Why Should Humanists Organize?
"What do you organized humanists do, and why should I care?" At the American Humanist Association, we sometimes receive variations of that pair of related yet distinct questions from Christians and humanists, critics and sympathizers... Read More
What Next for Gay Marriage?
Voters here in Wisconsin passed a ban on same-sex marriage in the fall of 2006. The following morning, I thoughtlessly tried to console a lesbian coworker by predicting a universal right to marry within a... Read More
The Nature of Great Coincidences
When I was at university my friend Bruno claimed to have the ideal pickup line. He’d approach a woman in a bar and say that in a parallel universe at that very moment an identical... Read More
Chipping Away at the Bench How we failed the judiciary in Iowa
Voter anger took a new form as the results of Iowa’s November 2010 midterm elections were revealed. In a real-life twist that would make any screenwriter envious, three of the seven Iowa Supreme Court justices—who... Read More
Coats before Christmas
It’s mid November, a cold, rainy one, with lower temperatures arriving earlier than we’d like. I work in the street selling newspapers. It’s a cold and wet job. But I like my job, I happen... Read More
Net Neutrality, Google, and Internet Ethics
This past summer, Verizon and Google unveiled a joint legal framework for the consideration of Internet policy makers that grants Internet Service Providers (ISPs) greater control over the way consumers can access content in the... Read More
“Burn a Koran Day” and the Flames of Extremism
It’s fair to say that the fifteen minutes of fame recently afforded to Terry Jones—the once-obscure Florida preacher with the misguided plan to burn copies of the Koran at his Dove World Outreach Center in... Read More