Free Republic

Opponents of the Obama administration's plan to scrap the "don't ask, don't tell" compromise by which gay men and women are allowed to serve in the military, so long as nobody finds out they are gay, say that with an all-volunteer force stretched thin by two wars, this is no time to rock the boat. They're wrong. Precisely because the military needs all the manpower -- and woman power --it can get, now is the time to end one of President Bill Clinton's least satisfying triangulations, a discriminatory and unjust policy that never made much sense. Defense Secretary Robert M....

Orange diocese’s “gay” and lesbian spiritual support group seeks to overcome discrimination in the Church Where are Catholics to go to deepen their understanding of the “gay community”? Where can the “gay community” find spiritual support? According to the July 2008 Orange County Catholic, the newspaper of the Orange diocese, they’ll find such understanding and support in Koinonia, “a community of gay and lesbian people and family and friends of gay and lesbian people” which meets at Orange’s St. Joseph Center, run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. A couple, Laura and Tom (not their real names) discovered...

Gays challenge traditional marriage supporters: put up or shut up Homosexual group calls for boycott of Wal-Mart, shopping at Target instead If Wal-Mart sales go down, gays will claim victory in support of same-sex "marriage" benefits The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest homosexual organization, has issued a challenge to pro-traditional marriage supporters saying in essence: "Put up or shut up." They have called for a boycott of Wal-Mart while urging their supporters to buy from Target. The reason? Wal-Mart refuses to offer "domestic benefits" (benefits given to married couples) to homosexual partners. The homosexual organization also urged individuals...

As same-sex couples tied the knot in San Francisco, "My first reaction was they have lost their minds," the Palmdale Republican said. City officials in San Francisco started marrying same-sex couples Thursday at the behest of Mayor Gavin Newsom, and the civil unions were expected to continue throughout the weekend as lines formed outside City Hall. Calling the unions a "sideshow," Knight said he only hopes the same-sex couples realize that their marriages are not legal. "It's absolutely illegal. Those departments do not have the authority to change California law," he said. In March 2000, two-thirds of California voters passed...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The couples began lining up outside City Hall at 4 a.m., four hours before the marriage license bureau opened. By 8 a.m., more than 50 couples were waiting for the new gender-neutral licenses that would allow same-sex couples to marry. By 9 a.m., there were 100 couples; by 11 a.m., 200 couples. Some had flown in from New York or had driven all night from such places as Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and Palm Springs, Calif. Licenses in hand, gay couples were exchanging vows all over City Hall -- on the grand steps of the rotunda, upstairs,...

San Diego and the American Civil Liberties Union settled a lawsuit over two leases between the city and the Boy Scouts, both sides announced Thursday. The ACLU suit, filed in 2000, challenged the city's subsidy of the Desert Pacific Boy Scout Council through leases for public land in Balboa Park and Fiesta Island Aquatic Park. In July 2003, a federal judge ruled the Balboa Park lease violates First Amendment guarantees of separation of church and state. The judge also put over for trial the matter of the Fiesta Island lease. Under its settlement with the ACLU, the city will take...

Addressing A Scandal . . .Bishops’ Actions Expose More Corruption By MICHAEL S. ROSE and Paul Likoudis   DALLAS — The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ summer meeting in Dallas closed with the bishops approving a "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People," a shovelful of ground meat thrown to a media pack and victims of clerical sexual abuse demanding some sort of response to decades of clerical misconduct and episcopal cover-up.   The bishops placated almost no one. Critics assailed them from both the left and right and in the long run, the only likely lasting results from the meeting...