Harvard historian Niall Ferguson apologized this weekend for suggesting that John Keynes held hedonistic economic beliefs because he was a childless gay with no investment in the future -- becoming the latest in a long list of public figures forced to make a dramatic mea culpa...

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, would have you believe that government regulation is threatening the economy. Earlier this month, as his company reported record profits but a scant appetite to write new home loans which would spur the still-lackluster economy, he blamed regulations for having,

Americans invoke faith in God whenever big events occur, whether a national tragedy like the Boston bombings or any solemn or even celebratory occasion, from weddings to sports games. At these moments, ritual and rhetoric -- cassocks and caps and collars, along with talk of faith and grace and redemption...

Whatever the outcome of this week's historic Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage, one thing has become crystal clear: there is no longer, if there ever was, a rational argument to ban it. That very question -- when did it become unacceptable to ban gay marriage -- was at the...

Ok I get it: Conservatives just love gay marriage. Ted Olson, the conservative super-lawyer who helped press George W. Bush into office, has co-led the legal challenge to California's gay marriage ban, now headed to the Supreme Court. Over 80 prominent conservatives have signed a legal brief that...

Seemingly out of nowhere, the Pentagon announced this week that it would lift its ban on women in combat. Just like that. No years-long Washington lobbying campaign, no protracted national culture-war debate, no threats by conservatives in Congress to do everything humanly possible to block progress -- in other words,...

In a rambling acceptance speech for a special achievement award at the Golden Globes Sunday, Jodie Foster begrudgingly announced -- almost as though at gunpoint -- that she's a lesbian: "Now apparently I'm told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press...

When Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said last week that his faith teaches that homosexuality is a sin, he was clearly speaking to social conservatives. But with the 2016 election in mind, he was simultaneously moderating his rhetoric, so he also said that while his faith "informs"...

Dear X & Y:

We go back a long time, to the beginning of my college years. I've known you over half my life, and you've become like another set of parents to me. I've enjoyed sparring with you over politics at Christmas dinner, and I respect that you, X,...

On September 10th, 2001, a message was intercepted by American intelligence that warned that "tomorrow is zero hour" but it sat untranslated from the Arabic until it was too late: the U.S. government didn't have enough interpreters to do the work quickly enough, in part because it had...

As the dust settles a week after Obama's disastrous first debate performance, a new narrative is emerging: he doesn't want it enough to win it. "Does Obama Even Want to Win the Election?" asked Michael Tomasky, calling the president "withdrawn and distant," and asking, "Is he enthusiastic about...

Last year I released a report documenting 60 claims that anti-gay voices made about problems that would result if DADT were to end. The report was designed as a "provisional framework" for evaluating the policy change, and as an invitation to these conservatives, who generally profess to care...

There was something surprisingly cruel--and equally cowardly--about the way Republicans glibly touted their exclusionary position on marriage in this week's Convention. "The man who will accept your nomination," said VP nominee, Paul Ryan in the obligatory "values" line of his speech praising Mitt Romney, "is prayerful and faithful and honorable....

Hearing the news that Dharun Ravi's sentence would be 30 days rather than the maximum 10 years (with deportation still possible but unlikely), I experienced a wave of relief that almost felt as if I knew the perpetrator of the anti-gay spying crime (I didn't). The question of...

Now that Obama has completed his evolution on same-sex marriage (nearly -- he still gives states a pass, echoing the states'-rights argument that justified segregation), Mitt Romney's position on LGBT equality is under new scrutiny. Indeed, Obama's morally courageous (if also politically calculated) announcement that he now supports...

The Blunt amendment, the bill that would have allowed employers and insurers to deny health care coverage for services that are contrary to their "religious beliefs or moral convictions," has created a predictable rift between the left and the right, with each side trading election year sound bites....

When Cynthia Nixon, who became famous for her role on Sex and the City, recently told The New York Times that being a lesbian was, for her, "a choice," her words lit up the LGBT listservs, angering many who believe that Nixon is giving comfort to the enemy....

For years, defenders of anti-gay exclusion in the military have claimed that equal treatment was incompatible with a strong military. For nearly as many years, researchers pointed out that there was no evidence to support this claim that letting gays serve openly would harm cohesion, recruitment, or readiness,...

For years the religious right has done all it could to cast gay people as existing outside the family. It's part of a messaging strategy to define them as shifty, rootless individualists who threaten precious institutions that symbolize group cohesion. But in anointing themselves the champions of "family values" and...

When Rick Santorum said in the GOP debate that he'd reinstate the ban on openly gay military service, it raised some serious questions. Not only did Santorum stand by as the audience booed an active-duty gay soldier's question, but he seemed not to understand a thing about actual...