Free Republic

Billionaire businessman David Koch has helped direct millions to Republican candidates but he disagrees with the party on gay marriage. The Libertarian-minded Koch -- whose brother, Charlie, also is a big GOP supporter -- made the remarks Thursday on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention. "I believe in gay marriage," the 72-year-old Koch told Politico. He was in Tampa as a New York delegate and to attend an event held by Americans for Prosperity -- the political advocacy group he helps fund and lead.

A notary in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo has sparked controversy by accepting a civil union between three people. Public Notary Claudia do Nascimento Domingues has said the man and two women should be entitled to family rights. She says there is nothing in law to prevent such an arrangement. But the move has angered some religious groups, while one lawyer described it as "absurd and totally illegal". The three individuals, who have declined to speak to the press, have lived in Rio de Janeiro together for three years and share bills and other expenses. Ms Domingues says they...

1) Obama took 700 billion dollars out of the Medicare program and put it into his wildly unpopular health care program. This is despite the fact that even Obama has admitted, Medicare in particular will run out of money, and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will put that money back into the Medicare program where it belongs, while Obama won't. 2) Barack Obama's stimulus plan cost more than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, and putting a man on the moon — combined and...

Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Washington, DC)Photo by Shubert Ciencia Catholics are a major voting block, and one that can’t be pigeonholed by Republicans or Democrats. A recent NPR segment compared Vice President Joe Biden with the presumptive Vice Presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan. Both are Catholics, but their worldview is not the same.Stephen Schneck, a political scientist at Catholic University, said that Biden comes from a more traditional generation of Catholics. “This is the Catholicism of our old ethnic neighborhoods, and our union halls, and St. Christopher medals on the dashboard sort of thing,”...

LINCOLN, Neb.—Police say a former University of Nebraska women's basketball star faked an attack in which she allegedly carved anti-gay slurs into her skin because she felt it would spark change. Lincoln Police Chief Jim Peschong said Tuesday that 33-year-old Charlie Rogers outlined her motive for the faked July 22 attack in Facebook postings four days earlier. Peschong says Rogers wrote: "So maybe I'm too idealistic but I believe way deep inside me that we can make things better for everyone. I will be a catalyst. I will do what it takes. I will. Watch me." Rogers, a lesbian, told...

Kate Michelman, the former president of the NARAL pro-abortion organization, joined pro-abortion MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews and said vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is “crazy” to believe that unborn children should be legally protected.h/t Jill StanekThe National Right to Life Committee, in tracking the votes Ryan has cast in Congress on important pro-life issues, has crafted a perfect 100% pro-life voting record.This year, Ryan is 10 for 10 in pro-life voting — voting to repeal Obamacare, cut off taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood repeatedly, stopping taxpayer funding for abortions in various instances, banning sex-selection abortions, providing for pro-life...

The huge pro-abortion rally that was supposed to bring tens of thousands of abortion advocates to Washington to stand up to the supposed “War on Women” pro-life groups, Republicans and Mitt Romney are supposedly waging on women didn’t materialize.However, pro-life advocates stood their ground in a counter protest against the hardcore abortion backers who did show up.The pro-abortion community was stunned by the presence of African American pro-life prayer supporters. Pro-life leaders on the ground were encouraged by the gathering of prayerful prolife supporters who wore t-shirts announcing the injustice of the death of Tonya Reaves; a Black woman who...

What happened to so many once-Christian colleges in the United States? Two fine books describe the decline. George Marsden's 462-page The Soul of the American University shows how once-Protestant universities became secular look-alikes. James Burtchaell's The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from Their Christian Churches uses 868 pages to show not only how schools moved from liberal theism to secularism but how, before that, they moved from theologically conservative to liberal stances. I'll try to give the high points of 1,330 pages in fewer than 1,330 words: Three central messages are (1) Follow the money,...

FRC has been around for decades, why in 2010 did the SPLC suddenly call them a hate group? i can't find the exact date in 201

State Democratic leaders are increasing pressure on a DFL legislator not to seek re-election after authorities said he had a sexual encounter with a 17-year-old boy at a rest stop in Duluth. "I am deeply disappointed with Rep. Kerry Gauthier's conduct," said House Minority Leader Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis. "The conduct was wrong and ... I believe he should withdraw from the race for re-election." Last week, the St. Louis County attorney's office decided not to pursue charges against Gauthier, a first-term legislator from Duluth, for allegedly engaging in oral sex with a 17-year-old boy in a wooded area behind the...

Mitt Romney campaign spent $500 at Chick-fil-A By: Tarini Parti August 20, 2012 08:44 PM EDT The Romney campaign appreciates Chick-fil-A. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s campaign spent $500 at a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta last month, days before former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s national “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” on Aug 1. Romney’s campaign reported the cost as “meeting expense” in its monthly federal campaign finance filing on Monday. The Atlanta-based fast food chain has come under fire after the company’s president Dan Cathy told the Baptist Press that Chick-fil-A was “guilty as charged” for backing “the biblical definition of a family.”...

Pelosi, Beatty tour to defend health-care reformBy Emily Wilkins The Columbus Dispatch Friday August 17, 2012 6:09 AM Nancy Pelosi ripped criticism of the federal health-care law by GOP presidential ticket Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as “not true” during an appearance yesterday in Columbus. The U.S. House minority leader defended the Affordable Care Act at a panel she attended with Joyce Beatty, Democratic candidate for Ohio’s 3rd Congressional District. Ryan, who spoke at Ohio’s Miami University this week, said President Barack Obama had “raided” the Medicare budget and taken $716 billion to fund the Affordable Care Act. “The Ryan...

When chess grand champion and Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov showed up Friday at the sentencing of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, he didn’t expect to spend the next five hours in the custody of the Moscow police, recovering from a severe beating. Now, he says, after being punched in the genitals, thrown in a van and beaten by several police, Kasparov says the police have accused him of biting one of them—an allegation he denies. “They act like animals and they accuse me of biting them,” Kasparov told the Daily Beast in his first interview since being arrested. “Can...

WASHINGTON -- A White House spokesman says President Barack Obama is disappointed by the two-year prison sentence imposed on a punk band in Russia for protesting president Vladimir Putin (POO'-tihn). The sentence handed down to the provocative band Pussy Riot follows a trial seen around the world as an emblem of Russia's intolerance of dissent.

August 17, 2012 7:47 AM Russian female punk band Pussy Riot found guilty of hooliganism over Putin protest at church site Updated at 8:53 a.m. ET (CBS/AP) MOSCOW - A Russian judge found three members of the provocative punk band Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism on Friday, in one of the most closely watched cases in recent Russian history. The judge said the three band members committed hooliganism driven by religious hatred and offending religious believers. The three were arrested in March after a guerrilla performance in Moscow's main cathedral in February calling for the Virgin Mary to protect Russia...

MOSCOW — Madonna has expressed her support for the jailed members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot by donning a black ski mask and scrawling the group's name on her back. ~snip~ Madonna voiced support for Pussy Riot at a Tuesday night concert in Moscow, saying she'd "pray for them."

"I also think there needs to be a “historic marker” affixed to Man’s Country Bathhouse up in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago, as well..."

Bill Keller, the world's leading Internet Evangelist and the founder of LivePrayer.com, with over 2.4 million subscribers worldwide reading the Daily Devotional he has written every morning for 13 years on the issues of the day from a Biblcial worldview, is planning to file a $100 million defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling him and his ministry as a "hate group." In an exclusive interview, Keller said, "The sad shooting the other day at the Family Research Council by a man who supports the radical homosexual agenda, was clearly fueled by the left wing group, the...

The Dems in Alabama have pulled Harry Lyons as their Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. "The hearing generated colorful commentary from Lyon, who represented himself. At one point, Democratic Party Chairman Mark Kennedy asked Lyon if he believes gays and lesbians are abominations. Lyon replied, "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve."

NEW YORK CITY (BP) -- New York City may be one of the more liberal cities in America, but more than 80 percent of voters there believe public officials should neither prevent Chick-fil-A from opening new franchises nor discourage citizens from visiting it, a new poll shows. The Quinnipiac University survey of 1,298 New York City voters showed that by an 82-12 percent margin, the city's voters don't think that the Chick-fil-A president's stance on marriage should "have an impact on their ability to obtain government permits to do business." Similarly, by an 83-11 margin, voters don't believe elected officials...