Free Republic

<p>NEW YORK — The priest about to become the first openly gay Episcopal bishop said Tuesday that several Anglican leaders have appealed to him to step down, but the only thing that could sway him would be if he felt a personal call from God to stand aside.</p>

Excluding homosexuals does not reflect God's way, that of compassion, writes Dorothy McRae McMahon. The Bible is an amazing testimony to the wonder of the grace and faithfulness of God as people journeyed down the ages. It gives clues to the way we are to live with that God, but only clues. It takes little reading to discover that understandings on many issues, and particularly on human relationships, changed over the centuries, even in biblical times. We do not now have slaves and masters. We do not in our church believe that men are morally superior to women and thus...

BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) - A key suspect in last year's Bali bombings told an Indonesian court on Thursday he was proud of the attack that killed whites and that it served them right. Reuters Photo Amrozi, a 40-year-old mechanic, also said he had been involved in several bombings across Indonesia including a blast outside the home of a Philippine diplomat in 2000 that killed two people. Amrozi is charged with plotting, organizing and carrying out crimes of terror and causing mass casualties in the October 12 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. When asked...

May. 8, 2003 Croatia plans to build monument to honor its Nazis By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - ZAGREB, Croatia The Croatian government announced Thursday it plans to buy land in southern Austria to build a monument honoring thousands of Croat Nazi troops and civilians who were killed in the aftermath of World War II. The announcement came just a few days ahead of Sunday's anniversary of the 1945 killings of tens of thousands of Croat soldiers and civilians who fled to Austria in fear of reprisals from antifascists. They gathered in Bleiburg, a small town near the then-Yugoslav border, waiting...

According to the Weekly Standard and later echoed on MSNBC's Joe Scarborough Show, Sen. Tom Daschle — a member of American Life League's Deadly Dozen — has been sent a letter from his home diocese of Sioux Falls informing him he can no longer publicly identify himself as a member of the Catholic Church because of his unrepentant support of abortion and other pro-death legislation. "The recent actions involving Daschle are totally in agreement with the teachings of the Catholic Church and make crystal clear the point of our Deadly Dozen ad: you cannot be Catholic and pro-abortion," said Judie...

Mikhail Gorbachev is teaming up with former US president Bill Clinton and actress Sophia Loren to record a new version of the classic children's musical "Peter and the Wolf." Retitled "The Wolf and Peter", the remake of Sergei Prokoviev's tale will tell the story from the point of view of the wolf, faced with the encroachments of urbanisation on his dwindling forest habitat.