No same-sex marriage licenses are being issued in Decatur County, Tennessee, because the entire county clerk’s office has resigned following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian upheld a preliminary finding that sentenced Aaron and Melissa Klein, the Christian bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to a fine of $135,000 in emotional damages to the homosexual couple they denied service, but also added a new provision forbidding them to speak about their unwillingness to serve a gay marriage.
In an interview with Kentucky television station WDRB, McConnell said that while he has “always felt that marriage is between one man and one woman,” the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. “That’s the law of the land,” he said.
The ACLU — whose stated mission was once “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States” — now states that while the organization supported the RFRA when it was passed, “we can no longer support the law in its current form” because “it is now often used as a sword to discriminate against women, gay and transgender people and others.”
Freedom to Marry Campaign Director Marc Solomon argued that refusing to provide services for same-sex weddings is “a non-American approach” and “if you are open to business, you’re open to business for everybody” on Monday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” Solomon was
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, winning points galore with the LGBT community, officiated for the first time as governor at a gay wedding on Sunday, the same day he wrote a letter loftily demanding that the State Education Department do more to protect transgender students across the state.
Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses.
The Washington Post observes that because “real money” is involved in legal marriage, the ruling could cause religious schools that ban homosexual relationships and cohabitation to suffer “in a big way” with the loss of tax-exempt status and accreditation.
A new article by veteran reporter John L. Allen blasts John Kerry and the State Department for radically discounting Christian persecution its recent Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2014.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), spoke on MSNBC’s “Up w/ Steve Kornacki” about the new ruling to grant same-sex marriage in the U.S. on Saturday. Baldwin said she thinks that business owners, like those that own a bakery, should not be allowed to turn down
Pro-family groups throughout the nation are condemning the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis argued that “where we start to get into a slippery slope around religion is when we start to deny services that are far-reaching outside of the church or the place of worship” on
Karen Finney, a top advisor for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, declined to answer if she believes churches that refuse to perform same sex marriages should lose their tax exempt status. Responding to a question from Breitbart News, Finney dodged with,
A New Jersey jury returned a verdict this afternoon that could have a devastating impact on all men and women in New Jersey with unwanted same-sex attraction.
From Politico: Ted Cruz dominated, Rick Santorum flopped and Bobby Jindal found his niche. At the latest GOP cattle call, about a dozen presidential contenders rolled through a Washington, D.C. ballroom over a three-day period to tout their socially conservative
Newly elected Chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom Robert P. George, said Thursday that religious liberty is “a key element in the quest for regional and global security.”
Chaplain Wes Modder spends his days basically alone in the base chapel. He is no longer allowed into his office. By order of his commanding officer, he is not allowed even to speak to the sailors in his unit. If anyone from his unit comes into the chapel, he may not speak with them.
A press release for the event states that the biblical response to a nation in crisis is “to gather in humility and repentance and ask God to intervene.” It describes the meeting as “a historic gathering of people from across the nation to pray and fast for America” that hopes to draw some 10,000 people to “worship God, seek repentance and pray for reconciliation, reformation and revival.”
A Persian-language news outlet reported this week that Iran has sentenced a group of 18 Christians to between one and ten years in prison each for organizing “house churches” and “propaganda against the regime.”
After outcry from supporters, Instagram restored an account dedicated to memorializing the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamist revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The account, which has over 100,000 followers according to some media reports, has posted over 600 photos of the late cleric and revolutionary.
A U.S. Marine who was court-martialed in 2014 for failing to remove a Bible verse from her work desk has launched an appeal, bolstered by a religious liberty law firm.
One cannot help but wonder in which parallel universe the Times editors live where motherhood and fatherhood are self-evidently an “absurdity.” It also bodes poorly for the future of reasoned moral discourse, when professional journalists simply write off the deepest convictions of their adversaries as unworthy of serious consideration.
Following a recent government crackdown on visible crosses on Christian churches in China, a number of church pastors have defied the campaign, going so far as to replace demolished crosses, and in some cases, to put up bigger ones.
After last week’s rash of attacks on Christians in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, Christian leaders have appealed to the federal government for protection from Hindu radicals.
According to Bishop John McAreavey, the Chair of the Council for Justice & Peace of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, statistics show that the situation of Christian persecution in the world is far more dire than most people understand.
