Sometime in June, the U. S. Supreme Court will define marriage for us: a prospect that helps to define the moral mess we’re in as a people.

May gays marry gays, or do we, should we, will we stick with the ancient prescription — one man, one woman? Judges are the ones to tell us? The larger question, maybe, is how in the world did we get to this point? Read More»

The Democrats have to be bent over in derisive laughter as the national Republican party flagellates itself for irrelevance, backwardness and plain old stupidity. (Ow! Ow! Hee, hee, haw, haw!) Read More»

Male or female, those of us who’ve been around for a while can recall clearly the objectives of the feminist movement as it geared up in the early 1970s. Workplace fairness was the goal.

A lot of manufactured indignation attended the feminist rising; e.g, who says we have to wear bras? Basically, nonetheless, what the rebels said they wanted was opportunity too long denied them by chauvinistic males. Opportunity they received from government, and in a larger sense, from the hand of a culture they prodded or embarrassed into agreement with most of what they said. Read More»

Every human trend (as those of us who’ve seen a few will affirm) looks fixed, untouchable, set in ready-mixed concrete. Until, to be sure, something else happens and the betting begins anew.

The leadership of the Episcopal Church has the notion that objectors to the present leadership style better get used to an eternity of choose-your-own-truth theology. Don’t bet the 401(k) on it: accounts of the church’s recent General Convention notwithstanding. Read More»

With all these debates and polls and risings and fallings, we’re supposed to think (I think) that there could hardly be a worse presidential selection process than this. Possibly, we should look on the bright side. The process digs up and conveys important information.

The Herman Cain collapse brings these ruminations to mind. Cain was never my label of joy juice, but many Americans, generally of conservative bent, were ready to award him the state fair blue ribbon. Read More»

Marriage in New York State, by act of its legislature, and in spite of everything you’ve always heard, is for everybody, and every combination of everybodies.

Except, you know what — it’s not. And, what’s more, won’t ever be.

For all the legislature’s grandeur and power, and the fervent encouragement of The New York Times, no aggregation of human beings enjoys the power to redefine marriage. Read More»

Few things in life are as clear as the futility of a real debate on the clarity of America’s religious origins.

“Debate,” I said? Lay a finger, unsuspectingly, on The New York Times Magazine’s inspection of the attempt by so-called Christian fundamentalists to overhaul history textbooks, and you require treatment for first-degree burns.

I refer less to the article itself than to readers’ sulfurous responses to the claims of Texas State Board of Education members concerning the need they see for forthright teaching of the founding fathers’ Christianity. Yow-ee! Read More»

Heavy weekend snowfall closed down the capital of the United States. Not that many outside the Washington Beltway were sorry about it. Possibly — by their reasoning — the blizzard was God’s gift to decent government, a holiday from the ceaseless commotion, braggadocio and show-offing that have become the capital’s principle pastimes.

Did Sarah Palin bring down the house in Nashville, Tenn., at the big tea party bash and the next day at a Rick Perry rally in Texas? By virtue of her considered views on Federal Reserve reform or transportation policy? Read More»

It’s jobs, jobs, jobs now for the Obama team, rather than healthcare, healthcare, healthcare. You have to call it progress, particularly if you’re jobless, or fearful of becoming so at a time when 17 million Americans are either non- or underemployed.

We’re about done, in other words, with the free-floating pretense that putting the federal government in charge of healthcare decisions somehow creates a lot of opportunity and employment. Read More»

Back to the future — or something like that.

The last time Americans got wound up about the assorted misfeasances and incompetencies of the U.S. Congress, the national conversation opened itself to the possibility of term limits for the members. Read More»