Free Republic

The longtime leader of the Marijuana Policy Project says that after helping legalize pot in 10 states, he’s decided to spearhead a national push to legalize prostitution. Prostitution is against the law in all 50 states, with the exception of some Nevada counties. Rob Kampia, a savvy political campaigner who grew the MPP from a low-profile nonprofit organization into a well-funded vehicle for designing state political campaigns, “came out” in an interview with the Washington Examiner as a someone who has paid for sex himself. “It’s important, like the gay rights movement. ... If everyone knows someone who is gay,...

Look, you can be as close with any consenting adult as you like. I sure don't care what they're doing behind closed doors, either- why let things you cannot possibly control bother you? But 'marriage' exists for the purpose of creating families and providing a stable environment for the raising of children- and deep down, everybody knows it... Government needs to step-away from the moral side of this topic -which is really none of it's concern- and issue ANY and all couples 'civil partnership' arrangements, as is done in -of all places- France.  People can pick whatever church they like...

When the ACLU of Colorado likened a baker who won't supply cakes for gay weddings to a police officer who refuses to protect a church or synagogue, it blurred the distinction between private action and state action, which is vital to a free society. Conservatives who defend Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who last week went to jail rather than issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, are making the same mistake. Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said a federal judge's decision to hold Davis in contempt of court amounted to "the...

Imagine waking up to the news that a Quaker county sheriff is denying concealed carry permits to citizens because of his religious objection to violence; or, a Muslim DMV supervisor in Dearborn, Michigan has ordered his staff to refuse to issue driver’s licenses to women out of a religious objection to women behind the wheel. These are among the realities that await should we make Kim Davis, the embattled County Clerk from Rowan County, Kentucky, an archetype for “religious freedom” in America. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson replied to a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in which he...

Reason magazine went out on a limb recently and published an article entitled “Privatizing Marriage Is a Terrible Idea,” by Shikha Dalmia. She presented an argument that is boldly counter-intuitive for many libertarians these days: that abolishing state-recognized marriage would increase government interference in our lives rather than reduce it. Dalmia is absolutely correct about this. And it would behoove anyone who truly stands for limited government to consider her points thoughtfully and soberly. The libertarian default position that goes by the slogan “let’s just get the government out of the marriage business” is short on substance. If it sounds...

Standing Athwart the March of History, Yelling, “Stop! Wait for Me!” With its managing editor endorsing same-sex marriage, will National Review join the ranks of the Church's persecutors? ... For many of us, National Review is indispensable daily reading. It hosts many of conservatism’s most gifted writers. Indeed, The Stream is proud to publish columns by such NR stalwarts as Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry and Kathryn Lopez. This is why the publication of a long essay defending same-sex marriage by National Review’s managing editor Jason Lee Steorts is so distressing. Steorts defends both same-sex “marriage” and, by implication, sexual relations...

Submission to Governing Authorities Romans 13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For...

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is expected to announce a presidential bid, says if the Supreme Court rules same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional, then it will be time for Republicans to move on. Graham told Boston Herald radio on Monday that society is changing and a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and woman is no longer possible. “Well, can you be for traditional marriage? Yes. Am I for traditional marriage? Yes, I believe marriage has stood the test of time between a man and a woman, ordained by God, and that’s — most societies have been organized...

Nearly fifteen years ago, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe, with 1 percent of the population addicted to heroin. They had tried a drug war, and the problem just kept getting worse. So they decided to do something radically different. They resolved to decriminalize all drugs...

Washington (CNN)Rand Paul isn't endorsing same-sex marriage, but said Sunday that "people ought to be treated fairly under the law." The Kentucky Republican senator who launched his 2016 presidential campaign this week talked about the semantics of marriage equality in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." He said the decision on whether to allow same-sex marriage should be left to the states, and that he believes in "the traditional religious connotation" to marriage -- which religious conservatives believe should be reserved for one man and one woman. "I also believe people ought to be treated...

“With marijuana,” declare William J. Bennett and Robert A. White in Going to Pot, their new prohibitionist screed, “we have inexplicably suspended all the normal rules of reasoning and knowledge.” You can’t say they didn’t warn us. The challenge for Bennett, a former drug czar and secretary of education who makes his living nowadays as a conservative pundit and talk radio host, and White, a New Jersey lawyer, is that most Americans support marijuana legalization, having discovered through direct and indirect experience that cannabis is not the menace portrayed in decades of anti-pot propaganda. To make the familiar seem threatening...

My daughter will turn 19 this month. She is our fifth child. She has also been the most worrying to us as she started using drugs a long time ago. She said she first smoked weed at age 12. Since then she has gone on the try many other drugs to include meth, cocaine, pills and LSD and a few others I can’t name. Last year she was in intensive care for 8 days. She has also been in jail about seven or eight times and gone through rehab twice. She is currently living with her mother and I at...

President Barack Obama continues to speak out against mass incarceration, the devastating impact of our drug policies on communities of color and his expectation that marijuana legalization will continue to spread. Obama's comments came today during his YouTube interviews with YouTube bloggers, Bethany Mota, GloZell Green and Hank Green. Some Obama nuggets from today's interview include this on marijuana: "What you're seeing now is Colorado, Washington through state referenda, they're experimenting with legal marijuana," the president said in response to a question from host Hank Green. "The position of my administration has been that we still have federal laws that...

"Why I hate cops- they roll heavier than we did outside the wire downrange, they use helicopters and machine guns and militarized stuff and drive tanks into crowds..."

Laws banning incest between brothers and sisters in Germany could be scraped after a government ethics committee said the they were an unacceptable intrusion into the right to sexual self-determination. “Criminal law is not the appropriate means to preserve a social taboo,” the German Ethics Council said in a statement. “The fundamental right of adult siblings to sexual self-determination is to be weighed more heavily than the abstract idea of protection of the family.” Their intervention follows a notorious case in which a brother and sister living as partners in Saxony had four children together. The couple had been raised...

but pedophiles can now flourish in this liberal cesspool. State does not require prison for people guilty of creating child porn By Jordan Steffen The Denver Post On the computers in his Aurora apartment, Timothy Robinson collected thousands of images and videos of children being raped and assaulted. Less than 10 miles away, David Moe stashed child pornography on hundreds of DVDs and multiple computers in his Denver home. Both men spent more than a decade collecting the images and videos, meticulously cataloging and labeling their collections. Both had a preferred age and hair color for the boys and girls...

Attorney Gen. Eric Holder on Thursday announced a review of racial bias within the nation’s law enforcement agencies, further expanding the federal response to last month’s fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teen in Missouri. The three-year initiative will include five "major activities" in yet unidentified U.S. cities, undertaken by a consortium of criminal justice experts funded through a $4.75 million grant. The effort, which will also involve testing policing strategies and providing training, is meant to develop a strategy to combat bias within police forces around the country. Holder said the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown highlighted the...

A commission composed mostly of former world leaders will recommend Tuesday that governments move beyond legalizing marijuana and decriminalize and regulate the use of most other illegal drugs, including heroin and cocaine. The international drug-control system is broken, says a report to be released Tuesday in New York by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Governments should be allowed wide latitude to experiment with the regulation of drugs, except for the most lethal, says the commission, whose 21 members include former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, and former presidents such as Brazil´s...

<p>That’s what the Berkeley City Council in California has unanimously approved, ordering medical marijuana dispensaries to donate 2 percent of their stash to patients making less than $32,000 a year.</p> <p>The new welfare program in the liberal-leaning city is set to launch in August 2015.</p>

High hopes for tax money isn’t as expected as the state’s legal marijuana industry isn’t bringing in as much money as anticipated. In fact, tax revenue is way below expectations. When voters approved recreational marijuana sales the state predicted it would pull in more than $33 million in new taxes in the first six months. The actual revenue came up more than $21 million short. The problem is that buying pot is less expensive on the streets where people don’t have to pay taxes or fees. Medical marijuana is also less expensive than recreational pot, so those with medical cards...