Marriage equality for same-sex couples gained momentum recently as a federal district court ruled unconstitutional the anti-equality California Proposition 8 passed by voters in 2008, and the state legislatures of Washington and New Jersey, and the Maryland General Assembly, passed bills that would legalize marriage for same-sex couples. The Maryland...

Homosexual behavior violates the commandments of God, is contrary to the purposes of human sexuality, distorts loving relationships, and deprives people of the blessings that can be found in family life and in the saving ordinances of the gospel. Those who persist in such behavior or who influence others to...

As wisely and eloquently stated by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1839 play, Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy, "the pen is mightier than the sword," this adage holds that the written word acts as a powerful tool in the transmission of ideas. Why else would oppressive regimes and other virulent...

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Mahatma Gandhi

College and university students throughout the country have organized boycotts and petition drives to terminate their schools' relationship with the national fast food chain Chick-Fil-A because of the restaurant's...

Recently speaking at a town hall meeting at an American Legion Hall in Lady Lake, Florida, presidential hopeful Rick Santorum fielded a question, or rather, a comment from a woman in the audience who forcefully proclaimed: "I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not....

Adding insult to injury, just one month after passing this country's most restrictive and punitive anti-immigration law, the Arizona legislature in the beginning of May 2010 passed House Bill 2281, signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer, targeting public school districts' ethnic studies programs. Arizona School Superintendent, Tom Horne,...

From ancient to modern times, since long before Thomas Jefferson, Grover Cleveland, Franklin Roosevelt, and the "Johns" (Fitzgerald Kennedy, Edwards, and Ensign), through William Jefferson Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anthony Weiner, and Newt Gingrich, married men have found it engorgingly hard to keep their pants zipped. But I am continually struck...

A few years ago, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Alliance at a private Boston-area university asked me to give a presentation on LGBT history at one of its weekly meetings. During my introductory remarks, in passing, I used the term "Stonewall," at which point a young man raised...

"My husband, Martin Luther King Jr., once said, 'We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny... an inescapable network of mutuality.... I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be.' Therefore, I appeal to everyone who...

Though I was certainly not surprised, I was saddened when recently I read a statement on marriage for same-sex couples issued by a wing of Orthodox Judaism and signed by over 100 Orthodox rabbis reaffirming its position laid out in July 2010 on marriage for same-sex couples. That 2010 document,...

Within the current controversy of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago comparing the gay liberation movement to the Ku Klux Klan, I pulled out an essay I wrote in 1986 for you to determine whether much has really changed since that time in the Catholic Church.

Laying Down the Law

On...

The small Alabama town of Bay Minette has come up with a rather peculiar plan of giving convicted non-violent offenders a choice between incarceration and paying a fine or attending church every week for a year, what some are calling choosing between "lockup and the Lord" or between "jail...

Imagine this: Today is your first day at college. You have been looking forward to this day ever since you can remember. Excited about living away from home for the first time with the expectation of experiencing new people and new adventures, your feelings are tinged, however, with a nagging...

It was a brilliantly sunny, though rather cool, mid-June afternoon in Boston. Banners flying, music blasting, people of all walks of life assembled, reuniting, greeting, embracing, kissing, catching up on lives lived in the space between. The signal was given with a contagious cheer rising from the crowd, and for...

"I will do my best to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what I say and do, and to respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and be a sister to every...

When people wish others a "Happy Holiday Season" or just "Happy Holidays," what exactly do they mean? This "season" usually begins around Thanksgiving and lasts through December until the first day of January, "New Year's Day." Thanksgiving in the United States commemorates that mythical occasion when the "Pilgrims" and the...

"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pews every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As president, I'll...

"It doesn't matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live." -- Newt Gingrich

What are people really hearing from Newt Gingrich? What I personally hear...

In Iowa recently, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum described marriage for same-sex couples as "a hit to faith and family in America," and he asserted that if legalized, "their sexual activity" would be seen as "equal" to heterosexual relationships, and it would be taught in schools....

"If we feel afraid, it isn't what we don't know that frightens us, it's what we think we do know."
-- Allan G. Johnson in Power, Privilege, and Difference

Though a number of published research studies surfaced in reputable medical journals during the mid-1980s finding that...