Free Republic

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced on Tuesday that he is banning all non-essential state-funded travel to Indiana in response to a state law that critics say would allow businesses to deny service to gay people. "Today, I direct all agencies, departments, boards and commissions to immediately review all requests for state funded or state sponsored travel to the State of Indiana and to bar any such publicly funded travel that is not essential to the enforcement of state law or public health and safety,” Cuomo said in a statement.

Governor Mike Pence of Indiana seems to have caved into enormous pressure and will ask the state legislature for new legislation to make it clear that Christian florists and bakers could be forced to participate in weddings that violate their religious beliefs.Last week, Indiana joined 19 other states and the federal government by enacting a law to protect religious believers from governmental encroachment on religious freedom. Such legislation was cited in the recent Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision that determined religious employers could not be forced to supply abortion drugs to employees under ObamaCare.In a packed press conference this morning,...

A Christian florist and grandmother who declined to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding because of her Christian belief in traditional marriage has been fined $1,001 by a Washington court and will be held liable to pay the legal fees incurred by the gay couple, which could "devastate" her financially. As previously reported by The Christian Post, 70-year-old Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene's Flowers in Richland, Washington, was found guilty of violating the state's non-discrimination law in February, after referring Rob Ingersoll and Curt Feed to another florist when they asked her to provide the floral arrangements for their...

A judge in Washington state on Friday fined a florist $1,000 after she refused to sell flower arrangements for a gay couple's wedding, officials said. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who along with the couple - Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed - sued florist Barronelle Stutzman in 2013, applauded the ruling in a statement.

Attention, hotels…if you’ve got a “Sir Ian McKellen” on your list of incoming guests, you should probably remove the Bible from the bedside table drawer in his room and read this recent Q&A with Details magazine (quoted on PopEater): “The openly gay ‘Lord of the Rings’ star admits to a habit of tearing out the Bible passage that condemns homosexuality — (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” – Leviticus 18:22) — every time he finds one in his hotel room.[…] “I’m not proudly defacing the book,” he asserts, “but it’s a choice between removing...

VANCOUVER -- Vancouver's police force has been ordered to pay a trans woman $15,000 for repeatedly referring to her as a man and refusing to provide her post-op treatment while she was in jail. A B.C. Human Rights Tribunal decision posted Tuesday described how Angela Dawson had completed gender-reassignment surgery in March 2010 before several encounters with police officers in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Dawson is well-known by the area's officers as someone who skates around on rollerblades on the road to direct traffic, often while wearing flashy clothes and big headphones. Dawson was arrested 11 days after her surgery on...

I can’t get this question out of my head: Who is Patricia Jannuzzi? These last few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of religious organizations publicly wrestling with gay rights. The Mormon Church authorized new protections for gay people, while attempting to protect religious believers, too. A rapidly dwindling denomination of Presbyterians decided to embrace gay marriage. San Francisco’s City Church, the largest evangelical megachurch, embraced gay marriage for its congregants. Cardinal Dolan was the grand marshal of the first St. Patrick’s Day parade that permitted people to march with LGBT banners. Some of these churches are discarding ancient Christian moral...

Filling in for “Hardball’s” Chris Matthews, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart told viewers Thursday night that he has faced an onslaught of racial attacks since his editorial this week debunked Ferguson protesters’ “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative. In the Post op-ed published Monday, Mr. Capehart argued that 18-year-old Michael Brown did not have his hands in the air when he was fatally shot by police, writing that former Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson was justified in the killing. During his monologue Thursday night, Mr. Capehart mentioned how actress Ashley Judd announced this week that she is pressing charges against...

Everywhere we turn the Democrats are sounding more like Benito Mussolini every day. They’ve become the fascist party. Fascism is a system of government where the party in power forcibly suppresses opposition and criticism. We’re seeing over the issue of same-sex sexuality, ‘gay rights,’ homosexuality, whatever you want to call it. Any opposition will be shut down, fined, and put out of business. The call for toleration is the foot in the door to political, economic, and social repression, and once the objective has been achieved, toleration discarded. The ideological door is now shut. No more debates, and you will...

A wedding videographer in Ohio could face legal action after she declined to shoot a lesbian couples' wedding ceremony because it would have conflicted with her biblical understanding that marriage should only be between one man and one woman. When Jenn Moffitt and her partner Jerra Kincely were searching in February for a videographer to film their wedding, they sent an email inquiry to a local video production company called Next Door Stories in Bexley, Ohio, a town in the Columbus suburbs. CNN reports that the couple got an email back from the company's owner, Courtney Schmackers, on Feb. 4...

TAUNTON, UK – A street preacher in the UK who is charged with making “homophobic” and “Islamophobic” remarks has just completed a two-day trial and awaits a verdict on whether or not biblical speech about the issues is considered a crime in the country. Mike Overd, a street preacher for five years, is accused of speaking against homosexuality and Islam last June and July on two separate occasions. He is now facing two charges of using threatening and abusive words and a charge of causing racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress under the Public Order Act. A police...

Secretary of the Air Force Deborah James has decided to celebrate Women’s History Month by announcing a set of nine initiatives to increase diversity and inclusiveness in the service. The most notable is a new requirement that unless those aspiring to leadership roles can demonstrate their commitment to diversity and inclusion, they will not be considered for promotion. James first declared the changes on Wednesday during a “Women and Leadership in National Security” conference at the Center for a New American Security, and justified the new initiatives by proclaiming, “There’s simply no country in the world as widely diverse as...

Defy and Nullify: The alternative is to walk legally and quietly into that good night, going out not with a bang but a whimper, muttering something about 2016, the Supreme Court and pixie dust It was supposed to be a phone call for Obama administration ears only. But hear it the radio host did, she says. And what she heard should make your blood run cold—and perhaps your rage hot. Obama’s amnesty plan is to use illegal aliens as “seedlings,” said the federal officials. They will “navigate, not assimilate,” as they “take over the host,” create a “country within a...

According to an 86-page report issued by the Department of Justice, six of the most credible witnesses to the shooting of Michael Brown were afraid to give testimony in support of Ferguson, MO, police officer Darren Wilson, because they knew it would undercut the “Hands up, don’t shoot” narrative being advanced by their neighbors and, eventually, by the media. Several expressed concern for their safety should they choose to contradict that narrative publicly. As one witness noted, there were signs in the neighborhood reading “snitches get stitches.” The fear experienced by witnesses to the incident is a constant refrain in...

By Fox News. Potential 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson apologized Wednesday for saying homosexuality was a lifestyle choice.“I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation,” Carson said on his Facebook page late Wednesday afternoon. “I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive. For that I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended.” Carson, a neurosurgeon, was attempting to clarify comments he made earlier in the day to Chris Cuomo on CNN’s “New Day” show. “A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and...

The America that I love has been changing, but it wasn’t until Feb. 26 that I was struck with the realization that I don’t recognize my country anymore. That was the day three FCC commissioners, without revealing the regulations or taking public comment, decided to take regulatory control of the internet.

Ultimately, this is about the government designating an Official Position on a social issue and using force to impose it as a minority on the rest of the population. When the Civil Rights laws were enacted during the '60s, it was determined that places of "public accommodation" could not discriminate based upon race, sex or age. These are groups into which people are born. Hence, to be permitted access to offer goods and services to the public, they are obligated to offer them to all of the public, regardless of which group one is born into. And there is no...

Students at Kings College London (KCL) have successfully campaigned for the removal of a window featuring former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, an alumnus of the college, on the grounds that his stance on gay marriage makes him “homophobic”. The move comes despite Carey’s reputation as a liberal while he was Archbishop, ushering in the ordination of women priests for the first time in the Church’s history. The front windows of KCL’s Strand campus, which line the famous London thoroughfare for 90 metres feature head and shoulders images of 50 well known alumni of the College, including former Prime Minister...

Who Killed Comedy?: Liberals, and not by accident by Daniel Clark Since Jon Stewart announced that he will be ending The Daily Show, which has run on Comedy Central for 16 years, even non-liberals have expressed a certain amount of admiration for him, and not completely without reason. Unlike the mainstream late-night hosts, Stewart is forthright about the fact that he’s pitching his liberal ideology, and when he interviews conservatives, he’s a lot more polite to them than David Letterman has ever been. But is he funny? No. Not even close. Just try watching and reading the “highlights” in some...

On February 9th, Florida’s Yulee High School brought the hammer down on a student who offended some of his fellow classmates. The student was reprimanded for his actions after reading the morning announcements over the school’s intercom. Why? Upon finishing the announcements, the student added, ‘God Bless America.’ Two atheist students took offense to the statement. A school spokesperson for the Nassau County School District said that the student had gone off script and was being reprimanded: “It wasn’t part of the scripted morning announcements,” district spokesperson Sharyl Wood said. “The principal took the appropriate steps in speaking with the student...