would back proposed federal legislation to safeguard same-sex marriages, marking the latest show of support for the measure from conservative-leaning groups. The nearly 17-million member, Utah-based faith said in a statement that church doctrine would continue to consider same-sex relationships to be against God’s commandments. Yet it said it would support rights for same-sex couples as long as they didn’t infringe upon religious groups’ right to believe as they choose. “We believe this approach is the way forward. As we work together to preserve the principles and practices of...

Ukrainian forces said Saturday they had entered Kupiansk in eastern Ukraine dislodging Russian troops from a key logistics hub in a lightning counter-offensive that has seen swathes of territory recaptured. The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, meanwhile arrived in the Ukrainian capital for a surprise visit, which she said was to demonstrate Berlin's support for Ukraine in its battle against Russia. Ukrainian special forces published images on social media showing camouflage-clad officers with automatic weapons "in Kupiansk." It "was and will always be Ukrainian," their statement said. The town of some 27,000 people, that sits on a crucial supply route...

Ukraine has launched a new front in the counteroffensive, this time moving east into the Kharkiv region. Yesterday the Guardian reported the town of Balakliia had been encircled by Ukrainian troops. Today, Balakliia is more than encircled. President Zelensky just published this video of Ukrainian soldiers standing on a Russian flag in the city with the Ukrainian flag flying behind them. (snip) And the push east has already moved on to another small town called Volokhiv Yar where the Ukrainian flag has also been raised.

Less than 24-hours after delivering the darkest, most toxic presidential speech of the modern era, the Commander in Chief is trying to gaslight America to believe he didn't say what it just heard him say. 'C'mon, look guys, I don't consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country,' he told reporters Friday. 'When people voted for Donald Trump - and support him now - they weren't voting for attacking the Capitol. They weren't voting for overruling the election. They were going for a philosophy he put forward.' Let's roll the tape back. Here's what the president asserted Thursday evening...

A high-profile Washington, D.C. conservative pundit exploded in anger during a podcast interview he was conducting when his guest suggested that the burgeoning conservative Christian nationalist movement would inevitably push for the overturning of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage. After asserting that Dave Rubin’s gay “marriage” is something “beautiful,” Ben Domenech, a Fox News contributor and founder and former publisher of The Federalist, lashed out at his guest, National Conservatism movement leader Yoram Hazony, who had said that “gay marriage is already back on the table,” ripe for a revitalized national public debate. Domenech, showing...

When a significant number of House Republicans voted for a recent bill to recognize same-sex marriage at the federal level, those who most vocally made the case for the legislation were the younger members, especially Kat Cammack of Florida. The split in the GOP vote, with 47 voting in favor and 157 against, mirrors the divide within the wider conservative movement. At Young America’s Foundation’s National Conservative Student Conference last week, several students spoke to National Review about their receptiveness to a national gay-marriage law. But their views incorporated a respect not only for religious freedom but for the religious...

Walton County couple has been arrested and are facing child sex crime charges for acts deputies say they committed against their adopted children.Last month, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office raided a home in unincorporated Loganville where they believed a man was downloading child pornography. When interviewing him, the suspect admitted to collecting child porn and identified a second suspect in Oxford.The suspect told deputies that the other suspect was making the child porn with at least one child who lived in his home. The first suspect’s identity has not been released.After making sure the children were safe, investigators found evidence...