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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. In 1987, an evangelical Christian missionary in the Philippines, Pam Tebow, sick and near term, ignored doctors' advice to abort her fifth child. How could they know he would grow up to win a Heisman Trophy and lead the University of Florida to two national titles? Twenty-three years later, before he even turned pro, Tim Tebow made himself the player to beat in Sunday's Super Bowl XLIV by starring in a 30-second commercial for Focus on the Family, a Christian group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. That the ad would run ...

The next big culture war battle is about to be waged in an unlikely place: the restroom. After many years, Congress may finally have the votes to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The measure, which the Obama administration views as key to advancing gay rights, would ban workplace discrimination against gays, lesbians, and transgendered people. But Christian right groups are fighting the legislation—on the grounds that it would force businesses to allow transgendered and "transitioning" men and women to use opposite-sex restrooms or face lawsuits from the Equal Employment ...

Last week, Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, Florida Democrat, introduced a bill that would allow gay service members to testify at Congressional hearings without jeopardizing their careers by violating "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell." I spoke on the phone with Nathaniel Frank, author of Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America and senior research fellow at the Palm Center at the University of California in Santa Barbara, about this call for temporary immunity and his research on gays in the military. Mother Jones: Beyond the obvious logistical issue it addresses, what ...

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. Is it too early—or already too late—to begin drawing lessons from "the Long War"? That phrase, coined in 2002 and, by 2005, being championed by Centcom Commander General John Abizaid, was meant to be a catchier name for George W. Bush's "Global War on Terror." That was back in the days when inside-the-Beltway types were still dreaming about a global Pax Americana and its domestic partner, a Pax Republicana, and imagining that both, once firmly established, might last forever. "The Long War" merely exchanged the shock-'n'-awe ...

This story first appeared at Alternet. The Rev. Jim Wallis is sitting pretty these days. He's the evangelist the media love—so much so that Democrats kow-tow before him. He says he's progressive, and has some credentials to back up the claim: anti-poverty work and opposition to the Vietnam War. But he's opposed to legal abortion and same-sex marriage. Nonetheless, eager for an evangelical partner, President Obama named Wallis to the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, giving Wallis the ideal platform from which to try to subvert the debate over health-care ...

Kenneth Prewitt served as Bill Clinton's director of the US Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001 and, before he withdrew his name from consideration, was widely considered a front-runner to return to the post in advance of the 2010 Census. He has authored or coauthored a dozen books on census-related matters and is completing a historical study of the tortured consequences of the nation's official racial classification from 1790 to the present. Currently, he serves as a part-time consultant for the US Census Bureau, appointed by President Obama. He spoke with Mother Jones this week about gay ...

Former solicitor general and ultraconservative lawyer Ted Olson is a rock star of the US Supreme Court bar. He’s argued more than 50 cases before the high court during his career and won more than three-fourths of them. So on Wednesday, when he signed on to a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, he looked like the great white hope for a cause that’s had only mixed success in the nation’s courts. If anyone could prevail in this case, Olson could. So gay rights groups must be thrilled that he’s thrown his significant legal weight ...

Tom Fiebiger, a Democratic state senator from North Dakota, has mixed emotions about the events of April 3. On that morning, he learned that Iowa was to become the first state in the Midwest to recognize same-sex marriages. In the afternoon, he watched as his own state's House of Representatives voted 54-to-34 to kill a bill that would have protected North Dakotans from being fired, denied credit, or evicted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. [Read more ...]

The Vermont State House was packed and overflowing. Inside the 152-year-old building, a drama was reaching its climactic act. Nine years after Vermont became the first state in the nation to legalize civil unions between gay and lesbian couples, the Vermont Legislature was about to vote again on whether to legalize same-sex marriage. The House and Senate had overwhelmingly approved same-sex marriage a week earlier, only to have Republican Gov. Jim Douglas veto the bill within 15 minutes of receiving it on April 6, 2009. [Read more ...]