Free Republic

A Fort Worth high school student was sent to the principal’s office earlier this week for telling another classmate he believes homosexuality is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Dakota Ary spent most of the day Tuesday serving an in-school suspension. It was punishment for discussion in his German class at Fort Worth’s Western Hills High School. “We were talking about religions in Germany. I said, ‘I’m a Christian. I think being a homosexual is wrong,’” he said. “It wasn’t directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me. I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he...

*excerpt* ... “We were talking about religions in Germany. I said, ‘I’m a Christian. I think being a homosexual is wrong,’” he said. “It wasn’t directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me. I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he was going to write me an infraction and send me to the office.”

An elderly priest on the Acadian Peninsula has been barred from performing church services in the Bathurst diocese after he made remarks about homosexuals and women who have had an abortion. Rev. Donat Gionet, 85, gave the sermon at the Roman Catholic church in Saint-Léolin while replacing the regular parish priest late last month. He stands by the comments he made in Saint-Léolin, a village of about 730 people located about 50 kilometres east of Bathurst. Reached in Caraquet on Wednesday, Gionet declined an interview but did provide a written statement. In a letter written in French that he provided...

Dear Mr. President: I write with a growing sense of urgency about recent actions taken by your Administration that both escalate the threat to marriage and imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage. This past spring the Justice Department announced that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, a decision strongly opposed by the Catholic Bishops of the United States and many others. Now the Justice Department has shifted from not defending DOMA-which is problem enough, given the duty of the executive branch to enforce even laws it disfavors-to actively...

Even as federal officials laud the end of the U.S. military’s ban on openly gay troops, Justice Department lawyers are trying to dissuade a federal appeals court from deciding if the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy was unconstitutional. They filed a motion Tuesday asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to vacate a lower court ruling last September that found the ban violated the civil rights of gay service members. The gay political group Log Cabin Republicans, which brought the case, wants the appeals court to address the ban’s constitutional implications.

President Obama’s re-election campaign on Tuesday touted the end of the military policy “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” as one of the Obama administration’s “signature achievements.” The ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military officially ended on Tuesday, following a vote to repeal in December. President Obama, who ran on the pledge to repeal in 2008, called it an “honor” to sign the repeal into law in July, setting into motion a 60-day waiting period. In an email, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina called it both a “policy promise” and a “personal promise” kept by Obama to “the...

In a statement on the day that “don’t ask, don’t tell” ends, President Obama briefly relives the moment in which he signed the bill to reverse the military’s ban on gays, saying he was “proud” to end it. He also adds a sentence for gay service members who were kicked out of the military before the policy ended: “I want those who were discharged under this law to know that your country deeply values your service.” Here’s Obama’s full statement:

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the nearly 18-year-old policy that allowed gays to serve in the military as long as they kept their sexual orientation a secret, was officially repealed at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 20. The following official Defense Department memo acknowledges the historic repeal. "Effective today," it reads, "statements about sexual orientation or lawful acts of homosexual conduct will not be considered as a bar to military service."

A group of roughly 75 House members, almost exclusively Democrats, is pushing the IRS to clean up issues that same-sex married couples and domestic partners face in filing their taxes. Overall, 15 states recognize either same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships, with New York becoming the sixth state to allow same-sex couples to marry this summer. But the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress in the 1990s, means the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages, leading to filing confusion that the group of lawmakers wants the IRS to address. “Now, more than ever, our tax system must be simplified...

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal judge in San Francisco has decided to unseal video recordings of last year's landmark trial on the constitutionality of California's same-sex marriage ban. Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware on Monday agreed with lawyers for two same-sex couples who sued to overturn Proposition 8 and with a coalition of news outlets that there is no reason to keep the recordings secret.

The Navy’s former top civilian has rocked the service in a military journal article by accusing officials of sinking the storied naval air branch into a sea of political correctness. Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, himself a former carrier-based aviator, wrote that the swagger and daring of yesterday’s culture has given way to a focus on integrating women and, this year, gays.

If we post this story on Facebook, will the company remove it? According to a new study from the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) and the American Center for Law and Justice, there's a good chance it will. As reported in The New American, NRB conducted a study of "the practices of Apple and its iTunes App Store, Google, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, as well as Internet service providers AT&T, Comcast and Verizon." Its conclusion: with the notable exception of Twitter, "social media websites are actively censoring Christian viewpoints." Specifically, social media sites have proscribed any content critical of the homosexual...

TORONTO, ON, September 16, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A father of a six-year-old student in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) says he was shocked to discover what the school board considers to be “Days of Significance,” reports the Toronto Sun. In the “Days of Significance”  calendar in his son’s 2011-12 daily planner, Jaak Purres discovered days devoted to transgendered people, prostitution, gender identity, and Dyke marches. “I was looking through this thing and was shocked,’” said the outraged father. “It’s just bizarre! He’s six. I want him to enjoy being six.” Purres pointed out that the planner comes from a...

This Tuesday, September 20, the Joint Education Committee of the Massachusetts Legislature is holding a public hearing on critical bills regarding the sex-education agenda and homosexual agenda in the public schools. The bills we are concerned with all aim to change two things that MassResistance accomplished several years ago: 1. In 1996 we wrote, lobbied and got passed the current Parental Notification Law (Ch 71, Sec. 32A) which is still state law. It allows parents to "opt-out" their kids on "human sexuality issues". At the time it seemed reasonably sufficient. But it's terribly out of date, the text allows for...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Night-long celebrations will mark the final countdown to the historic end of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay troops, and even more partying will take place once it is lifted Tuesday. But in many ways change is already here. Countless subtle acts over the past months have been reshaping the military's staunchly traditional society in preparation for the U.S. armed forces' biggest policy shift in decades. Supporters of repeal compare it to the racial de-segregation of troops more than 60 years ago. For some gay service members, the fear of discovery and reprisals dissipated months...

TAKE ACTION NOW: a new homosexual web campaign is urging the internet payment company PayPal to drop AFTAH and other pro-family organizations as so-called “extremists” that “promote anti-LGBT hate.” Please help defend Americans For Truth from being dropped by PayPal in response to this anti-Christian pressure campaign. 1) Go to PayPal’s website and make a much-needed gift to AFTAH to support our work. Or do so through the AFTAH website at www.americansfortruth.com/donate/. Mail a check to AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522. 2) Write or call PayPal and urge them to STAND FOR FREEDOM and NOT give in...

On July 12 California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act (SB 48): a law which forces California schools to use textbooks and curriculum that acquaint public school students of all ages with the “historical contributions” of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) persons. Ironically, the act is called “FAIR,” although there’s a stipulation in the law that parents can’t exempt their children from LGBT lessons in the classroom when the historical contributions of “men-who-want-to-be-women” is addressed. Hmmm, doesn’t seem very fair to me.

Homosexual activists are pressuring PayPal to cut off the accounts of pro-family Christian organizations that oppose the homosexual political agenda and uphold sexual morality, and PayPal is showing signs that it may capitulate to their demands. The homosexual organization behind the effort, All Out, claims that such organizations as Tradition, Family, and Property, and Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), as well as pro-family Christian activist Julio Severo, promote “hate, violence, and intolerance” and are “extremist.” The two organizations are mainstream pro-family, Christian groups that reject hatred of homosexuals but uphold traditional sexual morality and oppose legal privileges for homosexuals....

A member of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is calling for a ban on marriages at Christian churches if they refuse to also perform same-sex unions. “As long as religious groups can refuse to preside over ceremonies for same-sex couples, there will be inequality,” wrote Mike Weatherley, the Conservative MP for Hove and Portslade, in an August 21 letter to Cameron. While Weatherley’s proposal is currently a “minority view,” it “could quickly become a main stream point of view,” warned Neil Addison, national director of the U.K.‘s Thomas More Legal Centre. The U.K.‘s 2004 Civil Partnership Act, which legalized...

The leader of Scotland's Catholic community has warned that moves by MSPs to legalise gay marriage will be "strenuously opposed" by the Church. Cardinal Keith O'Brien, in a strongly worded homily delivered at a mass for politicians in Edinburgh last night, claimed that allowing gay people to wed through a civil or religious ceremonies would be a "direct attack" on the institution of marriage. However, the intervention sparked criticism from MSPs, with the openly gay leader of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie, attacking the Cardinal's remarks as "absurd" and as an attempt to "suppress" the freedom of gays, lesbians and...