GAY TRUTH

English: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) pride flag under a "No" symbol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Catholic marriage and family counseling agencies in Ireland are being told they must accept LGBT -identifying clients, otherwise they risk losing government funding.  “The government is threatening to withdraw millions of euros of public funding ,” reports UK ’s  The Times , “unless the counselling services agree to change their longstanding policy of excluding same-sex couples from their services on religious grounds.” The counseling service administered by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference ( ICBC ) received about €1.5 million during 2016, one-quarter of the total €6 million Department of Children and Youth Affairs budget for such services.   The ICBC counseling group Accord may have to shutter its doors because government funding may dry up if it follows Catholic teaching and refuses to accept the validity of LGBT relationships.  The Catholi

The Kenosha Unified School District has caved to the transgender agenda,  dropping its appeal  to the U.S. Supreme Court and paying a $800,000 settlement in the case of a biologically female student who says she is a "boy." In July 2016, Wisconsin high schooler Ashley Whitaker sued her school. She said she suffered from depression and anxiety and that her life was miserable – not because of her gender dysphoria, but because George Nelson Tremper High School didn’t acknowledge her as a "boy" and allow her to use the boys’ bathroom.  The board voted 5-2 last week to not continue the case and to withdraw the district’s petition to the Supreme Court. The district’s attorney Ron Stadler said that the district would likely have succeeded at the Supreme Court, but that the monetary and insurance risks weighed heavily. “I think we have an excellent argument, but if you look at it in terms that you’ve got these escalating costs, you’ve got a good argument, bu

The activist group wants to encourage intimidation of schools that follow religious teaching. On Friday, the nation’s largest gay-rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), released a chilling report that investigates a “disturbing trend” of religious colleges’ taking legal measures to exercise their religious liberty , using waivers available to them under Title IX . A summary of the report can be found here.  Titled “Hidden Discrimination : Title IX Religious Exemptions Putting LGBT Students at Risk,” the report looks at 56 colleges that have sought such exemptions. According to the report, “Since 2013, 33 have received exemptions from protections that relate to gender identity , and 23 have received exemptions relating to sexual orientation.”  In the eyes of HRC, the constitutional rights of a religious school to remain faithful to its doctrinal views on sexuality and sexual complementarity should be subjugated to the expressive and sexual identity of prospec

With Neil Gorsuch now on the US Supreme Court, as one of its last acts of the current term the Supreme Court decided to accept the case of  Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission , a critical case that highlights the growing problem of supporters of marriage being discriminated against by government and targeted for harassment and punitive punishment in violation of our constitutional rights. Jack Phillips is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, a skilled baker and cake artisan, and a devout Christian. He runs a family business that has thrived in Lakeland, Colorado for nearly 25 years. He's happily served all clients, and continues to sell baked goods to anyone who seeks them regardless of their religious beliefs, politics or sexual orientation.  However, when it comes to applying his artistry and creativity to helping with events and ceremonies that violate his deeply held religious beliefs, he draws the line and declines to personally participate. Contri

THERE is a simple and elegant solution to the problem of people being annoyed by brewers doing promotional deals with the Bible Society , or phone companies waving the rainbow flag for gay marriage : Stop listening. Stop caring. Stop paying attention to anything that a business has to say about anything that is not connected to its core business . If a manufacturer wants to make noise about trade policy or the price of electricity , fair enough, that’s bread and ­butter stuff. But if that same company decides to start playing in the social policy arena, the most appropriate response is to say “what would they know?” and move on. In a healthy society people can have disagreements with one another and still do business together. Likewise, in an ideal world companies would stick to ­providing quality goods and services rather than believing their success is dependent on their political stances. But in an unhealthy society, not so much. That is why the events of the past week were s

South Dakota Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard , religious freedom means the freedom of state-funded agencies to refuse to let immoral dysfunctional homosexual couples foster or adoption children . On Friday evening, Daugaard signed SB 149 into law, granting publicly funded adoption agencies a license not to experiment with kids lives under immoral homosexual homes.  The law permits any “child-placement agency” in the state—including those that receive taxpayer money—to discriminate on the basis of “any sincerely-held religious belief or moral conviction.” This is a very wise outcome. Republican legislators designed the law to let these agencies turn away immoral homosexual experimental couples who want to make their make believe barren marriage look legitimate. Its Senate sponsor, Republican Sen. Alan Solano, co-wrote the bill with Catholic Social Services , a very spiritual and sound traditional family based adoption agency that will not place children in the d

The high stakes game of politics over same-sex marriage is now dangerous and unpredictable with the main question being: will the champions of change kill off the Coalition’s plebiscite, thereby denying the main hope of reform in this parliament? That would be a strange and self-defeating step. The tactical and moral issue is immense — it is whether the advocates of same-sex marriage put the means before the end and are so fiercely opposed to a plebiscite that they reject the mandate Malcolm Turnbull won at the election. If parliament votes against the plebiscite bill the pivotal question becomes the assumption on which it acts. Does it act on the honest, upfront admission that, more likely than not, it means same-sex marriage will be delayed for another three years? Former High Court judge Michael Kirby is prepared to accept this price. Indeed, he wrote on this page it is better “that nothing at all were done by the federal parliament on same-sex marriage than that a plebiscite was

Twenty-six LGBT organizations are demanding that the Big 12 block the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-operated Brigham Young University from joining the athletic conference because of the institution's biblical stance on same-sex marriage. As the Big 12 looks to expand and BYU makes its case to join the conference, Athlete Ally and 25 other LGBT advocacy groups sent a letter on Monday to Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby and the leadership of schools within the conference to warn about BYU's policies that they believe to be discriminatory toward the LGBT community. "The Big 12 is a conference committed to sportsmanship, fair play and inclusion both on and off the playing field," the letter states. "You are known for your dedication to fans and your commitment to the welfare of your student-athletes. Adding a school like BYU to your membership while it still champions anti-LGBT policies and practices would greatly undermine these Big 12 values."

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has won the fight for religious freedom after a federal judge issued an order dismissing all three 2015 marriage license lawsuits against her yesterday. U.S. Judge David Bunning dismissed in their entirety, Miller v. Davis, Ermold v. Davis and Yates v. Davis, which brings to an end the trial proceedings against her arising from the 2015 Obergefell decision. Despite the ACLU's attempt to continue the case against Kim Davis and assess damages against her, the federal district court dismissed the case, closed the files and ordered all the pending cases to be removed from the docket. Davis, represented by Liberty Counsel, spent six days in jail last year for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in violation of her right to freedom of conscience. Davis would not issue the licenses because they had her name and authority on them. As a result, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin signed an executive order creating one marriage license form which

“The court protects LGBT consumers. The first such verdict in Poland!” proclaimed   Campaign Against Homophobia (CAH) , a Polish LGBT group, but a closer look reveals that claims of a victory are premature if not downright false. The group’s website explains that a printing shop employee who refused a service to the LGBT Business Forum was found guilty of a misdemeanor. The employee declined to work with the organization’s graphics, writing in an email, “We will not participate in promoting LGBT with our work.” The District Court in Łódź-Widzew in central Poland fined him $50 (200 zł). CAH is one of the most vocal organizations of its kind in Poland. The group boasts several sponsors and partners, among them the U.S. Embassy, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (named after a Communist revolutionary who wanted “to destroy capitalism once and for all”). The plaintiff, LGBT Business Forum, described itself on its website as “a Polish non-g

An African-American pastor who stood up for bathroom privacy says he has been attacked personally and professionally by gay activists determined to crush his business and turn his life into “chaos.” Bishop Kenneth Adkins, overseer at Greater Dimensions Christian Fellowship in Brunswick, Georgia, publicly opposed a Jacksonville city ordinance that would allow biological men to use women's bathrooms. At one point, he posted a picture of himself with a wig on Facebook and threatened to demonstrate against the transgender ordinance in drag. He said the citizens of Jacksonville should vote on whether to expand the city's Human Rights Ordinance rather than leaving the decision with city council members. At the third and final public hearing on the city ordinance in December, Adkins received applause when he   said , “We live in a time that Christians need a law passed to protect them. It’s crazy because we can no longer say what we believe.” The Jacksonville City Counci

Australia: Labor leader Bill Shorten’s sudden antipathy to the marriage plebiscite can only be seen as an early admission that he had no hope of winning government and had decided to drag the Labor Party into a politically correct dead-end. The plebiscite, after all, is wildly popular — polls show 70 per cent of Australians want to have their say on whether to fundamentally change marriage. The popularity of the plebiscite transcends party allegiances. It’s the one issue about which most Australians agree. And yet, on the eve of the election, Shorten committed his party to kill it off. Go figure. He claims the plebiscite will “give the green light to homophobia and ugly hateful attitudes”. This is a profoundly illiberal view. And an insult to the good humour and decency of Australians. Shorten misunderstands democracy if he thinks its aim is to avoid robust disagreement. After all, what have we been doing the past eight weeks? He claims Australian is rived by “systemic raci

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of Education has agreed to create a searchable database to publicize which Christian colleges and universities have applied for exemptions from a 44-year-old gender-equality law. The announcement comes a month after the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy group, accused Christian institutions of “hidden discrimination” for obtaining Title IX waivers. The same day HRC released its report , Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and seven other Democratic senators asked the agency to increase transparency around the exemptions, which they said “allow for discrimination under the guise of religious liberty.” Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex and is best known for requiring equity between men’s and women’s athletic teams. But in 2014, the Department of Education expanded its interpretation of the word “sex” to include gender identity—meaning, for example, a male student who identifies as