Warning: This post includes two very bad jokes, one of which I’ll dispose of right up front. When my wife walked into my study to find me looking at scantily clad Playboy bunnies on the Internet, I did in fact tell her that I was going to watch NBC’s latest show, The Playboy Club for […]
E.J. Graff
E.J. Graff writes on social-justice and human-rights issues, particularly discrimination and violence against women and children; marriage and family policy; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lives. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center and the author of What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press, 1999, 2004).
Posted inArticle
DADT Goes Out With a Bang
I should’ve known better. Yesterday, I wrote that DADT would die not with a bang but a whimper. Wrong! There was, indeed, a media fanfare, with general agreement that this was a very good thing. Apparently, I’m an anachronism; but after spending my early adulthood in the Jim Crow era of LGBT issues, it still […]
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So You Say You Want a Sexual Revolution, Huh?
After my post last week on whether “sexual liberation” leads to monogamy, Amanda Marcotte and I twittered briefly about the myth of progress in sexual mores. The progress myth goes like this: Once upon a time, all was repression, imposed by religion/patriarchy/the establishment/your-nominee-here. But that theory is wrong: As with all fashions, libertinism comes and […]
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Marry Me
Yesterday the Washington Post published a nice summary of the various federal lawsuits underway in the court battles over same-sex marriage, a piece occasioned by a panel at the College of William and Mary Law School’s Institute of Bill of Rights Law. The panel, according to reporter Robert Barnes, was debating whether the government’s political […]
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Can Tammy Baldwin Win?
Over at TheAtlantic.com, I look into the question of whether openly lesbian Tammy Baldwin can become Wisconsin’s senator. Pop quiz: What’s the ” L-word” that’s likely to hurt her most? Hint: It’s not this one. Here’s an excerpt: In 1998, Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay candidate to be elected to the U.S. Congress […]
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The Real Contagion
While we’re talking about how policy failures can help illnesses spread, let me pass on some news from organizer Ellen Bravo of Family Values @ Work. As flu season starts (file under: Contagion), Bravo’s group is stressing that real contagion can be prevented if more people had paid sick days. Every year, 44 million low-wage […]
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Back-Door Anti-Abortion
Earlier this week I posted an excerpt from a funny diatribe by Jeffrey T. Kuhner of the Edmund Burke Institute, published in the Washington Times, that linked contraception with abortion. Kuhner ranted that almost every major religion and civilizations have always opposed contraception, homosexuality, adultery — oh, pretty much anything having to do with sex […]
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Taking a Stand on Standing
At the Prospect on Monday, Chris Geidner took a principled stand on the procedural question of who should be able to defend Proposition 8 in the courts: Do only California state officials, who have declined to support this antagonism toward marriage equality? Or do Prop. 8’s authors and backers. The LA Times essentially agreed that […]
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Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go to the Salad Bar …
In theory, your lunch is soon to be a little safer . In part as a response to Harvard Public Health Review editor Madeline Drexler’s devastating food-safety critique in the latest issue of Good Housekeeping, the USDA just announced it would designate all “Big Six” strains of E. coli as “adulterants” — previously, only one […]
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This Is Your Country “On Alert”
Remember reading that there were some “security incidents” this past Sunday after authorities “erred on the side of caution” for fear of a 9/11 anniversary attack? James Fallows at The Atlantic has some dispiriting insights into one of them: A half-Arab, half-Jewish self-described suburban housewife and former journalism student was detained because, by chance, she […]
