Free Republic

The data are in, they’re not looking good, and the implications for America’s future are dire. Recently, a report was released on the latest fertility rate numbers for the United States, and they are alarming. For several years, they’ve been low enough to cause worry about American replacement rates, but in 2025, they hit a new low:AdvertisementThe United States is experiencing a demographic shift that could reshape the nation’s future. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows America’s total fertility rate has plummeted to a historic low of 1.6 children per woman—well below the 2.1 replacement level...

Raise your hand if someone close to you – friend, relative, co-worker – has been personally touched by divorce. Sadly, I’ve been able to raise my hand for all three at certain points of my life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you can as well. Perhaps you’ve even been divorced yourself. The prevalence of divorce in our culture is likely why so few say anything against it. Afraid of stepping on toes, we dance around the topic, telling divorcees that they’re “so brave” for separating from their partner, or that they did the right thing to get out and...

I used to be entirely in the camp that said you should kick your kids out at 18 and force them to live independently and make their own way in the world. I don’t feel that way at all anymore. I want all my kids to live with us until they get married. Even after they’re married, if they want to live on our property, or close by, my wife and I would love that. The important thing is to teach your kids responsibility, which we’re doing. They need to contribute and help around the house, which all of our...

Modern women are at a crossroads. There seems to be an irreconcilable difference between a career-driven woman…and the opportunity to approach womanhood and traditional goals as a life of their own. But when you look into these two paths online, they are actually far more similar… Infatuated by the haze of traditional influencers like Nara Smith, Erika Kirk and Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman, those replicating these lifestyles have fully lost the actual degree of agency and success these “trad-wives” have achieved. Look no further than Erika Kirk, who is the current Chief Executive Officer of Turning Point USA…She has a...

A Catholic bishop in Belgium has announced plans to ordain married men to the priesthood by 2028, despite the Roman Catholic Church’s requirement of clerical celibacy.Bishop Johan Bonny of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Antwerp recently released a pastoral letter claiming that “the consensus on this question is almost total” among Church leaders.“The question is no longer whether the Church can ordain married men as priests but when it will do so, and who will do it,” wrote Bonny. “Any delay comes across as an excuse.”The bishop said he “will make every effort to ordain married men as priests for...

ABC has scrubbed the upcoming season of “The Bachelorette,” starring Taylor Frankie Paul, three days before its planned premiere, citing a newly released video from 2023 in which she appears to punch, kick and throw chairs at her former partner as her young daughter watched and cried. Thursday’s cancellation of the already filmed 22nd season of the reality show is unprecedented. While ABC parent company Disney cited the older video, the move comes amid a current domestic violence investigation involving Paul and Dakota Mortensen, father to a son who is the youngest of her three children.

Zarqawi Associate Charged with Lying to FBI Friday, June 25, 2004 By Catherine Herridge and Anna Stolley A Lebanese national with ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search), the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, was picked up in Minnesota and charged Friday in a New York court with lying to the FBI about his ties to terrorists, Fox News has learned. According to a federal complaint obtained by Fox, Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi (search), attended jihad training camps in Afghanistan in 1988 and ‘89, where he first met Zarqawi — who is believed to be directing the current attacks against U.S. and...

Donald Tusk’s government has replaced the words “woman” and “man” in key official documents with gender-neutral terms so that same-sex marriages conducted elsewhere can be recognised in Poland. This follows the European Court of Justice’s November ruling that Poland must recognise a gay couple’s foreign marriage despite the country itself forbidding same-sex marriage. But a host of politicians and legal experts have argued that Warsaw was not obliged to introduce this change of language. Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, however, appeared to concede that the move was voluntary, saying his team “wanted to” recognise same-sex marriages. In a statement released...

America spent the last decade insisting that redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would never open the door to anything else. Opponents were dismissed as hysterical, warned that slippery slopes weren’t real. But marriage did not stop evolving at “two people.” A new frontier is forming — not directly from the LGBTQ movement, but from two radically different cultural currents now converging on the same legal question.On one side is a revival of biblical polygyny, championed by figures such as Missouri pastor Rich Tidwell and author and cultural commentator Rob Kowalski. On the other is Gen Z’s normalization of polyamory,...

Modern relationships between men and women are dysfunctional. But to understand why, we cannot examine them through the lens of emotion or morality. We need to look at something far more fundamental, our biology. If you look at the natural world, you'll see that there are three distinct categories that demonstrate how two organisms relate to each other. The first is competition, where you are fighting over a limited resource. This is the lion and the hyena fighting over the same carcass. One party's gain is the other party's loss. This dynamic is the classic power struggle where one needs...

I mean, we knew the dating scene was rough, but this is a whole other level. Read the full story on Jenny Lewis' wedding here.Not to offend any of the newlyweds out there, but sometimes, marriage really is just another piece of paper. Hey, let's not forget when that one girl married the Eiffel Tower in 2007, or in 2015, when a Russian man pledged his undying devotion to a pepperoni pizza. Yeah, you heard me. His reason? "Pizza would not reject you or betray you, and speaking quite frankly and sincerely, I love it," he told The Mirror. Apparently,...

Is marriage financially penalized in the US for low-income couples, esp. on welfare, or not [mainly asked in analyzing reasons for long term "cohabitation" (fornication) esp. among low-income parents] Marriage is often penalized for low-income couples in the US, especially those receiving welfare or means-tested benefits.Welfare and Tax PenaltiesMeans-tested benefits: Welfare programs like SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, housing assistance, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) calculate eligibility and award levels based on household income. When two low-income adults marry and combine incomes, their joint income frequently exceeds program thresholds, causing sharp reductions or complete loss of benefits.1234SSI marriage penalty: Married disabled...

Immigration lawyers are warning that federal agencies are increasingly skeptical when migrants claim to have legitimate marriages with Americans. The policy shift comes after President Donald Trump’s deputies began cracking down on rising rates of marriage-related visa fraud by migrants who pay Americans for temporary marriages. While marrying a U.S. citizen has never been a locked-in guarantee that a migrant would be issued a green card, marriages have previously offered a huge boost to a migrant’s request for legal status. But that may be changing as immigration attorneys are finding that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are giving such...

While the world’s attention is focused on the combat transpiring in Libya and the events in Egypt and Bahrain, Yemen has also descended into crisis. The country is deeply split over its support for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and this profound divide has also extended to the most powerful institutions in the country — the military and the tribes — with some factions calling for Saleh to relinquish power and others supporting him. The tense standoff in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa has served to divert attention (and security forces) from other parts of the country. On March 28,...

Divorcing a good man is not an act of bravery but an act of self-destruction that harms many others in the process.There’s a big milestone coming up for a lot of families this year: first divorced Christmas. It might be a challenging day of splitting kids between disparate family events. Or, perhaps, Mom and Dad will behave like adults and both show up to the same gathering in an effort to create some normalcy for their children, who, heretofore, might have had an intact family and simple celebrations.For as long as there has been marriage, there have been some people...

The husband says he never agreed to do household labor himself, even when his wife chose not to hire outside help and kept the chore money instead. NEED TO KNOW A man who routinely pays for household help says his wife agreed to take over chores in exchange for the money he used to spend on snow removal Tension erupted after she kept the snow shoveling money and expected him to clear it instead, despite his long-standing refusal to do manual chores He asked Reddit if he was wrong for insisting that taking the money also meant taking full responsibility...

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., called those concerned about whether she married her brother "sick" after the far-left lawmaker was approached by Fox News Digital about border czar Tom Homan, signaling that federal officials have started digging into records pertaining to the matter. Homan said last week that records and files related to Omar's potential immigration fraud were being pulled and looked at after President Donald Trump revived the years-old scandal amid an ongoing debate over the Somali Medicaid fraud scandal taking place in Omar's state of Minnesota. While Homan suggested that fraud likely took place, he also signaled that...

Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce is set to marry Taylor Swift in the Watch Hill neighborhood of Westerly, Rhode Island on Saturday, June 13, 2026, according to multiple reports Saturday. The venue, Ocean House, is a glamorous, Victorian-style luxury hotel where the couple has spent plenty of time, per Harper's Bazaar. The date, of course, is a nod to the superstar’s lucky number, 13. There were rumors that Swift's desired date of June 13 was already held for another bride and groom and that she and Kelce dropped a pretty penny to buy the date from them....

Richard Cooper @Rich_Cooper 40 yr old women: I have no idea why I can't find a husband... Also 40 yr old women:

In response to the erosion of the biblical paradigm of gender and marriage in modern Western society, some believers are inclined to support any promotion of heterosexual monogamous marriage as a positive moral force. However, this impulse can be dangerous, as certain conservative ideologies, while outwardly compatible with biblical values, are fundamentally incompatible with Christian teachings… A case in point is the version of marriage and gender promoted by the National Socialists in Germany during their ascent to power in the 1930s and 1940s… Salvation—it would not be a stretch to use that word—came from both the man and the...