Dear Gun Lovers: We hear you: Guns are beloved custom and culture. They are rites of passage, in which 5-year-olds are given shotguns, along with bicycles with training wheels or tea sets, to bring them into adult culture through play. They are the means through which fathers (and likely mothers) inculcate their children into the [...]
“How am I going to manage without you?” my maternal grandmother Pata wailed at the viewing of her husband’s recently deceased body. As a precocious and carefully inscrutable 12-year-old, I remember feeling embarrassed on her behalf, and thus mine, that she expressed public grief for logistical support rather than the passionate loss I had seen [...]
Following Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision overturning Proposition 8, the accusation that he is furthering “unnatural” marriage is being spouted so often that it is quite obviously a deliberate talking point: notably from Pat Buchanan, or a variant coming from L.A. Cardinal Michael Mahoney that “the union of a man and of a woman in a [...]
The Rajya Sabha (Upper House) of the Indian Parliament passed a bill on Wednesday approving a constitutional amendment to reserve 30 percent of seats for women in national and state legislatures. This would not only improve India’s rate of women in parliament from the current 10 percent, but also put India in healthy comparison with [...]
If March 8 happens to fall on a day when I’m teaching in Lexington, Kentucky, I valiantly remind students that it’s International Women’s Day and try to rouse some enthusiasm. A couple of feminists in the room look pleased at the validation, but for most the event is likely to fall into the usual morass of [...]
