People — queer or straight — who support social equality for sexual and gender minorities tend to consider the subjects of their advocacy as whole people. For instance, one might think of a married couple of gay men as two goofy dudes who listen to Heavy Metal and play video games, like Brian and Steve [...]

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Over at Salon, Lynn Harris addresses the under-representation of women on the writing staffs for TV comedy. Much as been written in other venues on this problem (Harris provides links), so I’ll just excerpt the bit that I found interesting: Still, even some of the most florid trash-talkers — Hirsch included — also said that [...]

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The Planned Parenthood Action Center has a form letter you can send to the White House to encourage President Obama to defend women’s reproductive rights as the Senate debates health care reform. There’s pre-written stuff, but I have heard from activists in various fields that more attention/weight is given to original writing. Maybe that’s a [...]

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This shooter is mentally ill. This other shooter is a terrorist. Or perhaps this shooter cracked under economic pressures. And this other shooter cracked under anti-religious racism and the pressures of war. Whenever these violent outbursts occur, I never feel that the explanations for them are adequate. Yet how we explain them — and our [...]

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I have been waiting for this shoe to drop: Under the agreement, anti-abortion Democrats will be permitted to offer an amendment on the House floor to the health-care overhaul bill. The amendment would prohibit a new government-run insurance plan created by the health-care bill from offering to cover abortion services, congressional sources said. It would [...]

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