Homosexuality and gay marriage are two of the most unnecessarily divisive social issues facing this nation.

Licking their wounds from the last election, Republicans look to return to their roots of minimal government intrusion and freedom. Backing off their Bible-based dogma on same-sex marriage might be a start. Many on the right fringe of the Party would have objections to Labradoodles being bred.

No social issues have changed as much in recent years as support for same-sex marriage. In a recent CBS News poll, 53 percent of us now approve. Notable for the Republicans, 56 percent of independents and 75 percent of those under 30 years of age are in favor of gay marriage. The GOP should remember the report that called for being more inclusive and less judgmental. Now might be a good time to thump those Bibles a little more quietly. more >>

Georgia's GOP Chairwoman Sue Everhart, who opposes same-sex marriage, said in a recent interview that she is concerned some may commit fraud in order to receive government benefits, should same-sex marriage be legalized.

"You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow," Sue Everhart, Georgia GOP chairwoman, told The Marietta Daily Journal this past weekend.

"Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you're gay, and y'all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it's unreal," Everhart continued. more >>

James Holmes, the man who killed 12 people and wounded 70 on July 20, 2012, during a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises," in Aurora, Colo., will face a death penalty trial, prosecutors announced on Monday in a heavily anticipated court disclosure.

Prosecutors rejected a plea from Holmes' lawyers just four days earlier when the 24-year-old shooter offered to plead guilty in hopes of avoiding capital punishment. His defense team is trying to prove that Holmes was legally insane when he carried out the mass shooting that shocked the nation, The Associated Press reported.

The former neuroscience graduate student from the University of Colorado Denver stormed into the movie theater last July in a bullet-proof vest, wearing Joker-inspired makeup, and opened fire at random, which resulted in 12 deaths. more >>

An Arizona judge ruled Friday that a transgender man who birthed three children could not divorce his wife because there was insufficient evidence indicating that he was male when he and his wife wed, and therefore the nine-year union is invalid because Arizona does not recognize same-sex marriage.

Thomas Beatie sparked a media firestorm nearly five years ago when he became known as the "pregnant man" after he gave birth to a girl, the first child of three with his wife, Nancy Beatie.

Beatie was born a female but underwent transgender surgery to become a man, taking testosterone hormone supplements beginning in 1997 and undergoing a double-mastectomy in 2012, as well as undergoing psychological treatment for his change. more >>

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court dismissed the three-year long lawsuit of a Florida-based atheist group against the City of Lakeland, which was being accused of violating the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause by conducting prayers at the beginning of its City Commission meetings.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined Tuesday that the city and its mayor, Gow Fields, had not violated the Constitution, as argued by the Atheists of Florida organization, due to a 2010 policy implemented by the city which allows speakers of various denominations to deliver the opening prayer at the meetings.

"The selection procedures of the invocational speakers invited to deliver an invocation at Lakeland City Commission's meetings pursuant to policies and practices initiated informally in March 2010, which were codified with the passage of Resolution 4848 in August 2010, do not support the AOF's contention that Lakeland attempted to exploit the prayer opportunity to proselytize or advance or disparage any one faith or belief," Judge Arthur Alarcon of the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court wrote on behalf of a three-judge panel. more >>

Earlier this week, an Alabama federal judge dismissed the lawsuit of a major Catholic television network regarding the Obama administration's contraception mandate, determining that the rules of the mandate have not been finalized yet, and therefore the court could not make a proper judgment on the case.

Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn of the U.S. District Court in Birmingham, Ala., ruled Monday that although the Eternal World Television Network [EWTN] has standing it its lawsuit because there exists a "real prospect of harm from a concrete regulatory mandate," she determined that she could not review the lawsuit because the Obama administration has promised to amend the mandate, and therefore it is not yet "ripe" for review.

"In this case, common sense weighs in favor of withholding judicial review until the new regulations are created and finalized. At that point, if EWTN still has objections, it may then file suit," Blackburn wrote in her opinion, according to AL.com. more >>