Free Republic

She kissed Madonna on stage and drunkenly married a childhood friend for 55 hours, but Britney Spears's new live show is her most shocking performance yet. The 22-year-old, wearing pink underwear with stockings and suspenders, cavorts with a male dancer and writhes suggestively on a bed as she tries to win over an older audience. It remains to be seen whether fans have tired of her attempts to shock with revealing outfits and erotic dance routines. The world tour is not a complete sell-out and tickets are still on sale for her rare UK dates. Spears, who performed at Miami's...

<p>And that is a two-edged sword. People will see what they want to see in a movie shorn of any point of view not in literal accord with the gospels. True believers will bear witness to holy writ. Others -- nonbelievers or even less literal-minded Christians -- will be troubled by the film's staunch adherence to a story line and characters that have been used by bigots to fuel hatred for centuries.</p>

MTV Networks revs up gay-themed Outlet NEW YORK (Variety) --- MTV Networks, buoyed by positive talks with top cable operators, has begun stepping up the planning for Outlet, a 24-hour network aimed at gays and lesbians. In development for more than two years, Outlet failed to launch in 2002 because MTV had brought in sister network Showtime to market it as a pay channel. When that strategy didn't pass muster with cable operators, Showtime bowed out of the picture and MTV repositioned Outlet as an ad-supported, digital, basic cable network. But with that repositioning, MTV has had to change its...

Misguided Mission It's clear that the president's brain is occupied by the neoconservatives who surround him. It's clear from their writings and policy statements that the neoconservatives believe the United States can become the dominant power on Earth. This is a bad judgment that is dangerous and could become lethal. This is why thoughtful people believe it is imperative to defeat George Bush in the 2004 elections. This wrongheaded policy, cooked up by academics and journalists, is not one that will merely embarrass the United States. It is a wrongheaded policy that could have dire consequences for the American people....

Religious groups demand an end to New Orleans' Southern Decadence Festival NEW ORLEANS -- The wet Jockey shorts contest will be followed by drag queen fashion shows, the Mr. Louisiana Leather 2004 Contest and thousands of gay men drinking a whole lot of alcohol. The Southern Decadence Festival started in the French Quarter for the 32nd straight year on Wednesday and will draw an estimated 110,000 people, mainly gay men, from around the world. To the participants, Decadence is the ultimate Bourbon Street blowout, full of good, not-so-clean fun. But to a growing number of religious leaders, it's a sinister...

MORALISTS WITHOUT MORALS I would fain flee to Sarmatia and the frozen Sea when people who ape the Curii[1] and live like Bacchanals dare talk about morals. In the first place, they are unlearned persons, though you may find their houses crammed with plaster casts of Chrysippus;[2] for their greatest hero is the man who has brought a likeness of Aristotle or Pittacus,[3] or bids his shelves preserve an original portrait of Cleanthes.[4] Men's faces are not to be trusted; does not every street abound in gloomy-visaged debauchees? And do you rebuke foul practices, when you are yourself the most...

Pop diva Jennifer Lopez proudly sings how she is 'Jenny from the Block' but a new UK Television Documentary brings the story tumbling down.It reveals that she comes from a smart (posh) New York suburb, had a private education and experienced nothing of the tough urban upbringing she likes to protray to her admiring fans.In it J-Lo--who just bought a 10 million dollar island hideaway with fiancee Ben Affleck-sang about the girl who 'used to have a little and now has a lot.' Photographer Tony Duran says: 'I remember the first day I met her,. She told me, 'If you...

"We've been overseas for several weeks and have been reading and following the news accounts of our government's position. The anti- American sentiment that has unfolded here is astounding." This just got the poor girl in deeper. The only thing that would astound the typical country fan about Maines' encounter with anti- Americanism is the fact that she didn't slug the person expressing it. Another singer from country's classic era, Merle Haggard, put it this way: "When you're runnin' down my country, man, you're walkin' on the fightin' side of me."

<p>Not wanting to jeopardize $328 million in federal funding, Harvard Law School has decided to end the official ban it imposed on military recruiters because of the services' discrimination against gay men and lesbians. With the US Defense Department now enforcing a six-year-old law against such recruitment bans more strictly than before, the law school's principled stand in favor of nondiscrimination threatened to cost all Harvard schools their largesse from Washington.</p>

by L. Brent Bozell III TEEN CHOICE AWARD LESSONS? Another summer of freedom for teenagers is again tumbling to a close. After months of being late to bed and later to rise, children are agonizing over another year of organized learning about to begin. So the commissars of teen culture have thrown one last TV party -- the "Teen Choice Awards," voted on by the readers of Seventeen magazine and broadcast on that antonym of wholesomeness, Fox. If you're a boy or girl of 12, and you're about to take a plunge into the world of teenagerdom, what would television...

The Patriarchal Family in History Author: Christopher Dawson Title: The Patriarchal Family in History Larger Work: Dynamics of World History Pages: 156-166 Publisher & Date: Sheed & Ward, 1956 Description: Written in 1933, historian Christopher Dawson analyzes the roots of the patriarchal family and predicts the downfall of the family in a contraceptive society. THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY IN HISTORY By Christopher Dawson Essay written 1933, taken from The Dynamics of World History, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1956. The traditional view of the family was founded on a somewhat naive and one-sided conception of history. The knowledge of the past was...

HIV-Positive Muppet Coming to Sesame Street (CNSNews.com) - An HIV-positive Muppet is coming to Sesame Street, an adviser to the children's program said. Wire reports said Joel Schneider, the vice president and senior adviser to the Sesame Street Workshop, made the announcement Thursday at the 14th International AIDS Conference now underway in Barcelona, Spain. According to those reports, the HIV-positive Muppet will first appear on the South African version of Sesame Street, a program called "Takalani Sesame," in September. The character will be female, but other details, such as the name and color, are still being worked out. "This character...

Conservatives need not apply In our March issue, we reported in this space on some for-credit courses on offer at the University of California at Berkeley. There was a course in Blackjack, for students who hadn’t yet learned how to handle cards, and “Copwatch,” an important scholarly offering that, according to one description, advises students “how to safely and effectively assert their rights when interacting with the police.” The pièce de résistance, however, was a women’s studies course in male sexuality in which students visited strip clubs, wrote papers about their sexual fantasies, and watched an instructor having sex. Well,...

<p>The spokesman for U.S. bishops hashing out a sex-abuse policy for the church protected homosexual priests who joined a pornographic Internet chat room, where participants railed against Pope John Paul II's policies against homosexual clergy and one eagerly anticipated his death.</p>

Prison rules have been reformed in England and Wales, allowing gay partners to be classified as close relatives. The reform will mean that it will be easier for gays to visit their partners in jail, Martin Narey, the Prison Service director general said. In addition gay prisoners who are in a relationship with other inmates at a different prison will now be allowed to apply for "inter-prison visits." Narey said the Prison PROMOTION Service hopes the move will encourage stability in the lives of gay prisoners. In a letter to Unlock, the national association for former offenders, Narey acknowledged that...

Vagina Monologues: an annual exercise in bad taste By Mark Nuckols The Vagina Monologues, an off-Broadway play by feminist author Eve Ensler, has been a rather odd sensation on college campuses for the past four years. In addition to its various performances on the commercial stage, it has been presented on hundreds of college campuses, and Ohio State this year is no exception. Last year at OSU, the Thurber Theatre did itself a discredit by running the event for several evenings during Women’s Month. They also did the Monologues an undeserved favor by lending it credibility. I say this because...