To hear the right wing tell it, gays and lesbians have taken over. They push their political "agenda" -- "forcing" children to learn about it in schools, "forcing" states to sanctify their relationships as legitimate marriages, and "forcing" heterosexuals to see them flaunt their "gay lifestyle" by publicly acting... well,...

Liberal observers in Florida are no doubt howling in protest at the new anti-immigration bill being proposed by state legislator William Snyder. It's true, on the surface, it does appear to be blatantly racist, targeting would-be immigrants from some countries, and not others, and excluding from its reach residents of...

Nearly thirty years ago, in a column in the New York Times Magazine, conservative firebrand William F. Buckley waxed nostalgic about his college days at Yale. He imagined a young Yalie today, at the now-coed, gender integrated, university, longing for "the fraternity that wouldn't end:"

Someday, damn it, we'll...

There's no shortage of explanations for the tragic death of Yeardley Love, University of Virgina lacrosse player at the hands of George Huguely, a player on the men's lacrosse team, with whom she had recently broken off a dating relationship. It's human, after all, to search for some reason in...

The recent controversy between Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines has spurred a flurry of commentaries -- some thoughtful and others merely outraged. To recap: Kevin Smith, famous Hollywood director (he directed Clerks and Chasing Amy) is a very large man, and he was thrown off a Southwest flight...

A new dispatch from the "everybody's a critic" department. The Vatican has released its list of the Top 10 Rock Albums of All Time.

According to the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano wrote in an editorial yesterday (Sunday): "A little handbook of musical resistance could be useful during...

Meet the Lamberts, Elizabeth and Adam. No, they're not really related - at least by blood. But they are related socially. Both are the victims of gender and sex discrimination and the galloping double standard.

To review, ladies first. Elizabeth Lambert, a defender on the University of New Mexico...

Ask any teenager in America what is the most common put down in middle school or high school? The answer: "That's so gay." It's said about anything and everything -- their clothes, their books, the music or TV shows they like, the sports figures they admire. "That's so gay" has...

Two items in the International Herald Tribune this past week caught my eye. I was thinking about the best strategies to engage young people in initiatives to promote gender equality, which is open of the major issues of my political life.

A fleet of 35 bright pink taxis...

Can anyone still recall the hazy afterglow following the presidential election -- that orgy of premature self-congratulation about suddenly becoming a "post racial" society?

That prematurity was on full display the other night in the women's semifinal match at the U.S. Open between Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters. Clijsters's...

Who today remembers the 1965 song from those one-hit wonders, The Barbarians -- a little anti-hippie ditty called "Are you a Boy, or Are you a Girl?" "Well you may be a boy," they sang, "but you look like a girl," capturing the cultural anxiety about the androgynous blurring of...

The lionization of Michael Jackson now seems complete following the cathartic outpouring of grief and the celebration of his life at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Hundreds of millions of people, worldwide, tuned in to watch on Jumbotrons and TVs at home. Calls for national days of mourning just...