Free Republic

Crystal Dixon has run out of options. Dixon, the former associate vice president of human resources at the University of Toledo (UT), sued her former employer in 2008 after she was fired for publishing a column expressing her opinions on homosexuality. In February 2012, a federal judge ruled against Dixon. Later that year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit concurred with the lower court. Now, this week, the United States Supreme Court has declined to hear Dixon’s appeal. In her column, published in The Toledo Free Press, Dixon, who is black, had expressed her disagreement with comparisons...

After six years and hundreds of celebratory confections, it wasn’t the economy, the stiff competition, financing, or any of the other usual road bumps of building a new business that caused Sweet Cakes by Melissa—a husband-and-wife bakery in Portland, Oregon area—to close its doors at the end of the summer.Instead, it was the nationwide battle over same-sex marriage.In January, co-owner Aaron Klein had denied a request to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding. “The Bible tells us to flee from sin,” his wife and business namesake, Melissa Klein told a Fox News columnist recently. “I don’t think making a...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Elections: Latest Excuse to Kill ChristiansPosted By Raymond Ibrahim On September 18, 2013 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.In what seems to be a pattern in many Muslim nations of finding new pretexts to justify anti-Christian—and “anti-Other”—behavior, Egypt’s Christians and their churches are under attack, ostensibly because Christians joined the June 30 Revolution, which led to the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood.Lesser known is that, even before the revolution back during the 2012 presidential elections, Christians were often threatened and sometimes attacked simply for not voting...

Muslims in southern Egypt killed two Christian men for failing to pay them protection money. Muslims in the area are demanding Christians pay them "jizya," a kind of tax that Islamic law requires religious minorities to pay Muslims. However, the tax is so high many Christians simply can't afford it. The Voice of the Martyrs reports that a Muslim man demanded a Christian in a village in Assiut pay him nearly $1,500. The Christian sought help from local police but to no avail. When he failed to come up with the money, several Muslims went to his home and shot...

Christians in the United States are witnessing a subtle but mounting transformation in our relationship with the American empire. Some would say the changes are not so subtle. Believers have enjoyed an enviable status throughout the history of this country, largely due to our own efforts in helping to secure certain liberties during it’s founding decades. These “unalienable Rights” were seen, not as rights created by Government, but as gifts given to mankind by the Creator. The Bill of Rights, for example, was composed in order to impel the government to secure rights which already existed. This climate of liberty...

In his 1835 book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that for Americans, "equality is their idol." Among such a democratic people, he reports, "there are certain epochs at which the passion they entertain for it swells to the height of fury." They prefer equality in freedom, he noted, but if "they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery." Even barbarism, servitude, and poverty are acceptable offerings to "this irresistible passion." The same-sex marriage debate might have focused on the purpose of sexuality, or the nature of homosexuality, or the etiology of marriage. Instead, the dominant...

The New York Times story, "President Gains McCain's Backing on Syria Attack," is predictable, considering that Obama had invited Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to the White House for the specific purpose of supporting his proposed military strike on Syria. Obama has also asked the same two senators to travel to Egypt to undermine the military leaders who overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government there. What is lacking from the media coverage is any recognition that the inevitable result, according to congressional testimony, will be the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood and associated terrorist groups in Syria, and...

Syrian rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to dogs, according to a nun who says the West is ignoring atrocities committed by Islamic extremists. The nun said taxi driver Andrei Arbashe, 38, was kidnapped after his brother was heard complaining that fighters against the ruling regime behaved like bandits.

Christians in Egypt are under the worst persecution by Islamic radicals in recent memory, Syrian believers are displaced in massive numbers and the effort to assist them in both countries goes on despite tremendous upheaval in both nations. Most of the recent attention has been focused on Egypt. Christians have been in the Muslim Brotherhood’s cross-hairs since the 2011 Arab Spring, but the persecution has greatly intensified in the weeks following the July 3 coup that removed Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from power. The violence is a result of radical leaders blaming the coup on Christians. It’s a...

As church after church is put to the torch in Egypt by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, one of the things that is going up in flames is the reputation of President Obama. In the past 48 hours alone, some 57 Egyptian churches have been burned to the ground in the Nile valley. It will not be lost on the Egyptians that Mr. Obama has spent the crisis playing golf at Martha’s Vineyard. Scores of Christians are being consumed in this conflagration, some burned beyond recognition defending their churches, even as Mr. Obama’s much-despised envoy in Egypt,...

From Catholic World News (Aug. 16): Citing the Alien Tort Statute, which became law in 1789, a U.S. district judge has ruled that a Ugandan umbrella LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) organization may sue an American evangelical pastor in U.S. court for allegedly committing 'crimes against humanity.' The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) permits foreign citizens to sue U.S. citizens in U.S. courts for actions 'committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.' According to the court decision, Scott Lively, a Massachusetts pastor, reportedly traveled to Uganda, spoke out against homosexuality, linked...

The homofascist rainbow-shirts are at it again. They’ve unsheathed, once more, their anti-Christian long knives. Back in April, I wrote the following in a column headlined “Religious freedom and ‘gay marriage’ cannot coexist”: “‘Gay pride’ necessitates anti-Christian hate. It must. ‘Gay marriage’ and other ‘sexual orientation’-based laws do violence to freedom and truth. They are the hammer with which the postmodern left intends to bludgeon bloody religious liberty and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic.”

Due to a perceived slight against homosexuality, Senior Master Sgt. Phillip Monk is in a fight for his career. The Lackland Air Force base first sergeant was told by his commanding officer to clear out his office on Aug. 9. The point of contention reportedly is not about anything Monk said, but what he refused to say. "It's all because he didn't say anything wrong. He thought it," said Steven Branson, pastor of Village Parkway Baptist Church in San Antonio. Monk, his wife and their three teenage sons faithfully attend services each Sunday the pastor said. Branson said he has...

"The Islamists are taking revenge on us Christians": With these words the Coptic-Catholic Bishop of Assiut, Kyrillos William Samaan, commented on the latest Islamist attacks on Christians and Christian institutions in Egypt.The bishop made his comments while talking to international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) on Monday, August 12th.  The Bishop was referring among other things to events in the towns of Sohag, Fayum and Beni Suef and on the Sinai Peninsula, where churches have been attacked by Islamists and Christians have been threatened. There have also been fatalities. In the town of Sohag, there...

Dr. Kamil Sedik, secretary of the Congregational Council in Alexandria, has condemned repeated attacks by Islamist groups against Coptic Christians in Egypt, saying that authorities are permitting the violence by not providing adequate security for vulnerable Copts."Copts are subjected to violence by criminals, who were released from prison by deposed President Morsi, because of their [Copts] ideological affiliation," Sedik told Mideast Christian News. Moreover, Sedik accused government officials of failing to cope with criminal attacks against Copts. "The government does not provide security for Copts, but it tolerates prisoners who are under investigation," he said in reference to the meeting...

Once more we learn of military personnel being punished for causing homosexuals in the military to feel bad. From Fox News: An Army chaplain’s assistant said she was accused of creating a “hostile and antagonistic” environment after she posted a message on her personal Facebook page calling homosexuality a sin. The soldier, who asked not to be identified, said her commander ordered her to either remove the Facebook message or face a reduction in rank and pay. “I haven’t taken it down and I won’t take it down,” she told Fox News. “It is frustrating that people are trying to...

Vladimir Putin has urged the world’s political leaders to stop the violent persecutions against Christians that have erupted in many Middle Eastern countries. Speaking at a meeting with Orthodox Christian leaders in Moscow last week, the Russian President said he noted “with alarm” that “in many of the world’s regions, especially in the Middle East and in North Africa inter-confessional tensions are mounting, and the rights of religious minorities are infringed, including Christians and Orthodox Christians.” “This pressing problem should be a subject of close attention for the entire international community,” Putin said. “It is especially important today to make...

Wealthy gay dad, Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, says he and his civil partner Tony will go to court to force churches to host gay weddings. He told the Essex Chronicle that he will take legal action because “I am still not getting what I want”. A Government Bill legalising gay marriage passed Parliament recently but it included measures to protect churches from being forced to perform same-sex weddings. Challenge Mr Drewitt-Barlow said: “The only way forward for us now is to make a challenge in the courts against the church. “It is a shame that we are forced to take Christians into...

Wealthy gay dad, Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, says he and his civil partner Tony will go to court to force churches to host gay weddings. He told the Essex Chronicle that he will take legal action because “I am still not getting what I want”. A Government Bill legalising gay marriage passed Parliament recently but it included measures to protect churches from being forced to perform same-sex weddings. Challenge Mr Drewitt-Barlow said: “The only way forward for us now is to make a challenge in the courts against the church. “It is a shame that we are forced to take Christians into...

If President Eisenhower were alive today, the five-star general may be shocked to know that his own speeches are too offensive to be quoted in the military he used to command. A military chaplain has been taken to task for fulfilling the job description that most spiritual leaders (until recently) were hired to do: talk about faith. In a harmless post for his online website, "Chaplain's Corner," Lt. Col. Kenneth Reyes (USAF) of the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska wrote an inspirational piece called, "No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II." The phrase, which President Eisenhower...