Free Republic

As Republican politicians wrestle with same-sex marriage, the daughter of a party icon — former President Ronald Reagan — said in an interview this week that she believes her father would have “been puzzled” by the political fuss and would have supported marriage for gay people. Patti Davis, a Los Angeles writer and the onetime rebellious daughter of Reagan and his second wife, Nancy, said in a telephone interview that she never discussed same-sex marriage with the former president, who died in 2004 just as it was emerging as a political issue. But Ms. Davis, now 60, offered several reasons...

Few things were certain after the Supreme Court's first foray into the issue of gay marriage earlier this week—except that conservative-leaning swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy will control the outcome. The four liberal and the four conservative justices appeared to split right down the middle on how (and whether) to decide the constitutionality of both Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. Kennedy—who in the past authored the court's two most important opinions affirming gay rights—seemed to be on the fence in both cases.

Is anyone else feeling harassed by the gay rights “equals” logo? I see it everywhere: it fills my Facebook page, it is on the news, it is everywhere and I feel pounded by it. This enormous red and pink “equals” sign is strong and effective; it is also becoming a bully club as it appears everywhere and those who bear it seem to want to beat us into submission. My job is analyzing art, so let’s look at this sign. Isn’t purple the color of the gay alliance? Wouldn’t a pink equals against a purple background be prettier and more...

The old adage that one lie leads to another is never more apparent than when modern American public officials deal with issues arising from sexual immorality. President Bill Clinton, for example, started a chain of lies when he decided to have an adulterous relationship with a White House intern. Clinton first lied to his wife, then to a federal court, then to the American people. Nor could Clinton's lies, delivered as president, be his lies alone. His partisans in Congress either had to abandon him or add another link to the chain of lies by declaring that perjury and...

A coalition of Eagle Scouts, Scoutmasters, and parents have launched a new organization vowing to keep sex and politics out of the Boy Scouts of America. “The Boy Scouts are one of the great jewels of American culture,” said John Stemberger, an Eagle Scout and the founder of OnMyHonor.net. Representatives from more than a dozen states gathered in Florida to announce the opposition to any attempt to allow open homosexuality in the BSA. The BSA is expected to offer a proposal that would remove the national rule banning open homosexuality -- and replacing it with a local option. That...

WASHINGTON — A majority of the justices on Wednesday questioned the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, as the Supreme Court took up the volatile issue of same-sex marriage for a second day. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, widely considered the swing vote on the divided court, joined the four liberals in posing skeptical questions to a lawyer defending the law, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman for the purposes of more than 1,000 federal laws and programs. “The question is whether or not the federal government under a federalism system has...

Civil rights activist Rev. William Owens, who is founder and president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, said Tuesday there is no comparison between the civil rights movement and the gay community’s fight for same-sex marriage. “I marched and many other thousands of people marched in this same location years ago on the claim that we were being discriminated against, and today the other community is trying to say that they are suffering the same thing that we suffered, but I tell you they are not,” said Owens, who gathered on the National Mall with other traditional marriage supporters in...

A couple of recent news items illustrate the close-mindedness, aggressiveness and oppressiveness of modern liberalism's thought police. MSNBC's Toure issued a scathing commentary against the GOP for considering outreach efforts toward African-Americans. Toure said: "Such is the dysfunctional, abusive relationship the GOP insists on with black folks. They say they want a new relationship while continuing to try to screw us over." Toure went on to lambaste Dr. Ben Carson, a black person, for daring to stray from leftist ideas and endorsing conservative ones, such as a flat tax. Carson has "intellectual tumors in his mind, like a flat tax,...

Canada’s House of Commons has passed a bill that would make it illegal to discriminate against transgender people. … The legislation passed Wednesday by a vote of 149-137, with the crucial support of 16 Conservatives, including four cabinet ministers. Prime Minister Stephen Harper opposed the bill. …

Gay rights activists are demanding Tim Tebow back out of a speaking engagement at Liberty University just two weeks after pressuring the New York Jets quarterback to cancel a speaking engagement at the First Baptist Church of Dallas. Tebow is expected to speak this weekend at Wildfire – a men’s conference hosted by the conservative Christian university. His remarks will be closed to the general public. The professional football player is well-known for sharing his faith in Christ – but in recent weeks he’s come under fire from the national media and gay rights activists for speaking in churches...

"Walesa said in a television interview on Friday that he believes gays have no right to sit on the front benches in Parliament and, if represented at all, should sit in the back, "and even behind a wall." "They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights, the greatest hours, the greatest provocations, spoiling things for the others and taking (what they want) from the majority," he told the private broadcaster TVN during a discussion of gay rights. "I don't agree to this and I will never...

The Obama administration threw its support behind a broad claim for marriage equality on Thursday, and urged the Supreme Court to rule that voters in California were not entitled to ban same-sex marriage in that state. In a sweeping argument, the administration argued that denying gay and lesbian couples the right to marry violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause, and that any ban on same-sex marriage should be subjected to a test known as “heightened scrutiny” – a test that the law would be likely to fail. That argument is similar to the one made in the administration’s brief in...

The same-sex marriage wars took a decidedly ugly turn, according to the Washington Times, when a group of gay activists started a petition to demand that DC Comics fire a Mormon writer for his opposition to gay marriage. The writer in question is Orson Scott Card, best known for his science fiction novels such as "Ender's Game," soon to be a major motion picture starring, among others, Harrison Ford. Card has been employed by DC Comics as a writer for its new digital product, "Adventures of Superman."

The Boy Scouts of America got front-page ink, as we say in the newspaper trade, for their currently postponed meditations on the topic of admitting avowed gays to membership. Word had leaked out that the Scouts were considering a local option solution to the vexed question of their supposed right to determine who can become a member and who can't. At a top-drawer meeting in Irving, Tex., the topic proved too vast and complex for immediate resolution. Consultation and deliberation will take place prior to May meeting of Scouts' national council. I spoke of the Scouts' "supposed" right to...

The TV news channel Russia Today's CrossTalk programme for once had a debate (you can see the video by clicking on the link just below the post title) I am glad to report on. "Unimarriage?", on the subject of gay marriage, was a discussion among the UK's prominent gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, UK Independence Party's Member of the European Parliament Godfrey Bloom and Thomas Peters of the USA's National Organization for Marriage who works in Washington DC. It was introduced thus: Should same-sex marriages be accepted? What's driving the change in the institution of marriage? Are equal marriage rights...

The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to approve a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Britain, indicating that the bill is assured of passage as it moves through further legislative stages.... After a six-hour debate, the Commons vote was 400 to 175 for the bill. It will have to pass in the House of Lords, where delaying tactics by opponents are possible, but Mr. Cameron has said that he plans to have the bill enacted into law sometime this summer..... A day after the newly confirmed archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, took office saying that he shared the Church...

The Vatican's top official on family policy has opened slightly to the possibility of rights for gay civil unions, although he also stressed that marriage should remain between a man and a woman. The remarks from Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, wee made at a Vatican press conference on Monday and were quoted in Italian press on Tuesday. "Marriage is a clear legal dimension. There are then multiple other types of non-family cohabitation for which solutions should be found in terms of individual law and in my view also in terms of property law,"...

Chris Culliver, the San Francisco 49ers player who badmouthed gays last week, will soon begin LGBT sensitivity training. When do the public figures who badmouth conservative Christians begin their sensitivity training? Back in 2007, basketball player Tim Hardaway received an avalanche of criticism when he said during a radio interview, “I hate gay people. I don’t like to be around gay people. I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world for that or in the United States for it. So yeah, I don’t like it.” He too went to sensitivity training and has since emerged as...

Gays can be leaders. Women can be leaders. Without realizing it, I think gays and women inadvertently work against their own objective of equality when they force private organizations to support gay and female leaders. As I wrote here, gays and women are already equal before the Constitution, which defines us by our humanity, not by our sexuality, and is silent on most personal matters like marriage. Furthermore, the more the federal government defines our rights, the less free, equal and human we all become. Here is what generally happens when minority groups confuse social acceptance with equality and push...

Is Gomer Pyle one of the Four Horseman of the Liberal Apocalypse? The superficially surprising thing about last week’s announcement that Jim Nabors had married his boyfriend of four decades was not so much the nuptials themselves – I always felt Gomer was just going through the motions with Lou-Ann Poovie. Rather, it was the cultural reaction to the news that a huge star back in his day had decided he would tell even if we didn’t ask. There was no reaction. America, including conservatives regardless of their feelings about gay marriage, collectively shrugged their shoulders and generally wished the...