When the Karl Roves and Andrea Laffertys of the world decided that the best way to get out the vote was to fire up the masses about gay rights, they never considered that some of their own were gay too. It’s kind of like forgetting that some Republicans are black, and one or two are […]

Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.
— from the constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), chartered in 1946

The clamor for Sen. Larry “Wide Stance” Craig to resign is growing by the minute among Republicans in Washington. The senator’s inadvertent self-outing in an airport men’s room in June has rendered him too morally impure to remain in the GOP.
So what are the moral dictates behind the decision that Craig should go but Vitter […]

The professed purpose of the United States military is to maintain the peace, but its methods toward this goal are destructive and have resulted in the promotion of suffering and death of foreign peoples as well as its own.
— Susan Schnall (1943- ), Navy nurse court-martialed and discharged for her antiwar activities during the Viet […]

In his “Everyday Ethics” column, Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute mulls over the question of when it is appropriate or germane to a story to identify a public figure or politician as gay. He notes that there were intimations that the latest scandalized pol was gay almost a year ago:
Last fall when a gay […]

“This is your President!” Johnson announced. “I’m here to help you!”
Hurricane Betsy came ashore at Grand Isle, Louisiana, on the evening of Sept. 9, 1965. Like Hurricane Katrina would do 40 years later, the surge devastated New Orleans, flooding parts of the city, including the Lower Ninth Ward, for days.
One striking difference between Betsy and […]

Homophobia has flourished in the Bush era, both as a potent political tool — many people believe George Bush would have lost Ohio in 2004, and thus a second term, if Karl Rove hadn’t made sure there was an anti-gay initiative on the state ballot — and as an industry unto itself. In just one […]

News of rabidly anti-gay Republican Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest for lewd behavior in an airport men’s room has highlighted, once again, a signature phenomenon of our era: highly placed, secretly queer rightwingers living on the down low.
“Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.”- Study
Bisexual […]