Free Republic

Former President Barack Obama suggested during an appearance on his wife's podcast earlier this week that men need gay friends to learn "empathy and kindness" while preparing for potentially fathering a son who identifies as gay or non-binary. Appearing during an episode of "IMO," a podcast hosted by former first lady Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, the former president discussed with the two how best to raise boys. At one point during their hour-long discussion, Barack Obama — who noted he was raised by a single mother — suggested that boys need male figures in their lives other...

*** In 2025, lawmakers in several states introduced resolutions that urged the Supreme Court to overturn the 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which established same-sex civil marriage nationwide. The North Dakota House and the Idaho House passed resolutions, but both efforts failed when sent to their respective state senates. In most states, the resolutions died in committees. The limited success was in legislative chambers with overwhelming Republican supermajorities. The Idaho House, for example, has a 61-9 Republican majority and passed the resolution in a 46-24 vote. The North Dakota House, with its 81-11 Republican majority, adopted the resolution more...

“When it comes to the interpretation of the Constitution — the ‘great charter of our liberties,’ which was ‘meant to endure through the long lapse of the ages,’ — we place a high value on having the matter ‘settled right’ ...When one of our constitutional decisions goes astray, the country is usually stuck with the bad decision unless we correct our own mistake” – (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization 2022). The time has come for the Court to do just that — correct the mistake it made a decade ago and overturn the disastrous and unconstitutional decision that legalized...

On the 10th anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges (federally mandating “marriage equality”), it’s proper to ask whether same-sex marriage is a good idea. One reason to think that it’s not is the existence of an epistemic oddity, an oddity which strongly undermines any argument for same-sex marriage (hereafter “SSM”). The oddity in question is characterized by what may be called an "underdetermination asymmetry."Start with the following very simple observation.There are two ultimate positions in the SSM debate, and only two. On the one hand, there’s love or care as the basis of marriage, as in the view of SSM’s supporters....

The alarmists were right. Ten years after the Obergefell decision enacting same-sex marriage nationwide, its opponents — smeared then and now as cranks and bigots — have been vindicated. Same-sex marriage was sold to the public through a campaign of lies, and the lies are hurting people. It is therefore no wonder that support for same-sex marriage seems to have peaked, and may even be starting to decline, especially on the right. Of course, GOP leaders, whether from MAGA or the old establishment, have no stomach for the fight. They just want the issue to go away. They and the...

The Obergefell ruling rode rough-shod over religions and dozens of state constitutions on the bases of a moral — not legal — opinion.In late January, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a memorandum calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to “reverse” its 2015 gay marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, “and restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman.” The memo passed 46 to 24 in the House and is heading to the Idaho Senate. If it passes the senate, it will be sent on to the Supreme Court as one more formal encouragement that...

“Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?” (James 2:4) The adage – “choosing the lesser of two evils” was thought to originate from this verse out of the book of James. In America we have begun to choose between two evils so much that the right and the wrong of most matters is lost.

If marriage is possible between any two individuals, then why not three, four, or any number of consenting adults, regardless of their sex?In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges, legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states and the District of Columbia by a 5-4 vote. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion for the case, didn’t seem to believe that the issue of polyamory could possibly be relevant or arise due to the court’s decision. Just eight years later, The New York Times published an article last week that celebrated Somerville, Massachusetts,...

More than a decade ago, Florida voters approved a ban in the state’s Constitution on same-sex marriages, ratifying a declaration that marriage is only between a man and a woman. With the multitude of state and federal policies at play here, what does the state Constitution’s ban on same-sex marriages mean for the future?Given the messy political context, it’s hard to say exactly.During the 2008 general election, Florida voters were presented the proposed constitutional amendment to exclude same-sex couples from the definition of marriage under the law.As a refresher in Florida politics during that election cycle, that is the same...

The man who took his demand for gay "marriage" in America to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in that decision that destroyed millennia of traditional morality by "finding" such a right in the Constitution – has been blown out in his first bid in politics. It is the Washington Stand that revealed the big loser is Jim Obergefell, whose name forever is linked to the Obergefell v. Hodges case through which the anti-Christian precedent was adopted for America. He ran as a Democrat for the Ohio House of Representatives, losing by 23 percentage points.

Last week Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) voiced the commonly held belief that the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the country was wrongly decided — yet popular Twitter personalities twisted his words to tell a more sinister story. Yet that is an oversimplification of the senator’s comments on the subject on his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1548340766920978434?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1548465411481432065%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2Fnews%2Fprogressives-twist-ted-cruzs-obergefell-criticism-beyond-recognition%2F Cruz, asked what the argument would be for overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, replied that the decision, like Roe v. Wade, “ignored two centuries of our nation’s history.” “Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states,” he...

A GOP unwilling to admit that can’t save America. The media is trying to mau-mau Republicans into a selective and unprincipled originalism, and it appears to be working. After the collapse of Roe v. Wade, many Republican pols signaled that they had no interest in overturning other nakedly unconstitutional rulings, such as Obergefell v. Hodges. Never mind that that ruling, which imposed a wholly invented “constitutional” right to gay marriage on all 50 states, was as much an attack on democracy as the Roe ruling. “I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy,” Justice Antonin...

Obergefell, like Roe, was a particularly arbitrary, extreme, and unjust imposition on the people. Like Roe, it had no basis in the Constitution’s text or American custom. It was simply dreamed up by a group of unelected judges who decided the time had come for them to impose a radically new understanding of the most fundamental institution of human society. Like Roe, Obergefell took away from the people the power to decide the most basic moral questions and daily life in their communities. As Justice Scalia put it at the time, the Court was violating “a principle even more fundamental...

Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized gay marriage in 2015, argued that marriage equality is threatened in the United States if Roe v. Wade (1973) is overturned.

If you scan the internet, you'll see a number of headlines stating that the Supreme Court is hearing oral argument today in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the case out of Mississippi that challenges Roe v. Wade. I'm completely disinterested because I'm certain that the outcome is pre-determined: Roe v. Wade will be upheld.Why do I say that? Certainly not because it rests on a firm legal principle. Penumbras of emanations or emanations of penumbras do not create a federal right to abortion. The Constitution and the history of abortion in America before Roe v. Wade make it unequivocally...

Thirty-three self-identified LGBTQ etc. students who are currently attending Christian universities have sued the Department of Education, demanding that all federal funding be withdrawn from those institutions. This suit is an inevitable sequel to the Obergefell lawsuit, which put the whole non-traditional sexual identity spectrum into the Constitution. However, it also highlights that Christian institutions should never have gotten entangled with the federal government. In typically histrionic terms, the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Eugene, Oregon, claims that it's a necessity because the court must "put an end to the U.S. Department of Education's complicity in the abuses and...

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said Monday that Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that mandated all states recognize same-sex marriages, is "found nowhere in the text" of the Constitution and threatens "the religious liberty of the many Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred institution between one man and one woman." The statement was written by Thomas and joined by Alito about the case of Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who said she would not give same-sex couples marriage licenses. The two justices said they agreed with the consensus of the court that it...

Don’t say America wasn’t warned. During the oral arguments for same-sex marriage in 2015, a question came up about the fallout for Christian education. Asked if religious schools could be punished for holding a natural view of marriage, U.S. Solicitor Donald Verrilli was surprisingly honest. ” … [I]t’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is going to be an issue.” Four years later, that prophecy is coming to pass. Out in Maryland, a Christian charter school was told by state officials that it can’t participate in the voucher program anymore because of its...

Most everyone in America was and is in favor of marriage equality. Most everyone was and is in favor of marriage equality because most everyone wants the law to treat all marriages equally. The debate in the United States in the decade and a half before Obergefell v. Hodges wasn’t about equality. It was about marriage. We disagreed about what marriage is. Of course, “marriage equality” was a great slogan. It fit on a bumper sticker. You could make a red equal sign your Facebook profile picture. It was a wonderful piece of advertising. And yet it’s completely vacuous. It...

Subtitle: Black-Robe Disease. The only “living Constitution” is one that is followed; a Constitution whose text is ignored is a dead one.1 Standing over and looking down at the remains of the US Constitution, retired Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy recently admitted in an interview why he provided the fifth vote in Obergefell v. Hodges. “It seemed to me just wrong that under the Constitution, over 100,000 adopted children of gay parents could not have their parents married. I just thought this was wrong.” Well, there you have it. Kennedy admitted an open secret; he let his passions rule his reason...