Free Republic

A couple of items from the passing parade: The Lancashire Constabulary have "added two new liveried cars to our fleet to highlight the Trans and bi-sexual community". These are decked out with their exciting new badge (right), showing the rainbow flag under the crown of Royal authority and bearing the slogan "Police with Pride". Some years ago I wrote about an Oxford student who spent a night in the slammer and was fined £80 for asking a mounted policeman (if you'll forgive the expression): "Do you know your horse is gay?" With hindsight, it seems entirely reasonable to assume, if...

What is the “Harlot City” in the Book of Revelation? Msgr. Charles Pope • May 7, 2017 • Today, it is generally believed that the “Harlot City” referred to in the Book of Revelation is Rome. The opulence and the prominence of the city along with the mention of the seven hills on which it rests, its persecution of Christians, and the use of euphemisms such as “Babylon” are generally presented as evidence that Rome is the wicked city.I propose that the city is actually Jerusalem, not Rome. A more direct indication than the oblique references above occurs in...

A STUNNING Italian actress who offered to perform a sex act on everyone who voted ‘No’ in the country’s referendum appears to be following through on her promise. Paola Saulino, 27, who lives and works in Los Angeles, promised voters who rejected the change a ‘present’ after the poll. Now she has posted dates for a tour of Italian cities throughout January and told her fans: “I am a woman of my word.” She added: “Those who say NO to the referendum will be waiting in delight for my ‘Pompa Tour’ in January for what I promised to those who...

August 9, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Italian Bishop Nunzio Galantino, a personal appointee of the pope and a prelate who has been extolled as the “prototypical ‘Pope Francis bishop,’” is coming under criticism after delivering a homily to young people at World Youth Day in which he rewrote the story of God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. While the clear meaning of the text is to emphasize God’s hatred of sin, in the bishop’s telling the message of the story is about Abraham’s willingness to emphasize “positive possibilities” and "signs of hope" despite the “misdeeds” of the people of Sodom. It’s...

Ever heard of Bishop Nunzio Galantino? Crux’s John Allen reported on him back in May. Excerpts: If you’re seeking the prototypical “Pope Francis bishop,” you need look no further than Nunzio Galantino. Francis overlooked all 500 Italian bishops to pluck Galantino out of obscurity and name him head of all Italian bishops. Galantino, appointed by Benedict XVI in 2011, was very last of all the bishops in a poll of the Italian episcopate requesting their input in who should govern them — yet Francis went to the back of the line to elevate him. Why? Allen writes: What did Francis...

After their abysmal failure to stop ultra-Orthodox murderer Yishai Schlissel, who in 2015 stabbed to death an Israeli teenage girl at the Jerusalem gay pride parade, police have gone several shades of crazy on the eve of the Tel Aviv Friday parade. According to the legal aid society Honenu, police have been raiding the homes of rightwing activists, warning them against attending and protesting the parade. According to attorney Itamar Ben Gvir, despite the fact that an Israeli court refused to sign restraining orders without the shred of a proof against individuals, police nevertheless showed up in their homes and...

Amid the Obama administration's "obsession" with allowing men into girls' restrooms, shower rooms and locker rooms, there's appearing a horrifying side effect: Men who have assaulted, or tried to assault, girls while both are in those areas of privacy. Obama's latest on the White House bathroom fetish came this week with his demand to public schools across the country that they allow students to say they are transgender and to use the facilities of their choice, completely disregarding the privacy rights of other students. Administration officials are casting it as a civil-rights issue, claiming that Congress, in its 1964 Civil...

Oh by the way, he'd done it before, and when cops arrested him, he had a loaded handgun. Let’s get this out of the way right at the start: No one is mistaking Matthew Foerstel for a “transgender person” for lack of the better one-word noun I’m sure someone will come up with very soon. He’s clearly just a male pervert going where he’s not supposed to be. I don’t even think he’s claiming to “identify as a woman.” But last week, Target took a step toward completely erasing the distinction between men’s bathrooms/dressing rooms and women’s bathrooms/dressing rooms when...

Donald Trump and the Mainstream Media are foaming at the mouth over the comment Senator Ted Cruz made about New York values. Now, all of us folks who are not New York City liberals know exactly what Senator Cruz was talking about -- and it had nothing to do with the aftermath of 9-11. Senator Cruz was talking about cultural and political values. Duck Dynasty values versus Bill de Blasio values. He was referring to the permissive New York values celebrating public debauchery that would make the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah blush. Just ask the families from the Heartland...

It seems that Sodom and Gomorrah were not as “destroyed” as previously thought. The ruins of the biblical city of Sodom reportedly have been discovered by U.S. archeologists in southern Jordan. God punished the wickedness of the citizens by destroying the city with brimstone and fire, the biblical story explains. Only the righteous inhabitants were allowed to escape the destruction and were spared by God. The archeological team, directed by Steve Collins of New Mexico’s Trinity Southwest University, has been working for 10 years in the Jordan Valley. It now believes it has uncovered this magnificent historical site. If confirmed,...

This is a non-political story (but a very cool one nonetheless) which I was first alerted to by John Hawkins at Right Wing News. Archaeologists who have been busily digging into a massive mound in southern Jordan for the last ten years are growing increasingly convinced that they have located the city of Sodom, famously known in the Bible for having been struck down by God due to the sinful ways of its residents. While there aren’t any postcards with “Welcome to Sodom” emblazoned in neon, the ruins are definitely the remains of a massive city-state which thrived from...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA chief Charles Bolden has advice on how to handle a large asteroid headed toward New York City: Pray. That's about all the United States - or anyone for that matter - could do at this point about unknown asteroids and meteors that may be on a collision course with Earth, Bolden told lawmakers at a U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee hearing on Tuesday. An asteroid estimated to be have been about 55 feet in diameter exploded on February 15 over Chelyabinsk, Russia, generating shock waves that shattered windows and damaged buildings. More than...

AMMAN — Engineers are making headway in the construction of a two-story historical museum in the Jordan Valley, with project officials estimating its completion in October. “Lot's Museum,” being built some 300 metres from the cave where Lot and his family sought refuge from the devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah, is set to showcase the area's dazzling topography and unique geological facets. Samir Jaradat, the project's contact engineer told The Jordan Times yesterday that the museum's structure is being finalised with plans under way to select the exhibits. Jaradat said a specialised committee comprising antiquity, tourism and geological experts...

A team of archaeologists working on a 10-year excavation near the Dead Sea believe they have unearthed the remains of the ancient city of Sodom, detailed in the book of Genesis. This startling discovery was not only done by using the Bible to locate the city, much of the findings confirm the Biblical account of a once-thriving, wealthy metropolis that met sudden, swift destruction as it burned to the ground from a super-powerful explosive force. The findings continue the steady stream of ancient evidence that continues to confirm the accuracy of the Holy Bible. Making The Case For Sodom’s Discovery​...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – An experienced archaeologist who has spent a decade searching for the ancient ruins of Sodom is now confident that his team has located the ill-fated biblical city and evidence of its sudden destruction. Dr. Steven Collins is a distinguished professor of Archaeology at Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque and is also dean of the school’s College of Archaeology & Biblical History. In addition to writing dozens of scholarly books and journal articles, Collins frequently visits the Middle East, where he participates in ongoing archaeological research. Since 2005, Collins has led excavations in the southern Jordan Valley in...

The long-lost Biblical city of Sodom — a city that the Bible claims was destroyed by God because of its immorality — may finally have been found. Archaeologists have uncovered a slew of monumental structures and artifacts in a Jordan Valley mound known as Tall el-Hammam offering evidence of a city-state that is believed to have thrived during the Bronze Age when other Holy Land cities were being abandoned or were in decline. Based on the location, dates of occupation, and the remains of other ancient cities nearby, archaeologists think it's the best candidate yet for what was once Sodom....

But based on the excavated evidence, the city’s Bronze Age heyday seems to have nevertheless come to a sudden, inexplicable end toward the end of the Middle Bronze Age—and the ancient city became a relative wasteland for 700 years, for the most part void of human habitation. The comparatively paltry or lack of Late Bronze Age material is a testament to this, with the same pattern shown in the smaller, nearby sites. A strange development, thinks Collins, for a great city-state that flourished even through the catastrophic climate changes that arguably led to the collapse of the great cities of...

A new study suggests that 'gaydar' -- the sixth sense by which many insist they can just tell that someone they meet isn't heterosexual -- is bad in two big ways. For starters, it doesn't work. But more importantly, the concept of gaydar may be pretty harmful. It may -- big surprise here, guys -- just be an excuse to revel in harmful stereotypes about LGBTQ people. In a paper published in the Journal of Sex Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist William Cox argues that gaydar just isn't really a thing. "Imagine that 100 percent of gay men wear pink...

This country talks a lot about terrorist attacks—and rightly so. Almost anybody in America can give you some kind of a listing of the most destructive acts of terror that have happened in our country. But let me suggest to you this: The two greatest attacks of terror on America were perpetrated by the Supreme Court. Not by any Muslim, but by the Supreme Court of the United States. The first one was the legalizing of abortion. Subsequent to that, there have been millions of babies slaughtered in the wombs of their mothers. It’s incalculable to even comprehend that. The...

A Study of Sloth in the Life of Lot Msgr. Charles Pope • July 1, 2015 •   In daily Mass this week (the 13th week of the year) we have been reading through Genesis. Tuesday’s reading highlights a significant spiritual problem: sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. Sloth is a sorrow, sadness, or aversion to the good things God offers. Rather than being joyful and zealous to obtain these gifts, the slothful person sees them as too much trouble to obtain and is averse to the changes such gifts might introduce into his life. This is clearly the...