Free Republic

A court case that already has been in the system for years is being pushed up to the level of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and it is expected ultimately to be before the Supreme Court, where it could be a vehicle to overturn that institution's creation of same-sex marriage for the nation. That 2015 ruling, the Obergefell case, has been described by no less than the chief justice of the high court as unrelated to the U.S. Constitution, and exploded limits on same-sex marriage in dozens of states. ... The case at hand is the attack on...

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...

On Wednesday, Thailand’s House of Representatives voted 400-10 in favor of same-sex “marriage.” Only 10 lawmakers voted against the bill. Two abstained and three didn’t vote. The country’s Senate “rarely rejects any legislation that passes the lower house,” the Associated Press noted. Once it passes the Senate, it then must be approved by the majority-Buddhist country’s king. In addition to redefining marriage, the bill “extends all rights and protections contained in the Civil and Commercial Code to LGBTI+ persons,” the pro-LGBT group “Fortify Rights” said in a press release. The group’s lobbying to add the “gender-neutral language of ‘parent’ addition...

If Christians want to convey love, there are other — and truer — ways of doing so than attending a celebration of sin.Alistair Begg, a 71-year-old evangelical Scottish pastor of Cleveland’s Parkside Church, who has an influential radio ministry called “Truth For Life,” should repent of the dangerous advice he gave on his program.In response to a question from a grandmother as to whether she should attend her grandson’s wedding to “a transgender person,” Begg said that, so long as the grandson knows that she “can’t countenance … the choices that he has made in life,” she should “go to...

If you have followed my writing and speaking over the decades, you will know that Catholicism has not been a focus of my ministry, either praising it or criticizing it. At the same time, I recognize the important role of the Catholic Church in standing for the sanctity of life and the meaning of marriage. That’s what makes the recent pronouncement of Pope Francis, allowing priests to “bless” same-sex couples, especially distressing. What act of apostasy will be next?My Catholic colleague John Zmirak wrote on Tuesday, “Today I got one of those emails nobody wants to receive. You know, the...

According to much of what's read in the media and among some advocates, the Vatican's changed! It's finally come around to embracing the LGBTQ+ agenda, and is now offering blessings for gay couples for inclusivity's sake, and who knows, soon may be offering gay marriages! Here is some of the cheering from Christopher Lamb at CNN:With five words, uttered right at the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis changed the Catholic conversation about LGBTQ+ people. In 2013, when asked by a journalist about gay priests, the pope famously replied: “Who am I to judge?”Over the last decade the pope has...

Rabbi David Wolpe is stepping down from the antisemitism advisory committee at Harvard University, citing “events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony” of the university’s president, Claudine Gay, during a congressional hearing this week on campus antisemitism. “Without rehashing all of the obvious reasons that have been endlessly adumbrated online, and with great respect for the members of the committee, the short explanation is that both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped,” Wolpe wrote Thursday on X, formerly Twitter. .....

Five years after decriminalizing sodomy, the justices on India’s Supreme Court unanimously declined to legalize same-sex marriage, leaving the issue for the nation’s Parliament to decide. Tuesday’s ruling came after listening to arguments for and against same-sex “marriage” last spring. During those hearings, “the government argued that a marriage is only between a biological male and a biological woman, adding that same-sex marriages went against religious values and that the petitions reflected only ‘urban elitist views,’” according to an AP report. “Religious groups too had opposed same-sex unions, saying they went against Indian culture.” Attorneys representing those in favor of...

In 2014, I attended Matthew Vines’s conference on the Bible and homosexuality. His stated goal was to “promote inclusion of LGBTQ people by reforming church teaching.” The organization he started, The Reformation Project, teaches that homosexual sex and same-sex marriage are biblically permissible, and its goal to mainstream this theology into the church is overt and clear.Fast-forward to last month, when I attended the Unconditional Conference put on by Embracing the Journey (ETJ). Hosted by nationally known pastor Andy Stanley and held at his church, which boasts a weekly attendance of nearly 40,000 people, the event sought to create a...

ROME—Pope Francis softened the Vatican’s ban on blessing same-sex couples, saying that priests may use their discretion in giving such blessings, so long as they don’t imply a same-sex union is equivalent to a heterosexual marriage. The pope’s statement, in a letter released by the Vatican on Monday, marks a significant shift in the Catholic Church’s stance on blessing gay relationships. Its release comes on the eve of a major Vatican meeting that will consider possible changes to church teaching and practice on matters such as homosexuality and women’s ordination. Catholic priests in Germany and some other northern European countries...

New Pew Research Center polling revealed a range of opinions about open marriages among Americans across various demographic groups, with the LGBTQ+ community accepting this relationship arrangement at significantly higher levels than other groups. (Snip) The survey revealed a stark contrast between acceptance rates based on sexual orientation. Bisexual, lesbian, and gay adults expressed significantly greater acceptance, at 75 percent, than heterosexual adults, at 29 percent. Even when accounting for age differences, this discrepancy persists.

A federal jury has awarded $100,000 to a same-sex couple who sued a former county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue them a marriage license, claiming that doing so would violate her religious beliefs. Kim Davis, the former clerk in Rowan County, Ky., was sued by two same-sex couples to whom she refused to grant marriage licenses. The district court found Davis personally liable in both cases, but only awarded damages in one. In the case Ermold v. Davis, the jury awarded $50,000 to each of the plaintiffs, David Ermold and David Moore, according to attorneys for Davis. No...

The Catholic Church doesn’t need to bless same-gender unions. The Southern Baptist Church doesn’t. The United Methodist Church doesn’t. No church needs to. God already blesses them—that is, if God is love in the way these churches all claim that God is. If God is really love, if that truly is the essence of the Divine, then God is for same-gender marriage, non-heteronormative marriages for the same reason God is for any loving, respectful, interdependent union. If God is love, God is for a mutually-beneficial relationship between two adult people; where they each find connection, affection, and devotion in the...

Estonia’s parliament passed on Tuesday a law legalizing same-sex marriage, becoming the first ex-Soviet country to do so. Two adults will be able to marry “regardless of their gender,” after the parliament approved amendments to the country’s Family Law Act, according to a press statement. The amended act will go into effect from January 1, 2024. The amendments to the Family Law Act also mean that same-sex couples can now adopt children. In Estonia, only a married couple can adopt a child, although single gay, lesbian and bisexual people can also petition to adopt. “Everyone should have the right to...

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Has the LGBTQ+ et al movement hit a ceiling — and has it sowed the seeds of its decline? For the first time since Gallup began polling on the question of same-sex relationships, American public approval of their morality suffered a statistically significant decline, falling seven points to its lowest level in four years. And while that decline has a strong partisan flavor, it’s also falling among its traditional allies.First, the overall results show a sharp drop in support in the overall population:Americans’ views about the morality of a number of behaviors and practices are...

NEW YORK, May 19 (C-Fam) The Biden administration is pressing countries to adopt homosexual marriage as a human right. This new development comes during the latest cycles of the UN’s Universal Periodic Review. U.S. officials called on the government of Serbia to “legalize same-sex unions” last week during the latest round of the process where governments criticize each other on questions of human rights. The Biden administration also called on Korea and Japan to “provide legal recognition of same-sex marriage.” The Biden administration claims homosexual marriage or unions are required by human rights law “to guarantee equal protection under the...

Conservative body in Church of England encourages dioceses to protest, and says opposition is growingConservative clergy and parishioners have launched a small but vocal revolt against the Church of England’s plan to offer to bless the civil marriages of same-sex couples, a move that some Christians believe is contrary to biblical teaching. In Buckinghamshire, a large group parish plans to refuse to offer blessings to same-sex couples in its seven churches and is taking steps to withhold its annual contribution of £235,000 to the diocese of Oxford in protest. A group of traditionalist clergy in the City of London have...

ndia's Supreme Court on Monday said a five-judge bench will start hearing final arguments over granting legal recognition to same-sex marriages on April 18, proceedings of which will be live-streamed on its website and Youtube. The case is being seen as a milestone event for LGBT rights in the country. India's top court decriminalised homosexuality in 2018 by scrapping a colonial-era ban on gay sex. But the government said it opposes recognising same-sex marriage and urged the Supreme Court to reject challenges to the current legal framework lodged by LGBT couples. "When the question of granting recognition, legal sanction to...

A majority of members in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriageJapanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida dismissed a close aide following media reports accusing him of making derogatory remarks against sexual minorities. Masayoshi Arai who served as an executive secretary to Kishida had given out off-the-record comments to the press on Feb. 3 highlighting his reluctance to “not even want to look at” sexual minorities, The Asahi Shimbun reported on Feb. 4. Kishida told the press that Arai’s statements were absolutely against his government’s stance for an inclusive Japanese society. “My administration has made...

NEW DELHI (AP) — Utkarsh Saxena and Ananya Kotia’s love story began just like any other college romance. Except no one else knew about the gay couple’s relationship. It was 2008. Homosexuality was yet to gain a degree of acceptance in deeply conservative India, with many gay couples facing stigma and isolation. So Saxena and Kotia took their time, watching from a distance how people’s acceptance of homosexuality was changing. “We were actually quite scared about the consequences,” said Saxena, a public policy scholar at the University of Oxford. “We were very fragile and vulnerable, a young couple figuring out...