Free Republic

One of the thorniest issues on the American political scene came to the Midwest this week, and it arrived in typical Midwestern fashion. No one seemed to fuss too much about it. When Iowa clerks began issuing same-sex marriage licenses Monday, they were not greeted with long lines or large protests. And despite the historic nature of Iowa being the first Midwestern state to approve same-sex marriage, Minnesota gay and lesbian couples are not rushing across the border to get hitched. Instead, they are waiting -- perhaps patiently, perhaps stubbornly -- for gay marriage to happen here.... There is precedent...

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The village mayor who challenged New York law by attempting to marry gay couples will face trial, the state's highest court ruled Friday. New Paltz Village Mayor Jason West faces 24 misdemeanor counts of violating the state's domestic relations law by marrying couples without marriage licenses last year. West's defiance of a law that state officials say forbids gay marriage made the little Hudson Valley village a flashpoint in the national gay marriage debate. The state Court of Appeals on Friday refused West's request to hear the case first, avoiding the usual process of hearing cases in...

The Vatican's top family affairs official on Monday blasted Spain's law allowing gays to wed as a destruction of the marriage institution and urged Christians around the world to oppose such unions. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, also said adoption of children by same sex couples was "moral violence" against children and jeopardised their personality and stability.

Massachusetts courts plunge down slippery slope of own creation Posted: November 26, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern By Alan Sears© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com "Judicial activism" is innocuous when compared to what the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did last week by kicking us further down the slippery slope, when it held, "We construe civil marriage to mean the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others." The court exercised a lack of proper judicial restraint by utterly ignoring the will of the people and the constitutionally created path to social change: legislation. Recent polls report that more than 60 percent of...

MONTREAL -- Swingers clubs will spring up across Canada because of a judge ruling their activities are not necessarily illegal, the head of a swingers group said yesterday. Municipal court Judge Denis Boisvert found five people guilty of swinging-related offences, but decided "contemporary Canadian society tolerates swinging and swingers clubs if the sexual acts take place in private." Jean Hamel, president of the 8,000-member Quebec Swingers Association, said Boisvert's ruling will have national significance. "I don't think more clubs will open in Quebec but I think it will open doors for other places in Canada, like Toronto." Judge Boisvert found...