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The Advocate | December, 2010 IT SOUNDS like a joke, but it isn’t, and you get your choice of punch lines. So…these college students walk into a mom-and-pop bakery in Indianapolis with an order for rainbow-colored cupcakes and cookies. Seems they’re celebrating National Coming Out Day. The bakery owners turn down the job, saying it violates their…
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The New York Times | November 7, 2010 A GRAND victory for Republicans in the 2010 midterm election? Yes, of course. But also no. In all three of the most recent earthshaking midterm elections — 1994, 2006 and now 2010 — the same candidate won: divided government. That is not a coincidence. In the last two…
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National Journal | September 11, 2010 THOUGH headless, the tea party movement is not mindless. Its collective brain meets every Monday night. More than 200 leaders of local tea parties — coordinators, as they usually call themselves — join a conference call every week organized by an umbrella group called the Tea Party Patriots, the…
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Journal of Law and Inequality | Summer, 2010 IT IS an honor to be with you today, and there could not be a better moment to talk about law, values, and the meaning of family in a time of tumultuous change. I should begin with a caveat: I am neither a lawyer nor any kind of expert on…
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The New York Times | July 3, 2010 ELENA KAGAN uttered neither the word “gay” nor “marriage” in her opening statement at the Senate confirmation hearings on her nomination to the Supreme Court, but she addressed the issue nonetheless. No, she didn’t say how she will vote when gay marriage comes before the court, as…
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The Atlantic | April 2010 My father came to live in Washington, D.C., near me, in the spring of 2009. I went with my partner, Michael, to Phoenix, to fetch him and bring him east. He had Parkinson’s disease, or so everyone thought. He was falling regularly, which he insisted was no cause for alarm, because…
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National Journal | December 5, 2009 RONALD REAGAN, though dead, has not lost his sense of humor. Told that some conservative Republicans have proposed a “Reagan test” whose effect would be to drum moderates out of the party, the former president chuckled. “You know, I know Ronald Reagan. I am Ronald Reagan. And believe me,…
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South Texas Law Review | Winter 2009 | References omitted I AM flattered to lead off this discussion of whether gay marriage is a conservative idea, and even more than that, I am struck by how well-timed the discussion is. In a quarter century of practicing journalism, I have never seen a moment when the meaning…
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National Journal | August 8, 2009 LAST October, Bill Meezan, my cousin, left his home in Columbus, Ohio, for a business trip to Philadelphia. Bill is the dean of Ohio State University’s College of Social Work, and he travels quite a bit. In Philadelphia, he thought he felt an old cold coming back. Then he…
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Democracy Journal | Summer 2009 Review of The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History, by Patrick Allitt • Yale University Press • 2009 • 336 pages • $35 IT IS the summer of 2008. I am watching the telecast of the Republican convention with a sinking feeling. Here is Mitt Romney. The former governor of Massachusetts (repeat: Massachusetts),…