Free Republic

The North Dakota Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously found the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors constitutional, upholding a lower court’s ruling from last year. The 2023 law makes it a crime to prescribe puberty blockers and other treatments to adolescents. The high court’s reasoning for its decision mirrored that of South Central Judicial District Judge Jackson Lofgren, who in October 2025 rejected North Dakota pediatric endocrinologist Luis Casas’s claims that the law forces him to withhold necessary medical care from his patients.

PENDLETON, Ore. – To resolve a lawsuit brought by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys, Oregon child-welfare officials agreed to a court order freeing Jessica Bates to seek a license to adopt children from foster care without violating her religious beliefs about human sexuality. Bates filed a lawsuit in April 2023 challenging an Oregon Department of Human Services rule that categorically excluded her from adopting any child—no matter their age or beliefs—because she would not lie to children about their identity by promoting the view that girls can become boys and vice versa. Under the agreed-upon court order, Bates may now...

The slippery-slope is nearing the bottom now. The City of Seattle wants to keep employers, businesses, and private citizens from discriminating against people who like to sleep around and/or identify as an infinite list of genders. .... Notice how "male and female" has now been struck from the municipal code altogether. The law will "recognize genders outside the gender binary, recognize pansexuality and asexuality as orientations, and include consensual relationships with multiple partners as an element of attitudes, preferences, and practices pertaining to sexual orientation." This idea of normalizing multiple partners is a growing movement on the Left. ... It's...

The popular gay dating and hookup app Grindr agreed to pay £26 million (about $35 million) to settle a lawsuit over allegations that it shared users’ personal information, including their ethnicity, sexual orientation and, in some cases, HIV status, with third parties, reports The Guardian. The settlement ends the class-action lawsuit filed in the High Court of England and Wales in 2024, though Grindr continues to deny liability. ... Launched in 2009 and based in Los Angeles, Grindr bills itself as “the largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people. We have millions of daily users who...

Did a real Grindr outage take place in Dallas during the 2026 Republican National Convention, which began on Sept. 9, 2026? No, that's not true: A spokesperson for Grindr told Lead Stories it had no outages connected to the convention, and its status page did not show any either. The Downdetector website did show an increase in outage reports nationally on the evening of Sept. 9, 2026, but according to its methodology, the graphs on the service are at least partially based on unvetted user reports and social media posts. The claim appeared in a post by the @factpostnews account...

The Swiss government says it supports a uniform, national ban on so-called conversion therapy, and it’s moving ahead to consider federal legislation to outlaw the discredited practice. A report from the government published last week details a number of current national regulations addressing the practice, as well as a patchwork of laws or procedures in various cantons (independent member states) across the country, which include their own administrative or criminal measures and corresponding legislative proposals that have been initiated, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation reports. ... The patchwork of Swiss laws makes a national ban on the practice worth considering at...

Democrats in Kentucky might be some of the dumbest in the country. We all see the political landscape due to national issues. This is the best chance Democrats in Kentucky have had in nearly ten years to win back some of the seats they’ve lost, and then they go and support this. The very reason Kentucky Democrats stopped dominating the state is due in large part to coal and a huge disconnect on social issues with the God-fearing, rural nature of the state. So instead of trying to respect that and win back some of those voters, they decide to...

A survey of LGBTQ+ rights groups around the globe shows the vast majority of them lost funding since the start of President Donald Trump's second term. Outright International released a report on September 10 showing nearly 89% of groups responding to a survey said that since January 2025, they have lost foreign aid from the United States. The advocacy group spoke with representatives from 229 organizations in 94 countries, 203 of which said funds had been cut since the inauguration.

Erobella recently published the Out on Campus: The LGBTQ+ College Index 2026, which measures how “supportive and inclusive” the universities across the country are. The study examined whether universities have professionally staffed LGBTQ+ centers, provide gender-inclusive housing, have written policies that protect trans students from discrimination, have a student health insurance plan that covers gender-affirming care, and allow chosen names and pronouns to be used on official records. Out on Campus also analyzed the city where the school is located by measuring its score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index, the number of LGBTQ+ venues nearby, and whether...

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A group of five patrons was kicked out of a Portland sports bar Sunday evening after bargoers were made “uncomfortable” over their “pro-women” apparel after they say they were ejected from a soccer game.According to footage posted by Amy Sousa, a staff member asked Sousa and her acquaintances to leave The Sports Bra, a women’s sports bar in Northeast Portland.“There are people that are in here that are uncomfortable with those shirts, and so I’m asking y’all to leave,” the staff member said to the group in the video. The staff member continued, “If I have...

The Episcopal Church has apparently reached another historic milestone, although perhaps not one Christians should be celebrating. All Saints' Cathedral in Milwaukee recently installed the Very Rev. Micah Cronin as its new dean, believed to be the first transgender-identifying dean in the history of the Episcopal Church. Cronin is a biological woman who identifies as a man and is married to another biological woman who identifies as transgender and serves as a pastor at an LGBT-affirming Lutheran campus ministry. If that description sounds confusing, perhaps that is precisely the point Christians should be considering. This is no longer simply a...

For years, one of the most visible consequences of transgender policies has played out in women's sports. Female athletes have watched biological males enter their competitions, stand on podiums, occupy roster spots and, in some cases, enter spaces once reserved exclusively for women. Whatever one's position on transgender issues, the conflict has forced society to confront an uncomfortable question: What happens when the interests of people who identify as transgender collide with protections created specifically for women? But there is another group of women caught in that collision who receive considerably less public attention. They are women in prison. And...

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — The city and Norfolk Police Chief Mark Talbot are named in a pair of related lawsuits over the hiring of a transgender police recruit. The lawsuits, totaling $20 million and filed last week and Monday in Circuit Court, were brought by a current officer on suspension and another officer who was fired earlier this year. Officer Meghan Grabow’s lawsuit alleges she was in a women’s locker room in 2024, when a department recruit she describes as a “biological male self-identified as a woman” entered that locker room. According to the lawsuit, Grabow was in her underwear,...

Harry Potter author JK Rowling was forced to cover the name of her superyacht while moored in Marina del Rey harbor, according to a new report. The beloved author has endured a storm of protests since expressing 'deep concerns' about transgender activism in an essay June 2020. She celebrated on the deck of a boat after a UK ruling that decided the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex in April 2025 She rose from homelessness to become one of the most celebrated children's writers of all-time. It was originally commissioned for LA businessman Eric Smidt, the...

...in 2026, according to the Community Health Law Project (CHLP), "32 states criminalize people living with HIV (PLHIV) and 28 states have harsh criminal penalty enhancements that elevate charges based on a person’s knowledge of their HIV status." There are many examples of the harm these laws do. One that stands out to me is Robert Suttle. I met Robert last year when he was a guest on my cable access TV broadcast, The Recruiters with Tom Duane. In 2008, Robert was arrested at his workplace after a former partner accused him of failing to disclose his HIV status. Robert...

President Donald Trump has been praised after it was revealed woke American professors are being poached by Canadian universities, including an academic who teaches transgender philosophy. California State University philosophy professor, Talia Mae Bettcher, who is transgender, is among the many American-based educators who have packed their bags and headed north to Canada to become a part of the $541 million research funding project. 'I knew I had to leave,' Bettcher, who is a native Canadian but taught in Los Angeles, told The University of Waterloo, her new home. 'As a green card-holding trans-woman and outspoken academic in an area...

All the shopper wanted was to buy a laptop. Instead, a routine trip to a Best Buy turned into a bizarre confrontation over gender, pronouns and whether a customer should be compelled to address a biological male employee as “ma’am.” Video of the encounter shows the Best Buy employee, who presented with a distinctly masculine appearance, objecting after the customer referred to the employee as “sir.” The employee insisted on being addressed as “ma’am.” The customer wasn't having it. His position was straightforward: the person standing in front of him appeared to be a man, and he wasn't going to...

Washington — Far-right political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, according to the agency's online detainee database. Reports indicate Yiannopoulos, who is British, was in New Orleans ahead of a concert headlined by the artist formerly known as Kanye West scheduled for Friday night. TMZ first reported Yiannopoulos' status. CBS News has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE for additional details and the basis for his apprehension. ...

On this Feast of St. Monica, I guess we Catholics need to add another wayward soul to our prayer list. This one's quite a lulu. Emma Cieslik, a 'museum specialist' at, not surprisingly, the Smithsonian, who claims to be Catholic, but not as loudly as she claims to be "queer, disabled and neurodiverse" in her social media bios, wrote this guest column for the National Catholic Reporter: August is Transgender History Month, a time to reflect on the transgender people who have led the way for transgender people's rights and who continue fighting for legal recognition and protection. This history...

A gay men STD screening may require more than a basic urine test. Some sexually transmitted infections (STIs) can hide in the throat or rectum. You could test negative on a standard screen while an infection remains untreated. Urine testing can detect some infections, but it does not always check the throat or rectum. Sexual activity can expose different areas to STIs. Gonorrhea and chlamydia can affect the throat or rectum.