Free Republic

Pope Leo XIV met Monday with one of the most prominent advocates for greater LGBTQ inclusion in the Catholic Church and encouraged his ministry, just days before a planned Holy Year pilgrimage of LGBTQ Catholics to the Vatican. The Rev. James Martin, a New York-based Jesuit author and editor, said Leo told him he intended to continue Pope Francis’ policy of LGBTQ acceptance in the church and encouraged him to keep up his advocacy. The message he received from Leo was “that if people were happy with Pope Francis’ approach to LGBTQ Catholics, they’re going to be happy with Pope...

There are times when reading a list of projects funded by the United States federal government sounds more like parody than reality. The Department of Government Efficiency — unlike Congress, it seems — is still working hard every day to identify and eliminate waste and fraud from the federal government funded by our taxpayer dollars. And this week’s update included some profoundly idiotic programs and grants that were, until now, recipients of our hard-earned cash. DOGE normally releases a contracts update on X on Fridays highlighting some of the stupidest agency contracts that it has discovered in the last week,...

Over 100 people showed up for Miami Beach’s rainbow crosswalks that are currently in the political crosshairs across the state of Florida. “Our rights are on shaky ground everywhere, but especially here in Florida,” said activist Paul Thomas. Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Department of Transportation has ordered communities across the state to remove colorful crosswalks

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) accused White House official Sebastian Gorka on Sunday of wanting “to deflect from the reality” of the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting by pointing out gunman Robin Westman’s transgender identity. Gorka, who serves as President Trump’s deputy assistant and senior director for counterterrorism, argued on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Westman had a clear “ideological” motive for targeting the Annunciation Catholic School earlier this week — where two students were killed and more than a dozen other children and adults were injured while they prayed at Mass. “That’s what terrorism is,” Gorka said of the mass...

Most Democrats agree that they need to fight Trump more vigorously, while also focusing on economic issues. A sharper debate has opened over social and cultural issues: Should Democrats break with identity politics? WASHINGTON — The Democratic Party’s standing in public opinion polls has sunk to its lowest point in more than 30 years. Many of the party’s own voters think their leaders aren’t fighting hard enough against President Trump. In one survey, the words they used most often were “weak” and “tepid.”“The party is in shambles,” said James Carville, the political strategist who helped Bill Clinton win the White...

Minnesota Democrats are fundraising on the recent homicidal assault on a church by one of the transgender maniacs they have gone out of their way to foster. According to liberal ideology, the children were not murdered by Robert/Robin Westman, but by the guns he used. Therefore, the bloodbath is an opportunity to raise money to fight the Second Amendment: (X image on link) Our right to bear arms helps us defend the innocent from maniacs like Westman, who are outside the law and therefore will never have much difficulty obtaining firearms, just as they easily obtain illegal drugs. Democrats have...

President Donald Trump’s administration this week told 40 states to eliminate parts of lessons that focus on LGBTQ+ issues from federally funded sexual education materials or that they will lose funding. The move is the latest in a line of efforts since Trump returned to the White House in January to recognize people as only male or female and to eliminate what he calls “gender ideology.” “Federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation or advance dangerous ideological agendas,” Acting Assistant Health and Human Service Secretary Andrew Gradison said in a statement. ...

FORT MYERS. Fla. – Jaimee Michell, founder and president of Gays Against Groomers, said transgenderism should be classified as a mental illness, arguing that cross-sex hormones only worsen the problem. This comes after a transgender gunman opened fire during a mass shooting early Wednesday morning, killing two children and injuring 17 others, according to several news outlets. Speaking on Florida’s Voice Radio with host Drew Steele, Michell warned that prescribing synthetic hormones to those suffering from gender dysphoria is “a recipe for disaster.” “Time and time again when we sound the alarm that cross sex hormones given to a mentally...

Banda Aceh, Indonesia: Two men were publicly flogged 76 times each in Indonesia’s conservative province of Aceh on Tuesday after they were found guilty of sexual relations by a court operating under strict Islamic law. Gay sex is outlawed in Aceh, which imposes a version of sharia, the Islamic legal code, but it is not illegal elsewhere in the world’s most populous Muslim majority country. The men were part of a group of 10 who were flogged Tuesday at a park in the provincial capital Banda Aceh for a range of alleged crimes. The pair were flogged separately with a...

Galatians 3:28 (King James Version) There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. The massacre of these children in Minneapolis was a political assassination by one of the favored groups of the Communist Party. He obviously was a hardcore Dim since the slogans on his guns were DNC talking points one after another. They were obviously not used in the mainstream sources, although if you went to fringe websites you would hear those chants over and over. This kid was sucked into...

MINNEAPOLIS (TNND) — The suspect who shot and killed two children and hurt at least 17 others as they attended mass during the first week of school in Minnesota was identified as a 22 year-old man claiming to be transgender, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said the suspect -- who was later named as Robin Westman -- was found dead in the back of the church parking lot from what authorities believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Wednesday morning. The coward who fired these shots ultimately took his own life,"...

A California school district has enacted a new rule for young girls who are uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with biological males pretending to be girls, requiring the girls to file a mental health accommodation request.The Temecula Valley Unified School District TVUSD has reportedly enacted a rule that tells female students who feel uncomfortable sharing bathroom space with biological males must file a mental health accommodation request under federal law if they want privacy.The move has prompted outrage from parents and others who say that the rule treats those girls who object to sharing private space with biological males as the...

Executive Summary In this report, we use the best available data to provide new estimates of the size and characteristics of the U.S. population, aged 13 and older, who identify as transgender. Data come from the 2021- 2023 Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the 2021 and 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). Key Findings Over 2.8 million adults (aged 18 and older) and youth (aged 13 to 17) identify as transgender in the United States, or 1.0% of those aged 13 and older.Among U.S. adults, 0.8% (over 2.1 million people) identify as transgender. Among youth aged 13 to...

Protesters repainted the rainbow crosswalk at the Pulse Memorial in Orlando after state crews painted over it, reigniting tensions over LGBTQ+ visibility. The crosswalk, installed in 2017 after the nightclub massacre, had been removed citing updated state

But the organization's days could be numbered.There was a time when most people would’ve viewed transgender medical procedures on minors as outright child abuse. Now, not only are countless people fighting tooth and nail to keep “gender affirming care” legal, but one organization is actually incentivizing hospitals to chemically and surgically mutilate children. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an LGBTQ rights group, persuades children’s hospitals to give transgender surgeries to minors, according to a report by Do No Harm. HRC uses a scoring index to measure a hospital’s “compliance with various tenets of gender ideology” and ranks each facility, giving...

“If they are interacting with a customer and the customer says, this is my preferred name and these are my preferred pronouns, this is the way I want to be addressed, there is a legal obligation to do that. They're compelled to use those pronouns and those surnames under Colorado's law. That's compelled speech, and the real kicker is there criminal penalties for it. You can have prison time, jail time for up to 4 months if you don't abide that.” - Kristen Waggoner, President, CEO & General Counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom

Justine Lindsay, the NFL's first openly transgender cheerleader, has confirmed she will not return to the Carolina Panthers' TopCats squad for the upcoming season. Lindsay, 32, made history in 2022 when she joined the TopCats, becoming the first transgender woman to cheer in the NFL. But after three seasons on the sidelines, she is officially stepping away, telling Outsports she's moving on to focus on pageantry and charity work. 'For now, I'm focusing on my pageantry work and community involvement, striving to be recognized not just as an NFL cheerleader, but as someone making a positive impact, especially during these...

The federal takeover is being blamed for fewer people coming out to clubs and bars in Northwest. Several owners say they’ve lost thousands of dollars because people stayed home or went somewhere else to avoid the intimidating sight. The problems started Wednesday night with traffic stops on 14th Street just a block north of Crush Dance Bar. Co-owner Stephen Rutgers said it deterred people from coming out last week into the weekend. ... Perruzza even had a drag queen who didn’t want to come to work.

Cracker Barrel is done. Woke executives killed it, wrapped the corpse in a rainbow flag, and then made it do a little puppet show in New York City for the entertainment of all their woke little friends.Cracker Barrel’s new logo — and its miserable attempt to reinvent itself — is obviously a complete disaster, whether in terms of customer backlash or the company’s stock price. But the real reason Cracker Barrel has been struggling is that its service and food quality nosedived after Covid, and instead of fixing that, the company and its woke executives decided to go full Bud...

The Trump administration on Thursday canceled a grant for sexual education to California since the state “refused to remove radical gender ideology from the federally funded education program.” The grant is worth $12 million, according to multiple media reports. The California Personal Responsibility Education Program serves youths ages 10 to 19, teaching abstinence and contraception to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. The program focuses on vulnerable groups, including children who are homeless, in foster care, or living in areas with high teen birth rates. LGBTQ teens are among the targeted populations. The curriculum is offered in schools, juvenile justice...