The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman is laughing out loud at those of us concerned (for very good reason) about the cause of religious liberty, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same sex marriage in all 50 states.
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.
In the space of just five days, from May 10 to 15, 2015, Hindu Fundamentalist groups have carried out five separate attacks against Christians in their places of worship in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, which is under the authority of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
During his commencement address at Liberty University on Saturday, presumptive 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush blistered the Obama administration for its “use of coercive federal power” to restrict religious freedom.
The quintessential symbol of Christianity—the cross—has been outlawed on the rooftops of buildings in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, pending final approval.
Polk State College in Lakeland, Florida is doubling down in its support of a professor accused of discriminating against and giving failing grades to a 16 year-old virtual student in his Humanities course for defying his anti-Christian worldview in her essays.
A bill working its way through the Alabama Legislature would allow probate judges and ministers to refuse to marry same-sex couples on religious grounds.
For the first time in history, Pakistani history books for middle and high school students will describe the role that Christians, Hindus and Sikhs have had in building the country after independence.
A humanities professor gave a 16-year-old girl four consecutive “zero” grades on assignments at Polk State College in Lakeland, Florida, for refusing to conform to his anti-Christian worldview.
On Saturday at South Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who recently won two straw polls in two of South Carolina’s biggest counties, forcefully attacked big business for its collusion with the Democratic Party in attacking Indiana’s religious liberty law. He also slammed the Obama administration for its intrusion on Americans’s liberty.
In a candid interview, Nigerian bishop Emmanuel Badejo has responded bluntly to Hillary Clinton’s recent assertion that religious beliefs “have to be changed” in order to give women access to reproductive health care.
Indian officials expressed intense indignation over the 2015 report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), saying it reflected ignorance of India and its culture and calling it “a conspiracy to tarnish the image of the country.”
Hillary Clinton says she places value onn all human lives. But does that include the unborn?
The independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has released its Annual Report for 2015, documenting religious freedom violations in 33 countries and assessing the U.S. government’s implementation of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA).
All but one of the members of an Iraqi delegation of minority groups—comprising representatives of the Yazidi and Turkmen Shia religious communities—have been granted visas to come for official meetings in Washington. The lone member denied a visa was the only Iraqi Christian in the group, a Catholic nun.
During oral arguments before the Supreme Court on whether same-sex marriage should be a “right,” the Obama administration admitted that religious schools teaching marriage as the union of one man and one woman could lose their tax-exempt status as a