Free Republic

There's been a whole lot of talking going on regarding GOProud's participation and sponsorship of this year's CPAC convention. There've been numerous pundits spouting off about it. There've been interviews galore on the subject. There've been memos. There've been boycotts. There's been a lot of liberal drooling over the prospect of a conservative split of gigantic proportion. Yet, there is something fundamental missing in this big, fat heap of internecine squabbling. What will GOProud bring to the conservative table? So far, fiscal conservatives of the libertarian bent have sought to shame social conservatives into silence and forced acceptance of GOProud....

As our annual CPAC gathering kicks off today with the sponsorship of the gay Republican GoProud organization, it is important to understand something about socially liberal "conservatives".  They don't exist. Period. (O.K. there is Jeff Flake on DADT, but he is still 100% pro life). American conservatism is comprised of three indissoluble principles; social values, national defense, and classic economic liberalism.  A movement that includes those who categorically reject one of those ethos is not a big tent.  It is a circus.  That is because those who reject social values or national defense will indubitably reject fiscal conservatism as well. ...

Former Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) kicked off The FAMiLY Leader’s Presidential Lecture Series to a crowd of approximately 150 people gathered at Pella Christian High School in Pella, IA today. Governor Pawlenty in a press conference before the event explained that he was delighted to be participate in this series to share his views about the continuing importance of families in our society.

Social conservatism has long allowed itself to be painted as bloodless, largely irrelevant political Protestantism; an alliance of Evangelicals who have climbed into bed with the most myopic fringe movements in America. At the same time we have allowed the Left to co-opt issues that are central to achieving the goals of social conservatism: maintaining the traditions and values of Western Civilization in general and America (the pinnacle of Western civilization) in particular. While we find a hundred different ways to disapprove of gays or pornography or the idea that someone, somewhere is enjoying themselves in ways we find unseemly,...

...Yet, as is always the case with popular movements whose star is rising, there are always those who want to hitch their wagons and use the movement to promote their own, often contrary, agendas. Such is the case with the gaggle of partway-conservatives — Ron Paulians, social libertarians, third partyists of every stripe and color — trying to latch onto the conservative freight train. One of the effects of this in recent months has been the attempt by many to downplay or even eliminate the place of social conservatism in the conservative alliance. Driven by libertarian types, there seems to...

Congressman Henry Brown's "Stand Up for Christmas" resolution is just another example of Republican politicians' long history of exploiting social and cultural issues to distract voters from their big government records.

"The local Republican leadership tapped state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava to run in the special election. She seemed to them a good fit for the moderate district but was out of step with national Republicans, supporting both abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Nonetheless, she enjoyed the backing of the national party and, among others, former House speaker Newt Gingrich. "

Mark Sanford's summer adventure to Argentina -- no, he was not hiking the Appalachian Trail, as his aides incorrectly told reporters -- is now a full-fledged personal and family embarrassment, a story of infidelity followed by a public confession of the kind that has become all too familiar from political leaders. But Sanford's story is more than personal. For a Republican Party down on its luck, the governor's disappearance and subsequent rambling apology to his wife, his family, his close friends and all the people of South Carolina draw more unwelcome publicity to a party that needs but cannot seem...

A servant is not greater than his lord. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. (John 15:20) Are social conservatives hurting or helping the cause of conservatism? The answer to this question has not yet been decided. Christian conservatives can be the saving grace of the conservative movement -- if they can step back and carefully consider how they are perceived in the abortion debate, imagined (and actual) racial and religious bigotry, and in the temptation to claim to know that these are "the last days." Conservative Christians love and respect the law and the Constitution. Most recognize...

Rudy Giuliani analyzes the reason the Republican party is losing in recent years and what it can do to enlarge it's base. Stressing the importance of big tent politics and under-emphasizing social issues. In any case, the economy is the main reason McCain lost, but other social issues have also created a bad stereotype of Republicans in general.

The cause of gay rights has made enormous progress in the last couple of decades, but the more specific cause of gay marriage continues to be battered. In the same election that voters helped bridge the United States' racial divide by electing the country's first African-American president, voters in California overrode a ruling of that state's Supreme Court and effectively rebanned gay marriage. Reliably Democratic-voting California — home to those much-mocked "San Francisco values" that tolerate gay lifestyles — has now joined 29 other states, including Ohio, banning gay marriage. Protests in reaction to the vote popped up across the...

Case No. 8168047 IN THE Supreme Court of the State of California KAREN 1. STRAUSS et al., Petitioners, v. MARK B. HORTON, as State Registrar of Vital Statistics, etc., et al., Respondents; DENNIS HOLLINGSWORTH et al., Interveners. INTERVENERS' OPPOSITION BRIEF KENNETH W. STARR (Bar No. 58382) 24569 Via De Casa Malibu, CA 90265-3205 Telephone: (310) 506-4621 Facsimile: (310) 506-4266 ANDREW P. PUGNO (Bar No. 206587) LAW OFFICES OF ANDREW P. PUGNO 101 Parkshore Dr Ste 100 Folsom, CA 95630-4726 Telephone: (916) 608-3065 Facsimile: (916) 608-3066 Email: andrew@pugnolaw.com Attorneys for Interveners TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF AUTHORITIES iii ISSUES PRESENTED 1...

Marc Shaiman, the Tony Award-winning composer of the film and stage musical “Hairspray,” has done the country a major, if inadvertent, service. He has composed a brief musical piece against California Proposition 8 that takes only three minutes to reveal the ignorance and hate that pervades so much anti-Proposition 8 activism. This short musical, viewed more than 2 million times on the Internet, features major Hollywood talents playing (through song) two groups on a beach -- gay men and women in beach clothes and a stuffy formally dressed church group composed of whites and blacks. Its message begins with a...

Yes on Proposition 8 campaign today accused legislators of “grandstanding for the cameras” in an inappropriate and misguided publicity stunt designed to influence the California Supreme Court in the lead-up to the Court’s scheduled hearing on the validity of Proposition 8. “You’d think that these legislators would be focused on resolving the budget deficit or improving the economy. Instead, they seem more interested in grandstanding for the cameras and thumbing their noses at voters who enacted Proposition 8 by a nearly 600,000 vote margin,” said Ron Prentice, Chairman of ProtectMarriage.com – Yes on 8. “Sadly, with an approval rating hovering...

The Australian government has been forced into an embarrassing u-turn after it emerged that two men it had appointed to promote men's health to the public had co-authored a book that labeled homosexuality as a "pathology". Barry Williams, president of the Lone Fathers Association, and Warwick Marsh, Fatherhood Foundation president, were among six men named earlier this week as role models for Australian males. The men were supposed to spearhead a health campaign to encourage Australian men to seek regular check ups for prostate cancer. However, both were later found to have been listed as co-authors and contributors to a...

The writer Andrew Sullivan sits across the table from you on Chris Matthews' Hardball praising gay-marriage as a symbol of the homosexual community's desire to join the mainstream. He is a Catholic, conservative in many things, and a highly articulate spokesman for his point-of-view. What do you say? The requisite conservative on pundit panels usually falls back on citing heterosexual marriage's 5,000 year history as society's basic building block. Marriage has always been between a man and a woman. 65% of the American people are against homosexual unions. Etc. That's not going to get it. It's a way of brushing...

Above the Hate.com Letter Against Hate to President Monson November 15, 2008 President Thomas S. Monson Office of the First Presidency Church Administration Building 47 East South Temple Salt Lake City, Utah 84150 Dear President Monson: We write firstly to express our deep gratitude to you and the entire LDS community for the large and impressive contributions of your church and its members in protecting marriage in California and Arizona. Anyone who participated in this process has come to admire the competence, diligence and moral courage that so many members of your faith community displayed as part of this coalition...

More than 3,000 people, including longtime Mormon critic James Dobson of Focus on the Family, have signed an online petition thanking the LDS Church for its efforts on behalf of California's traditional marriage initiative known as Proposition 8. "Anyone who participated in this process has come to admire the competence, diligence and moral courage that so many members of your faith community displayed as part of this coalition effort -- as Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons and people of other faith communities all came together to fight this great battle for marriage," says the petition, which is addressed to LDS President Thomas...

Left to their own devices, most Americans can work these differences out in politics much as they do in their everyday lives, as untidy as these solutions may be. Unfortunately, when the courts short-circuit this process, they do three things corrosive to our politics. First, they act as dishonest referees, imposing one set of preferences over another. Second, they cheat the American people of an honest political contest, where candidates need to persuade the people of their views to put them into effect. Ed Whelan, a former Justice Department official who now runs the D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center,...

I was interested to see that in the recent election exercise in the USA, although the Democratic Party won the presidency, and increased its majority in the Senate and the Congress, it lost ballots in three States which would have redefined the institution of marriage to include same-sex unions. In Arizona, Proposition 102 won by 56 per cent to 44 per cent; in Florida, Amendment 2 passed by 62.4 per cent to 37.6 per cent and in California, Proposition 8 passed by 52.2 per cent to 47.8 per cent in a hard-fought contest. In California, campaigns for and against Proposition...