Free Republic

More than 140 United Methodist Church congregations in the Susquehanna Conference, including 14 in the Harrisburg area, plan to end their affiliations with the denomination under agreements approved by the conference Wednesday night. Among those churches are 14 in the Harrisburg district and 43 in the York district. The seven-district Susquehanna Conference includes 870 churches, almost 150,000 members and close to 580 pastors. Nationally, simmering disagreements over the 6.4 million-member church’s position on ordaining and marrying members of the LGBTQ community, as well as other issues, have caused a rift fueling the “disaffiliations” by more moderate and conservative churches. Marriage...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has revealed that under present circumstances, Kiev is currently unable to launch a counteroffensive, blaming the situation on weapons shortage."We can't start yet. We can't send our brave soldiers to the front line without tanks, artillery and HIMARS [multiple launch rocket systems]," Zelensky said in an interview with Yomiuri Shimbun daily. He continued, saying that the situation in the country's east is "unfavorable" and that Ukraine is currently waiting for its allies to supply it with weaponry.This comes shortly after Zelensky beseeched European leaders to deliver lethal weapons at a faster rate than they are being...

French state-backed media say American conservatives, not LGBT activists, are to blame for the “culture war” over drag queen events aimed at small children. France 24, a government-owned news organisation which produces English, French, Spanish, and Arabic content aimed at foreign audiences, was one of many outlets which published a pro-drag article acquired from Agence France-Presse (AFP), a news agency founded as a state enterprise and still deeply entangled with the French state. As output from a notionally impartial wire service, the article has been published by a huge number of media outlets, sometimes automatically — but it is far...

The 96-missile barrage fired across Ukraine on Tuesday was Russia’s biggest aerial attack of the war so far. But it followed months of assertions by Western and Ukrainian officials that Moscow’s stockpile of missiles and other weapons was rapidly dwindling. Whether the assault on infrastructure targets was long planned, as Ukrainian commanders say they believe, or served as a deadly response to Kyiv’s recapture of the city of Kherson last week, the widespread attack raises questions about how much Russia’s arsenal may be depleted and whether Moscow will endure by finding alternative sources of weapons. The Ukrainian defense minister, Oleksii...

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is being accused of election interference after threatening to use “tools” if the wrong election result is achieved in Italy’s national elections, set to take place this Sunday, Sept. 25. She added that those same tools are already being used against Hungary and Poland. “We will see the result of the vote in Italy,” said von der Leyen. “If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.” Von der Leyen made the comment while responding to a journalist after a talk she...

Russia slapped Hollywood stars Ben Stiller and Sean Penn with sanctions on Monday in response to their public criticism of Moscow's war on Ukraine. Putin's foreign ministry included the actors on a new list of 25 US citizens banned from the country. Those affected are mainly politicians, trade officials and industrial executives. The sanctions bar them from entering Russia. Stiller and Penn have been vocal supporters of Ukraine in the conflict and have met Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in high-profile shows of support. In a televised meeting in Kyiv in June, Stiller, star of Zoolander, Meet the Parents and Dodgeball,...

The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update on Sunday that Russian forces in Ukraine have likely not received combat bonuses, hampering morale. “Russian forces continue to suffer from morale and discipline issues in Ukraine,” the ministry said in a Twitter thread. “In addition to combat fatigue and high casualties, one of the main grievances from deployed Russian soldiers probably continues to be problems with their pay.” It said that Russian troops receive a modest salary and a variety of bonuses and allowances, noting the combat bonuses have not been paid since the beginning of the invasion...

CNN offers 24 hours of programming every day, but not a whole lot of uncomfortable truths, so it was noteworthy when CNN host Becky Anderson asked her guest, Iranian-American academic Mohammad Marandi, about increasingly close ties between Russia and Iran despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Marandi gave her a double-barreled blast of honesty in response. ...

A top Italian history professor has caused outrage after he claimed that the Roman Empire fell due to the rise of homosexuality.Roberto De Mattei, 63, a devout Roman Catholic, had already raised eyebrows by saying the Japan tsunami was "divine punishment", and now with his latest claim he faces calls to resign."The collapse of the Roman Empire and the arrival of the Barbarians was due to the spread of homosexuality," the Daily Mail quoted the vice-president of Italy's prestigious Centre for National Research as saying in a radio interview."The Roman colony of Carthage was a paradise for homosexuals and they...

G. Allen Johnson June 15, 2022Updated: June 16, 2022, 5:06 pm Buzz Lightyear (voice of Chris Evans) is best friends with Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), a lesbian character in a same-sex relationship in the Disney/Pixar film “Lightyear,” which has been banned in territories in the Middle East and Asia. Disney and Pixar Animation Studios’ decision to refuse to re-edit or alter depiction of a same-sex relationship in the new film “Lightyear” is continuing to reverberate — and those repercussions now include a ban on the film’s release in territories in the Middle East and West Asian territories. This week, decision...

EXCLUSIVE — Lia Thomas, the controversial transgender swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania, recently gave an interview on Good Morning America. During the segment, Thomas talked about the past swim season and how transitioning allowed him to be truly happy. But while that may have been great for Lia Thomas, some of his former teammates felt differently. In an exclusive interview, one of the swimmers who swam with Thomas last season spoke to me on the condition of anonymity about Thomas’s GMA appearance. "You can tell he is mentally ill," she told me. "I saw the video and was so...

Lucas has just turned 4 years old, and Buzz Lightyear is his favorite character. He has the action figure, Santa brought him the space man’s costume, and he doesn’t sleep the same if he’s not wearing the pajamas sporting Woody’s friend. When his father says, “To infinity and beyond!” Lucas always smiles. His favorite Friday plan is to sit with his father and siblings and watch one of the four Toy Story movies; he already knows them by heart, but he can’t get enough. Ever since he learned that Buzz’s solo movie was going to be released, he’s been waiting...

Walt Disney has been unable to obtain permission to show its new Pixar movie "Lightyear" in 14 Middle Eastern and Asian countries, a source said on Monday, and the animated film appeared unlikely to open in China, the world's largest movie market. A "Lightyear" producer told Reuters that authorities in China had asked for cuts to the movie, which Disney declined to make, and she assumed the movie would not open there either. The animated film depicts a same-sex couple who share a brief kiss, which prompted the United Arab Emirates to ban the film. The United Arab Emirates said...

There is a serious problem with the homogenized nature of cybersecurity professionals, Trellix CEO Bryan Palma said during his keynote at the RSA Conference. An overwhelming majority of individuals in the cybersecurity field identify as straight, white, and male, according to a recent Trellix-commissioned survey conducted by a market research firm. This clear lack of diversity is holding the industry back in two main ways. “First, we are turning away great people and doing our industry a significant disservice by failing to cultivate a more inclusive environment,” Palma explained. “We are all better when we benefit from the diverse perspectives...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said same-sex marriage "will not happen" as long as he's in the Kremlin.MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia would not legalize gay marriage as long as he was in the Kremlin.He made clear he would not allow the traditional notion of mother and father to be subverted by what he called “parent number 1” and “parent number 2.”“As far as ‘parent number 1’ and ‘parent number 2’ goes, I’ve already spoken publicly about this and I’ll repeat it again: As long as I’m president this will not happen. There will be dad and...

Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia's Orthodox Church, will be excluded from the latest package of EU sanctions against Russia after Hungary's objection, three diplomats have told Euronews. Brussels accuses Patriarch Kirill of supporting the invasion of Ukraine and acting as a propagandist for Vladimir Putin’s regime. In a sermon delivered in early May, Kirill stated that "Russia has never attacked anyone" and that "we don't want to go to war". "It is amazing that a great and mighty country has never attacked anyone - it has only defended its borders," he added. Hungary repeatedly said it was against the...

A teammate of controversial transgender swimmer Lia Thomas said University of Pennsylvania officials warned women swimmers they'd face consequences for speaking out against the presence of Thomas — a biological male who identifies as female — on the women's swim team. “They’ve made it pretty clear if you speak up about it, your life will be over in some way, you’ll be blasted all over the Internet as a transphobe … you’ll never be able to get a job,” the teammate told Matt Walsh as part of his just-released "What Is a Woman?" documentary, according to the Daily Wire.

Party, military challenge rules-based system as Biden prepares for Asia tour.. China’s ruling Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army are subverting the rules-based international order and increasing global efforts to expand power, the U.S. admiral in charge of Pacific forces told a House hearing .. Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, discussed China’s strategic and military goals for rapidly becoming a global superpower in detailed written testimony. “The PRC seeks to become a global military power and acquire the ability to seize Taiwan, while developing conventional weapons that can reach the U.S. homeland,” Adm. Aquilino said, using...

UNAIDS has expressed concern that some public reporting and commentary on Monkeypox has used language and imagery, particularly portrayals of LGBTI and African people, that reinforce homophobic and racist stereotypes and exacerbate stigma. Lessons from the AIDS response show that stigma and blame directed at certain groups of people can rapidly undermine outbreak response.

In a foreshadowing of America’s future under coercive secularism, a Finnish politician and Finnish bishop will go on criminal trial next week for merely upholding historic Christian teaching on sexual morality. The trial is a telling measure of the erosion of Christianity in Europe. Juhana Pohjola, a Lutheran bishop, and Päivi Räsänen, a member of Finland’s Parliament, stand accused of an act increasingly forbidden in the de-Christianized West: quoting the Bible. “According to the nation’s top prosecutor, the two people are accused of violating the equality and dignity of LGBT people,” reports Christianity Today. Simply quoting the Bible’s condemnation of...