Free Republic

Educators in all Florida public schools for all grave levels will now be banned from teaching students about gender identity and sexual orientation in a sweeping move announced by Ron DeSantis's board of education on Wednesday. The move marks a huge expansion of the The Parental Rights in Education law - also dubbed the 'Don't Say Gay' bill by critics - which was signed last year by the governor and sparked a firestorm across the country. Critics of the policy claim it could harm children who identify as gay and transgender. While the previous version of the law prohibited instruction...

There can be no compromise with those whose political program requires erasing American citizens' constitutionally guaranteed rights to freely speak and freely worship. On May 15, Fox News reported that three Republican senators would like to write caveats into the Equality Act that might give them the political cover to vote for the bill to criminalize free speech and Christianity in the United States.“Representatives from the offices of Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; Rob Portman, R-Ohio and Susan Collins, R-Maine, met with groups including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council and American...

Adding ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ to the list of protected classes may seem straightforward enough, but the proposed law does more—much more.The statutory language instead provides for an extreme remaking of all aspects of society, destroys the promise of equality for women, and threatens religious liberty and the privacy rights of all Americans, especially children. The proposed law also will upend state and federal protections of the unborn—yes, the Equality Act is about abortion too.Here are the five facts about the Equality Act Americans need to know.1. The Equality Act Is Deceptively SimpleThe statutory language of the Equality Act...

The Supreme Court effectively just told Americans that they must consider men women and women men in the workplace. This will not end well. In a 6–3 decision this past Monday, the Supreme Court rewrote Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While Title VII prohibits discrimination in employment “because of an individual’s sex,” the majority held, in an opinion authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, that “an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.”The judicial usurpation of the legislature’s role, however, was but half of the horror of the Supreme Court’s...

As a teenager, Nate Oyloe was attracted to other boys. Hoping to change his sexual attractions, he sought therapy.  Today he is happily married to a woman.  Most people would be glad that Nate has achieved the life he wanted.  But not everyone is.  Lawmakers in his home state of Minnesota recently passed a law banning the kind of therapy Nate received to help him overcome his unwanted same-sex attraction. To date, twenty states and many cities have made it illegal to offer therapy for minors unless it affirms the LGBT agenda -- and several more are considering similar...

Equality is a central value that unites us as Americans, and is enshrined in our nation’s legal motto, “Equal justice under law.” It is egregious, then, to misuse that term, to use it to divide us and further inequality. But that’s what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has done in naming her new proposal the “Equality Act.” Far from advancing equality, the bill would rob Americans of some of their most cherished liberties. The Equality Act would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes under federal civil rights law. But whereas the original Civil Rights Act of 1964 furthered...

The American Bar Association will vote on the controversial notion that being and acting LGBT is a human right protected in international law. The resolution will be considered by the ABA House of Delegates at their annual meeting this August in Boston. The resolution, proposed by James J.S. Holmes, Chairman of the Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, cites a number of international treaties as justification, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Holmes resolution relies on a broad reading of all the cited documents because none of them mentions LGBT, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Holmes claims,...

The TedX talks lecture series is promoting the acceptance of Pedophilia as a sexual orientation. People are paying to listen to this crap.

Whether you’re a lawmaker considering a “bathroom bill” or some other “transgender”-oriented legislation, or a citizen pondering a vote influencing the matter, you need the facts. The following are 10 “transgender” truths: There is no sound science behind the transgender agenda. No “expert” can point to any physiological markers, in any given case, proving that at issue is a biological phenomenon and not a purely psychological one.The “transgender” diagnosis is based purely on feelings relating to what’s called strong “cross-gender identification.” It’s no different from a cardiologist performing bypass surgery on a patient — without conducting any medical tests...

Back in 2014, a bigoted African leader put J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern, in a strange position. Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, had been issuing a series of anti-gay tirades, and — partially fueled by anti-gay religious figures from the U.S. — was considering toughening Uganda’s anti-gay laws. The rhetoric was getting out of control: “The commercialisation of homosexuality is unacceptable,” said Simon Lokodo, Uganda’s ethics minister. “If they were doing it in their own rooms we wouldn’t mind, but when they go for children, that’s not fair. They are beasts of the forest.” Eventually, Museveni said...

The Census should be demanding more information about “gender identity,” leading liberal lawmakers said Wednesday, asking the agency to start including more probing questions to get at the increasingly complex family dynamics in America. “Many federal data collection instruments gather respondents’ race, ethnicity, sex, marital status and other personal demographic information. However, most of these instruments do not include direct measures of respondents’ sexual orientation or gender identity,” Rep. Raul Grijalva and Sen. Tammy Baldwin said in a letter they led, and which was co-signed by dozens of their Democratic colleagues.

In the same-sex-marriage case recently argued in the Supreme Court, the petitioners have claimed a “fundamental right to marry” protected by the Constitution and unmoored from biology, the complementarity of the sexes, or the universal understanding of what “marriage” has meant in every culture in human history until the last 15 years. Their most persistent and compelling comparison of their legal situation has been to the laws that once banned interracial marriage in many states, until they were overturned by the Supreme Court 48 years ago in Loving v. Virginia. But a closer look at that precedent reveals that it...

Amidst the media euphoria surrounding the former Bruce Jenner’s gender reassignment surgery and cover photo on Vanity Fair, a 74-year-old transsexual who deeply regrets his decision has come forward to caution those who think that transgenderism solves people’s psychosexual problems. In a CNN interview on Tuesday, Walt Heyer warned viewers that the relief accompanying gender reassignment surgery doesn’t last. After Jenner expressed exhilaration over the Vanity Fair cover, Heyer responded that such elation is normal, but transient. Heyer acknowledged that “this is really the most exciting time in a transgender’s life.” It is, he said, “the debut,” when “all the...

Last week Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., introduced a bill in Congress asking states to ban sexual orientation conversion therapy, often abbreviated as CT, for minors. California is one of two states that have prohibited licensed professionals from offering the practice, which includes efforts to change not only sexual orientation but also gender identity. While the congressional bill is only a resolution—it encourages states to bar the practice rather than proposing the heavier lift of a federal ban—the idea that CT is dangerous and should be banned is gaining momentum ... What do we actually know about the practice of CT...

This weekend Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt stirred up controversy by writing in the Daily Beast that Christians have no biblical basis for claiming that religious belief should allow them to refuse to serve a same-sex wedding:Before considering legal rights, Christians wrestling with this issue must first resolve the primary issue of whether the Bible calls Christians to deny services to people who are engaging in behavior they believe violates the teachings of Christianity regarding marriage. The answer is, it does not. Nor does the Bible teach that providing such a service should be construed as participation or affirmation. Yet...

Planned Parenthood Federation of America tells teens on its website that it “can take a long time” to determine one’s “sexual orientation or gender identity.” “Sexual orientation describes which gender(s) you’re attracted to, sexually and/or romantically,” says Planned Parenthood’s “All About LGBTQ at a Glance” webpage. “Sometimes a person’s sexual orientation changes over time, but people can’t choose or decide to change who they’re attracted to.” …

<p>Matthew Aune and Derek Jones were...strolling through Main Street Plaza just east of the Salt Lake Temple, the holiest site in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.</p> <p>Aune bussed his partner on the cheek. Church security guards appeared. The twentysomething men said they were cuffed and forced to the ground. The church's official statement said the couple had been "engaged in passionate kissing, groping, profane and lewd language" on private church property, an account the two men vigorously contested.</p>

Dating website OKCupid has begun offering select users twelve options to describe their sexual orientation. Some may consider the idea that there are twelve sexual orientations bizarre in itself — but what’s really bizarre is, according to screenshots of the feature, the site is also allowing people to select “up to five” of those twelve to describe themselves. That’s 1,585 combinations. And how could the same person be five different sexual orientations at once? Here are the twelve choices: Demisexual: no sexual attraction toward any person unless they become deeply emotionally or romantically connected to someone Asexual: does not experience...

While speaking in Singapore at a seminar sponsored by Focus on the Family, I was asked the question: What about ex-ex-gays? Does their existence prove that it is really impossible for people to change their sexual orientation? This past July, Time magazine ran a story entitled, "9 Ex-Leaders of the Gay Conversion Therapy Movement Apologize." The article stated that, "Former members of organizations that advocated therapy to 'cure' homosexuality have joined LGBT groups in rejecting the concept." Last year, John Paulk, formerly a very prominent ex-gay married to his ex-gay wife Anne, went back to his gay lifestyle after 15...

Less than three percent of the population identifies as gay, lesbian or bisexual (GLB), a new federal health report shows. According to the survey responses, 96.6 percent of adults ages 18 years and older identify as straight, 1.6 percent identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent identified as bisexual. These numbers are significantly lower than most American’s estimate. A 2012 Gallup Survey shows that U.S. adults, on average, approximate a quarter of the population to be gay or lesbian.