Free Republic

Ervin Gonzalez told his fellow Florida Bar Board of Governors members: “If you frame the issue of what this is really about, we are all in favor of this request. The goal is putting children first. It’s not an endorsement of an alternative lifestyle.” In less than a half hour, on January 30 in Tallahassee, the Board of Governors voted unanimously (with one recusal) to allow the Family Law Section to file an amicus brief supporting 11th Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman’s November 25, 2008, decision to declare F.S. §63.042(3) unconstitutional and to allow homosexual foster parents to adopt two brothers...

A Florida law that has banned adoptions by gay men and lesbians for over three decades is unconstitutional, a judge here ruled on Tuesday. “The best interests of children are not preserved by prohibiting homosexual adoption,” the judge, Cindy S. Lederman of Miami-Dade Circuit Court, said in a 53-page decision. She said the law violated equal protection rights for children and their prospective parents.

PLEASE CALL GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER AND MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD. The Number to call is : 1 916-445-2841 Legislature Passes Bill for 'Gay Day' Celebrations in California Public Schools By Peter J. Smith August 8, 2008, SACRAMENTO (LifeSiteNews. com) - California public schools soon will be planning 'gay day' celebrations every May 22 unless Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoes the legislation. Thursday the California Assembly approved AB 2567, which designates May 22 as 'Harvey Milk Day.' The 43 to 26 vote occurred on party lines with Democrats for, Republicans against. Earlier this week, AB 2567 passed the California State Senate on another...

Europe Catholic adoption agency’s new policy will allow homosexuals to adopt London, Jul 27, 2008 / 05:57 pm (CNA).- The largest Catholic adoption agency in England and Wales has decided to implement an adoption policy that does not rule out same-sex couples in the face of new laws that forbid such screening. The change in its adoption policy was made with the full support of the bishops who oversee the agency.

For nearly two years, the South Florida middle school art teacher forced the boy to have sex in a classroom supply closet. Sometimes, Aaron Mohanlal would call in sick to work, take the boy to his home for sex and drop the seventh-grader back off at school at the end of the day. To keep the abuse secret, Mohanlal bought the 13-year-old a cell phone and created nicknames for their genitalia. When police arrested him, the teacher was caught on hidden video trying to destroy letters threatening the boy if he ever told. Last summer, a Broward County jury convicted...

I’ve been studying higher education for a long time, but I’ve never seen anything quite as queer as a new course being taught at the University of Michigan. Section Two of English 317 is titled “How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation.” Taught by Instructor David Halperin (halperin@umich.edu), the course is worth three credit hours to Wolverine students interested in exploring learned gayness. For years, I’ve been hearing that gayness is a function of some sort of gay gene but, apparently, I’ve been over-simplifying the issue. Here’s what Halperin has to say: “Just because you happen to be a...

A North Hunterdon High School teacher and coach was charged Thursday with sexually assaulting a student over a 10-month period while she worked at a Catholic high school in Somerset County, N.J. Pamela Balogh, 39, of Bethlehem, taught and coached the female student, who was 15 years old when the alleged sexual assaults started in December 2004, according to the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office. The alleged assaults continued through September 2005 and mainly occurred in Balogh's office at Immaculata High School in Somerville, the prosecutor's office said.

Former page: We knew about Foley 'for years' By M.E. SPRENGELMEYER AND AMIE PARNES Scripps Howard News Service October 1, 2006 WASHINGTON — Sexually explicit messages from former Rep. Mark Foley to one former congressional page might be just the tip of the iceberg, the leader of an alumni association for former congressional pages told Scripps Howard News Service on Saturday. While Foley resigned this week after published reports of "friendly" e-mails to one 16-year-old male page and the pending broadcast of more sexually explicit instant messages, similar graphic messages from him were received by at least three other teenage...

Five conservative federal appeals court judges accused their colleagues of promoting censorship Monday after the court refused to reconsider an appeal by a Southern California student barred by his high school from wearing an anti-gay T-shirt to class. "School administrators are now free to give one side of debatable public questions a free pass while muzzling voices raised in opposition,'' Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain said ... --snip-- The author of the original ruling, liberal Judge Stephen Reinhardt, said the dissenters did not seem to understand what it is like to be a member of a minority group subjected to verbal intimidation...

THERE were community meetings in Seattle on Wednesday. Some of the couples who had sued to overturn Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage, a case they lost before the state’s Supreme Court earlier that day, were going to appear. Gay and straight elected officials who support “marriage equality” were going to make speeches. I probably should have been there too. But I had a previous engagement. The Seattle Mariners were playing the Toronto Blue Jays at Safeco Field. My 8-year-old son — adopted at birth by my boyfriend and me — loves the M’s almost as much as he hates the...

Decades of files that the Boy Scouts of America compiled on sexual abuse allegations can be used in a lawsuit claiming the organization was ineffective at preventing abuse, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday. About 1,000 files, with names redacted, have been given to the lawyers for three men who say their scoutmaster abused them from 1971 to 1983 when they were Boy Scouts. The files are sealed by court order for now but could be made public at trial, plaintiff's attorney Tim Kosnoff said. The files include court records and news accounts, as well as rumors and tips from...

City Solicitor Romulo L. Diaz Jr. said a recent push to force the Cradle of Liberty Boy Scouts Council to denounce the national organization's antigay policy had nothing to do with his own homosexuality. "My own sexuality, my own sexual orientation, has never been hidden and never played into my decision," Diaz said in an interview yesterday with The Inquirer. "It has, perhaps, made me more sensitive to the issues." Diaz said he sent another letter yesterday morning seeking a meeting with William T. Dwyer III, council chief executive officer and president. Diaz, the city's first openly gay solicitor and...

SACRAMENTO, April 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Dr. James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family said in his weekly radio broadcast that the California legislature is devoted to a “far, far leftist” ideology. On April 17, Dobson stated, “Some of the bills that come out of (the California) legislature are flat-out off the wall.”The legislature, Dobson said, is controlled “by those who represent a far leftist philosophy, and the conservatives, mostly Republicans, don’t have the votes to stop it.”The most recent example he noted was characteristic of the movement to the “extreme” left was the State Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval...

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people are at particular risk in our society.They are surrounded by images and references that imply the unacceptability of their own feelings and identity. Heterosexuality is simply taken for granted as “the way to be.” Many sexuality education curricula assume all students are heterosexual. When sexual orientations are considered, homosexuality is often the only one examined. All young people benefit from learning about sexual orientation—their own and others.This education helps young people understand not only sexual development and orientation, but also the effect of stereotyping, homophobia, and prejudice on people’s lives. The activities in this section...

A third gender choice available to young participants of a poll on the Barbie doll website was changed after initially offering children the options of "I am a Girl," "I am a Boy," and "I don't know" – eliciting charges that Mattel, the company that owns Barbie, is intentionally promoting gender confusing among kids. Barbie poll's original options. Apparently due to the criticism, the third gender option has now been changed to "I don't want to say." Concerned Women for America, or CWA, believes by including the "I don't know" choice the company was promoting the homosexual agenda. "It's...

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...