Tag Archives: civil rights

May 7, 2012, 4:16 pm

Amendment 1, Protecting the ‘Caucasian Race’ and a Whole Lot of Stupid

Amendment 1 is North Carolina’s attempt to stop any and all unmarried residents from having any legal rights whatsoever. This despite the fact that unmarried Americans are the majority of the population.

Amendment 1 defines

marriage between one man and one woman [as] the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.

It would deny any registered domestic partnerships or civil unions legal status.

Billy Graham even got up off his deathbed to urge Evangelical Christians to vote for Amendment 1. Running full page ads in 14 of the state’s paper, Graham urged North Carolinans to vote for Amendment 1 saying:

At 93, I never thought we would have to debate the definition of marriage. The Bible is clear — God’s definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. I want to urge my fellow North Carolinians to vote for the marriage amendment on Tuesday, May 8…

February 25, 2011, 12:26 pm

Our Mercenary Impulses

By David Barash

I hope you aren’t tired of news from those exhilarating, humbling, ongoing people’s rebellions in the Arab world, because you’re going to hear a whole lot more about it. Even from me.

In a recent New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof made the claim that “We are all Egyptians,” nicely reformulating JFK’s now-famous reassurance/provocation about being “a Berliner.” I’d like to think that it’s true: that in times of trouble, we’re all prone to walk like an Egyptian—i.e., unite in a courageous show of nonviolent solidarity. But I’m not so sure.

The current bloody events in Libya and the reports that the regime in Tripoli is employing armed mercenaries to do its lethal work made me think back to my school days when we learned that the British used “Hessian mercenaries” during the Revolutionary War. (I wasn’t sure what Hessians were, or mercenaries, but …