Free Republic

After changing the definition of marriage by passing same-sex “marriage” legislation last year, now the Spanish government is bent on changing the very definition of “human.” *** Spain’s Socialists want monkeys “to be immediately included in the same category as people.” The party presented this week in Spain’s Parliament a project for simians to have “Human Rights.”

As China's President Hu Jintao tours the United States -- meeting Thursday with US president George W. Bush -- there are reports that the Chinese government recently broke up a meeting of 80 Protestant church leaders in the Yunnan province, and held massive arrests, which included five Americans and two Taiwanese. According to the China Aid Association, the five Americans are from churches in Greensboro, North Carolina. "Among them two are white Americans and three are Chinese Americans. Since the two white American pastors are still inside China and some of the released Chinese pastors are still monitored by the...

Jason Johnson was finishing his sophmore year at Cumberland College in Kentucky, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. He was stage manager for the school production of "As You Like It" which was supposed to have been put on last week. Then he was called in to see two Cumberland officials on Thursday. They'd seen his MySpace blog and profile. He was handed a letter that requested he be off school property by that evening.

A Taiwanese NGO founded by a Baptist missionary recently re-decorated the door of a theater to resemble a vagina, through which people entered and departed, and the seating area as a uterus, within which they sat. The event was a showing of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues." *** A Christian NGO helping disadvanted girls and women advocates safe sex, masturbation and condom use, as well as appearing to contemplate the possibility of abortions.

Get prepared. This film of the Passion isn't your typical Hollywood production, and it's producers say playing the race card is needed. It's not Mel Gibson's The Passion, but folks involved in this big-screen's production are no less passionate in bringing this adaption of Christ's last 48 hours to your local cinema house in a film that openly plays the race card - with the Messiah cast as a black man. This racial perspective to the conventional biblical story, the producers say, "is sure to challenge Conservative Christian beliefs."

Reason rules the day for now, as a measure at my alma mater Northwest Nazarene University to drop its Crusader mascot name was defeated. But continued vigilance will be needed. The university's Board of Trustees - champions of political correctness that they are - now support finding a cuddly, soft definition of the crusades in step with our hip-hop modern times.

Forget all the hype in US press about how the ongoing demonstrations in Paris’ streets are yet another example of all the ills of socialism. Most of the press is missing the main point: emancipation. *** France’s 26-year-olds and under will no longer have the job security they need to secure loans for vehicles, mortgages, or to even rent an apartment that American youth take for granted if a new labor law goes into effect next month without being revised. *** Unlike their American counter-parts, French youth could face an increasingly steep hill into financial freedom from their parents. Despite...

In the immediate aftermath of the March 11 train bombings in Madrid a backpack was found. Inside the backpack was found an unexploded bomb. That backpack bomb was important in helping to link the Madrid bombings to al Qaeda, and subsequent arrests. Perhaps not surprisingly some people hint the backpack could have been planted.

Environment minister Ben Bradshaw has announced he is to become the first MP to enter into a same-sex civil partnership. Mr Bradshaw is a practicing churchgoer and a member of the Christian Socialist Movement. It was suggested that he might be the first MP to do so in 2004, before the law on civil partnerships was created.

So now, jump fast forward to last Friday. That’s when the Spanish government announced a ministerial order that new births would have to be registered at the State Civil Registries in the Family Book under the headings of Parent (progenitor) A, and Parent (progenitor) B. In other words, the terms "Father" and "Mother" were to be no longer used. In Spain, marriages, births and deaths are all recorded at Civil Registries, with most of those actions being noted in a Family Book (Libro de Familia). While the example isn’t perfect, think of the Family Book as an extended birth certificate....

There are allegations that animals were mistreated during the filming of the so-called gay-cowboy movie, "Brokeback Mountain". In a letter filed to "Brokeback Mountain" director Ang Lee, the American Humane Association expressed dismay over reports that animal care and protection guidelines were violated during the Oscar-nominated movie's filming in Canada. The American Humane Association is the authority behind the "No Animals Were Harmed"(r) End Credit Disclaimer on film and television productions. Because "Brokeback Mountain" was produced in Canada, the production company was able to circumvent use of the Guidelines and oversight by the American Humane Association. "Filming abroad may be...

Is the War on Drugs taking aim at that morning cup of java? As crazy as it might sound, some activists would hope so - and they have enlisted the help of various Californian mayors to support their cause. But first, to be more precise, critics aren't specifically after coffee, but rather after caffeine - a "drug" that is included in such products as energy and soft drinks, and some chocolates. It is said that the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung was once boiling some drinking water when leaves from a small bush fell into his pot - to create the...

The unanimous passage of a proclamation drafted by a a group advocating conservative social values -- including a narrow definition of marriage -- has put the town council of Kanab, Utah at the center of a fight over separation of church and state. Local lawmakers adopted the resolution, The Natural Family: A Vision for the City of Kanab, at their last council meeting in January. *** The proclamation labels marriage between a man and a woman as "ordained by God," and envisions a society wherein young women grow into "wives, homemakers and mothers and young men become husbands and fathers...

I should have studied art, or at least learned how to doodle better. Word on the street is that there is a killing to be made right now in cartoon art, especially if it's offensive and religious in overtone. That at least is what they are teaching at Canada's University of Toronto, where the student newspaper The Strand came up with the original idea of drawing a cartoon with Christ kissing Mohammed – and which would be supported on the grounds of defending freedom of expression. I note they don't seem to be teaching students at the UoT the value...

Most Revd. Peter J. Akinola (CON, DD.) President, Christian Association of Nigeria issues a statement warning Muslims in Nigeria on violence committed against Christians ...It is clear the sacrifices of Christians in this country for peaceful co-existence with people of other faiths has been misunderstood to be weakness. A long standing agenda to make Nigeria an Islamic nation is being pursued. *** May we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation. Nigeria belongs to all of us - Christians, Muslims and members of other faiths. No amount of...

February 22 is the birthday of George Washington, the man who, more than any other, made possible our republican form of government. The third Monday in February has come to be known - wrongly - as President's Day. America's political leaders should take this occasion to remember Washington's deeds, recollect his advice, and once again call the holiday celebrating him by its legal name: Washington's Birthday. James Flexner, George Washington's greatest biographer, called him the "indispensable man" of the American Founding. Without Washington, America would never have won our War of Independence. He played the central role in the Constitutional...

Christians living in Jesus' birthplace are bracing themselves as the militant Islamic group Hamas prepares to take power as the Palestinian Authority government after winning legislative elections in January. "There are many Christians who are afraid," said Shatha, a student at the Roman Catholic Bethlehem University. "Since Hamas is new to the government, I doubt they will be able to implement Islamic law," she said the day before Hamas was to take over the Palestinian authority on Feb. 17. "But it's possible they might in the future." Bethlehem's Christian community was already concerned after a member of the city council...

We’ve tried charity, aid, loans, debt relief, international organizations, the U.N., the World Bank, peace forces, police forces, sympathy, threats, military involvement and disengagement. We’ve done it all. Everything, in fact, other than admit that if you really want to get something done properly than you have to do it yourself. Until we accept that the only people who can help Africa are the Africans, then we will continue to patronize them. We permit the rape and pillage of their ruling elites by doing business with them and by turning a blind eye to their misdemeanors. How can we even...