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Showing posts with the label Freedom of speech

New York City to repeal ban on gay 'conversion therapy' amid legal battle

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The New York city council is planning to repeal a two-year-old ban on “gay conversion therapy” to avoid a costly uphill legal fight. The city’s openly gay Council Speaker Corey Johnson introduced a bill to repeal a measure passed in 2017 banning the sale of “services intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”  With a conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court makeup, Johnson doesn’t seem to want the law to be tested in the legal system. He vowed that the council would act quickly to repeal the law.  Obviously I didn’t want to repeal this,” Johnson was quoted as saying. “I don’t want to be someone who is giving in to these right-wing groups. But the Supreme Court has become conservative; the Second Circuit, which oversees New York, has become more conservative.” The city's ban is being challenged by the conservative religious freedom legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has won nine Supreme Court cases in the last seven years....

Wedding vendors will be forced to participate in gay ‘marriages’ under new N. Ireland law

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A politician in Northern Ireland has pointed out that the new law legalizing same-sex “marriage” in the region will not allow civil registrars, hoteliers, florists, and wedding photographers to refuse their services for homosexual “weddings.”  The Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, the same piece of legislation that introduced new abortion laws into the region, has also legalized same-sex “marriage,” effective from January 13 of this year.   Same-sex “marriage” has been legal in the rest of the U.K. since 2013, but until last month had not been imposed on Northern Ireland. On January 20 the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), the U.K. Government department responsible for Northern Ireland affairs, launched a public consultation, focusing on questions around the freedom of various groups and individuals to opt-out of such ceremonies. Under the new laws, churches and other religious groups will not be compelled to celebrate such “weddings.”  But N...

Mom arrested, interrogated for disagreeing with transgender about pronouns

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Last month, a docker in Northern England was informed by the police in Humberside that he would be the subject of a formal investigation for tweeting out a limerick about transgender people. Several weeks after that, the police in Suffolk contacted a 74-year-old woman, and an officer asked her to stop tweeting comments critical of transgender ideology and to perhaps consider deleting some of her previous social media posts. And now, the Daily Mail reported over the weekend, it turns out that a 38-year-old mother was arrested in front of her children and locked up in a cell at the police station by the Hertfordshire Police back in December for having an argument with a transgender activist on Twitter. Kate Scottow’s story is truly chilling. Three police officers showed up at her home and detained her, carting her off to the station and then interrogating her for having an argument with a transgender activist about “deadnaming,” and for referring to a biological man who identifies as...

UK police investigate transgender pronoun complaints, raising free speech concerns

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Members of the public in the United Kingdom are facing investigation by the police and criminal charges if they dare to challenge gender ideology on social media. The week before last, Harry Miller, 53, a plant and machinery dealer and married father of four, reported on Twitter that he had been contacted by Humberside Police at his workplace.  The police cited a series of 30 tweets which were deemed to be potentially “offensive.” Amongst them was a limerick written by a feminist which questioned whether transgender “women” can't be a biological woman. Although the police force admitted that no crime had been committed, Police Constable Mansoor Gul informed Miller that his tweets would be officially logged as a “hate incident” and insisted on referring to the “victim,” telling Miller that “we need to check your thinking.” NO FREE SPEECH - CHECK YOUR THINKING OR YOU MUST THINK THIS WAY Miller’s social media account contained no details pertaining to either his full identity ...

Church petitions British Columbia’s top court to overturn city’s ban on youth conference

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A Christian church in British Columbia has petitioned the province's top court to reverse a city's 2018 decision to cancel the church's booking of a city-owned center for a youth conference after the city took issue with one of the event's Christian speakers. Grace Chapel is a parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, located in downtown New Westminster. Part of Grace Chapel’s vision is to “build a multi-ethnic, diverse church where people of every nation in our community will worship God…” Grace Chapel does not have a church building of its own. Church events are held in rented spaces, including the municipally-owned and managed Anvil Centre. As explained in a recently filed affidavit , on May 25, the City of New Westminster signed a contract with Grace Chapel to rent a portion of the Anvil Centre. The rental was for a youth conference to be held on July 21, 2018. On June 21, 2018, a media article was published which included a picture of a poster for the confer...

Twitter locks out conservative Christian for saying gay sex ‘spreads disease’ and is a ‘sin’

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Editor's note: The following report is written by Peter LaBarbera, a former reporter for LifeSiteNews and the president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH.org), based outside Chicago, Illinois. He shares a letter he wrote to Twitter after being banned from the platform for posting what the social media giant deemed "hateful conduct." WARNING: This this letter contains graphic medical descriptions of homosexual acts. October 17, 2018 – I sent a version of the following letter to Twitter today appealing their decision Monday to lock me out of my account ( @PeterLaBarbera ) due to a 2016 tweet describing homosexual acts as a “sin” that “spreads disease” – which Twitter deemed in violation of its rules against “hateful conduct.” Near the end of the letter, I state the following: "If Twitter no longer allows its users to advocate for healthy behaviors on its platform, and to defend their sincere moral and religious beliefs--shared by billions worldwide--th...

NSW Australia Parliament halts free speech

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NSW Australia. The NSW parliament introduced unworkable new legislation will create a new offence in the Crimes Act of publicly threatening or inciting violence against people on the grounds of race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics or HIV/AIDS status, including a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment and a fine of $11,000. The LGBT lobby considers all negative comments as vilification. Does this mean, any form of communication, comments on blogs, public comments in Churches, public conversations or conduct observable by the public, as well as the distribution or dissemination of any matter, will become illegal if it vilifies those groups? The Gay lobby is happy to silence any and all objections to the unnatural, immoral and sinful lifestyle choices of homosexuals. They can threaten people, take them to court even if their applications fail they have achieved fear in those who object to the sin of homosexuality. LGBT are now...

Homosexual Marriage Vs Free Speech

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There’s been a battle online over whether or not to call Monday’s  Supreme Court decision  on a Christian baker “narrow.” The vote was 7-2, which isn’t narrow. But the scope of the ruling was. It seemed to say that in this particular case, the Colorado human rights commissars showed explicit, anti-religious bias. That tainted their case that a vital public interest was served by punishing this Christian wedding cake baker. (He would sell cakes to everyone, but wouldn’t design a specific, gay-wedding cake.) But bureaucrats with a little more tact would likely get away with closing down Christian businesses. At least under the Court as it stands today. SCOTUSblog explains  the decision as follows: [T]he justices today handed Phillips a victory, even if not necessarily the ruling that he and his supporters had hoped for. Kennedy, the author of some of the court’s most important gay-rights rulings, began by explaining that the case involved a conflict between t...

Judge rules Christian baker does not have to make gay ‘wedding’ cake

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A California judge has issued his final judgment in favor of a Christian baker who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex “wedding,” ruling that cakes celebrating events are a form of speech. Last August, Mireya and Eileen Rodriguez-Del Rio sought a wedding cake from Tastries Bakery owner Cathy Miller, who declined on the grounds that affirming a homosexual union would violate her Christian beliefs , Bakersfield.com   reports . The couple filed a complaint with California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), arguing that the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act forbids businesses from refusing to provide services on the basis of sexual orientation (among other grounds). “Everyone is God’s creation and I love everyone,” Miller has   previously explained . “But there are certain things that violate my conscience, and my conscience will not allow me to participate in things that I feel are wrong. Most of what that’s based on is scripture.” The departme...

Twitter suspends commentator Mark Dice for saying transsexualism is a mental illness

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Mark Dice, famous for YouTube video interviews with random passers-by in public spaces, says that his Twitter account was suspended Thursday of last week after he implied that transgenderism is a mental illness. The exchange that led to Dice’s suspension began with a tweet by Dice on April 10, in which he  wrote , “58 different genders wasn't ‘inclusive’ enough for Facebook, so now instead of picking from a list of options, that section is a 'fill in the blank.'  The company is embracing mental illness on a massive scale.  # Zuckerberg ”. An outraged reader named “Davon” tweeted back to Dice, “Are you calling gender identity a mental illness? The fact that you're able to tweet this [EXPLETIVE] is proof enough that there's [no] liberal social media bias.” Dice then responded to “Davon,” writing, “All of them but two, yes.” Soon after the exchange, Dice’s response disappeared from his Twitter feed, and Dice announced via Facebook that Twitter had suspe...

GAY QANTAS threatens rugby player

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In response to an Instagram question last Tuesday in which Israel Folau was asked what he thought was “God’s plan for gay people”, Israel Folau , Australian rugby ’s highest- paid player and a devout Christian, was unequivocal: “HELL. Unless they repent of their sins and turn to God.” His answer was biblical in that everybody, every sinner is called upon to turn from sin and turn in faith to Christ to be saved. If the person rejects Christ - their choice leads them to a road of not being redeemed namely hell - separation from God.  What is the problem? Homosexuals and others don't believe homosexuality is a sin. It is a simple as that. God, history, biology, and evolution simply point to the fact that homosexuality is a nonsense, broken incomplete and sinful lifestyle choice.   Some in the community believe that homosexuality is very good - based on their feelings and their Government who lied to them about gay marriage.  What has followed has been a fevered ...