Free Republic

The Vermont Department for Children and Families has changed its guidance regarding whether prospective foster parents must affirm the gender identity of LGBTQ+ youths before being licensed as part of two legal settlements reached last week. Under the new guidance, issued February 18, the state agency will no longer be able to deny or revoke foster-parent licensure based on an applicants’ refusal to “affirm, endorse or adopt any particular views regarding gender identity, sexual orientation or related ideological concepts,” according to the settlements filed in federal court late last week. The changes come in response to two lawsuits — Wuoti...

A first-grade teacher in Nashville, Tennessee, claims that he was threatened with termination and reassigned to a new position after requesting religious accommodations to avoid reading books to children that promote same-sex marriage, which would have conflicted with his beliefs about marriage and sexuality. Eric Rivera is a devout Christian who taught first-grade students at KIPP Antioch College Prep Elementary School, according to a Wednesday statement from the First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit public interest law firm. KIPP is a public charter school that operates under the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

The aggressive push for socialism in America is not just a policy debate. It is a direct assault on the American founding and the prosperity it created. Under the guise of “progress,” bloated liberals are imposing a compulsory, state-led ideology and economy that mirrors failed socialist experiments of the past. In 1988, I escaped the crushing weight of communism in Romania, trading a life of state-mandated silence for the promise of American liberty. As a political refugee, America gave me the soil to rebuild my life from nothing. But today, America’s foundation is shaking. I look at the country that...

A Catholic couple who alleges that Massachusetts officials banned them from welcoming foster children into their home due to their religious beliefs is still fighting for their rights in court, even after state foster care licensing rules were altered amid federal pressure. Michael and Catherine Burke say that state officials denied them the chance to foster children despite completing the training and interviews required for the application process. According to the couple’s lawsuit — which they filed in 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts — they were denied the right to foster a child because...

A Christian college, The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, continues to be excluded from the Chicago Public Schools student teacher program after suing for religious discrimination, the college’s lawyer told The College Fix. In an exclusive interview, senior counsel on the case Jeremiah Galus said that as of Jan. 7, Chicago Public Schools still wasn’t allowing Moody’s student teachers to work in its schools.... Moody began offering a Bachelor of Arts in elementary education in 2024. However, according to an ADF news release, Chicago public school leaders refused to employ Moody’s student teachers unless the college abandons its religious hiring...

A federal judge has ruled in favor of a Christian father seeking to have his kindergarten-aged child removed from classroom lessons teaching LGBT ideology, as litigation continues. In a Dec. 30 opinion authored by Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, the United States Court for the District of Massachusetts sided with the father, identified as “Alan L.,” in his litigation against Lexington Public Schools over its inclusion of LGBT-related material in the kindergarten curriculum. The plaintiff, a father of a kindergarten student, alleges that the school district violated his “sincere and deeply held” religious beliefs as a “committed, practicing Christian” by...

A unanimous decision by a federal appeals court will allow Yakima Union Gospel Mission to continue its faith-based hiring practices. The decision, issued Tuesday by the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, agreed with the organization's lawsuit challenging a state anti-discrimination law that would affect the mission’s hiring of employees to non-ministerial positions. State law forbids hiring practices based on sexual orientation, with some exceptions for religious organizations. In its ruling, the court cited the religious freedoms outlined in the First Amendment in allowing Union Gospel Mission to require its employees to agree with and live out its Christian beliefs...

Massachusetts will no longer require prospective foster parents to affirm the sexual orientation and gender identity of the children they foster, following legal challenges and criticism from religious groups. The change comes after the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a federal lawsuit in September on behalf of two Massachusetts families, who claimed the requirement conflicted with their religious beliefs, according to a Fox News report. One couple had its foster care license revoked, while the other was threatened with revocation.

A U.S. House Republican leader pressed Chicago Public Schools for answers about its anti-discrimination policies this week after a Christian college recently accused the employer of religious discrimination against its student teachers. In the letter, an advanced copy of which was provided exclusively to The College Fix, U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg raised concerns about the public school system compelling Moody Bible Institute “to abandon its Biblically-based doctrinal positions” on human sexuality. “Specifically, the governing board of CPS – the Board of Education of the City of Chicago – appears to be excluding Moody and its...

Left-wing Canadian lawmakers are working to introduce a new bill that would end existing protections for people of faith against prosecution under national “hate speech” laws. Canada’s Criminal Code, which bans what the government deems “hatred against any identifiable group,” contains a so-called religious exemption that protects Canadians who “in good faith” cite religious texts or beliefs. But the left-wing Liberal and Bloc Québécois parties are currently negotiating new legislation, Bill C-9, with an amendment that would remove this exemption.

The City Club of Cleveland is defying LGBTQ+ activist pressure to cancel or substantially alter an event featuring a conservative Christian leader next month, and Ohio’s attorney general is standing with the venue. “We’re not canceling, and we have never had any intention of canceling this,” Dan Moulthrop, the City Club’s CEO, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “We’re gonna continue to do what we always do, and have done for 113 years, which is convene conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive and do that with the leadership of relevant organizations who are shaping our communities.” Moulthrop...

Several Colorado parents are suing their local school district after an overnight school trip allegedly tried to place a transgender-identifying male student in a hotel room — and ultimately the same bed — with an 11-year-old girl. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative legal organization that advocates for religious liberty, filed its opening brief Wednesday in "Wailes v. Jefferson County Public Schools" with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit on behalf of four families. The lawsuit alleges that the district, located near Denver, allows biologically male students to share overnight accommodations with girls based solely on gender...

Major corporate giving platforms use the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to vet charities, effectively blocking donations to many conservative and faith-based nonprofits wrongly labeled as “hate groups.” Benevity, a platform used by hundreds of corporations to manage workplace donations, says it has processed more than $18.5 billion in transactions. Company materials show that the platform relies on the SPLC list to help determine which organizations employees are allowed to select for donations.... The SPLC has labeled right-leaning groups such as Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) as “hate groups,” listing them alongside the Ku Klux Klan...

Despite its penurious name, the Southern Poverty Law Center has an endowment of more than $700 million, compensates leadership handsomely, and possesses more than $30 million in offshore accounts—likely in the Cayman Islands, its most recent IRS filing reveals. “It’s very odd and frankly raises suspicion that a nonprofit organization would have accounts in places like the Cayman Islands, or as they reported $30 million in Central America,” Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the law firm Liberty Counsel, told The Daily Signal on Tuesday.

Over the past four years President Trump has established himself as a man of his word – promises made, promises kept. And that’s especially true among Evangelical Christians. President Trump has been more of a friend to people of faith than any other president dating back to President Reagan.He is without a doubt the most pro-life president in American history. He has nominated constitutionalists to the federal courts. And he is also a rock-solid defender of the Second Amendment.Promises made, promises kept.So you can imagine the consternation among social conservatives and Evangelical Christians when the Trump campaign erased those significant...

hDonald Trump, Sen. Mitch McConnell and other speakers are set to address the 2016 Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, D.C. The conference is one of the largest events for religious conservative groups in the country. Trump’s speech marks an appeal to the evangelical voter base, whose support for Trump has taken some analysts by surprise. “Mr. Trump won a plurality of evangelical votes in the Republican primaries on his path to the nomination, and we welcome him to once again address members of Faith and Freedom and to express his views on the many issues of importance to...

It would be an ignominious defeat worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy if abortion ends up being the issue that derails Trumpas the Tank Engine. By claiming that there would have to be “some form of punishment” levied against any woman who would dare get an abortion in Donald Trump’s Great-Again America, the poor bastard walked right into Chris Matthews’ well-crafted trap. In fact, he eagerly took bait that those he considers his lessers have been wise enough to pass up for years. All Republican presidential candidates in recent history—the “dummies,” the “failures,” the “disasters,” the ones who “got captured” in...

Leaders of the Christian right have found their man: Ted Cruz. In the past two weeks, the Texas senator has wracked up a string of high-profile endorsements from influential evangelical leaders, including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown, and Family Leader chief Bob Vander Plaats. According to the National Review, many more are on the way.

On Oct. 12, the Sunday edition of The Washington Post reported their "Election Lab" estimate that the Republicans will win six more seats in the House and eight more Senate seats, and projected it was 95 percent certain that Democrats will lose the Senate. But on NBC's "Meet the Press" that morning, newly installed host Chuck Todd stubbornly persisted in the usual Republicans-in-deep-trouble narrative. Based on the judicial failure to take up gay marriage cases, Todd previewed the program by asking, "Is it time for conservatives to surrender in the culture wars?" Later, Todd underlined his point: "Whether it's on...

"The party can’t become the opposite of what it is," the libertarian-leaning senator said. "If you tell people from Alabama, Mississippi or Georgia, 'You know what, guys, we’ve been wrong, and we’re gonna be the pro-gay-marriage party,' they’re either gonna stay home or -- I mean, many of these people joined the Republican Party because of these social issues." "So I don’t think we can completely flip. But can we become, to use the overused term, a bigger tent?" he added. "I think we can and can agree to disagree on a lot of these issues. I think the party...