Free Republic

In a recent article that has to be read to be believed, Shannon Dea, co-president of Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region, responds to a call by a Canadian member of parliament to have a debate on the humanity of the unborn child, saying: “Medical science is irrelevant to the question of when a fetus becomes a human being — that matter is a legal and philosophical one, not a medical one.” Dea might as well have said that medical science is irrelevant to the question of whether or not a pig is a pig, or an elephant is an elephant, or...

Kristy, 15, was in such pain after days of being attacked with sticks, a metal bar, hammer and chisel that he begged to die, jurors heard. His brother-in-law Eric Bikubi was joined by his partner, Kristy's sister Magalie, in the horror, said Brian Altman QC, prosecuting. And his other siblings were forced to join in before they were all placed in the bath to be hosed down in cold water with a shower head by Bikubi on Christmas Day, 2010. ... The jury was told that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the defendants are originally from, witchcraft...

The Pope will on Sunday launch a renewed attack on the "moral relativism" that he has blamed for Britain's summer riots.In a message for the 2012 World Peace Day of January 1, Pope Benedict said that neither peace nor justice was obtainable if the objective norms of morality expressed in the Ten Commandments continue to be rejected. His words represent another severe criticism of moral relativism, the humanistic creed that holds there can be no objective standard on which to base morality. They come just months after the Pope told Nigel Baker, Britain's Ambassador to the Holy See, that the...

  The Content of Their What? David C. Stolinsky Dec. 15, 2011 I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The word “judgmental,” in the sense of overly critical or self-righteous, dates only from the 1960s. For centuries, great writers expressed themselves without this word, but now we use it frequently. Why? What does this word reveal about our thinking? How does it affect our actions? Specifically,...

Whether you love him or hate him, Denver Broncos phenom quarterback Tim Tebow is a force to be reckoned with. Regardless of how one views Tebow’s playing style—whether or not it is amenable to one’s tastes or preferences—they should reconcile his sportsmanship with his righteous character. It is apparent that the sensational (and equally accomplished) 24-year-old football star faces unmitigated scrutiny from the media. What exactly has he perpetrated that beckons their attention, one might ask?

Last week in Boston, a seven-year-old boy named Mark got into a fight with a bully. The bully put his hands around the boy's throat and began to squeeze. That's when Mark fought back; he kicked his aggressor right in the family jewels. In a normal society, we'd celebrate Mark. Throw him a ticker tape parade or something. Bullies need a sharp kick to the testicles. That's how you convince them that bullying is wrong. But in Boston, Mark was charged with sexual assault. Just to get this straight: Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank's gay lover can run a homosexual prostitution...

This is no nursery rhyme but rather the cast of characters lining up to appear at the 2012 Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly meeting in Pittsburgh. ACT I: An assault on marriageThe chameleon:  This character will attempt to lead commissioners to see marriage differently than the Church has historically defined it. Separating marriage from the Biblical narrative of creation and the Biblical witness of Jesus' affirmation between one man and one woman, the assembly will be asked to see a "new normal" that is inclusive of gay marriage. Presented plainly, the redefinition of marriage will arrive at the assembly through...

In the Carpenter home, every meal begins with a prayer. Robin and his wife, Emily, are devout Christians. But they part ways with many other Christians over a measure that would expand the legal definition of human life. Their son, Luke, now 4 years old, was born through in vitro fertilization. The anti-abortion amendment being voted on this week in the state could restrict in vitro procedures, and the Carpenters are worried that if they wait too long to add to their family, they may end up breaking the law. "I don't really want or need anybody else getting involved...

In his debut PJ Crime column Rob Taylor reveals the painful price of moral relativism.While the big story in conservative circles is the stunning amount of criminality coming out at the Occupy Wall Street protests, I’m shocked there hasn’t been more. The Occupy protesters are — by and large — downwardly mobile, sheltered, white drug users who have joined a variety of fringe movements and refuse to cooperate with police in any criminal matters. In the highly politicized blogosphere where most of these stories are being broken we often call people like these “radicals� or “revolutionaries,� but in the real...

Barry’s Bay, Ontario, October 4, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In his talk to the annual meeting of LifeSiteNews staff this summer, Canadian author, artist, essayist and lecturer Michael D. O’Brien spoke of his travels in various countries in Europe over the past year meeting with leaders in the culture wars who all had the same message.  “To encapsulate it in a thumbnail would be to say everyone is fighting a battle to the death with a dictatorship of moral relativism,” he said.  “Confusion is created everywhere through media.  Media is the primary shaper of consciousness of our times.  In every nation...

Last week, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Here are excerpts from Brooks’s summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith”: � “Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.” � “When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral...

Kool-Aid. It conjures up contradictory images.  On the one hand, it brings to mind thirsty gulps, drink-stained lips, and happy children.  On the other, it suggests the shadow of the Jonestown massacre, where a cult leader killed his followers, including children, by spiking their sugary drinks with poison.  It tasted good going down but led to inevitable death. These days, too many of our children are drinking spiked Kool-Aid. ] And it’s being served to them by unwitting educators, dysfunctional celebrities, government leaders, and the whole of pop culture. What’s in the Kool-Aid? The sweet flavor of unrestrained sexual pleasure...

"We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic."

Simon Baron-Cohen has been battling with evil all his life. As a scientist seeking to understand random acts of violence, from street brawls to psychopathic killings to genocide, he has puzzled for decades over what prompts such acts of human cruelty. And he's decided that evil is not good enough. "I'm not satisfied with the term 'evil'," says the Cambridge University psychology and psychiatry professor, one of the world's top experts in autism and developmental psychopathology. "We've inherited this word.. and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don't...

Church preacher convicted of sex assault 10:57 p.m. CDT, April 28, 2011 Rev. Morris Eubanks told a judge in Lake County Thursday night that God will punish those who bore "false witness" against him during his trial for sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl. The Waukegan man, who has preached at Baptist churches in North Chicago and Zion, according to testimony, declined to take the stand in his own defense, saying he was relying on his faith to clear his name. But there would be no divine intervention for Eubanks, as a jury found him guilty of aggravated criminal sexual abuse...

The Rev. Albert Cutie saw a lot of things in his 14 years as a Catholic priest while church officials looked the other way: priests who got caught with prostitutes, priests who lived with their gay partners, and men of the cloth who kept one bed in the rectory and another with their mistress. "In the Roman Catholic Church, a scandal is not really a scandal until it becomes public," Cutie writes in his new book, Dilemma: A Priest's Struggle with Faith and Love.

A new Dark Age on the horizon?Catholics, Protestants, Agnostics... the vast majority of conservatives of every stripe would agree with this almost non-reported speech made by Pope Benedict XVI on 20 December, 2010.In a speech to Papal representatives from all over the world, the Pope spoke in the context of a the near total collapse in the Western world of any moral consensus rooted in Christian ethics and heritage.In comments aimed directly at the secularization and abandonment of God by the West, Benedict stunned those in a attendance when he stated; "Alexis de Tocqueville, in his day, observed that democracy...

The founder and pastor of a Georgia megachurch said Saturday that the September suicide of a Rutgers University student was the tipping point for his decision to come out of the closet to his congregation. "For some reason, his situation was kind of the tipping point with me," said Jim Swilley, who calls himself as a bishop. "There comes a point in your life where you say - how much time do we have left in our lives? Are we going to be authentic or not?" Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, 18, jumped off a bridge after a secretly-taped sexual encounter...

The founder and pastor of a Georgia megachurch said Saturday that the September suicide of a Rutgers University student was the tipping point for his decision to come out of the closet to his congregation. "For some reason, his situation was kind of the tipping point with me," said Jim Swilley, who calls himself as a bishop. "There comes a point in your life where you say - how much time do we have left in our lives? Are we going to be authentic or not?" Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, 18, jumped off a bridge after a secretly-taped sexual encounter...

The reports are rolling in from all over the country. A Craven County, NC resident attempts to vote a straight Republican ticket but his choices come up straight Democrat four times, despite receiving assistance from poll workers. In NC's Lenoir County, registered Democrat Ervin Norville also tries to vote straight Republican but finds that his ballot has the names of several Democrat candidates selected. Boulder City, NV resident Joyce Ferrara says that when she and several others went to vote for Sharon Angle, they found that Senator Harry Reid's name was already checked off. In Dallas County, TX' congressional district...

A young client, Jenny, came to see me this week in tears. She was outside her house when suddenly, a speeding Prius hit her cat. The driver slowed down, observed Jenny's horrified eyes, and then hightailed it out of there. There's good news: the cat survived. But Jenny's belief in the goodness of people -- particularly hybrid-drivers -- did not. I have my own tales to tell from my week in Berkeley. I was walking gingerly through a crosswalk (I have bad knees) when an impatient driver shot me the bird. His car was graced with a Coexist bumper sticker....

A treatment for Parkinson's disease that involves injecting patients' brains with cells from aborted foetuses could bring hope to thousands of sufferers. It was first tested more than 20 years ago and hailed as a cure before being abandoned because of devastating side effects. Many of the human guinea pigs lost control of their bodies and experienced writhing and jerking movements for the rest of their lives. Now scientists say they have found a way to control these side effects, which will give hope to many sufferers - such as Hollywood star Michael J Fox and boxing legend Muhammad Ali....

It's funny how trivial events somehow get seared into your brain. This one is from years ago, when I was enjoying a yogurt on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Suddenly, a large exotic bug appeared and started dancing around. Its iridescent colors caught the sun and glistened like a rainbow. A crowd formed to watch its antics in shared delight. Out of nowhere, a lunatic pushed through the crowd. I'd seen this guy before -- paranoid, menacing. His rage toward the bug slit me like a knife. The insect was getting attention, people were happy, and he was out for revenge....

“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” Alexis de Tocqueville In his treatise, The Christian Manifesto, published in 1981, Francis Schaeffer suggests that the gradual shift away from a Judeo-Christian (or at least a Creationist) worldview towards a materialistic view of reality has broad sociological and governmental implications for western society. His is an interesting thesis to ponder in light of a recent article in USA Today discussing religion and the Millennial Generation. The article cites a recent survey conducted by Lifeway Christian Resources, which reveals that Millennials (defined as Americans born approximately between 1980 and 1995)...

Speaking at the Cathedral of Our Dear Lady, which is the Munich Catholic Archbishop’s own cathedral and one of the most important Catholic churches in Germany, Käßmann warned against demonising birth control. Contraception, including the pill, is forbidden under the Catholic Church’s strict moral code. “We can however also see it as God’s gift, for it is about the preservation of life, of freedom, which doesn’t have to immediately degenerate into pornography, as much as the sexualisation of our society is, of course, a problem. “It’s about love without fear and about responsible parenthood. And for women, in fact, it’s...

Our nation's public schools are a dismal failure. Nothing underscores that fact more than a story I heard about Colina Middle School in Southern California. In one eighth-grade honors social studies class at Colina, a teacher decided to hand out sample outlines to show the students how to outline an essay. So far, so good. But one of those outlines was this ... Read the whole thing. OUTRAGEOUS.

In this age of media insolvency and newsroom job cuts, I sometimes think that restaurant reviewers are doubling as religion writers. After all, both today seem to treat their subjects as matters of taste. In fact, I expect to soon open a modern newspaper's religion page and read something akin to the following: The steeple was sufficiently impressive, although there were obvious stress cracks in the paint. As I entered the church, I was greeted by an all too obsequious usher, whose fawning attempts to please were rendered quite unwelcome by his dollar-store shoes, mismatched tie and sport coat, and...

She’s right. Tomorrow, I’m gonna stop being unfair to bananas and call them soda. And apples, well . . . it’s not nice to exclude them from the meat group. Gonna call ‘em steak. She also said that specific assignments often call exclusively for gender-neutral language. Wow, someone’s parents are blowin’ a whole lot of money. Keith Reisinger, graduate student instructor for the Women’s Studies Department, said the issue reaches far beyond any departmental policy or the confines of the University. “I think we as a whole need to change how we talk about gender and people,” he said. Me,...

Should the “greatest good for the greatest number” be the guiding principle behind health care? As I have said before on Breakpoint, much of the hype and even hysteria surrounding the H1N1 flu strain is unwarranted. That’s not to say that the swine flu’s potential impact isn’t devastating—it is, but not in the way cable news would have us think. And now the Florida Department of Health has issued a set of guidelines that instructs hospitals on what to do “if the state is overwhelmed by [H1N1] cases.” The guidelines recommend that hospitals bar “patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple...

(10-25) 19:34 PDT Los Angeles, CA (AP) -- Authorities say a 37-year-old Los Angeles man has been arrested on suspicion of murder for the death of an unborn child believed to be his. Police said in a press release that Joshua Woodward was arrested Sunday in Los Angeles and is being held on $2 million bail in a county jail. Police say the arrest came after an investigation on Monday revealed "suspicious circumstances of a miscarriage." Investigators estimate the fetus was in its 13th week. Police released no information on the mother or the circumstances of the child's death. The...

The American university is the anti-Disneyland, the saddest place on Earth. Today's colleges can make MSNBC seem fair and balanced and give the term "clinical depression" a sunny and joyful flavor. It's no wonder so many prominent liberal intellectuals are angry, begrudging, and gloomy. They imbibe four to ten years of it during their college studies. And their brethren in the media give them a consistent platform for their gloom. A few years ago, the Washington Post discovered that over 72 percent of college professors classify themselves as liberal. The study showed that the most left-leaning departments are in the...

In my high school World History class I remember reading about moral relativists who expressed moral indifference at the practice of forced female circumcision common in some African cultures. These moral relativists argued that moral principles were culture-specific and not universal. According to this theory, there is no objective standard by which to judge cultural norms. Curiously, the moral relativists were equally reticent about immoral acts committed in the United States. They defended the violence of The Weathermen and other extremist groups, excused brutal murderers sentenced to death row, and extolled the virtues of the 60's counter-culture. The argument that...

The Episcopal Church in the United States took another major step toward ensuring its own demise last week, by adopting a resolution endorsing the ordination of homosexuals as clergy and bishops. The resolution, adopted at the denomination’s General Convention, said that “gay and lesbian persons . . . have responded to God’s call and have exercised various ministries,” and declared that “God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.” The resolution was widely interpreted as abandoning a moratorium on the ordination of homosexual bishops that was adopted after the furor surrounding the...

Courage was considered the prime virtue through most of recorded history among virtually all peoples on the Earth, and has only recently been displaced by liberal Western concepts such as tolerance and comity. Children are no longer instilled with the desire to express courage — moral or otherwise — but instead are taught to value “openness,” “diversity,” “conflict resolution,” and other liberal forms of pacifism designed to create a drab and dreary conflict-free wilderness, a land where no one can be offended, no one holds any strong or difficult positions, a place without danger and fear — in short, a...

MANY PEOPLE in the field of genetics are mourning the murder of Dr. George Tiller as the loss of a personal friend. I'm one of them. I first met George in 1987 at a conference of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, where I was executive director for 18 years until 2005. He and his incredibly loyal staff - whom he treated with great generosity - had developed a procedure that provided excellent medical care but also respect and emotional support to the women who came to him for help.

News of Dr. George Tiller's death was only hours old last week when bloggers began asking the question: What kind of church accepts a doctor who performs abortions into its membership? "I wonder what kind, if any, preaching against sin this church did since Tiller felt welcomed there," opined Blue Collar Todd, who declares on his blog that "liberalism, or sometimes called progressivism, is a false religion that stands in total antithesis to biblical Christianity." Todd has already made up his mind, and so have others who called or e-mailed me this week to criticize a column I wrote describing...

I stole a laundry bag from the Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires. It was made of thick ivory linen, embroidered with the words "dry cleaning" in cerulean blue, and looked like something that I could have found at an antique textiles show. But that wasn't the case. I'm usually pretty scrupulous about purloined souvenirs. Of course, I help myself to soap and shampoo, sewing kits, even those black sponges meant to spruce up your shoes -- oh, and ballpoint pens and darling little notepads. But the laundry bag was my first sojourn into the land of, what shall we...

ELCA Congregation Grieves after Member Shot in Church 09-127-FI CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The funeral for Dr. George Tiller will be June 6 at College Hill United Methodist Church, Wichita, Kan. Tiller was shot and killed May 31 while serving as an usher for Sunday worship at nearby Reformation Lutheran Church, where he was a member. Tiller was 67. The funeral will begin at 10 a.m. Tiller's family requested College Hill because it offers more available seating than Reformation. "All the different stages and symptoms of grief are happening here," said the Rev. Lowell R. Michelson, senior pastor for Reformation, a...

A Former Pro-life Activist Reflects on the Death of George Tiller by Paul Sauer — June 01, 2009 When I heard the initial news teaser on the radio that an abortion provider had been shot at a church, I knew both the abortionist and the church before either were named. Few abortionists were as outspoken about the abortion services they provided as George Tiller. No other abortionist was as outspoken about his involvement in a church as George Tiller. The sickening part about waiting for the actual story was to see if I would recognize the name of the alleged...

The abortion debate is a shape shifter, its contours twisted by politics, culture, timing and the very language pollsters use when they ask people how they feel. So when the folks at Gallup announced that for the first time more Americans are pro-life than pro-choice, there are all kinds of ways to misunderstand what that means. First and foremost are the labels, which cloud the issue by oversimplifying it — that's why the advocates picked them. Most people are neither pro-choice nor pro-life, but both; we cherish life, we value choice, and we trade them off with great reluctance. Good...

President Obama has named to his faith-based advisory council a self-professed Christian who holds that the New Testament's teaching that homosexual behavior is unnatural and wrong--which is found in St. Paul's letter to the Romans--“is not true." The appointee, Harry Knox, has also said that Obama's decision to invite the Rev. Rick Warren to say a prayer at the Inauguration "tainted" the ceremony and that Pope Benedict XVI is a "discredited leader." Harry Knox, a professed gay Christian who is director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual rights group, was named to President...

Slouching Toward Columbine: Darwin's Tree of Death April 20, 2009 David Klinghoffer I've long been fascinated by the image of the Tree of Death, parallel to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and cryptically referred to in mystical texts explaining the Hebrew Bible: And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the Tree of Life also in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:9). Come and behold: as soon as night falls, the...

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as...

MANCHESTER, NH (July 9, 2021) -- The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church today has warned that the Diocese of New Hampshire must not in any way be ostracized because it has chosen to elect the church’s first openly non-celibate animal-loving bishop. "As presiding bishop, I am called to see to it that all perspectives are treated with respect,” said the Most Rev. Annie Thangohs. “We can, of course, disagree on the issue of animal-loving in the Christian life. I have seen, however, some distressing accounts in the secular press. I had hoped that we had removed that hateful term,...

Satan is losing the battle for people's minds. This is a clear trend, and it's been mounting for a long time. The basic reason is that evil has gotten a lot of competition. Are schizophrenics possessed by the Devil? Raise your hand if you say yes. A century ago, countless more people would have raised their hands than today, when we use "sick" in place of "evil" for many things, including psychosis. The more replacements we find for evil, the weaker Satan grows. After all, the Devil is the embodiment of absolute evil, the kind that admits no other explanation....

Introduction: It has been twenty years since the late Allan Bloom shook the intellectual elite in this country with the opening line of The Closing of the American Mind: “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student in America believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” In one sentence our dirty little secret -- we believe in the truth that there is no truth -- was out. Why do we believe this? Bloom had that pegged too: Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all...

Proposition 8 opponents received permission Tuesday from the California Secretary of State's office to begin collecting petition signatures toward a repeal of the state's same-sex marriage ban. Wed, Mar. 11, 2009 Posted: 08:19 AM EDT Proposition 8 opponents received permission Tuesday from the California Secretary of State's office to begin collecting petition signatures toward a repeal of the state's same-sex marriage ban. The initiative would side step the issue of same-sex marriage by making all couples eligible for marriage benefits regardless of their sexual orientation. If approved, the initiative would strike the word "marriage" from all state laws and replace...

SACRAMENTO, March 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - California same-sex "marriage" supporters are collecting signatures to support a ballot initiative that would remove civil marriage from California law entirely, as well as the provision codifying marriage as between a man and a woman. The "Domestic Partnership Initiative" proposes to categorize all unions simply as "domestic partnerships," while retaining all the rights of marriage for heterosexual couples, and extending them to homosexual couples. According to the initiative's summary, "Legally speaking, 'Marriage' itself would become a social ceremony, recognized by only non-governmental institutions." State Attorney General Jerry Brown submitted the official title and summary...

In his latest “Memo from Cairo,” New York Times correspondent Michael Slackman virtually begs the Obama administration to avoid using the word “terrorist” in reference to Hamas and Hezbollah. According to Slackman... calling these groups “terrorists” turns off the Arab world, in which people view Israel as the “real terrorist,” whereas Hamas and Hezbollah are just “trying to liberate their countries.” In turn, intimates Slackman, using a “loaded word” like “terrorist” when describing Hamas or Hezbollah makes peace impossible. Let’s leave aside for a moment that Slackman has managed to pass off his own view on the mind-numbingly dull one-man’s-terrorist-is-another-man’s-freedom-fighter...

"Rename, then abort terrorists" Whether you call it liberalism or progressivism, it still remains a twisted world view where up is down, good is bad, guilt is innocence, and sinner is saint. Case and point: our fresh ingenue president, Barack Hussein Obama, has stated his desire to heal the nation's discourse and to obliterate America's red state/blue state divisions. Yet, Obama's first acts as president include opening the floodgates of taxpayer dollars to fund international abortions and coddling murderous terrorists. So, according to Obama's worldview, innocent unborn babies are not entitled to any due process or rights whatsoever. Yet, the...