Some years ago, I clipped a newspaper item about a Vermont girl who was struck by lightning while playing baseball. Her parents sued the Little League. The coach, they alleged, had failed to take the kids off the field in a timely fashion, and thus had not averted a preventable accident.... Read more

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."... Read more

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?... Read more

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.... Read more

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.... Read more

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."... Read more

Ellen Willis peered. Maybe it was shyness, maybe myopia; she was afflicted with both. But she always seemed to be looking away from you and intensely at you, as if to get you in focus. This off-center, out-of-focus focus, and the urgent, almost aggressive way in which she listened, could make Ellen a little scary. If you disagreed, you knew you had to think fast, and with extraordinary rigor, to argue your point. But the conversation was an adventure: It went somewhere unexpected.... Read more

It's hard not to relish the spectacle of the Republicans' hoist on Mark Foley's quivering petard. But the pleasure wanes as the sanctimony rises - a chorus of politicians, pundits and reporters all singing the words child protection.

The GOP knew for years that the six-term Florida congressman was "funny" with the pages. They said nothing, except for the occasional, sotto voce warning to steer clear of the creep. Their first priority was to protect their own asses - not, as Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi put it, "to protect the children in their trust."... Read more

On the fifth anniversary of September 11, I went to see Oliver Stone's new movie, World Trade Center. I sat in the last row of the mini-cinema at the maxiplex, under the projector, trying for enough distance to take in the panorama. I expected huge images - and, because I'm a born-and-bred New Yorker, huge feelings.... Read more

In August, while the headlines reported the mounting deaths of already-born Lebanese and Israeli children, a bill to save American "children," both "pre-born" and pregnant, moved toward passage. Senate bill 403, the Child Custody Protection Act, criminalizes the transport of a pregnant minor across state lines to get an abortion, if the transporter isn't the girl's parent and is thereby circumventing home-state parental-consent laws. The bill still needs to be reconciled with a similar one passed in the House this spring, then go to the President, who is eager to sign it.... Read more