Free Republic

Democratic Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner announced on X that he is suspending his Senate campaign and denies the sexual assault allegations against him. In a lengthy video message, Platner argued that "large forces" and the political establishment used the accusations to force him out. GRAHAM PLATNER: Hey everyone, it's Graham Platner here. I think as many of you know, over the past couple days, I have faced some very serious allegations. And I just want to make it clear, this is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It's not real. It has placed...

University of California, Riverside associate professor Brandon Robinson argued that a sexual identity label like "gay" or "lesbian" "harms trans people" and called for abolishing sexual identities altogether. While promoting the book "Trans Pleasure: On Gender Liberation and Sexual Freedom," Robinson, a member of the Gender & Sexuality Studies Department, spoke with UC Riverside about gender identities on Friday. Robinson, who uses they/them pronouns, explained the importance of moving beyond "gender essentialism" from sexual identities, which the professor claims can be built around gender "stereotypes." "If being 'gay' means being a man attracted to men, it assumes 'man' is a...

The Iranian and Egyptian soccer federations have urged FIFA to strip any “Pride Match” displays and rainbow symbols from Friday’s World Cup match in Seattle. The contest, slated for June 26 at Lumen Field, is scheduled during the city’s Pride weekend and has been referred to as the “Pride Match.” While FIFA confirmed to the New York Times that rainbow flags remain permitted at all World Cup matches this summer, its president, Gianni Infantino, has previously distanced the governing body from the event’s promotional themes. He insisted there would be no official “Pride Match” at the tournament in an interview...

Street preachers Richard Penkoski and David Grisham allege Fort Worth police officers violated their First Amendment rights during Trinity Pride Fest on June 27 by preventing them from preaching on public streets and sidewalks surrounding the event and later issuing one of them a citation for disorderly conduct related to noise. ... Video of the encounter spread quickly on X after Carlos Turcios of The Dallas Express posted footage from the event. By Monday morning, the post appeared as the No. 2 item in X’s News category, according to a screenshot reviewed by The Dallas Express. Elon Musk replied to...

Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico was caught on video describing a “Christofascism movement” as he criticized legislation restricting gender-affirming care for transgender minors and the state’s abortion law.

Tyler Toler has suffered through the trifecta of bacterial STIs: chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis. While the corresponding itching, burning, and rash felt bad enough, the pain of treatment and the social fallout that often followed were worse. Toler dreaded the awkward conversation with his partners, admitting he may have exposed them to an infection. “Some people are like, ‘Yeah, cool, thank you for letting me know,’” Toler said. “And then there’s some people that think you’re the dirtiest person on the face of the planet.” ... Doxy PEP, or doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis, is an antibiotic taken within 72 hours of condomless...

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer proudly boasts having the "gayest" parliament in the world. To celebrate Pride Month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted a reception at 10 Downing Street for LGBTQ+ community leaders. A social media video from the event posted on Tuesday, local time, showed Starmer talking with attendees while a speaker jokingly referred to him as a "lesbian style icon".

The suspect who threatened a mass shooting and led police on a heavily armed standoff at the Sunset Station Casino parking garage appeared in court Wednesday. Allison Howlett faces several charges including assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence, making a threat related to an act of terrorism, grand larceny of a vehicle, grand larceny of a firearm, and resisting a public officer with a firearm. Howlett appeared virtually in Wednesday's hearing. A judge set bail for Howlett at $500,000 during the court appearance. This comes after Howlett's ex-spouse called Henderson police to report Howlett for stealing her car and...

An ordinance to repeal a ban on gay sex bathhouses in Minneapolis has been signed by Mayor Jacob Frey (D), who did so to support “our LGBTQIA+ neighbors.” The prohibition on the adult facilities known for hosting sexual activity with strangers was originally passed in the city in 1988 as a response to the AIDS epidemic. Local leaders, including those who identified as gay, deemed the bathhouses too risky to be open to the public due to the rampant spread of disease. When the “R-rated” bathhouses were banned nearly 40 years ago, the city had three, which the Washington Post...

San Bernardino LGBTQ+ Mass welcomes all during Pride monthThe church should be a place for healing and acceptance for all, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, Catholic ministry leaders in the Diocese of San Bernardino say.The second annual Embrace Family Mass was celebrated by Bishop Alberto Rojas at Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral on Saturday in San Bernardino.“Jesus looks past labels and social barriers to see a human being in need of love, compassion and restoration to a family, to a community, and to our society,” Rojas, who leads the Diocese of San Bernardino, told those gathered at the...

Texas Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, who is running against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, has accused Christianity of causing unmatched harm while opposing President Donald Trump’s immigration restrictions on terrorism-prone nations and repeatedly aligning himself with Muslim communities. Texas state Rep. and Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico said earlier this year in a New Yorker profile that Christianity is the “most violent” religion and has done “more damage” to Islam than it has done to any other religion. The remarks stand in contrast to figures from the Cato Institute, which say radical Islamic terror has killed at least 3,100...

Marchers and police clashed on Friday night toward the end of the Trans March in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, according to multiple witnesses and footage of the skirmish. Three witnesses told the Chronicle it all started when police tried to arrest someone spray painting a building on Market Street. When marchers approached and tried to block the arrest, officers responded with force, according to Nora Long and other witnesses. People could be heard on video shared with the Chronicle, repeatedly yelling, “let him go.” there trying to stop them,” Long told the Chronicle. “From there, the cops responded with more violence.”...

A man who routinely boasted about being the first open drag queen to be elected to a school board in the United States was arrested last week for disturbing sex crimes involving children as young as 18 months. Travis J. Longo, 46, who is the vice president of the Cazenovia Central School District’s board of education in New York state, was initially charged over a “pattern” of sending explicit communications to a child under 12 years old. Once authorities seized and searched Longo’s phone, child pornography was discovered. Tyler Toomey, a spokesperson for the United States Attorney’s Office in the...

Just when you thought David French's favorite new theologian couldn't get any worse. 😂 I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity. WHAT A QUOTE! Here's the longer quote: I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity, right? And I always get drawn back into it because nowhere else, in no other political philosophy, in no other economic theory, do I find anything as truly radical or revolutionary as the teachings of that barefoot Rabbi. I'm sure Talarico, who is running against Republican Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate seat in TEXAS, will try...

The perfect Democrat.

Texas Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick had a forceful rebuke of Democrat U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico’s radical claims about Biblical doctrine, warning that the far-left candidate is putting himself in danger of “going to Hell.” Democrats initially framed Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and current Texas state representative, as a mainstream figure and rising political talent capable of appealing across partisan lines due in part to his ostensible faith background, which was swiftly quashed not only by his strident left-wing stances on abortion, sexuality, and more, but by claiming Christianity endorses them. The Christian Post reports that, while addressing the...

Yesterday was Easter. It was also Trans Day of Visibility & the Hunky Jesus & Foxy Mary contest in Dolores Park with @SFSisters. The more the merrier! Yet instead of just minding their own business, right wing extremists came unglued.

The Pride Night backlash isn’t going away anytime soon for the San Francisco Giants. The Giants held their annual celebration of San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community on Friday night, with the team wearing special hats with a rainbow-colored “SF” logo as part of the evening. But four of the five pitchers the Giants used in Friday’s loss to the Cubs protested the commemoration, with three pitchers — Landon Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker — writing a Bible verse on their Pride Night hats, while Sam Hentges elected to not wear the rainbow-logo hat at all.

Celebrity children identify as trans and non-binary at unbelievable rates. Charlize Theron, Cynthia Nixon, Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony — whose 18-year-old recently debuted a new name, changing from Emme to Oskar — are just a few of the stars with children who aren’t living as their birth sex. There’s nothing wrong with being trans. But such an unlikely concentration in a particular community should give one pause — especially when so many of these kids began playing with gender at shockingly young ages. In a geography where having a trans child has a tinge of chicness...

After Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) defeated Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate last month, it wasn’t surprising that Republicans launched a barrage of attacks against Democratic nominee James Talarico. What was surprising, though, and troubling, is that they attacked not Talarico’s record or past rhetoric, but his masculinity. Paxton got things rolling on election night, calling him “Tofu Talarico,” “James Tala-freako,” and “low-T Talarico.” Trump aide Stephen Miller piled on, suggesting that Talarico was transgender. Others insinuated that he was secretly gay and that his girlfriend was fictional. (This is a bold strategy, because...