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(CNN)The State Department on Monday formally apologized for what it describes as decades of discrimination against LGBT employees and job applicants, a rare statement meant to right wrongs that preceded current Secretary of State John Kerry. "These actions were wrong then, just as they would be wrong today," Kerry said in a statement issued by the department in his name. "On behalf of the Department, I apologize to those who were impacted by the practices of the past." Kerry has been under pressure in recent weeks to issue a public apology. In November, Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who...

Many times we accuse our political opponents of crimes of which we ourselves are equally guilty. Neither the left nor the right has a monopoly on dishonesty, hypocrisy, or hyperbole. But there is at least one unpleasant trait that seems to reside almost exclusively in the hearts of leftists: a puling hysterical weakness in the face of setbacks and defeat. I think President Barack Obama is the worst president of my lifetime: an incompetent ideologue who made the world and the country worse. The economy is not as bad as it was directly after the crash, but it is much,...

As a classical liberal, I regard libertarianism as I would a wilder, younger brother. Libertarianism is younger because it is largely a product of modernity, while classical liberalism is more rooted in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is wilder, because it posits that the public-good function of the state is more limited and the externalities less frequent than I and other classical liberals believe. Yet the philosophies are close kin: they both see that the state poses a perpetual danger to its citizens, only disagreeing at the margin on when it is necessary to relax the strictures on governmental...

Editors note: Every Christian in America (especially pastors) need to listen to this prophetic warning to the American Church. It is clearly Holy Spirit-inspired and truer words were never spoken. – Matt Barber (Listen at link) Transcript: Hello. This message is for my fellow Christians in the United States of America, especially those who are in the clergy. I want to talk to you about church and State. I must confess that I’m a layman in both areas. That is to say, I’ve not made a career in either ministry or politics. But I’m Christian. I’ve been a follower of...

Americans' acceptance of sexual immorality is growing, according to a Gallup report. When asked about the moral acceptability of a range of issues, five of the top six issues that saw an increase in acceptability were related to sexual morality. The largest increase in moral acceptability from 2001 to 2015 was for homosexual relations, which increased 23 percentage points, from 40 to 63 percent. That was followed by having a baby outside of marriage (45 to 61 percent), heterosexual sex outside of marriage (53 to 68 percent), divorce (59 to 71 percent) and polygamy (7 to 16 percent). Also in...

January 28, 2015 (ThePublicDiscourse.com) -- It reads like fiction: an estimated 50 to 75 percent of American men were infected with a sexually transmitted disease (STD); in thousands of families, an STD killed one, two, even five of their children; and an incredible 30 percent of all blindness was attributed to STDs. The transmission of STDs was an urgent concern of national health and security—so serious, in fact, that soldiers were court-martialed if they were found to be infected. These statistics are not from a third-world country in the midst of the AIDs pandemic. These are estimates of syphilis and gonorrhea...

There could be an unlikely contributor to the decline of marriage in this country. And it's free pornography on the Internet. A team of researchers, who published their findings in The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany, determined that the rise of free Internet pornography is not only correlated with a pronounced decline in percentage of young adult males who are married, but might actually be contributing to the trend. "The results in this paper suggest that such an association exists, and that it is potentially quite large," the study notes. The researchers used data from the...

(Reuters) - Sex could keep the Ebola epidemic alive even after the World Health Organization (WHO) declares an area free of the disease, one of the discoverers of the deadly virus said on Tuesday. The WHO is hoping to announce later this week that Nigeria and Senegal are free of Ebola after 42 days with no infections -- the standard period for declaring an outbreak over, twice the maximum 21-day incubation period of the virus. However, it appears the disease can last much longer in semen. "In a convalescent male, the virus can persist in semen for at least 70...

IUDs and hormonal implants cost more, usually hundreds of dollars, because inserting them involves a medical procedure typically done in doctors' offices. But they're less expensive in the long run than over-the-counter condoms or prescription birth control pills, said Dr. Mary Ott, an adolescent medicine specialist and associate pediatrics professor at Indiana University. She is the policy statement's lead author,Teens have to remember to use pills and condoms consistently. By contrast, IUDs typically work for three to 10 years after insertion, while implants typically last three years. The new guidance was published Monday in Pediatrics. It echoes 2012 recommendations from...

PIE members were lobbying NCCL officials for the age of consent to be reduced and campaigning for “paedophile love”. Their view that children were not harmed by having sex with adults appears to have been adopted by those at the top of the civil liberties group. Today we publish extracts from an NCCL report written for the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1976 when Mrs Hewitt was general secretary. It says: “Where both partners are aged 10 or over, but under 14, a consenting sexual act should not be an offence. As the age of consent is arbitrary, we propose...

It is critical for us who would preach the Gospel to ponder what sorts of presuppositions our listeners bring to the conversation. Today, sadly, there are many trends that have poisoned the culture and make our task much more difficult.But difficult does not mean impossible. And thus it helps to describe modern mindsets, not to despair of them, but to describe them with some insight, rather than be vaguely aware of them. And being more clear on the presuppositions that people bring we can better speak our message and also go to work on those presuppositions and ask people to...

How young is too young to start teaching children about sexual health? According to a Georgetown University study, kids between 10 and 14 should be getting sex education because children at that age are susceptible to experimentation. …

The Fremont Unified school board held off on adopting "Your Health Today" after parents complained that its presentation of frank sexual topics was unfit for teaching ninth-grade students. The majority of the nearly 60 speakers said they opposed using "Your Health Today" and objected to chapters that discuss prostitution, bondage, pornography and other frank sexual education topics. About two-thirds of the audience waved yellow signs that read, "Remove College Textbook." Others who favor adopting the new textbook waved green signs that read, "I support comprehensive sex education." The controversy started June 25, when Fremont school board members voted 3-2 to...

Burke, who came out to team-mates in the 1970s and to the public in 1982, died of AIDS in 1995 aged just 42.More than two decades after Glenn Burke abruptly retired from Major League Baseball, the former LA Dodgers outfielder will be honored at Tuesday night’s all-star game as one of the few professional athletes to have come out. Burke's four-and-a-half year career is remembered for his charismatic attitude and the pressures he faced as a gay athlete in the late 1970s. Burke, who played for the Dodgers and the Oakland A's, was the first professional ball player to come...

Does the Bible really teach that premarital sex is wrong? (Of course it does! But with Sola Scriptura, that might be unclear!) http://youtube.com/watch?v=PsHMNPyI7iI(Alternate link, via Vimeo.) “Follow” me on Twitter, “Like” Answering Protestants and Catholic Analysis on Facebook, Add Answering Protestants and Catholic Analysis to your Circles on Google+, and “Subscribe” to my YouTube videos. TRANSCRIPT ———————- Does the Bible really teach that premarital sex is wrong? Well, as a Catholic, I know that it does. So, I suppose the real question should be: can a Protestant reasonably think that premarital sex is okay? I think that they can. And...

This “pastoral letter” was sent by Planned Parenthood and it reads: Many people wrongly assume that all religious leaders disapprove of abortion. The truth is that abortion is not even mentioned in the Scriptures—Jewish or Christian—and there are clergy and people of faith from all denominations who support women making this complex decision. The letter text: The decision to have an abortion is personal. Though your reasons may be complicated and private, you’re not alone. As religious leaders from a number of religious traditions, we’re here to support you in your decision. Many people wrongly assume that all religious leaders...

WASHINGTON (RNS) – Americans are showing more tolerance for a range of behaviors, with sex between unmarried adults, medical research on stem cells from human embryos, and doctor-assisted suicide all showing record highs and increases in “moral acceptability” from last year. The Gallup poll’s annual “moral acceptability” scale has been conducted since 2001 and charts shifting cultural attitudes on a number of hot-button social issues. In the 2014 list released Friday (May 30), Gallup researchers said 12 of the 19 categories reflected “levels of moral acceptance that are as high or higher than in the past.” “Americans largely agree about...

Rep. Jared Polis will gladly visit a marijuana dispensary in his home state of Colorado. He’ll stand in a fluorescent-lit room with hundreds of skunky plants, discuss the different types of high someone gets from Willie’s Wonder versus Super Lemon Haze (one’s a “creative upper,” the other “uplifting and euphoric”) and ruminate on the local ban on edibles. Just don’t try to take his picture in the grow room. “It’s like, that could go viral,” Polis says, leaving Choice Organics in Fort Collins. “I don’t shy away from the issue; we talk about it, whatever. But the problem is, we...

<p>On one tour we joined, smoke wafted out windows. Strangers shared pipes and exchanged samples of weed and wax, a concentrated form of marijuana. Canisters of buds bearing names like "tangerine haze" and "strawberry cough," were passed around to smell. Nutella pancakes came up in conversations at least three times.</p>

For a magazine that styles itself Reason, it’s surprisingly unreasonable. Nick Gillespie of Reason attacks Truth Revolt’s Ben Shapiro for writing that “Philip Seymour Hoffman['s] self-inflicted death is yet another hallmark of the broken leftist culture that dominates Hollywood, enabling rather than preventing the loss of some of its greatest talents. Libertarianism becomes libertinism without a cultural force pushing back against the penchant for sin; Hollywood has no such cultural force.”It’s a point that’s rather hard to argue with. Freedom opens up the arena for individual character to define how people will use it. Freedom alone is a blank slate...