Free Republic

The knives are out for NEA, NEH, and CPB in right-wing budget offensive Indiana Republican Congressman Mike Pence chairs the Republican Study Committee, which is proposing sweeping cuts to federal social, education, and cultural programs in the name of disaster recovery. A bloc of extreme-right Republicans in the House of Representatives is currently trying to turn the misery of the recent hurricane disasters into their day in the sun. The Republican Study Committee, a legislative service organization chaired by Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, is shopping a proposal in the House entitled “Operation Offset” that urges sweeping cuts to federal...

Legal challenge: Salt Lake City lawyer Brian Barnard says the ban is unconstitutional By Pamela Manson The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune Until 1963, interracial marriages were illegal in Utah. Residents who suffered chronic epileptic seizures and were not sterilized also were barred from marrying in the state. And, until 1993, anyone who had syphilis, gonorrhea or HIV could not make that walk down the aisle. Now, in 2005, three Utahns who want to unite as husband, wife and wife say their preferred form of marriage also should be allowed. They are asking the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of...

Tim Hart and James Lasadose skipped their senior proms this spring because they couldn't take each other. They made up for the missed experience Saturday night at "Out in the City," St. Louis' first prom for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender young people and their straight friends. Hart and Lasadose, both 18, wore matching Renaissance-style black shirts and buttons declaring, "I am loved." "My favorite part was just actually being able to be with my boyfriend," Hart said later. "Not all the time can you be in a large room with a lot of people, and be with the person...

AUSTRALIAN soldiers drew arms to protect themselves from Jordanian peacekeepers after a Digger blew the whistle on other Jordanian soldiers' sexual abuse of East Timorese boys. Corporal Andrew Wratten had to be evacuated and Australian commandos sent to protect Diggers in Oecussi, an East Timorese province in Indonesian West Timor, after he told the UN of the pedophilia that occurred in May 2001. The Australians drew their Steyr assault rifles after being confronted by Jordanians armed with M-16s, in an escalation of verbal threats triggered by the later betrayal of Corporal Wratten by a Jordanian officer in the Dili headquarters...

In a contentious debate between myself and some radical 'gays' who support the teaching of the 'gay' lifestyle to children, one of them asked me if and when I had 'chosen' to be heterosexual. "Was it at age 3, 6, 13, 19?" he asked, "Or did you (a female) just 'naturally' gravitate towards boys or men without any outside pressure or force?" This question, laden with implied meaning, is a favorite tactical 'trap' set by 'gays' for unsuspecting and unprepared heterosexuals. It plays upon and manipulates our consciences so as to cause us to feel guilty; it lures us into...

Just reported on NBC News

Pornography is tearing apart the very fabric of our society. Yet Christians are often ignorant of its impact and apathetic about the need to control this menace. Pornography is an $8 billion a year business with close ties to organized crime.(1) The wages of sin are enormous when pornography is involved. Purveyors of pornography reap enormous profits through sales in so-called "adult bookstores" and viewing of films and live acts at theaters. Pornography involves books, magazines, videos, and devices and has moved from the periphery of society into the mainstream through the renting of video cassettes, sales of so-called "soft-porn"...

WELCOME TO SODOM AND GOMORRAH, U.S.A. by Timothy Rollins, Editor and Publisher March 2, 2004 The homosexual lobby can say what they like, but the fact remains these so-called 'gay marriages' are neither legitimate nor lawful, despite what San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom or New Paltz, New York Mayor Jason West may think. Newsom cites the equal protection under the laws clause of the California State Constitution as his justification for violating Proposition 22, the ballot initiative overwhelmingly passed by California voters in 2002 that specifically prohibits marriage between two persons of the same gender.I recently spoke with an attorney...

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- We are the MTV generation. It's a cliche, but it's true. The influence of the network that brought us "Beavis and Butthead," Britney Spears, "The Real World" and "Undressed" seems near ubiquitous among just about everyone under 30. It‚s been the babysitter, the teacher, the parent and the preacher for an increasingly secular and jaded youth. It has helped homogenize the culture of an entire nation of young Americans. And the only thing that beats MTV's destructive pervasiveness is its hypocrisy. It preaches safe sex while airing soft porn. It promotes gender equality while celebrating rappers who...

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. Somehow it isn’t surprising how on the morning after the Super Bowl, there was outrage in the air—and it wasn’t just coming from Carolina fans. The MTV-produced halftime show, not to mention the commercials, left even some of the worldliest football fans sputtering. Our own Chuck Colson talked with a non-Christian friend who is usually blasé about what goes on in our culture, but who was furious over the exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast during the halftime concert—if you can call it that—and about finding out way too much...

Massachusetts courts plunge down slippery slope of own creation Posted: November 26, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern By Alan Sears© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com "Judicial activism" is innocuous when compared to what the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did last week by kicking us further down the slippery slope, when it held, "We construe civil marriage to mean the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others." The court exercised a lack of proper judicial restraint by utterly ignoring the will of the people and the constitutionally created path to social change: legislation. Recent polls report that more than 60 percent of...

Tuesday, November 14, 2000 254 'boy words' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor's note: The following column contains content of a sexual nature that some readers may find objectionable. Those debating whether homosexuals should be scout leaders should take a look at the dictionary to help decide whether or not homosexuals have an inordinate interest in young boys. Or is it really as gay rights leaders say -- they just labor in young boys' best interests. Let's look it up and see if pederasts (men who sexually assault boys) comprise just a small cadre within the much larger male homosexual population. The dictionary I...

The Politics of Deviance by Anne B. Hendershott (Encounter Books, 2002), 194 pages Most sociologists today deem the study of deviance an academic irrelevancy. In The Politics of Deviance, Anne B. Hendershott, a professor of sociology at the University of San Diego, seeks to put it back in the curriculum. "[F]or the majority of sociologists today," Hendershott writes, "the only reason to study deviance is to dissect a long-dead discipline in order to understand why so many sociologists once deemed it important." "Most of the sociology textbooks today," the author continues, "are critical of the notion of defining deviance and...

I have a sneaking sympathy for Dick Gephardt. Hitherto the Democratic Party's most reliably unexciting presidential candidate, the former House minority leader went bananas the other day and said if the Supreme Court did something he didn't like he'd sign an executive order overturning it. Several conservatives did a bit of pro forma huffin' an' a-puffin' about why this makes Gephardt unfit to be president. But, speaking personally, I can't see why rule by Dick-tat would be worse in principle than the present system, whereby the nation's course for the decades ahead is effectively set by executive orders from Sandra...

WASHINGTON, June 27 — In one of the first consequences of its landmark ruling on gay rights on Thursday, the Supreme Court today set aside the lengthy prison sentence imposed on a gay Kansas teenager for having had sex with a younger boy. In a brief order with little elaboration, the court vacated the 17-year sentence imposed in 2000 on the defendant, Matthew Limon, and returned the case to the Kansas courts "for further consideration in light of Lawrence v. Texas." The case of Lawrence v. Texas, which was decided on Thursday and overturned an Texas antisodomy law, upheld the...

IN AN April 30 essay titled "The Libertarian Question," my fellow National Review Online contributing editor Stanley Kurtz argues that laws against sodomy, adultery and incest should remain on the books largely to protect the institution of heterosexual marriage. By stigmatizing sexual relations outside that institution, Kurtz believes "the taboo on non-marital and non-reproductive sexuality helps to cement marital unions, and helps prevent acts of adultery that would tear those unions apart." Kurtz also states that keeping adult incest illegal will reduce the odds of sex between adults and their minor relatives. Anti-pedophilia laws, virtually everyone agrees, should be energetically...

Pro-family groups and individuals such as the FRC and Paul Weyrich, have fired warning shots, over the decision by RNC chair, Racicot, to cozy up to gay activist groups. While I agree with the religious right on the need to preserve traditional family values, I have a somewhat different take on the whole "gay pride" movement. As a Christian, and as a long time campaigner for racial justice and racial equality, I believe that the gay rights movement would not be as powerful as it is today, if most conservative/traditionalist/Bible-believing Christians had taken a very strong and unambigious stand in...

In September 1998, two men by the names of John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were having sex in their home in Houston, Texas. Without warning, police broke into Lawrence's home and found the two engaged in what Texas law calls sodomy. The police had been summoned by a neighbor who had complained about a man allegedly "going crazy" in Lawrence's house. Lawrence and Garner were arrested, held for 24 hours and subsequently fined $200 after pleading no contest to the charge of sexual deviation. The neighbor was subsequently convicted of filing a false police report. Lawrence and Garner then challenged...

In the Friday edition of the Washington Times, in the Metro section, the following item appeared. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a link to it on the paper's website. GOP activist sentenced on child porn charges A longtime Republican activist in Northern Virginia was sentenced to two years' probation after pleading guilty to a charge of child pornography. Richard Delgaudio was charged with taking sexually explicit photographs of a 16-year-old girl. According to court documents and Baltimore police, he paid the girl by the hour for the photo shoots at a Maryland hotel. As part of a plea agreement, a Baltimore...

The Politics of Deviance Anne Hendershott Encounter Books 2002 194 pages Occasionally a book is published that examines the dogmas of the dominant culture with such clarity that the gatekeepers can only regard it as subversive. Anne Hendershott's "The Politics of Deviance" is such a book. Hendershott, a professor of sociology at the University of San Diego, follows the lead of former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who warned in the 1965 speech "Defining Deviancy Down" that "[society] has chosen not to notice behavior that would be otherwise controlled, disapproved, or even punished." Moynihan's warning proved true. Behaviors once considered deviant...