The recent announcement that the New York school system intends to open the Harvey Milk School–a separate high school for gay teens–raised some troubling issues.
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Category Archives: Gay Rights
Single Issue
As Congress reconvenes after the Christmas/New Year holiday, we are told that anti-abortion legislation will be a high priority. Now that Republicans are firmly in charge of both houses of Congress, they intend to enact laws further restricting a woman?s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
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The Culture Wars
A few years back, I read an interesting article (I think it was in The New Yorker) predicting the ultimate marginalization of the Religious Right and the victory of social liberalism and toleration. The article acknowledged a string of right-wing electoral victories, but based its prediction on the values of popular culture–precisely those values that cause apoplexy in people like Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft. The thesis of the article was that popular culture is a predictor of political change.
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Be Very, Very Afraid
November’s election was much more than a triumph for George W. Bush, our inarticulate and one-dimensional President. It was one of those fateful turning points in national history–quite possibly the event that scholars in the future will point to as the beginning of monumental change.
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Framing the Issues
Over the past several years, political pundits have talked increasingly of “spin”—the persistent attempts by politicians and their handlers to describe events and issues in terms most favorable to their position or candidate. But spin is not new, nor necessarily evil. It is probably as old as the use of language itself. Academics call it “framing.”
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