On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi during his nightly walk in New Delhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse. Godse was a right-wing, gun-toting religious believer with connections to a political party whose goals included making India a Hindu nation, rejecting the secularism that separated religion
Marriage can’t bear the weight of our culture’s expectations for sex today. Sex as defined in America is ruining marriages. After poring over redundant discussions about sex, monogamy, biology, evolutionary anthropology, and clinical studies, I’m not convinced that the difficulty is based in something inherent
With November’s poll results, marriage equality continues to fail when put on the ballot. We can’t ignore the progress that’s been made, but the American people remain an easy mark for those who claim protecting marriage involves denying it to LGBT people. If we use
Almost 80 million people voted for a Barack Obama that talked about real change including single-payer healthcare and the end of Wall Street and other corporations pulling the strings in Washington. A march of – at most – 60,000 in Washington in September should mean
The Norman Rockwell-style American Thanksgiving is a feast of mythology about pilgrims and Indians sitting down like buddies giving thanks to the Christian god for a successful harvest. Add the picture of the perfect American family, every member home for the holiday, sitting down together
Over a quarter of a century ago, in January 1975, the American Psychological Association urged “all mental health professionals to take the lead in removing the sigma of mental illness that has long been associated with homosexual orientations.” On August 14, 1997, it adopted a
When children return to school, most will be safer there than at home. In spite of all the nostalgic attempts to keep us believing “the American family” is an idyllic refuge, statistics say that home is the most dangerous place for children. It’s hard to
On June 28, 1969, a group of street people and drag queens in Greenwich Village enacted the “Bunker Hill” moment of the movement for equal rights for transgender, lesbian, gay male, and questioning people in the U.S. This motley crew didn’t decide to hold a
The murder of George Tiller, on May 31, 2009, marks the eighth person and fourth doctor since 1977 killed in attacks on people working at women’s health clinics by people spouting formulaic right-wing rhetoric. Expect more attacks on representatives of a variety of “liberal” institutions
When President Obama told a press conference in Turkey in April that, “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation,” the usual suspects reacted in the expected ways. Those of us who value the ideal of our people’s civil rights and privileges not tied to