If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Twenty years later, how close are we to those aspirational goals set down by a process that gave grassroots activists, wealthy donors and national organization leaders an equal voice in the planning? Here are the primary demands, followed by the full platform.
After the latest Boy Scouts news, it dawned on me that there might be something fundamentally different about straight men's sexuality. I'm not talking about the whole being-sexually-attracted-to-women thing. I'm talking about some darker, more shameful secret that no one ever mentions.
As governor of Vermont, with help from LGBT advocates and others, Dean led his state to become the first in the nation to pass civil unions. He recently took some time to speak with me about his take on the evolution of LGBT rights in the United States and where we're headed next as a nation.
In the end, the only reason you need to not build a bomb is what is does to you. It is soul-killing to be a murderer. You want to do something with your feelings of alienation? Go out and practice random acts of kindness. Raise money for refugees. Fight for justice.
According to the pundits and experts, the 1973 decision to legalize abortion outraged millions of Americans and mobilized them into a powerful movement to defend the rights of the unborn. But this tale turns out to be a myth.
We don't have to "wait until" anything. We have everything we need, right now, to create the future we want for our world.
Despite the good intentions of those who wish to create a common identity, the recognition of a person's race is paramount in overcoming the growing racism.
we will no longer live in a world in which going to college increases one's risk of sexual assault, in which administrations promote rape myths and stoke rape culture, in which reporting a sexual crime exposes you to further trauma and betrayal.
So a boy can come out as gay, be a great scout and be accepted by the organization but not even think about being a scoutmaster as an adult? And how can a gay scout feel that he is not stigmatized by the Boy Scouts of America when the organization is still discriminating against gay adults?
The language of the Second Amendment, however it is interpreted, is about means. Some manner of access to guns for some portion of the citizenry is the means, and something like defense against tyranny and protection of liberty the presumably intended ends.
The United Nations offers a crucial platform for raising awareness about anti-LGBT bullying and exchanging best practices to counteract the problem. Similarly, sports, with their exceptional capacity to straddle varying belief systems, serve as a universal language for communicating this message.
During his 1976 prosecution of Klansman Robert Chambliss in the Alabama church bombing case, the mail for (then) Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley included racist rants, personal insults and death threats. Unfazed, Baxley placed them in a file he labeled "Kooks and Nuts."
Americans need to push back strongly against anyone who would weaken the Voting Rights Act or who propose electoral policies that are at best simply divisive, and at worst direct attacks on the ability of people to participate in the process.
If you can't wait for the fall, take a virtual spin now of the featured tour stops.
Sal Castro was the epitome of what it means to be a teacher, and we surely today need teachers such as Sal. But he is also someone who made history -- American history -- and he needs to be recognized as a major figure in American educational and civil rights history.
Tom was an amazing person who spent his days convincing me that I was worthy of love -- his love. But we hid the fact that we were a couple, mainly because I was ashamed to be out. To circumvent potential judgment when we were around others, we developed a secret code.
