Free Republic

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A Grand Rapids church is working to change the relationship between churches and the LGBTQ community. The First United Methodist Church on Fulton Street and Barclay Avenue hosted their fourth ever inclusive Communion service on Sunday night. This comes after Kent County Judge Sara Smolenski says she was denied Communion at her home church for being gay. Smolenski says she’s been a parishioner at St. Stephen Catholic Church in East Grand Rapids for 62 years and this has never happened to her before. “Why exclude anyone when they have sincere desire to come to God’s...

LANSING, Michigan, March 13, 2019 — Republican state legislators in Michigan introduced bills to ban the dismemberment of unborn babies and restrict late-term abortion. House Bills 4320 and 4321 would amend Michigan’s ban on partial-birth abortions by including the dismemberment abortion procedure, also known as a dilation and evacuation abortion (D&E). The ban has stood since 2011. In a press release, Right to Life of Michigan president Barbara Listing said, “These bills are Michigan’s response to New York’s abortion law and other states seeking to explicitly allow abortions through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason.” HB 4321 was...

Principal photography has started on the six-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic War And Peace which is being made by BBC Cymru Wales in partnership with The Weinstein Company and BBC Worldwide/Lookout Point. Paul Dano, Lily James and James Norton are already aboard to star, with new additions to the cast including Jim Broadbent, Gillian Anderson, Brian Cox and Ken Stott. The epic drama is written by House Of Cards and Bridget Jones‘ Andrew Davies. Anderson was nominated for a Golden Globe for her turn in his 2007 adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House.