Two California middle schools raised gay pride flags Monday to little fanfare, while a similar action at a Virginia middle school stirred controversy.

Sylvandale Middle School in San Jose, Calif., raised the gay pride flag in recognition of June as being LGBT Pride Month, placing it just below the American flag atop the pole.

Juan Cruz, the superintendent of Franklin-McKinley School District, participated in the ceremony.

“We try to make a safe, inclusive environment – regardless of their sexual orientation – for all youth. That’s why we’re here today,” Cruz said, according to the East Bay Times. 

Antioch Middle School in Antioch, Calif., also raised the gay pride flag. The Antioch School Board had voted 3-2 on May 29 to officially recognize LGBT Pride Month. Antioch Middle School was the only school to raise the flag, according to EastCountyToday.net.

Meanwhile, an indoor LGBT Pride display at Powhatan Middle School in Powhatan, Va., has resulted in some pushback from parents. The display was sponsored by the Multicultural Student Association and included the more well-known gay pride flag along with the asexual flag, the transgender flag, the bisexual flag and the equality symbol. 

“We were promoting the idea that while people may have personal beliefs about the LGBTQ community, they cannot judge, attack and bully people for who they…

After being fired for sharing a post on Instagram opposing homosexuality, Australian Christian Rugby player Israel Folau has filed suit against Rugby Australia.

On Thursday, the 30-year-old announced that he had filed an application with the Australian Fair Work Commission for religious discrimination, which he believes was the backbone of his termination. “No Australian of any faith should be fired for practicing their religion,” Folau argued, according to the Christian Post.  

As Christian Headlines previously reported, Folau’s contract was terminated in April after he shared a post on Instagram warning “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists, [and] idolaters” to turn away from sin.

The former Wallabies player wrote in the April 10 post, “Those that are living in Sin will end up in Hell unless you repent. Jesus Christ loves you and is giving you time to turn away from your sin and come to him.” 

He then quoted Galatians 5:19-21 which says, “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these , adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they…

LAHORE, Pakistan (RNS) — Sixteen-year-old Suneeta and her 12-year-old sister were walking home in March when they were kidnapped.

The men who took them forced the girls to convert to Islam.

“We were walking back to our house after working on the farm when men in a car came out of nowhere and dragged us in with them,” said Suneeta, who is Hindu and lives in Badin, a small city in the south of Pakistan. “The next thing we knew, we were in a shrine being forced to say the kalma (acceptance of Islam) by a cleric.”

The men who kidnapped the girls told their mother to pay the equivalent of $365 — an enormous amount for the poor farming family —  or the men would marry off the girls.

Their mother begged and borrowed from within the Hindu community and paid the ransom. She got her girls back.

The family considers itself lucky.

Every year, thousands of Hindu and Christian girls and young women are kidnapped in Pakistan and forcibly married, disappearing from their families. And while these forced conversions have been going on for decades, a recent surge in reported cases has brought the issue back into the limelight.

Around 1,000 cases of Hindu and Christian girls being forced to convert were estimated in the province of southern Sindh alone in 2018, according to the annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

There are no concrete numbers for the rest of…

Former Vice President Joe Biden told a crowd Thursday night he had changed his mind and now supports taxpayer-funded abortion, putting him in line on the issue with other major Democrats for the party’s presidential nomination. 

“If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s ZIP code,” he said, according to CNN.

Biden was the only major Democrat who backed the Hyde Amendment, a provision dating back to 1977 that prevents federal funds from being used to fund abortion, as Christian Headlines previously reported. Congress regularly reauthorizes it as part of spending bills. 

The 2016 Democratic Platform pledged to overturn the amendment, but Biden had voted for it during his time in the Senate. 

Biden maintained he was a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade yet said he opposed federal funds being used for abortions. Biden is Catholic. 

“Those of us who are opposed to abortions should not be compelled to pay for them,” he wrote to constituents in 1994, according to NBC News. 

He told a Catholic publication in the 1980s that “abortion is wrong from the moment of conception.” He said as late as 2007 there was a “sliding scale relating to viability of a fetus” in law.

Such comments had concerned pro-choice Democrats. 

On Thursday, Biden said his position had evolved on…