| Jan 28, 2015 | Rights / DemocracyWhen I decided to write a column about Leelah Alcorn, I initially tried to do it without using singular pronouns. The Cincinnati teen killed herself by jumping in front of a tractor trailer late last year. “I feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body,” she...
| May 21, 2014 | Rights / DemocracyWhen Michael Sam became the first openly gay football player drafted into the NFL, he also made sports TV history by kissing his boyfriend on camera. And he has no harsher critics than his fellow athletes. The public is rapidly growing more tolerant of LGBT Americans,...
| Mar 5, 2014 | Rights / DemocracyIn Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer has vetoed a bill that would have written anti-gay discrimination into state law in the name of religious freedom. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni signed an even more extremist law that sentences LGBT people to life in prison and...
| Feb 26, 2014 | Rights / DemocracyThe choice for Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was clear: “religious freedom” or the 2015 Super Bowl. Just when it looked as if social conservatives would force the state into taking a giant leap backward in the fight for LGBT equality, Brewer vetoed a blatantly anti-gay...
| Dec 11, 2013 | Rights / DemocracyDuring his recent bar mitzvah ceremony, Duncan McAlpine Sennett had to chant a biblical passage in Hebrew and deliver a short sermon in English putting that text into perspective. The Portland, Oregon 13-year-old had an unusual challenge with this routine part of the...