Free Republic

Take heart, patriot Americans. In the end, with faith in God, we will prevail over the forces of evil recently manifested in the two Supreme Court decisions. Continue to oppose tyrannical Obamacare and any other government mandates, and do not recognize gay faux marriage. I know that I will not recognize it, and neither will my Church: http://www.pravmir.com/archbishop-demetrios-marriage-is-a-sacred-institu... Work hard to elect constitutional conservatives who hold traditional moral values like Ted Cruz for president. Things may look glum right now with this tyrannical progressive onslaught, supported by most of the media powers, but not nearly so dismal as what General...

On this slender thread does the promise of religious liberty hang. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his majority opinion in Obergefell that declares same-sex marriage a constitutional right, barely mentions the means by which most Americans conduct their weddings — houses of worship. Only on page 27 does Kennedy get around to addressing the connection between church and state, and the assurances in this paragraph are less than compelling, to say the least: Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage...

Amongst other upside-down thinking in the majority decision is this: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf "A third basis for protecting the right to marry is that it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education. See, e.g., Pierce v. Society of Sisters , 268 U. S. 510. Without the recognition, stability, and pre - dictability marriage offers, children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents, relegated to a more difficult and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue thus...

Republican groups that support same-sex marriage want to send a message to their party's voters and candidates: We are not an anomaly. Two right-leaning groups—American Unity Fund and Project Right Side—are releasing a poll that they say shows that most voters support gay marriage, and a higher proportion of Republicans support gay marriage than measured before. ​The poll surveyed 2,000 registered voters nationally by phone this month, including 798 Republican and lean-Republican voters, along with 500 voters in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. The poll found that 57 percent of all registered voters...

If same-sex marriage comes to America, it will not be because Americans asked for it. In the last 15 years the question was put to the people in nearly every state of the union. Even in liberal states like California, even on ballots in purely democratic primaries, the people voted overwhelmingly to keep the definition of marriage unchanged. Gay activists were confident going into many of these contests because the polls promised them big wins. Yet when people stepped into the ballot box, man-woman marriage won. Polls are one thing. Polling places are another. We live in an age where...

If the view of the “converts” to same-sex marriage and the acceptance of homosexual partnerships is “ultimately destructive to society, to the church, and to relations between men and women,” how can that distance be avoided? The reality is that it cannot. This is a moment of decision, and every evangelical believer, congregation, denomination, and institution will have to answer. There will be no place to hide. The forces driving this revolution in morality will not allow evasion or equivocation. Every pastor, every church, and every Christian organization will soon be forced to declare an allegiance to the Scriptures and...

Great news about one of my favorite Republican governors, Mary Fallin.Excerpt: If the U.S. Supreme Court decides to overturn the millennia-long definition of marriage, Oklahoma clergy will not have to be concerned that they will be forced to perform such ceremonies.On May 1, Governor Mary Fallin signed a law that would allow ministers to exercise their religious beliefs on marriage and decline to “wed” same-sex couples.Governor Fallin’s office said in a press release that H.B. 1007 is “a bill protecting religious leaders from being compelled to perform marriages that are in direct contradiction to their religious beliefs.”The law says that...

One of the newly announced South Carolina co-chairs for Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) presidential campaign previously argued that the Utah judge who overturned the state's gay marriage ban should be impeached. That co-chair is state Sen. Lee Bright (R), who challenged Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the 2014 Republican primary. Bright, in 2014, griped about federal judges being "absolutely out of control on so many different fronts" and went on to suggest that U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby, the judge who struck down Utah's ban on same-sex marriage, should be impeached. In April, Cruz was hosted by a pair of...

Our friend Quin Hillyer posted an interesting article in National Review in which he parsed at some length the past opinions of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the perceived “swing vote” on the same-sex ‘marriage’ case argued before the Court yesterday. Many conservatives have been pessimistic about the prospects of the preservation of federalism and the power of states to regulate marriage, and Hillyer acknowledges Kennedy’s paeans to “personhood and dignity,” and “reviewing his long history of rulings that consistently expanded the rights of homosexuals at every opportunity, many observers consider it a foregone conclusion that his decision in the...

Even if the Supreme Court rules for gay marriage, Cruz proves that much still needs to be done for LGBT rights. Today’s oral arguments in the Supreme Court marriage equality case may or may not be exciting, but the importance of the outcome cannot be overstated. We are witnessing before us one of the greatest expansions of civil rights in decades, and if the high court decides to be part of the future instead of the past, this advance will codify into law the basic human right of marriage for gays and lesbians throughout America. This country has come a...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Ted Cruz, along with most of the other Republican presidential candidates, actual and potential, appeared at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Summit on Saturday. He decried what he sees as “liberal fascism” that has ensured "there is no room for Christians in today's Democratic Party." Ironically, some people who support LGBT rights are busily making Cruz’s case, albeit inadvertently. Indeed, recently, Hillary Clinton, still the likely Democratic presidential nominee despite the play for pay scandal that is consuming her campaign, recently gave Cruz a boost. As a way of illustration, a recent article in the Daily Beast by Jay Michaelson...

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official cited an “epidemic” of syphilis among homosexual men during an event Thursday by a lobbying group pushing for an increase in federal funding for sexually transmitted disease prevention from $157 million to $212 million. “We’re also seeing what we are calling pretty much an epidemic of syphilis among men who have sex with men – that really started in the early – 2000, 2002, but we’ve seen a dramatic increase since 2008,” Dr. Gail Bolan, director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, said at a briefing by the National Coalition of STD...

Citing the Declaration of Independence, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) argued on the House floor yesterday that same-sex couples are endowed by “their Creator—by God” with a right to marry. “Our Declaration of Independence, as all of us quote so often, says: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men’—of course, if Jefferson were writing today, it would be either all people or all humankind—‘are created equal, that they are endowed by’—not a Congress, not by a Constitution, not by a will of the majority—‘their Creator’—by God—‘with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and...

The successful shutting down (or at least shutting up) of non-groupthink-compliant wedding cake and floral businesses has given gay-marriage agitators and their backers a taste of the vast power of ideological extortion in 2015 America. I’m optimistic that the law will eventually come to its senses and give wide berth to Christians in the wedding trades, or even to non-Christian libertarians who simply don’t want to be told who they have to do business with. Perhaps James O’Keefe will covertly record owners of a black-owned florist shop being asked to create an arrangement for a “KKK” event, or a Muslim-owned...

The U.S. Catholic bishops could take a lesson from Mormon leaders on how to deal with religious liberty and gay rights. The Mormons have been strong allies of the Catholic bishops in the fight against gay marriage and the protection of religious freedom. But when the Mormons saw they were on the losing side in this fight, they were willing to compromise to protect what they considered essential. Like the Catholic church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints respects tradition and does not change teaching easily. But Mormons do have a pragmatic side. With the entire nation aligned...

Dear Editor: Your recent editorial on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (that has apparently been tossed in the closet for this legislative session) brought out some interesting points. I agree that a major problem in our society is the cheapening of the sexual relationship. God originally meant it to be shared as part of the exclusive bond between a husband and his wife, not reduced to the almost animalistic way it has become portrayed in the media, and now lived out in some circles. We are really reaping the rotten fruit of the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and following...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was in Iowa yesterday, where the presidential hopeful reflected on the possibility of a Supreme Court ruling endorsing marriage equality. The far-right senator told his audience, “The first thing and I think the most important thing every one of us can do, is pray. Lift up in prayer.” But as the Dallas Morning News noted, that’s not all Cruz said. He reiterated his vow to press for a constitutional amendment that would clarify the power of state legislatures to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. If the high court does legalize...

If the Supreme Court decides that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, will that signal the end of social conservatism? People have long predicted the end of the religious right and, increasingly, even the demise of “white Christian America.” These obituaries typically prove premature. First, why assume a loss at the Supreme Court will end the religious right’s reason for existence? Organized social conservatism was built from such defeats, including high court rulings against school prayer and legalizing abortion. The school prayer decision will turn 53 in June. Roe v. Wade turned 42 in January. Neither of those...

A man I know was a top executive at a major American media company, one of the biggest and most influential in the world. A young man came into his office one day asking to display a rainbow sticker with the words “safe space.” This was a decade ago and this man, a faithful Catholic, felt confident he could demur without reprisal though he could see the veiled threat of being “outed” as less than gay friendly, as a homophobe.But, in these post-Brendan Eich days, it is doubtful my friend would feel as safe to say no because things...

The founder and president of a coalition of black pastors has called upon U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan to recuse themselves from the same-sex marriage case that is currently before the high court. In a recent press release, Rev. William Owens of the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP) cited Ginsburg’s and Kagan’s “stated bias” as reason to recuse themselves in order to preserve the integrity of the court. Owens and his organization have launched a petition to bring attention to the alleged “lack of impartiality” on the part of the two justices. In February, Ginsburg,...