Free Republic

The marriages of more than 170 gay couples from New York who wed in Massachusetts before last July are valid because New York had not yet explicitly banned same-sex marriages, a Massachusetts judge ruled. Couples are barred from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriages would be prohibited in their home states. The New York Court of Appeals ruled against same-sex marriages on July 6, 2006. The Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders had asked for clarification of the status of New York couples who married in Massachusetts before that ruling. Massachusetts became the first state in the country to allow...

May 7, 2007 -- GOV. Spitzer's plan to legalize gay marriage is dividing Democrats, harming Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions, and handing Republicans their first strong campaign issue in some time, officials told The Post. "This could turn out to be the Democrats' Achilles' heel," crowed Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, a Schenectady Republican who has seen a sharp drop in the Legislature's GOP membership in recent years. -- SNIP -- His action forced the Assembly's majority Democrats, who have avoided taking sides on the polarizing issue for years, to confront what is expected to be a bitter internal debate...

Marine General Peter Pace – decorated war hero and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – continues to find himself fending off a vicious and unfamiliar rapid fire assault from his extreme left-flank. In recent days, the good general has been widely and unjustly vilified by America’s self-appointed thought police as they step up their unified and widespread campaign of homofascist speech enforcement. During a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune, Pace violated one of the cardinal rules of political correctness by noting that, “homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral.” While defending the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell”...

If the push for same-sex marriage was really about equal rights, then it would be a dead issue. Connecticut enacted its civil-unions bill in 2005 to give homosexuals all the rights and privileges of marriage, except the moniker. However, since same-sex marriage is about society signing off on immoral acts, the Judiciary Committee, cochaired by a homosexual Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, has proposed making marriage "the legal union of two persons," striking language that reserves it for one man and one woman. If the debate was about rights, there would be no need for the specious argument that same-sex unions...

Speaking for the second time this month in front of a predominantly gay audience, Hillary Clinton assured the crowd at a Gay Men’s Health Crisis dinner at Chelsea Piers that help was on the way. She guaranteed her support of their issues “when I’m President,” and pointedly referred to a special AIDS grant she pushed through Congress for the first time “since the end of the last Clinton administration.” The crowd laughed appreciatively at what was at once a well-worn bit about the Clinton restoration, and an acknowledgement of the influence of the gay fund-raisers and activists who may put...

Yes, Rudy Giuliani Is a Conservative Steven Malanga And an electable one, at that. Not since Teddy Roosevelt took on Tammany Hall a century ago has a New York politician closely linked to urban reform looked like presidential timber. But today ex–New York mayor Rudy Giuliani sits at or near the top of virtually every poll of potential 2008 presidential candidates. Already, Giuliani’s popularity has set off a “stop Rudy” movement among cultural conservatives, who object to his three marriages and his support for abortion rights, gay unions, and curbs on gun ownership. Some social conservatives even dismiss his achievement...

State’s attorney general says there’s no reason to deny them recognition. PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch says his state should recognize the gay marriages of state employees performed in Massachusetts. A letter dated yesterday from Lynch says Rhode Island prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and also extends benefits such as health insurance to domestic partners of state employees. And because there’s no Rhode Island law banning gay marriage — Lynch says there’s no reason to deny recognition of same-sex unions performed in Massachusetts. Massachusetts is the only state where gay marriage is legal.

BOSTON, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Massachusetts' lawmakers on Thursday took a giant step toward killing a proposal to ban gay marriage in the only U.S. state where it is legal. With protesters on both sides of the debate rallying outside the gold-domed statehouse, lawmakers voted 109 to 87 to delay a decision on whether to back a constitutional amendment that would have given voters a chance to ban gay marriage. Gay rights advocates cheered the move, seen as a crushing blow to opponents of gay marriage who had gathered 170,000 signatures in a petition that asked lawmakers to put the...

In the final stretch before Election Day, embattled Republicans feel as though they have received a gift from an unlikely donor: advocates of gay marriage. They think that last week’s ruling by New Jersey’s Supreme Court ordering equal rights for gay couples — seven of whom had sued for the right to marry — is re-energizing Christian conservatives, who had been losing interest in politics. Republicans predict that could draw more conservatives to the polls next week, especially in the eight states that will vote on proposed amendments to their state constitutions to ban gay marriage. Among the eight states...

When all the fanatical Christians disappear, will traffic finally improve? Wait, did I miss it? Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast, a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer, all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta? I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were...

No wait, not six. To hell with that. Make it 10. Ten bucks a gallon, no matter what the going rate for a barrel of light sweet crude. That would so completely, violently, brilliantly do it. Revolutionize the country. Firebomb our pungent stasis. Change everything. Don't you agree? Here's what we could do: Give gas discounts to cab drivers (at least initially) and metro transit systems and low-income folks, those who have to drive their busted-up '78 Honda Civics to their jobs scrubbing restaurant toilets and flipping burgers and vacuuming the residual cocaine from the seat cushions of numb SUV...

Think sex and drugs destroy America? Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls" There are these things. These unholy events called "Purity Balls" and you should probably fall to your knees right this minute and thank a merciful and lubricious and happily polyamorous God that you do not know what they are and that you have access right this minute to vast quantities of wine to deflect their nasty karmic arrows because, you know, oh my God. But hey, free country. Purity Balls. No, not some sort of newfangled spherical chastity device to be inserted using vacuum tubes and pulleys,...

It's a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world's most toxic retailer. Did hell just freeze over? Sometimes you just have to let the possibility breathe. Sometimes you just have to allow that something grand and good and healthy might actually be born from the bowels of the dank and ravenous megacorporate world, like flowers from a dung heap, like vodka from old potatoes, even if it comes right alongside the nastiest, most abusive federal environmental policy you will see in your lifetime. Take Wal-Mart, the most famously offensive, town-destroying, junk-purveying, labor-abusing, sweatshop-supporting, American-job-killing, soul-numbing, seizure-inducing, hope-curdling retailer in the known...

HOT Oscar tip Heath Ledger yesterday compared US bans on his gay cowboy film to racism. Critics' Choice Awards Picture Gallery Ledger said he was not surprised a Utah cinema had banned Brokeback Mountain, which depicts a lifelong love affair between two Montana cowboys. "I heard a while ago that West Virginia was going to ban it. But that's a state that was lynching people only 25 years ago, so that's to be expected," Ledger said. "Personally, I don't think the movie is (controversial) but I think maybe the Mormons in Utah do. I think it's hilarious and very immature...

Yes, I know you were drunk. Must've been. Either drunk or on serious meds and/or you just didn't give much of a damn about anything anyway because you're just one of those people, one of those types who comes lurching around the city like a chunk of numbed pain in your big-ass mid-'80s burgundy car with the white top and chrome bumpers -- an old Cadillac? Monte Carlo? -- early last Sunday morning to wreak casual havoc. Is that about right? Do you remember any of it? Here is what I'm guessing: probably not. Let me tell you what happened,...

Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe? Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost? And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob...

Apparently, it wasn't just "invade Iraq and Afghanistan in my name." A special report: Scene: White House private residence, night, not long ago. President Bush present in his most favoritest guns 'n' bunnies PJs. Laura asleep, knocked out by a combination of too much Good Housekeeping and excessive hair-spray fumes. Suddenly, a burst of black smoke. A deep, resonant voice speaks: "Psst! George! God here, taking a break from supervising the well-being of eight billion troubled souls along with infinite galaxies of unimaginable vastness to speak with you directly one more time because, well, you're special, aren't you, George? Yes...

Leather, techno, sex & war: more only-in-SF juice to make you proud. Take that, uptight neocons. It was the moment when we walked by a jam-packed S.F. City Hall and realized it was open to host a VIP techno dance party, while immediately outside its gilded doors upward of 50,000 revelers wandered and shimmied and flaunted their costumes and drank nasty Red Bull cocktails in the huge Civic Center plaza for the third annual Love Parade, everyone baring flesh and shaking their groove thangs to any one of 200 world-class (well, some of them) DJs spinning their wares on over...

At last, one scientist BushCo will definitely -- albeit resentfully -- listen to. Sometimes. So now we know. This is what it takes. This is how far the nation has to crumble and this is how many people have to die and this is how many tens of billions it has to cost and this is how far his dirt-low poll numbers have to fall before Bush will finally come out and say he agrees with one of those godforsaken gul-dang book-learned scientist types. You know the ones. Those informed and well-educated data-crunchers he normally despises like a kid hates...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...