Free Republic

NORMAN, Okla. - Four Norman, Oklahoma, high school wrestlers have been charged with felony rape for allegedly assaulting a 16-year-old and a 12-year-old, according to court documents CNN obtained Tuesday. Tanner Shane Shipman, 18, and three minors — two who are 17 and one who is 16 — are charged with raping the two victims on a school bus on January 9 while their Norman North High School wrestling team was returning home from a tournament in Pauls Valley. The district attorney viewed audio and video from the bus before charging the students.

Take note Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith: Getting political has its risks. After the actress declared Monday that she will be boycotting the Oscars after her husband was snubbed, Alexis Arquette took a major swing at the pair for what she alleges is hypocrisy. The transgender actress and gender-rights activist "outed" the married couple with a Facebook post that argued that Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s comments on race and the Oscars were invalid because they won't ’fess up about their alleged homosexuality. "When Jada comes out as Gay and her beard husband admits his first marriage ended when she...

The vestry opposed his position. Kentucky Bishop Terry White did not support him Fr. Erdman said he had no choice but to resign or contradict his conscienceThe Rev. Jonathan Erdman, rector of Calvary Church in Louisville, KY, is resigning because he could not in good conscience perform gay weddings. He will leave his church Jan. 10, 2016. The vestry of his parish had been trying to force him out since the Episcopal Church authorized priests to perform gay weddings, and Fr. Jonathan, a high churchman, said he would not do that. The vestry has the support of Kentucky Episcopal Bishop...

<p>Among the Christian Right, and most Republican presidential candidates, it’s now an article of faith that the United States is persecuting Christians and Christian-owned businesses—that religion itself is under attack.</p> <p>Why has this bizarre myth that Christianity is under assault in the most religious developed country on Earth been so successful? Because, in a way, it’s true. American Christianity is in decline—not because of a “war on faith” but because of a host of demographic and social trends. The gays and liberals are just scapegoats.</p>

<p>OLONGAPO, Philippines (AP) — A U.S. Marine has been found guilty of killing a transgender Filipino after discovering her gender in a hotel in the Philippines last year.</p> <p>Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton was convicted Tuesday of homicide by first strangling Jennifer Laude and then dunking her head into a toilet bowl in the hotel they had checked into after meeting in a disco bar in Olongapo city, northwest of Manila. Court clerk Gerry Gruspe said Pemberton was sentenced to up to 12 years in jail.</p>

San Francisco police officer whose good looks earned him the nickname "Hot Cop of Castro" was on medical leave when he allegedly hit two pedestrians with his Dodge Charger, then abandoned his vehicle and ran away, police said. Officer Christopher Kohrs turned himself in to fellow officers at police headquarters Sunday, according to the San Francisco Police Department. He was arrested and later booked on suspicion of two felony counts of hit-and-run. Kohrs, a 7-year San Francisco police veteran, was off-duty at the time of the crash and on medical leave for an unrelated medical condition, police said. If Kohrs...

A prominent student activist from Oxford University is resigning from her political posts and campaigns after admitting she failed to obtain full consent before having sex at a conference earlier this year.Annie Teriba, a third-year student at Wadham college, was the editor of No Heterox** – described as a zine for queer and trans voices – as well as a racial equality officer and member of both the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts committee and the NUS’s black students’ committee, according to the independent Oxford University newspaper Cherwell.Teriba reportedly made the admission in a statement posted on her Facebook...

The National Abortion Federation filed a federal racketeering suit on Friday against the anti-abortion group that released undercover videos in which Planned Parenthood officials discuss the sale of fetal tissue and abortion methods. The July 31 suit (PDF) says the anti-abortion group, the Center for Medical Progress, created a fake company called Biomax Procurement Services to obtain an exhibitors booth at national conferences of the National Abortion Federation, report the Los Angeles Times and the Recorder (sub. req.). According to the suit, activists posing as company operatives signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from making recordings at the conferences and from...

It wasn’t like we didn’t see this coming but it’s certainly arriving faster and harder than even some of the more conservative estimates would have predicted. Now that gay marriage (or just any old marriage if you prefer) is a “constitutionally assured right” in the United States, Left side proponents are taking their victory laps. But at the same time they’re going to stick to the established talking points of telling everyone not to worry… nothing bad is going to happen to anyone else. You’re just not adjusted to the New and Improved Post-Homophobic Christianity. (From the Daily Beast) The...

A lesbian public elementary school teacher divulged during a homosexual activist conference workshop for teachers how she indoctrinates students -- starting at age four -- to support homosexual relationships. Presenting at the event, Ontario public school instructor Pam Strong told those in attendance how she convinces her young Canadian students that same-sex "marriage" and other LGBT lifestyles are acceptable and honorable. "And I started in kindergarten ... what a great place to start," Strong told those in attendance,according to LifeSiteNews.com. "It was where I was teaching. So, I was the most comfortable there." The homosexual activist organization Canadian Centre for...

The Duggar family sowed the seeds for their own downfall nearly a year ago when they sent out a hate-filled robocall to their entire town, Daily Mail Online can reveal The sequence of events which ended with son Josh being revealed as a child abuser began last August when they sent out the message to all the residents of Tontitown, Arkansas. The call urged them to vote against new laws preventing anti-gay discrimination laws and among those who heard it was Tandra Barnfield, a lesbian whose family know the Duggars. In protest Barnfield posed outside the Duggar home kissing her...

In discussing the scandal engulfing former House speaker Dennis Hastert, who is due in court this week, one thing must be made absolutely clear. What he is alleged to have done to young boys has absolutely nothing to do with being gay or gay rights. * Almost immediately after the news broke of Hastert’s indictment, folks looked to Congress for signs of hypocrisy. Former representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, made an assertion during an appearance on Huffington Post Live last Monday that was flat-out inappropriate. “Dennis Hastert twice as speaker tried to get the house to pass a...

UKIP has been banned from taking part in a gay pride parade over what organisers claim are safety fears – even though the party has thousands of LGBT members.Organisers at the event in London said they had to "wrestle with a difficult issue" when deciding whether or not to allow the party to enter the parade. The shock move comes despite Ukip's strong lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) members' wing – and the fact that David Coburn, their only Scottish MEP, is homosexual. Parade bosses said the decision was made to reject Ukip's application "in order to protect participants...

Writing online, author Elisa Gabbert answered one of her reader's questions about whether he should stop writing because of his "privilege" of being white and male. An anonymous reader asked Gabbert: "I am a white, male poet—a white, male poet who is aware of his privilege and sensitive to inequalities facing women, POC, and LGBTQ individuals in and out of the writing community—but despite this awareness and sensitivity, I am still white and still male. Sometimes I feel like the time to write from my experience has passed, that the need for poems from a white, male perspective just isn’t...

LONGMONT, CO (KDVR/CNN) - Parents of Evan Curry are outraged after their teenage son is outed by his high school principal just before graduation. The parents say their son wasn't only forced out of the closet - he was silenced when he planned to come out to his family and friends during his valedictorian speech. The principal at Twin Peaks Charter School called Alise Curry and Don Young to tell them their son, the valedictorian, would not be allowed to give the speech at graduation. The principal also informed them their Evan was gay. "I think it goes without saying...

There may be evidence that the government agency in charge of enforcing Oregon anti-discrimination laws colluded against Aaron and Melissa Klein, former owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery, with the pro-LGBT group Basic Rights Oregon. The Daily Signal, the news arm of The Heritage Foundation, exposed the communications contact between officials at the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and Basic Rights Oregon, obtained through a public records request, in their story titled, "Emails Raise Questions of Bias in Case Against Bakers Who Denied Service for Same-Sex Wedding." The communications between the two groups raises questions of the impartiality...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is spending nearly $2 million to see if courts run by teenagers can be a viable tool to fight school bullying. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) tasked WestEd, a San Francisco-based education research group, late last year to study the effectiveness of “youth courts,” where the roles of judge, jury, defense, and prosecution are filled by students, who can then administer punishment in middle and high schools. “Reports of violence, bullying, and other offenses have resulted in concerns about school safety,” according to the NIJ grant. “Administrators, anxious to restore order, have adopted policies...

As a speaker was about to begin her lecture criticizing gay marriage Tuesday on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, about 30 students seated in the front rows stood with signs, turned to face the rest of the audience and let loose.

UNITED NATIONS — The boys said they approached the French soldiers because they were hungry. Some were so young that they didn't quite understand the acts the soldiers demanded in return. One boy, 8 or 9 years old, said he did it several times to the same soldier, "until one day an older kid saw him and told him what he was doing was bad." Another boy, 9, said he thought the soldiers had been urinating. United Nations investigators heard such stories of sexual abuse from several boys in May and June 2014 in Central African Republic, where French soldiers...

After news broke about the Rush Limbaugh Show getting kicked to the curb by WRKO-AM in Boston, Nielsen radio market #10, I received about a dozen emails asking when I was going to comment. So, here goes. First, understand the “business of business is business” and the “business of money is money.” And it’s money not a station’s Nielsen ratings that will ultimately determine your success or failure as a personality. For most of us, revenue and ratings are connected. But, that’s not true for everyone. After Rush Limbaugh stepped over the line with his Sandra Fluke comments a few...