Free Republic

A recent trend in many states is to outlaw "conversion therapy," where people who are unhappy with homosexual inclinations go through therapy to dispense with those inclinations.  Even though the process is voluntary, liberal states cannot tolerate the idea of someone with same-sex attractions wanting help to get rid of them. In the U.S., state governments are beginning to outlaw conversion therapy in growing numbers.  California became the first to do so in 2012.  Eight other states have banned it in some form since.  In 2017 alone, Nevada, New Mexico, and Connecticut have signed their own bans into law. Now New Hampshire, by...

A former Union High School teacher who in 2011 called homosexuality a "perverted spirit" that "breeds like cancer" has agreed to a three-year suspension of her teaching certificates. The posts on Jenye "Viki" Knox's personal Facebook page eventually caused the special education teacher and faculty adviser to the school's Bible study group to resign. She later filed a federal lawsuit claiming school officials had violated her free speech and religious rights.

<p>Wisconsin’s supreme court can soon right a flagrant wrong stemming from events set in motion in 2014 at Milwaukee’s Marquette University by Cheryl Abbate. Although just a graduate student, she already had a precocious aptitude for academic nastiness.</p> <p>On October 8, in an undergraduate course she was teaching on ethics, when the subject of same-sex marriage arose there was no debate because, a student said, Abbate insisted that there could be no defensible opposition to this. (Marquette is a Jesuit school.) After class, the student told her that he opposed same-sex marriage and her discouraging of debate about it. She replied (he recorded their interaction) that “there are some opinions that are not appropriate that are harmful . . . do you know whether anyone in the class is homosexual? . . . In this class homophobic comments . . . will not be tolerated.” The student’s appeals to Abbate’s superiors were unavailing (the chairman of her philosophy department referred to the student as an “insulin [sic] little twerp”), so he gave John C. McAdams his recording of Abbate rebuffing him.</p>

Vice President Pence arrived in Aspen, Colo., this week for a holiday vacation — but not without encountering a silent protest from his neighbors in the liberal ski resort town. “Make America Gay Again,” reads a rainbow banner posted on the stone pillar at the end of the driveway of the home where Pence and his wife, Karen, are staying. A dispatcher with the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office referred The Washington Post to the White House press office Saturday, but Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Buglione told the Aspen Times that Pence’s next-door neighbors posted the banner shortly after the vice president...

Starting in January, Illinois will bar a rare criminal defense allowing the use of a victim’s sexual orientation as justification for violent crime, a ban gay rights advocates say they will attempt to replicate in about half a dozen states next year. Defense attorneys will no longer be able to mount the so-called “gay panic defense” in Illinois, the second state after California to prohibit the tactic. It isn’t common, but one study shows it has surfaced in about half of all U.S. states and has been used with some success. Advocates say bans are necessary because crimes against gay...

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - A California judge has ruled in favor of a Christian baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The judge denied a motion for a temporary restraining order filed on Wednesday against Cathy Miller, the owner of Tastries Bakery in Bakersfield, California. According to a press release sent by The Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, the order would have compelled "Miller to create wedding cakes for LGBT persons, even though doing so would violate her sincerely held religious beliefs."

It’s astounding how many defenses of the state’s position in Masterpiece Cakeshop depend on misrepresentation and misconceptions. Last week I wrote about the most common misrepresentation — that Jack Phillips discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation when he refused to design a custom cake for a same-sex-wedding celebration. After all, he served all customers — regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation. He just consistently refused to design cakes that advanced messages he disagreed with. No person of any identity has the legal authority to compel an artist to use his talents to advance a cause the artist...

Copy sent to Vatican criminal prosecutor for further investigationVATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - A Vatican watchdog is claiming in a new book there has been homosexual abuse of underage seminarians at a Vatican-run minor seminary. Gianluigi Nuzzi, an Italian journalist who was a big part of the 2015 "VatiLeaks II" scandal, has released a new book titled Original Sin. He alleges there has been homosexual sex abuse in the Vatican's St. Pius X pre-seminary for middle and high schoolers, and includes a letter from a gay ex-seminarian who claims that his roommate, who was underage at the time, was being visited...

On Sunday, the day of the church massacre, cultural commentator David French tweeted, “The amount of anti-Christian hate on Twitter the same day Christians were massacred is stunning and chilling.” If ever there was a time when we might have expected sympathy for Christians, or at least restraint in attacking them, the opposite proved true far too many times. Why? On Fox News, Laura Ingraham noted that some of the reactions to the shooting pointed to “elite hostility to people of faith,” stating that “hostility to faith infects the popular culture.” She also spoke of a rising “militant secularism,” drawing...

A Christian student who was expelled from university after posting on Facebook in support of Biblical teaching on marriage and sexual ethics has today (Friday 27th October) lost his case in a judicial review of the university’s decision. Felix Ngole was studying for an MA in Social Work at Sheffield university. In 2015 he made comments using his personal Facebook account on the story of the American registrar Kim Davis who was imprisoned after conscientiously refusing to register same-sex marriages. Felix expressed his Christian beliefs on the issue and argued that: "same sex marriage is a sin whether we like...

"A redevelopment scheme must include a LGBTQ venue as part of its planning approval, councillors have ruled in Tower Hamlets." 'Tower Hamlets is leading the way in reversing the decline in LGBTQ+ venues which we have seen across London.'

The Boston “antifa” group lumped the thin blue line pro-police symbol with a list of white nationalist, neo-nazi and alt-right logos, enraged NYPD union officials said Monday. The thin blue line symbol is used to show support for law enforcement and commemorate fallen members who died in the line of duty and has become a symbol of police pride across the country and abroad. However, during the antifa protests in Boston over the weekend, it was shown on one of their posters as a symbol of hate to watch out for, next to images of an alt-right flag and a...

An Italian toilet icon in southern Italy has upset the LGBT community. A hotel establishment in Cavallino near the southern Italian city of Lecce has created a storm with its unusual toilet icons, three to be precise; a woman, a man, and a “gay” man. “The word had been covered up but somebody decided to uncover it and make it visible again,” the owner told Il Quotidiano. The owner said the extra icon would be painted over. It had been there since the previous administration, according to the current owner, who stressed that there was no intention to discriminate, according...

A prominent LGBT activist who has donated more than anyone else to LGBT causes has said that "wicked" people who advocate for laws protecting the religious freedom of conservative Christians to act in accordance with their views on marriage and sexuality need to be "punished."The Rolling Stone recently published a lengthy profile piece examining the contributions of Tim Gill, a software entrepreneur who has quietly been at the forefront of the push for same-sex marriage and LGBT rights in the United States over the past several decades.The article explained how Gill, who is gay, has spent over $422 million to advance...

Uh, sorry folks, but words mean things and science trumps feelings. Let's break this down. There are three sexual orientations: Straight, Gay, and Bi. If you have no attraction to members of the same sex, you're straight. If you have no attraction to members of the opposite sex, you're gay. If you have some attraction, some of the time, to members of both sexes, you're bi. If you have any degree of attraction to someone of the same sex as you, then you're Bi. You might be 1% Bi, you might choose to never act on your attraction (just as...

US clothing brand Abercrombie and Fitch has attracted an online backlash with a tweet seen by many as implying Gay Pride is not just for gay people. The tweet, which has since been deleted, read: "The Pride community is everybody, not just LGBTQ people. - Kayla, merchandiser."Twitter critic Zeus Tipado compared the brand's behaviour to opponents of the Black Lives Matter movement, who dismiss evidence of racial inequality with the slogan "All Lives Matter". "LGBTQ just got the All Lives Matter treatment," he rued

McDonald's is getting into the gay pride spirit. The fast-food franchise is serving its signature fries in cheerful rainbow-colored boxes at participating locations throughout the greater California Bay Area, as well as at some D.C. locations. "McDonald's has always been a company that has supported diversity and inclusion of its employees and extended McDonald's family," McDonald's spokesperson Kim Knapp said in a statement. "We are proud to create an inclusive culture where everyone feels valued, appreciated and supported. As an official sponsor of this year's Pride festivities, we looked for a unique way to bring that celebration into our restaurants...

A program that aims to give young children “unabashedly queer role models” is making its way across the U.S. via various public libraries. “Who wants to be a drag queen when they grow up?” an adult male dressed in drag asks a group of children at the Brooklyn Public Library during a recent installment of Drag Queen Story Hour. “Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) is just what it sounds like — drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores,” the initiative’s website states. “DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives...

Melania Trump is proving to the fashion designers who said they wouldn’t help her that dressing well is the best revenge. The first lady’s trip to Saudi Arabia, the Vatican, Belgium and Sicily — wearing mostly Dolce & Gabbana — was a fashion tour de force that has forced many naysayers in the rag trade to rethink. The list of designers who said they wouldn’t dress Melania is long, led by Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen, Christian Siriano and Sophie Theallet. But Melania has managed to look smashing in dozens of different ensembles, from her white Ralph Lauren jumpsuit...

Fox News’ Shepard Smith may have entered a new phase in his life in which he is open about his homosexuality, but longtime viewers of the daytime anchor are familiar with a “Shep” who reveals his pro-homosexual bias through snarky, on-air putdowns of social conservatives. Smith went public in October about his long-suspected homosexuality, in an interview with Huffington Post. But he was long suspected of being homosexual, and even was listed prominently year after year in the LGBT magazine OUT as one of its “Top 50” most powerful homosexuals. On April 21, in a speech at his alma mater,...