Free Republic

Almost sixty years ago, there were many places in this country where a black person couldn’t sit at the lunch counter of a local diner. Sometimes they were forced to sit in the back of the bus or give up their seat to a white passenger. Blacks often couldn’t use the same restroom, find a vacancy in the same hotel, or take a drink from the same water fountain as that used by white citizens. Those were certainly some of the bleaker days in our nation’s proud history. However, in much the same way that slavery was abolished in this...

When I was a kid -- which wasn't that long ago, given that I just turned 30 in January -- I recall hearing a popular phrase on the playground: "Mind your own business." MYOB reared its head whenever somebody threatened to rat out a fellow student for anything from harmless roughhousing to juvenile delinquency. The phrase is sometimes attributed to the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, a rough translation of which states: " ... make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you,...

If there is one man who can be credited for the success of the gay rights movement, it’s Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps.Phelps did more than anyone to make opposition to homosexuality seem as toxic as possible by picketing the funerals of soldiers with anti-gay slogans. There probably wasn’t a more inspired way to make anti-gay sentiments seem as unacceptable as possible.If the Phelps clan had deliberately set out to implement gay marriage in America, they could not have chosen a better method and who is to say that they didn’t.The Phelps, with their background in civil rights...

Protestors chanting pro-gay slogans and advocating for equal rights could be heard along Fifth Ave. as the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade proceeded through Manhattan. Mayor Bill de Blasio and other politicians skipped attending the festivity after organizers said gay groups were not allowed to carry gay-friendly signs or openly identify as LGBT. That caused beer brands Guinness and Heineken to drop their sponsorship of the event. Not all Irish eyes were smiling Monday as the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade kicked off in midtown Manhattan amid a protest over participants carrying pro-gay signs. Half a city block was...

Chris has a gay son. He neglected to mention that when I met him at a business event the week before last, when we talked a little politics, when he invited me to join him and his buds for their weekly golf game. All was amicable on the golf course. As it turned out, two of the guys were fellow conservatives. And two others happened to be members of my church. But things got twisted when our two foursomes sat down for post-round libations and conversation. That’s because Chris, a social liberal, an Obama-loving Democrat, insisted on talking politics. And...

The good news coming out of the just-concluded legislative battle in Arizona is that religious freedom remains what it has been there, undiminished by Governor Jan Brewer’s veto of a bill meant to protect it. The bad news is that the debate over religious freedom has taken an ominous turn. Here are six takeaways from the controversy. The media cannot be trusted to report accurately on social issues. I mention this first not because it is the most important part of the Arizona story — though it is very important — but because it has made understanding that story...

Being a believer in all -isms can get hairy at times. Take as an illustration a case reported in the Toronto Sun by Ezra Levant: So a lesbian walks into a Muslim barbershop, and asks for a “businessmen’s haircut”.It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it really happened, and now a government agency called the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario will hear her complaint.Faith McGregor is the lesbian who doesn’t like the girly cuts that they do at a salon. She wants the boy’s hairdo.Omar Mahrouk is the owner of the Terminal Barber Shop in Toronto. He follows...

Access to hormonal birth control hasn’t typically been a goal of the gay rights movement. But after a near miss on an anti-gay bill in Arizona last week, LGBT advocacy groups are rallying around a Supreme Court birth control case, arguing that gay people’s rights will be collateral damage if the court rules that for-profit businesses do not have to provide contraceptives to female employees. On March 25, the Supreme Court will hear arguments from the Oklahoma-based crafts store chain Hobby Lobby that the federal health care law is infringing on its religious liberty by forcing the company to provide...

In this day and age, why would you be stupid enough to use your religious beliefs as an excuse to deny someone services?There are plenty of ways to avoid entering into a business transaction without having to appear discriminatory at all. When I worked for a private repair shop and encountered a client who seemed to be more trouble than they were worth for whatever reason, we used to simply say, “I am sorry, but we cannot provide service.” If people questioned why (which they did, very often and with plenty of attitude), we just kept repeating the same phrase:...

Arizona has resisted national pressure before to its controversial laws. But this time leaders are urging Gov. Jan Brewer to veto a bill that would allow businesses to refuse service to gay patrons. TUCSON — When Arizona took controversial stands in the past — refusing to create a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and enacting a tough anti-illegal immigration law — state leaders shrugged off the criticism from out of state as the meddling of outsiders. But now, after the Legislature passed a measure to bolster the rights of business owners to refuse service to gays and others on the...

<p>Over the last few months, while well-intentioned people around the Western world were protesting antigay actions by Russia, conditions for gay people in much of Africa were going from terrible to even worse. Last month, the president of Nigeria signed a law prescribing 14 years behind bars for individuals in same-sex marriages and up to ten years for members of gay organizations, and since then dozens of people have been arrested and gay-rights activists have gone into hiding. In the northern (which is to say Muslim) city of Bauchi, a gay man was whipped 20 times in a courtroom – a disappointment to the crowd outside, which wanted him to be stoned to death in accordance with sharia law.</p>

A MEP who drafted a resolution on securing the basic rights of LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) people in the EU has so far received almost 41,000 emails against the proposal. “My website was hacked as well. I don’t know who it was from. It might be coincidence; it might not be a coincidence,” Green Austrian MEP Ulrike Lunacek told the Strasbourg assembly on Monday (3 February). […] Deputies adopted her report anyway and passed a resolution on Tuesday by 394 in favor. It calls for the EU to draw up a road map to protect the fundamental...

Brian Jensen and Jeromy Manke, a same-sex engaged couple in Nevada, are in the running to win a free trip to New York City, $5,000, and help from a wedding planner to fund their spring nuptials in California. Who would bankroll their nuptials? An organization that spends far more time defending civil liberties in court than at wedding receptions. The American Civil Liberties Union—worried that the public thinks the same-sex marriage battle is “over” after the Supreme Court’s twin decisions expanding gay rights last summer—is paying five same-sex couples who live in states that still outlaw the practice to get...

While the Oscars routinely go political and the VMAs pull out all the shock stops, the annual Grammys telecast eschews overtly dividing moments. Assuming you don't mind musical genre mashups worth rubbernecking over. Tonight, LL Cool J emceed another Grammys telecast aimed at the widest audience possible until rappers Macklemore and Ryan Lewis sang Same Love while 33 couples--both straight and gay--got married. "This song is a love song not for some of us, but for all of us," said Queen Latifah who officiated the live wedding in front of a church-like setting complete a gospel choir. "Strip away the...

Video:Hundreds protested in New Delhi Wednesday after India's Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling that had decriminalized gay sex, a surprising setback for the gay-rights movement. Via The Foreign Bureau, WSJ's global news update.

Mark Newton, right, with Peter Truong and their son outside their Cairns home. An Australian, who together with his domestic partner, bought a newborn boy in Russia and allowed men around the world to abuse him, has been sentenced in a US court to 30 years in jail. Peter Truong, 36, born in Vietnam, and his partner Mark Newton, 42, born in the US, both Australian citizens, bought a newborn boy in Russia for US$8,000, according to prosecutors. The boy’s birth papers were falsified to list Newton as his biological father. The fraud then allowed the boy to be adopted...

The White House released a letter Tuesday handwritten by President Obama .....< snip > OBAMA'S LETTER COMMEMORATING LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS In the evening, when Michelle and the girls have gone to bed, I sometimes walk down the hall to a room Abraham Lincoln used as his office. It contains an original copy of the Gettysburg Address, written in Lincoln's own hand. I linger on these few words that have helped define our American experiment: "a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Through the lines of weariness etched in his face,...

Andrew Koppelman, a long time supporter of gay rights and gay marriage, argued that those who disagree with him should have the freedom to live according to those beliefs. "I've worked very hard to create a regime in which it is safe to be gay. I would also like that regime to be one in which it is safe to be a religious dissenter," Koppelman said to the applause of a group of mostly conservative lawyers. Koppelman, professor of law and political science at Northwestern University School of Law, was speaking on a panel, "Religious Liberty & Conflicting Moral Visions,"...

SALT LAKE CITY — Politico reported Wednesday night that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had said The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members are changing their views on gay rights. The church reacted Thursday evening by issuing a statement that indicated its doctrine about traditional marriage has not changed... ..."As the church has said before, elected officials who are Latter-day Saints make their own decisions and may not necessarily be in agreement with one another or even with a publicly stated church position..." "...On the question of same-sex marriage, the church has been consistent in...

President Obama turned blogger on Sunday night, making an impassioned plea in the Huffington Post for Congress to pass a long-delayed measure to ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. The bill, called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, is set for a Senate vote on Monday, and proponents are upbeat about its prospects for passage.