Free Republic

Residents of the Castro are watching with growing concern as their neighborhood becomes a regular attraction on the sightseeing tour of the city. In the last three months, large tour buses have begun to park in the area on Thursday and Sunday afternoons, opening their doors and sending hundreds of tourists out to gawk and snap photos of the exotic sight of two men holding hands. For gay and lesbian residents, who are doing nothing more remarkable than, say, walking over to Cliff's Hardware Store, the idea that as many as six tour buses could turn up at once seems...

‘Harassed for being a Christian’- the policeman who objected to gay ribbons and is turning to a tribunal Last updated at 01:08am on 20.07.08    A policeman is taking his force to an employment tribunal, claiming that he has been harassed because of his Christian beliefs.Constable Graham Cogman says he has been persecuted since he objected to wearing ribbons to mark a gay event.The controversy echoes the case of Lillian Ladele, the Christian registrar who successfully took on Islington Council in London over her refusal to conduct civil-partnership ceremonies for gay couples.  Making a stand: PC Graham Cogman says...

Sacramento, CA (AP) -- Sacramento mayoral candidate Kevin Johnson upset local gay and lesbian leaders after saying he believes marriage is between a man and a woman. The former NBA star made the statement in response to a question during a candidate debate this week. Gretchen Bender, vice president of the Sacramento County Board of Education, says Johnson's statement shows that he is not ready to lead the city. Bender and a half-dozen other gay and lesbian leaders held a news conference to express their concern about the former Phoenix Suns star.

TEACHERS are being urged to stop using terms such as husband and wife when addressing students or families under a major anti-homophobia push in schools. The terms boyfriend, girlfriend and spouse are also on the banned list - to be replaced by the generic "partner" - in changes sought by the gay lobby aimed at reducing discrimination in classrooms...

Larry King was a gay eighth-grader who used to come to school in makeup, high heels and earrings. And when the other boys made fun of him, he would boldly tease them right back by flirting with them. That may have been what got him killed. On Feb. 12, another student, Brandon McInerney, 14, shot him twice in the head at the back of the computer lab at their junior high school, police say. The slaying of the 15-year-old boy has alarmed gay rights activists and led to demands that middle schools do more to educate youngsters about discrimination on...

New restaurant's logo described by some as demeaning When the owners of Quickie Burger and Dogs chose their logo, they thought it would make patrons crave an order of chili cheese fries. But the logo, a busty woman in a tight shirt straddling a hamburger, has drawn criticism from campus groups. The newest addition to the South State Street landscape has caused a stir on campus with its brightly colored logo, which some believe is offensive. The restaurant, which opened two weeks ago, sits south of campus at the intersection of State and Hill streets. Adorning the blue awning above...

"Duck of the day". Check out the three "responses" below, to the blue sign in the above pic. Yeah, he's not scoping out chicks, he's there because he's all about a woman's 'right to chose' (LOL) There was a large counter-protest. This was my favorite sign (below).

"Mom and Dad" as well as "husband and wife" have been banned from California schools under a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who with his signature also ordered public schools to allow boys to use girls restrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa, if they choose. "We are shocked and appalled that the governor has blatantly attacked traditional family values in California," said Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute. "With this decision, Gov. Schwarzenegger has told parents that their values are irrelevant. Many parents will have no choice but to pull their children out of the public...

Some residents of a gay-oriented retirement community have worries that adding too many straight neighbors might reopen the closet door. ___ SANTA FE, N.M. -- The first generation of openly gay Americans chalked up a lot of firsts -- a gay-rights march in Washington, openly gay politicians in national office and out-of-the-closet actors on sitcoms. And now, this generation will be the first to have, just in time for its twilight years, gay senior condo communities. It's an extension of the gay ghetto, this time with walkers. But at RainbowVision, a development that opened last year on the edge of...

A speech by a "parental rights" activist in Gloucester has been canceled after a gay marriage advocacy group threatened to protest what it deemed "hate speech." Cape Ann Marriage and Family, which characterizes itself as "pro-family" and has been active in advocating for a popular vote on gay marriage, had planned a meeting at a Main Street pizza parlor featuring a lecture by David Parker of Lexington. Parker is suing the state for the right to be notified when issues of sexuality, including gay marriage, are discussed in his young son's school. The case was initially dismissed but is on...

In 1997, the National Association of Social Work (NASW) altered its ethics code, ruling that all social workers must promote social justice “from local to global level.� This call for mandatory advocacy raised the question: what kind of political action did the highly liberal field of social work have in mind? The answer wasn’t long in coming. The Council on Social Work Education, the national accreditor of social work education programs, says candidates must fight “oppression,� and sees American society as pervaded by the “global interconnections of oppression.� Now aspiring social workers must commit themselves, usually in writing, to a...

Oh, if we all just disappeared. According to The World Without Us, Alan Weisman's strangely comforting vision of human annihilation, the Earth would be a lot better off. In his doomsday scenario, freshwater floods would course through the New York subway system, ailanthus roots would heave up sidewalks, and a parade of coyotes, bears, and deer would eventually trot across the George Washington Bridge and repopulate Manhattan. Nature lovers can take solace in the idea that the planet will thrive once we've finally destroyed ourselves with global warming. But Weisman takes the fantasy one step further: Let's not wait for...

A new plan approved by the California Legislature could be used to ban the words "dad" or "mom" in all public schools as being discriminatory against "partner 1"' and "partner 2" in same-sex relationships, according to critics. The legislation, in fact, seeks to impose a "radical homosexual indoctrination" on the young children in the state, according to Karen England, the executive director of Capitol Resource Family Impact, a new affiliate of Capitol Resource Institute. The plan, SB777, has passed the state Assembly on a 43-23 vote and it now moves forward to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who previously vetoed another similar...

US comedian Jerry Lewis apologised today for his use of an anti-gay slur during the weekend broadcast of his annual Labor Day Telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The controversial remark came yesterday in the 18th hour of the live national telecast, when a visibly weary Lewis, 81, was joking on stage, pretending to introduce members of someone's family as he mugged for the camera. "Oh, your family has come to see you. You remember Bart, your oldest son, Jesse, the illiterate fag ...," Lewis said, as he apparently caught himself and ceased the gag in mid-sentence, turning on his...

Joan Blades describes herself as, among other things, a “nature lover” and a “mother.” She is also a co-founder of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org and a regular contributor to the liberal blog The Huffington Post. In a recent post, Blades wrote about an article she read in her local paper. It described a group that supports the kind of measures Blades expected liberals like Huffington Post readers to support: health care for children, “fair wages,” and flexible work schedules for moms. What Blades found surprising were some of the comments that came into the paper’s website. One person “reasoned”...

Gay Aussie Hotel Wins Right To Ban Heterosexuals, Lesbians May 28 05:00 AM US/Eastern An Australian hotel popular with gay men has won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals and lesbians, officials and the owner said Monday. The Peel Hotel in Melbourne won an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to prevent insults and abuse directed toward gays in its bars and nightclubs, owner Tom McFeely told AFP. "The hotel predominantly markets itself towards homosexual males, towards gay men and we want to protect the integrity of the venue as well as continue to make the men feel comfortable,"...

Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost? And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain...

STRASBOURG, May 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Polish President Lech Kaczynski has been found guilty of violating the European Convention on Human Rights in a ruling released today by the European Court of Human Rights.  Kaczynski was found to have violated the Convention for having banned a homosexual activist 'Gay Pride' demonstration in 2005 as the then-Mayor of Warsaw. A press release by the court noted that in the case known as Baczkowski and Others v. Poland (application no. 1543/06), the court ruled unanimously that there had been: · a violation of Article 11 (freedom of association and assembly) of the...

Lawyers representing a Massachusetts school district named as a defendant in a parent's civil rights complaint have said teachers at Estabrook Elementary School have a "legitimate state interest" in teaching the homosexual lifestyle, and parents have no input into those decisions.... ...."The state must fight 'discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation' in ways that 'do not perpetuate stereotypes,'" the lawyers for the school district argued. They also explained to the judge that, in their opinion, parents have no right to control what ideas the school presents to elementary schoolchildren, and if parents disagree with that dictate, they can take...

Gays accused of discrimination in resort town By Jason Szep Fri Jul 21, 8:34 AM ET   PROVINCETOWN, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Provincetown, New England's summer gay capital, is facing a rise in harassment and discrimination. But this time it's straight people who say they are being ridiculed as "breeders" and "baby makers." Less than a decade after a successful campaign to end violent paroxysms of "gay bashing" in the beach town at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, police and town officials report a resurgence in tension between gays and straight people.Police Chief Ted Meyer said straight people...

Parental Rights Activist David Parker's Son Surrounded and Beaten-up at School on Anniversary of Same-Sex "Marriage" in Massachusetts June 14, 2006 CONTACT: MassResistance, Waltham, MA Brian Camenker Phone: 781-890-6001 info@MassResistance.com www.massresistance.com School acknowledges that attack by group of kids was "planned and premeditated" Caps year-long public campaign of anti-Parker hate by activists in town LEXINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS/JUNE 14, 2006/ MassResistance has learned that on May 17 - the two-year anniversary of same-sex "marriage" in Massachusetts - David Parker's first-grade son, Jacob, was dragged and beaten at the Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington during recess, receiving multiple blows to the chest, stomach,...

A controversial campaign to identify supporters of a constitutional ban of gay marriage in Massachusetts plans to launch a similar website in Florida today. KnowThyNeighbor.org, a website that contains a searchable database of the names of Massachusetts residents who have signed a petition for a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage, has helped a church in Jacksonville, Fla., build a similar database of Floridians who have signed a ``marriage protection" ballot initiative in their state. The Florida names will be available on KnowThyNeighbor.org or through a link on the church's website, christchurchofpeace.org . The website's creators say its purpose is...

When all the fanatical Christians disappear, will traffic finally improve? Wait, did I miss it? Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast, a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer, all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta? I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were...

No wait, not six. To hell with that. Make it 10. Ten bucks a gallon, no matter what the going rate for a barrel of light sweet crude. That would so completely, violently, brilliantly do it. Revolutionize the country. Firebomb our pungent stasis. Change everything. Don't you agree? Here's what we could do: Give gas discounts to cab drivers (at least initially) and metro transit systems and low-income folks, those who have to drive their busted-up '78 Honda Civics to their jobs scrubbing restaurant toilets and flipping burgers and vacuuming the residual cocaine from the seat cushions of numb SUV...

Think sex and drugs destroy America? Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls" There are these things. These unholy events called "Purity Balls" and you should probably fall to your knees right this minute and thank a merciful and lubricious and happily polyamorous God that you do not know what they are and that you have access right this minute to vast quantities of wine to deflect their nasty karmic arrows because, you know, oh my God. But hey, free country. Purity Balls. No, not some sort of newfangled spherical chastity device to be inserted using vacuum tubes and pulleys,...

It's a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world's most toxic retailer. Did hell just freeze over? Sometimes you just have to let the possibility breathe. Sometimes you just have to allow that something grand and good and healthy might actually be born from the bowels of the dank and ravenous megacorporate world, like flowers from a dung heap, like vodka from old potatoes, even if it comes right alongside the nastiest, most abusive federal environmental policy you will see in your lifetime. Take Wal-Mart, the most famously offensive, town-destroying, junk-purveying, labor-abusing, sweatshop-supporting, American-job-killing, soul-numbing, seizure-inducing, hope-curdling retailer in the known...

It's not easy for a gay, left-wing secularist to live in Jerusalem They say that nine measures of beauty were given to Jerusalem. But at the same time, we can also say the city was also given nine measures of intolerance. Jerusalem is a tough city: Extreme, intolerant, unbending. Sometimes, it even seems the city has lost its sanity. The city's beauty (which in recent years has been buried under mountains of garbage and dirt) cannot hide the difficulties of living here. It is the poorest city in Israel (the poorest Jewish city that is. Bnei Brak runs a close...

Last week we noted that the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld a California school's authority to ban T-shirts protesting the "Day of Silence," an annual pro-gay event. Now a school in Trumansburg, N.Y., is following suit. John Swanhart, a 17-year-old senior, "and some friends decided to print 'Straight is Great' and 'Adam and Eve Not Adam and Steve' on T-shirts and wear them to school in response to the National Day of Silence,": Cosimo Tangorra, superintendent of Trumansburg schools, said he supported the decision of high school officials to send the students home. "It seems to me...

On premium cable, "Penn & Teller" (Showtime, 10 p.m.) starts a fourth season by taking on the Boy Scouts of America, charging their anti-gay bias came after the Mormons hijacked the organization in the '70s. Brash humor keeps this lively series from becoming too strident

Viroqua, WI - Viroqua High School officials chose to cancel tomorrow's Diversity Day activities after Liberty Counsel presented legal precedent requiring inclusion of the viewpoints of Christians and former homosexuals. The school scheduled sessions for the students that presented the viewpoints of Hmong, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, African-Americans, homosexuals, Latinos, Buddhists, the physically disadvantaged, and the economically disadvantaged, but not Christians or former homosexuals. Diversity Day would have been held tomorrow, March 23, 2006. After a school official stated that the viewpoints of Christians and former homosexuals would be excluded, a resident contacted Liberty Counsel on behalf of many other...

BOISE - Stickers saying "Heterosexuals Only" were placed on bus benches and public drinking fountains in downtown Boise and at the Statehouse Monday morning. A group of gay and lesbian activists, who spoke to KBCI-Local 2 News on condition of anonymity, put up the 150 stickers to protest the legislature's passage of a proposed constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage in Idaho, which voters will face in November. "This was an issue we cared a great deal about," one activist told Local 2 News. "It affects us personally, it affects friends and family of ours." The group says it used...

PASADENA - Oral arguments were punctuated Tuesday by questions about belief in God, discriminating membership standards, and how they relate to the Boy Scouts of America's leasing public land. Lawyers representing the Boy Scouts and the American Civil Liberties Union squared off before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of a lesbian and an agnostic couple and their Boy Scout-aged sons. The plaintiffs said the Scouts should not lease prime park space owned by the city of San Diego because of the organization's pro-God, anti-gay stance. It is one of three current cases pitting the ACLU against...

January 6, 2006 - In early December 2005, Washington Post writer Shankar Vedantam reported on the efforts of UCLA psychology professor Edward Dunbar to encourage the psychiatric community to add "extreme bias" against homosexuals (or ethnic groups) added to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Professor Dunbar is considered an expert on hate crimes and serves as a consultant with the Los Angeles City Police Department, the LA Unified School District and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. The Post article quotes Darrel A. Regier, director of research at the APA who supports...

LILLE, France, January 26, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A court in Lille handed down its sentence on a French Parliamentarian Tuesday, fining him 3000 Euros and forcing him to pay an additional 6000 Euros to be split between three homosexual activist groups who brought the charges against the MP. Christian Vanneste, a member of the UMP representing the Lille region was found guilty in December on charges of violating a French law barring "hate speech" against homosexuals. However, Vanneste in the remarks upon which the charges were based and in his defence, was clear that he was not speaking against homosexual...

Yes, I know you were drunk. Must've been. Either drunk or on serious meds and/or you just didn't give much of a damn about anything anyway because you're just one of those people, one of those types who comes lurching around the city like a chunk of numbed pain in your big-ass mid-'80s burgundy car with the white top and chrome bumpers -- an old Cadillac? Monte Carlo? -- early last Sunday morning to wreak casual havoc. Is that about right? Do you remember any of it? Here is what I'm guessing: probably not. Let me tell you what happened,...

Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe? Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost? And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob...

Apparently, it wasn't just "invade Iraq and Afghanistan in my name." A special report: Scene: White House private residence, night, not long ago. President Bush present in his most favoritest guns 'n' bunnies PJs. Laura asleep, knocked out by a combination of too much Good Housekeeping and excessive hair-spray fumes. Suddenly, a burst of black smoke. A deep, resonant voice speaks: "Psst! George! God here, taking a break from supervising the well-being of eight billion troubled souls along with infinite galaxies of unimaginable vastness to speak with you directly one more time because, well, you're special, aren't you, George? Yes...

Leather, techno, sex & war: more only-in-SF juice to make you proud. Take that, uptight neocons. It was the moment when we walked by a jam-packed S.F. City Hall and realized it was open to host a VIP techno dance party, while immediately outside its gilded doors upward of 50,000 revelers wandered and shimmied and flaunted their costumes and drank nasty Red Bull cocktails in the huge Civic Center plaza for the third annual Love Parade, everyone baring flesh and shaking their groove thangs to any one of 200 world-class (well, some of them) DJs spinning their wares on over...

At last, one scientist BushCo will definitely -- albeit resentfully -- listen to. Sometimes. So now we know. This is what it takes. This is how far the nation has to crumble and this is how many people have to die and this is how many tens of billions it has to cost and this is how far his dirt-low poll numbers have to fall before Bush will finally come out and say he agrees with one of those godforsaken gul-dang book-learned scientist types. You know the ones. Those informed and well-educated data-crunchers he normally despises like a kid hates...

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050507/microsoft_gay_rights.html?.v=3Microsoft Will Back Gay Rights LegislationSaturday May 7, 5:29 am ET By Elizabeth M. Gillespie, Associated Press Writer Microsoft Changes Course on Gay Rights Legislation; CEO Says Company Will Support It SEATTLE (AP) -- After being criticized for quietly dropping support for a state gay rights bill, Microsoft Corp. chief executive Steve Ballmer told employees Friday that management would publicly back such legislation in the future.Ballmer's commitment came two weeks after activists accused the company of caving to pressure from an evangelical pastor who had threatened to launch a nationwide boycott of the software company. "After looking at the...

Perhaps the most important argument against same-sex marriage is that once society honors same-sex sex as it does man-woman sex, there will inevitably be a major increase in same-sex sex. People do sexually (as in other areas) what society allows and especially what it honors. One excellent example illustrating this is an article recently written in the McGill University newspaper by McGill student Anna Montrose. In it, she wrote: It's hard to go through four years of a Humanities B.A. reading Foucault and Butler and watching 'The L Word' and keep your rigid heterosexuality intact. I don't know when it...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

What happens when habitual warmongering and BushCo lies become part of our daily diet? And then you read the appalling little story about how BushCo is now "taking steps" to further the investigation into why their original intelligence on Iraq was so painfully, treasonously, colon-clenchingly wrong, why they thought Saddam had giant Costco-sized warehouses stacked to the rafters with snarling nukes and nasty biotoxins and active warheads when, in fact, he had nothing but a couple Dumpsters full of rusty 20-year-old shell casings and a bucket of stale glue.

We kill millions of pets every year Who cares if a few get posh shelters and humane laws? OK. So I tend to think people who insist on calling themselves pet "guardians" instead of "owners" are exasperating and a bit wrongheaded, and that such uber-PC thinking does almost nothing to change or improve the behavior of the thousands of animal abusers in this country. And I tend to agree with fabulous dog writer Jon Katz that such semantic sidestepping does more harm to the animals than good, and leads to naive treatment, lack of decent training and an outright ignorance...

A new year, a Bush-gutted, storm-ravaged world and you in need of some juicy, heartfelt pledges -- This is the year. No, really. This is the it. This is the year you resolve to let it all hang out and lick the fingertips of the divine and stop holding back and stop quivering with unchecked anticipation/dread as you realize that, if you care a whit for self-definition and spiritual nuance and hot wet intelligence and deep karmic color in this tsunami-hammered, Bush-ravaged world, you are desperately needed right now. It's true. Alas, many are dejected. Many of the blue or...

Attention, liberal shoppers! Next year, screw those GOP-supportin' companies, and try buying blue Do you care much that greasy ol' Pizza Hut gave tens of thousands in PAC money to the GOP last year? How about the fact that Taco Bell stopped pumping out their happily toxic semirancid meatlike substances just long enough to write a fat check to the conservative Right? Isn't that weirdly fascinating, in a depressing and indigestible sort of way? Does it matter a whit that, say, Fruit of the Loom underwear gave nearly 100 percent of its corporate donations to tighty-whitey-wearing Republicans, nearly every one...

As the world swoons over France's soaring beauty of a bridge, S.F. gets slapped with an eyesore And did you hear the one about how those gul-dang baguette-sucking antiwar French just completed work on this astounding new bridge, a soaring, airy, delicate thing erected in southern France, and it's all over the international press and the French people are justifiably proud and even the venerable Le Monde has deemed the new Millau bridge a "work of art," and the amazing pictures are being featured everywhere, for good reason? And you look at the photos and see the breathtakingly elegant architecture...

Legal pot? Legal gay marriage? Universal health care? What's next, free porn and candy? Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north? Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations? Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires,...

Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north? Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations? Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it has declared it will do almost...

The odds are very good that you are on drugs. Right now. This minute. As I type this and as you read this and as false Texas dictators rise and sad empires crumble and as this mad bewildered world spins in its frantically careening orbit, there's a nearly 50/50 chance that some sort of devious synthetic chemical manufactured by some massive and largely heartless corporation is coursing through your bloodstream and humping your brain stem and molesting your karma and kicking the crap out of your libido and chattering the teeth of your very bones. Maybe it's regulating your blood...