A Right to Marry? Katha Pollitt

MARTHA NUSSBAUM lays out the arguments against gay marriage so clearly and refutes them so neatly you wonder how opponents could possibly stick to their guns. But of course plenty will.  Religious people do not necessarily agree that their interpretation of Scripture should be ignored in the public square merely because millions read the bible differently or don’t accept it as the last word on modern life. To them, indeed, that’s the problem in a nutshell: all those people rejecting the word of God.  Similarly, attributing opposition to same-sex marriage to disgust for homosexuali... More

A Right to Marry? Martha Ackelsberg

MARTHA NUSSBAUM has written a clear and compelling argument for the position that “government cannot exclude any group of citizens from the civil benefits or the expressive dignities of marriage without a compelling public interest.” In carefully dissecting and deconstructing both what marriage is (and is not) in the contemporary US and the arguments against same-sex marriage, she effectively demolishes the case against same-sex marriage and argues that, if government offers a package of benefits that goes under the name of marriage, it cannot rightly exclude same-sex couples from ac... More

A Right to Marry? Stephanie Coontz

AS NUSSBAUM suggests, there are many logical inconsistencies in the argument that marriage is about encouraging procreation and guaranteeing children the support of both a mother and a father. We do not deny marriage to heterosexuals who cannot or will not reproduce, nor do we any longer forbid divorce, or refuse to recognize the right of unwed mothers to raise children.

But it’s also important to note the historical inaccuracy of the claim that traditional marriage was ever about the protection and procreation of children. Marriage was invented largely to get in-laws, and as... More

A Right to Marry? Same-sex Marriage and Constitutional Law

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE is currently one of the most divisive political issues in America. While several states have legalized it, others—most recently, California—have stripped same-sex couples of their right. “What ought we to hope and work for, as a just future for families in our society?” asks Martha Nussbaum in her essay “A Right to Marry.” Martha Ackelsberg, S... More

The War on Women: Afghanistan and Eastern Congo

IN THINKING about Afghanistan—and about what the United States should do in Afghanistan—I can’t help but think immediately, and primarily, about the women and girls who live there and will never live anywhere else. Such a perspective does not—for good or ill—answer all questions, or even lead me to a strategy, a solution, a line. But I am sure that there are certain realities we should not lose sight of and certain people we should not sell out.

The situation of Afghan women and girls is not bad, or oppressive, or exploitative: it is extraordinary. In fact, in thinking about this si... More

The War on Women: Establishing a Feminist Foreign Policy

COMING TO the defense of women requires locating ourselves in relationship to allies and enemies on the ground. To denounce sexual terror without identifying who’s responsible leaves us nowhere. Not all men turn women into sexual slaves and rape baby girls, as do soldiers of the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DCR). Not all Afghan men marry off their little girls or marry someone else’s girl. But men with loyalties to particular groups, armies, and reactionary political forces do these things, and more. Urgent circumstances require ... More

Partial Readings: Murdoch's Toxic Assets

To Infinity and Beyond
Thirty feet above Manhattan, visitors took their first steps on to the High Line Park last week, proving that New Yorkers can eke out communal space even in midair.  This new economy of aerial development is also evident in the rapid expansion of t... More

Let the People Decide: The Case for Soft Intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

THERE MAY still be one last chance for a two-state settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This will require an immediate but radically different approach to the international community’s efforts in peacemaking. Rather than try to engage the two sides in renewed negotiations, President Obama, acting on behalf of the Quartet, should make an offer to both sides which neither side can refuse. He should present a summary of a pre-drawn blueprint of a settlement to the leadership on both sides, and rather than asking them to enter into a new marathon of negotiations over it, or eve... More

A Petition Against the Government-Sponsored Violence in Iran

We, the undersigned scholars, academics and writers around the world, are concerned about the human rights crisis in Iran. We request the United Nations to condemn the current coup d’état and support Iranians in their demand for a fair and democratic election. Deeply worried by the reports of Iranian paramilitary groups and security forces firing upon and arresting peaceful civilian demonstrators, we demand that the international community act now to prevent further violence and bloodshed.  We call on the government of Iran to respect and uphold the right to peaceful protest. We ... More

The Gandhian Moment

WITH THE refusal of Iran’s political establishment to re-run the elections, more repression and violence seems inevitable. However, what we are witnessing since the first demonstrations against the results of the presidential elections might very well be considered as a major nonviolent movement in a Gandhian style. There is already an evident similarity between the civil disobedience movement in today’s Iran and successful nonviolent movements led by Gandhi in India in the 1920-1940s and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States in the 1950-1960s.

Gandhi adopted his methodology ... More

The Iranian Dream

THE ONGOING protests in the streets of Iran and the social and political developments that followed the presidential elections are reminders of a century-long quest for democracy and three decades of struggle for republican values against theological rule in the Iranian public sphere. Not since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 have such large-scale demonstrations taken place in Iran. Tens of thousands of young Iranians, women, students, artists, intellectuals, and ordinary people have been assembling and rallying in the Iranian cities defying the governmental restrictions and challenging the ... More

Will the Revolution be Tweeted?

The revolution will be no re-run, brothers,
The revolution will be live.

-Gil Scot-Heron, “The Revolution will not be televised”

IF GIL Scot-Heron’s anthem of revolution saw television’s jejune concerns as an opiate to be dispensed with in the revolutionary moment, should we view Twitter.com as help or hindrance to mass mobilization?  Never ones to miss a story that broadcasts well over wi-fi at Starbucks, reporters have pounced upon news of a young official at the More

Confronting Iran

I AM a statist in many ways and in many areas. I believe that government has an important role to play in the economy, in health care, in protecting the environment, and certainly in foreign policy. But reading about the mass demonstrations in Iran, my first thought isn’t about what the U.S. government should do or what President Obama should say. It is about what the rest of us should do and say.

We boast of our lively civil society, and those of us on the liberal left call ourselves internationalists. So l... More

Winging It At the Met

When New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its new American Wing in May 1980, its most impressive asset was the spacious Charles Englehard Court, which featured the Greek Revival limestone façade of Martin E. Thompson’s 1822 Branch Bank of the United States.  The glass-enclosed and roofed court, always filled with light, was a welcoming place where large-scale sculpture, mosaics, and architectural elements were never forced to compete with each other for attention.

The sculpture in the center of the court were limited in number and surrounded by plantings. At the souther... More

Politics vs. Protest: Rethinking Gay Marriage Rights Strategy

ON WEDNESDAY, May 26, the day after the California Supreme Court issued its ruling sustaining the voter-initiated, state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, streets all over the west side of Los Angeles were barricaded and traffic was stalled.  Stuck in our cars, many of us leaned out of the windows in the hope that they were anti-Prop. 8 demonstrations.  No such luck.  The president was in town. The evening before, a small demonstration of about 100 from UCLA held up traffic at the important intersection of Wilshire and Westwood, but only for a brief time. More

Partial Readings: Gutenberg's Paradise

What’s Good for the Body Is Good for the Purse
Ezra Klein interviews Christina Romer, chairwoman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, on the CEA’s new report detailing the economic argument for health care reform. For those rusty on the finer points of the employer tax exclusion or the political proclivities of Senate Finance ... More

The Gordian Knot: The Israel/Palestine Peace Dilemma

THE ELECTION of Barack Obama opens the door to renewed peace negotiations over the Israel-Palestine conflict.  With the appointment of George Mitchell, the lead negotiator of the peace accord in Northern Ireland, as the U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the prospects for serious negotiations looks as promising as they have for several decades.  At the same time, this opportunity for peace may go nowhere.  In the late 1990s, the Oslo accords collapsed into the second intifada, renewed terrorist attacks in Israeli cities, Hamas missile attacks, the 2006 war in Lebanon and Gaza, a... More

Ten Days in Tiananmen Square

In 1989, I went to China out of personal interest and believed the events in Tiananmen Square would be over by the time I’d arrived. The protest in Tiananmen had been in progress for some weeks prior to my arrival and in the ten days I was there, I moved freely ... More

Hard Times: A Tale of Two California Cities

SEVERAL MONTHS ago, my wife and I retired and left Riverside for Pasadena, California. We have been struck by the similarities and differences between the impact of the current economic crisis on the two cities, which are only fifty five miles apart.

Evidence of the current economic crisis is highly visible in Riverside with its burgeoning Mexican population and substantial working and lower middle-class populations.  The city currently has over 288,000 residents, nearly double what it was in 1980. Sub-prime loans have resulted in significant bankruptcies and foreclosures. With... More

It Happens Every Spring

THIS YEAR marks the sixtieth anniversary of one of the funniest baseball movies of all time, It Happens Every Spring.  But it’s hard to imagine TV stations re-showing the 1949 film, which made its New York debut at the Roxy along with a stage bill that featured the Andrews Sisters. The recent steroid problems of Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, among others, have guaranteed that It Happens Every Spring will not be seen with the lightheartedness it requires.

The film tells the story of a mild-mannered, college chemistry professor who accidentally discovers that a ... More