Within minutes of the Supreme Court's April 18 ruling in Gonzalez v. Carhart, which upheld the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, emails poured into my inbox from feminist and pro-choice organizations.
NARAL Pro-Choice America asked me to forward my friends a message starting, "I'm sending you an email because I want you to help protect privacy and a woman's right to choose.
It should have been easy to get out of the house on Sunday, March 18 - the day before the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq - for the first of a nationwide series of demonstrations to bring the troops home. The weather was clear and crisp in New York, where I was; most of the slush had dried up. My affinity group, Take Back the Future, was prepared to march. What could be better than a Sunday afternoon with my friends, chanting for peace?
The news was on our side.
The correctness of Vermont House Bill 275, permitting same-sex marriage, is a no-brainer. To forbid the privileges and protections of marriage to couples with matching genitals, when the complementary-genitalia crowd is welcome at the altar, denies a class of citizen equality under the law.
If I were voting, I'd vote for H. 275. But I'd do so with a heavy heart.
It's the same feeling I had in 1993, watching a videotape of 3000 same-sex couples celebrating their symbolic weddings at the gay-rights march in Washington, D.
It's thrilling to watch people pulling together against global warming. Fights and fissures lie ahead. But a green Christmas from St. Louis to St. Petersburg has, for this panicked moment, inspired some previously unimaginable alliances. Businesspeople are lying down with regulators, Democrats with Republicans, religious fundamentalists with scientists.
Amateur porn stars with Amazon Indians.
I heard Reverend Billy preach the other night at Manhattan's Cooper Union. His red-hot, red-robed Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir and Not Buying It Band rocked the Great Hall to its vaulted ceilings, mingling with the echoes of rabble-rousers past, from Fredrick Douglas to Emma Goldman to Hugo Chavez. The evening was entitled "Save Christmas from the Shopocalypse."
As always, the Reverend (a.
