Free Republic

Together with my good friend and occasional courtroom adversary David Boies, I am attempting to persuade a federal court to invalidate California's Proposition 8—the voter-approved measure that overturned California's constitutional right to marry a person of the same sex.... Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social...

Lucy Aharish is one of the most prominent television broadcasters in Israel—and the very first Arab Muslim news presenter on mainstream Hebrew-language Israeli television. Born and raised in a small Jewish town in Israel’s Negev desert, as one of the only Arab Muslim families, she has a unique lens through which to view the divisions in Israeli society, the complexity of the country’s national identity, and the Middle East more generally. Lucy has long been a vocal critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is equally critical of her fellow Arab Israelis, particularly of Arab violence and the Arab leadership...

An oxymoron is a rhetorical self-contradiction, like combining the word “gay” — meaning some peoples’ deliberate self-identification with the shameful, disease-spreading lifestyle of sodomy — with the word “pride.” Another example is defining the social goal of “diversity and inclusion” to require the active suppression and exclusion of pro-family Christians, Jews, Muslims and secular traditionalists. America is awash in delusions, contradictions and double standards these days as the crazies who stole the 2020 election continue their vain attempt to conform our institutions to their irrational worldview without collapsing it into chaos. Nowhere is that clown-show debacle more ludicrous than in...

Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” that voters would reject Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) “far-right fascism.” Frost said, “It’s exactly what Ron DeSantis has been looking to do anyway. It’s really behind the legislation, he’s looking to get rid of black history and black excellence in schools. That’s why he has no problem with this piece of art being taken away from elementary school kids. So, my message to the kids and my message to people in the state is continue to fight for a world we’re not banning books or banning poetry.”

British intelligence may have been leaked to Russia by an alleged German double-agent, an expert on Berlin’s spy services said. British spy chiefs are reportedly furious about the affair, which saw a senior figure inside Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) arrested shortly before Christmas. In one of the most spectacular double-agent scandals in decades, Carsten L, head of a division inside the BND’s signal intelligence wing, was arrested on charges of high treason in December. Germany believes that he was responsible for passing on highly sensitive battlefield information from the Ukraine war to the Russians. The case will likely have...

Are libertarianism and socialism diametrically opposed? The libertarian socialist would say no. The political philosophy of libertarian socialism categorically rejects state interference in social affairs and instead proposes the abolition of authoritarian institutions that inhibit freedom and justice. The rejection of state socialism and the current mixed economy define libertarian socialism. Instead, the libertarian socialism project calls for decentralized institutions that use direct democracy or voluntary associations to break up centralized institutions and institutions captured by rent-seeking capitalists.

NOTE: This is a fifteen year old article, but the songs are timeless On first glance, rock ’n’ roll music isn’t very conservative. It doesn’t fare much better on second or third glance (or listen), either. Neil Young has a new song called “Let’s Impeach the President.” Last year, the Rolling Stones made news with “Sweet Neo Con,” another anti-Bush ditty. For conservatives who enjoy rock, it isn’t hard to agree with the opinion Johnny Cash expressed in “The One on the Right Is on the Left”: “Don’t go mixin’ politics with the folk songs of our land / Just...

Prelates fail to answer if coronavirus is a divine punishmentMADRID (ChurchMilitant.com) - Reflecting on the global pandemic, a Spanish priest has charged that some bishops in the United States and Europe have ceased to address whether divine punishment exists, while they instead accommodate any sin, however severe. Fr. José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, a famed exorcist and an expert on the subject of the occult and demonic possession, said that many people have asked him whether the spread of the deadly virus is a divine punishment, a question he sought to answer in an online video. "You already know that I...

Being a celibate gay Christian means being an object of suspicion. The wider LGBTQ community sees you as shockingly conservative (“You think gay sex is wrong?”), while the wider evangelical community sees you as worryingly liberal (“You call yourself gay?”). One day, someone will be expressing disgust toward your “fundamentalist” beliefs. On the next, someone else is targeting your “perverted” sexual orientation. Disparate groups see you as an existential threat, and their attacks can be fierce, as recent online responses to conferences like Revoice and ministries like Spiritual Friendship and Living Out would attest. Researchers Mark Yarhouse and Olya Zaporozhets...

In 2012, the last election Democrats won, a headline from their convention read: "Democrats boo God." In 2016, they heckled a preacher during the opening prayer. It's a perception they've been trying to change since, especially on the 2020 campaign trail.

Older people are the fastest-growing group of cannabis users, as stigma fades and some seek an alternative to prescription drugs As attitudes towards cannabis shift, the fastest-growing group of users is over 50 – and marijuana’s popularity among seniors is beginning to change the American experience of old age. Why are more seniors getting high? It might make more sense to ask: “Why not?” As adults reach retirement, they age out of drug tests and have far more time on their hands. Some feel liberated to abandon long-held proprieties. Elegant vape pens and other attractive, discreet products have helped de...

Hypocrite – hip-uh-krit "a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc. that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs."Donald Trump has been president for a year, yet my social media news feed and email inbox still overflow with stupefied left-wing evangelicals who hate Trump (literally) and loathe the conservative Christians that voted for him.So then, where was the outrage from the same better-than-thou Chardonnay-swirling left-wing evangelical crowd when Christians voted for Obama?It's obvious that their condemnation has less to do with evangelicalism or Christianity and more to...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday that it is "distressing" that non-criminal illegal immigrants are being arrested. [Snip] In New York City, ICE arrested 156 non-criminal illegal immigrants, more than double the amount for the same period last year. De Blasio said in a radio interview with WNYC that "it's very distressing, Brian, to hear that ICE is picking up people who are law abiding and contributing to the community."

Since President Donald Trump's election, monthly lectures on social justice at the 600-seat Gothic chapel of New York's Union Theological Seminary have been filled to capacity with crowds three times what they usually draw. In January, the 181-year-old Upper Manhattan graduate school, whose architecture evokes London's Westminster Abbey, turned away about 1,000 people from a lecture on mass incarceration. In the nine years that Reverend Serene Jones has served as its president, she has never seen such crowds. "The election of Trump has been a clarion call to progressives in the Protestant and Catholic churches in America to move out...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Trump administration is rounding up and deporting "law-abiding" illegal immigrants and is demanding "details" about who is being targeted in a series of recent raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. "I have always supported smart immigration enforcement that helps to keep our country safe, but raids targeting law-abiding immigrants and treating those with traffic violations the same as murderers and robbers will only achieve the opposite," Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement Monday.

The leaked video of Donald Trump’s lecherous musings had only been on the internet for a few hours Friday when the Mormon backlash began. “I’m out,” Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz told a local news anchor in Salt Lake City. “I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine.” The interview made Chaffetz the first Republican in Congress to officially retract his endorsement of Trump, and by next day he would be joined by dozens of his colleagues across the country. But in...

Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, M.Sp.S. of San Antonio has shown the kind of leadership so badly needed in this election season. When the oxymoronic Catholics of Choice published a advertisement in the San Antonio newspaper (September 12), Archbishop Garcia-Siller answered with the following broadside. This statement has the ring of a bishop who has had enough of the nonsense and wants to set the record straight. Thank you Archbishop Garcia-Siller! (Italics are added for emphasis.) ARCHDIOCESE RESPONDS TO CATHOLICS FOR CHOICE ADVERTISEMENT IN SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS An organization called Catholics for Choice placed a full-page advertisement in the Sept. 12 edition...

had planned to comment today about Wednesday’s GOP debate. But after watching it I thought, “What’s the use in devoting a whole column to it when it can be summed up in a couple of paragraphs?” The military-industrial complex should feel secure. Regardless of which faux-conservative takes the nomination, more money to the MIC and more wars are in our future. For a while there, I wasn’t sure whether I was watching a campaign for U.S. president or Israel prime minister; and for some of the candidates I’m still not sure (Huckabee, Cruz, Rubio, Christie, particularly). But overall, there was...

 I had moths, I called the kids, "I'm bombing." They STILL laugh about it, I have my own NSA file having used the b.o.m.b. word on the phone. Hillary must have "an exclusive understanding" with the spooks. She's not worried. You know full well, there's no way we'll ever hear anything about what Hillary personally, directly did with the e-mails, certainly no one will admit to any directions she gave."A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal...

Third annual 300 Man March held in wake of recent violenceBALTIMORE —Hundreds of people marched through the streets of Baltimore Friday night calling for an end to the violence that has plagued the city in recent months.Those who marched are the dedicated foot soldiers of Baltimore's constant war on violence. Friday night marked the third annual 300 Men March, a shoulder-to-shoulder showing of Baltimore unity against what has plagued the city for years. "This year's march is simply about the 12 young children that have been murdered in our city this year," said Baltimore City Councilman Brandon Scott, D-District 2.