Free Republic

Tavish Forsyth, previously an associate artistic lead at the Washington National Opera’s Opera Institute, has been fired after releasing a nude video protesting changes being made at the Kennedy Center by President Trump and his point man Amb. Ric Grenell. In the YouTube video, Forsyth—who Kennedy Center sources tell The National Pulse was part of an education division which regularly engaged with students—performed a 35-minute spoken-word poem while nude. He was fired on Thursday afternoon.

Several longtime sponsors, including the company that makes Bud Light, have pulled their funding from the annual San Francisco Gay Pride Weekend. For some reason, San Francisco Pride requires $3.2 million to cover its June weekend of events. Corporate sponsors were expected to pay $2.3 million of that. But after four declined, the organization will have to scramble to make up the $300,000 shortfall elsewhere. San Francisco Pride’s executive director, Suzanne Ford, told SFGATE that they expect to lose a few sponsors every year, but it was “very abnormal” for four sponsors who have been with them for years to...

Anxious teachers have removed Pride flags and posters promoting “gender ideology” are forbidden at the school serving U.S. military families that 18-year-old Finn Dwyer attends. The Pentagon has moved swiftly to restrict access to learning materials covering subjects including immigration and psychology in its global network of schools as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Dwyer and other students who spoke to The Washington Post say they worry it’s only the beginning. “It makes you wonder, ‘What is the next move?’ … It’s unpredictable to an extent, and it’s scary because of that,” said...

America’s public high schools are strange places to find displays of the alphabet. Perhaps with plummeting standardized test scores and a substantial increase in English-as-a-second-language students in sanctuary districts, high school educators feel the need to review kindergarten basics. In Fairfax County, Virginia’s West Springfield High School, located just 17 miles from the White House, school administrators and teachers have decorated the history hallway this month with a special, leftist rendition of the alphabet. The display, titled “The ABCs to ME,” is decorated with the school’s colors: a blue background lined with an orange border. Featured in the display is...

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s ruling coalition continued its crackdown on the country’s LBGTQ+ community on Monday, as members submitted a bill to parliament that would ban the popular Budapest Pride event and allow authorities to use facial recognition software to identify attendees. The bill is almost certain to pass, as the ruling coalition has a two-thirds majority in parliament. The bill would make it an offense to hold or attend events that violate Hungary’s contentious “child protection” legislation, which prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors under 18. Attending a prohibited event would carry fines up to...

By the end of April, the new home of the Sundance Film Festival should be public knowledge with the Salt Lake City/Park City combo, Boulder, Colorado or Cincinnati bid picked as the host for the next decade. However, a bill heading toward Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk that would ban the Pride flag in schools and other state government buildings might be an eleventh-hour obstacle to the Beehive State’s hopes of keeping the Robert Redford-founded shindig past 2026. “What are they thinking?” a Sundance insider said late Tuesday of the bill to ban the LGBTQ+ flag after a virtual meeting...

Deerfield school administrators Joanna Ford (L), Cathy Van Treese (C) and Ginger Logemann (R) forced teen girls at Shepard Middle School to change in front of a boy. | Linkedin/Deerfield 109Deerfield school administrators Joanna Ford (L), Cathy Van Treese (C) and Ginger Logemann (R) forced teen girls at Shepard Middle School to change in front of a boy. | Linkedin/Deerfield 109Deerfield School District 109 administrators forced teen girls at Shepard Middle School to change in front of a boy in the school locker room.That's according to parent testimony heard during public comment Thursday's District 109 School Board meeting.After receiving a...

All of Maine’s federal judges recuse themselves from Rep. Laurel Libby’s lawsuit against House speaker None of the judges gave any reasoning for the recusals and the Republican state lawmaker's case will now be considered by a judge in Rhode Island. All of Maine’s active federal judges have recused themselves from a Republican state lawmaker’s lawsuit against the Speaker of the House. Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, and six of her constituents filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Bangor on Tuesday in response to Libby’s party-line censure by the Legislature last month. Democrats argued Libby crossed a line by...

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Sunday he’s confident local communities can make their own decisions about whether to let trans athletes participate in women’s sports in a way that is “safe” and “fair” to young people.

This was at Lowell Area Schools in Michigan. What books are they hiding???

Payton McNabb, the young woman who was seriously injured by a transgender volleyball player, ripped the congressional Democrats who greeted her with a rude cold shoulder during President Donald Trump’s address on Tuesday evening. McNabb suffered traumatic physical and mental injuries when she was injured by a more powerful transgender opponent during a high school volleyball game. During Trump’s address, she was in the gallery, but when the president honored her from the podium, none of the Democrats clapped for her. The young woman, now an activist to protect women’s sports, said the snub was “heartbreaking.” “Last night, just overall,...

A clothing-optional spa in California has sparked outrage among transgender protestors after one trans visitor said she was told to cover up during 'Lady's Night.' 'It's exclusion. It's discrimination. It goes against everything that I came here for,' Breath Mormorer, who joined demonstration outside the Russian-style bathhouse Archimedes Banya in San Francisco, told CBS News. 'I came from Alabama specifically to escape that type of prejudice and hate. And I got here and I found out this city has just as much of it,' she added. The spa offers one women-only night and one men-only night each month. On its...

During an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) declared that the problem in 2024 was “not enough Americans believed that, we, as Democrats or Vice President Harris and myself, were on their side, and we are. Our policies are popular. But that didn’t resonate.” .. I think the thing I learned is, is we need to be in every space, everywhere. Saturday night, I was up in Helena, Montana.

Washington — Senate Democrats on Monday blocked a measure that sought to ban transgender girls and women from competing on school sports teams that match their gender identity. The 51-45 vote fell short of the 60 required to advance the bill. Republicans, who control 53 seats in the upper chamber, needed at least seven Democrats to join them if all members were present and voting

Friday, February 28, marks the fourth annual HIV Is Not a Crime Awareness Day (#HINACDay; #HIVIsNotACrime), a global effort to inform the public about unjust laws that target people living with HIV and the efforts to modernize those laws. The HIV criminalization awareness day is spearheaded by Sero Project, a nonprofit that fights HIV crime laws, along with the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and other global HIV advocacy groups. Visit the HINACDay Facebook page for the latest updates, and search the hashtags online to find promotional and educational posts and info about events near you as well as those held...

More than half of books banned during the last school year featured or were about people of color or members of the LGBTQ community, according to a report released Thursday. PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, released data in the fall that found more than 10,000 instances of schools or their districts removing books from school, classrooms or curriculums last year, affecting 4,218 titles. The analysis released Thursday found that those bans disproportionately affect books about certain identities, including people of color, and also more often apply to certain genres, such as history. The...

AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine House of Representatives voted Tuesday evening to formally censure a lawmaker after she drew national attention for a Facebook post that singled out a high school athlete in Maine. Rep. Laurel Libby's social media post criticized Maine's policy of allowing transgender athletes to participate in girls' sports. "When the woke Left can't silence women, they cancel them," Libby said over calls of "order!" from Democrats. The debate was fierce from the start, with Democrat's criticizing Libby for using the image of a minor to make a political point. "No child designed these rules, and no...

The Maine House of Representatives voted to censure Rep. Laurel Libby Tuesday night for a recent social media post pointing out that a transgender high school athlete won a girls' competition. The Maine House's Democratic majority, led by Speaker Ryan Fecteau, passed the censure resolution Tuesday night in a 75-70 vote. Libby is now no longer allowed to speak on the house floor or vote until she issues an apology.

The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a Tennessee law that protects children from viewing sexually explicit performances. The court on Monday denied a petition from Friends of George’s, a Memphis-based theater group, that claimed a law banning sexually explicit performances in front of children violated the First Amendment. In July, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the law could take effect, overturning a federal judge’s decision to block the law. “Another big win for Tennessee! Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Friends of George’s v. Mulroy,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said....

You know the left was in a panic when members of the ‘separation of church and state’ party start insisting that their policies were supported by scripture. That was the case during the Monday episode of ABC News’s The View as staunchly racist Sunny Hostin shouted about how opposing the racist poison of the left’s “woke” ideology was “ungodly” and “not Christian.” Moderator Whoopi Goldberg also chimed in to claim wokeness would “make you a better person.”