Free Republic

Colorado Democrat Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation formally repealing the state’s long-unenforced ban on recognizing same-sex “marriage,” a largely-symbolic gesture for LGBT “equality” ensuring the state status quo would remain if the national one changed in the future. Senate Bill 24-014 strikes from the Colorado legal code language stating marriages can only be recognized as valid if “between one man and one woman.” It passed the state House 45-14 and the state Senate 29-6 and was signed into law on April 7. The statutory repeal follows a ballot initiative that passed last November removing the traditional definition of marriage from...

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...

In a shocking release from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera ahead of the release of leftist Pope Francis’ autobiography, titled Life: My Story Through History, it was shown that the pope has reaffirmed his support for same-gender civil unions. Doing so, he wrote that “it is right” that such couples “who live the gift of love can have legal coverage like everyone else.”The Amazon description of Pope Francis’s autobiography states, “For the first time, Pope Francis tells the story of his life as he looks back on the momentous world events that have changed history—from his earliest years during...

President @JoeBiden has officially awarded Conservative Republican Liz Cheney ( @Liz_Cheney ) the Presidential Citizens Medal, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors, for defending 'our Nation and the ideals we stand for: Freedom. Dignity. And decency,' following the January 6, 2021, election chaos. "Throughout two decades in public service, including as a Congresswoman for Wyoming and Vice Chair of the Committee on the January 6 attack, Liz Cheney has raised her voice—and reached across the aisle—to defend our Nation and the ideals we stand for: Freedom. Dignity. And decency. Her integrity and intrepidness remind us all what is possible...

The media elites have never been less interested in objectivity than they are right now on "gay marriage." They don't wear rainbow flags on their lapels when they appear on television, but the coverage speaks for itself. Even liberals are admitting the obvious. The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) studied a sample of almost 500 news stories from March to May and admitted "statements of support dominate" the daily narrative. "The study lends credence to conservative charges that the nation's news media have championed the issue of same-sex marriage at the expense of objectivity," media reporter...

Colorado officials have agreed to pay over $1.5 million to cover attorney fees for graphic designer Lorie Smith, who successfully challenged the state’s antidiscrimination law at the Supreme Court. The settlement, announced Tuesday, comes months after the high court ruled in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis that Colorado violated Smith’s First Amendment rights by attempting to compel her to create wedding websites for same-sex couples against her religious beliefs. Earlier this year, a federal district court issued a final judgment requiring state officials to cease efforts to compel Smith’s speech, a resolution that brought an end to years of legal...

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — The United Methodist Church in Liberia has been roiled in recent days over its position on marriage for same-sex couples after the global denomination, based in the United States, voted to strike a 40-year-old condemnation of homosexuality from its governing document. Clergy and lay members of the 150,000-member Liberian church have been calling for a special session of the annual conference to take a vote on the U.S. church’s decision, but Bishop Samuel Jerome Quire, the resident bishop of the Liberia Area, has refused, citing the importance of maintaining unity in the Liberian church. Last week,...

How Far Have We Fallen Merely Since 1996? (My Title) “In a short twenty-five years, we have cascaded from the Defense of Marriage Act (which prohibited same-sex marriage) getting eighty-four votes in the senate in 1996, including Senator Joe Biden’s; to the US Supreme Court declaring same-sex marriage constitutional in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015; to President Biden appointing two high-profile transvestites to his administration in 2021; to the proliferation of Americans identifying as LGBT, evidenced by a rise to 21 percent among those born between 1997 and 2003 in 2021, or double what it had been just four years...

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So imagine that you're a conservative evangelical Christian or a traditional Catholic, and a nephew invites you to attend his upcoming wedding. And oh, by the way, he will be standing at the altar with another man. Do you go? That question presents a huge dilemma for many followers of Jesus Christ, who said that marriage consists solely of one man and one woman, united for life, for the purpose of raising a family while cherishing one another. Do you, by attending such a ceremony, thereby lend support to a practice that you view as fundamentally un-biblical and therefore sinful?...

Many disputes arose a few years ago when the then-liberal U.S. Supreme Court created, in a decision condemned as unrelated to the Constitution, same-sex "marriage" for the entire nation. One of the more vicious was a series of lawsuits against a Kentucky county clerk who declined to issue ANY marriage licenses for a time because of the conflict the court decision created with her own constitutionally protected religious rights. An activist federal judge, David Bunning, took up the LGBT agenda and put Kim Davis in jail for a time. And two same-sex duos sued her for damages.

Conservative commentator Candace Owens has confronted former CNN host Don Lemon in a heated interview, telling the gay journalist that his marriage is 'sinful'. Lemon asked the 35-year-old point-blank if she thought he was 'sinning' for being in a same-sex marriage in a July 12 interview on 'The Don Lemon Show' podcast. 'You think I'm sinful because I'm married to a man?' Lemon asked to which Owens' responded confidently, 'Yes' before doubling down on her comments. 'It's a sin ... You're sinning. You're in a sinful relationship. I actually don't believe marriage can be between two men,' she told Lemon...

The Supreme Court is in the midst of issuing a flurry of rulings as they finish up the court's current session. One of them that was handed down yesterday is raising eyebrows for unusual reasons. In the case of Department of State v. Munoz, Sandra Munoz was challenging the denial of her husband's ability to enter the United States from El Salvador to come live with her. Immigration officials at the U.S. Consulate in El Salvador had refused entry to Luis Asencio-Cordero because of tattoos he had which they believed indicated that he was a member of one of El...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow should amend its adoption agreements with countries which have legalised gay marriage. Asked about the legalisation of same-sex marriage and adoption in France, he said other countries should respect Russia's "moral standards". French President Francois Hollande is expected to sign the bill into law after it was passed by parliament.It has emerged that Russia warned the Irish Republic last month that it could stop the adoption of Russian children by Irish parents if the parliament in Dublin endorsed the Magnitsky Act.The act places sanctions on 18 Russians allegedly involved in the death of...

A court case that already has been in the system for years is being pushed up to the level of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and it is expected ultimately to be before the Supreme Court, where it could be a vehicle to overturn that institution's creation of same-sex marriage for the nation. That 2015 ruling, the Obergefell case, has been described by no less than the chief justice of the high court as unrelated to the U.S. Constitution, and exploded limits on same-sex marriage in dozens of states. ... The case at hand is the attack on...

Together with my good friend and occasional courtroom adversary David Boies, I am attempting to persuade a federal court to invalidate California's Proposition 8—the voter-approved measure that overturned California's constitutional right to marry a person of the same sex.... Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social...

On Wednesday, Thailand’s House of Representatives voted 400-10 in favor of same-sex “marriage.” Only 10 lawmakers voted against the bill. Two abstained and three didn’t vote. The country’s Senate “rarely rejects any legislation that passes the lower house,” the Associated Press noted. Once it passes the Senate, it then must be approved by the majority-Buddhist country’s king. In addition to redefining marriage, the bill “extends all rights and protections contained in the Civil and Commercial Code to LGBTI+ persons,” the pro-LGBT group “Fortify Rights” said in a press release. The group’s lobbying to add the “gender-neutral language of ‘parent’ addition...

If Christians want to convey love, there are other — and truer — ways of doing so than attending a celebration of sin.Alistair Begg, a 71-year-old evangelical Scottish pastor of Cleveland’s Parkside Church, who has an influential radio ministry called “Truth For Life,” should repent of the dangerous advice he gave on his program.In response to a question from a grandmother as to whether she should attend her grandson’s wedding to “a transgender person,” Begg said that, so long as the grandson knows that she “can’t countenance … the choices that he has made in life,” she should “go to...

If you have followed my writing and speaking over the decades, you will know that Catholicism has not been a focus of my ministry, either praising it or criticizing it. At the same time, I recognize the important role of the Catholic Church in standing for the sanctity of life and the meaning of marriage. That’s what makes the recent pronouncement of Pope Francis, allowing priests to “bless” same-sex couples, especially distressing. What act of apostasy will be next?My Catholic colleague John Zmirak wrote on Tuesday, “Today I got one of those emails nobody wants to receive. You know, the...

According to much of what's read in the media and among some advocates, the Vatican's changed! It's finally come around to embracing the LGBTQ+ agenda, and is now offering blessings for gay couples for inclusivity's sake, and who knows, soon may be offering gay marriages! Here is some of the cheering from Christopher Lamb at CNN:With five words, uttered right at the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis changed the Catholic conversation about LGBTQ+ people. In 2013, when asked by a journalist about gay priests, the pope famously replied: “Who am I to judge?”Over the last decade the pope has...