What It Means To Be a Tar Heel
North Carolinians, who will soon consider a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, should remember the origins of their nickname.
On the Newsstand:Same-Sex Marriage
On The Alleged Death Of Marriage
The need to accept the evolution of marriage in the United States
The Folly of Perry v. Schwarzenegger
In my latest Harvard Independent column, I argue that the legal challenge to Proposition 8 in a California federal court may end up backfiring if it reaches the Supreme Court, because there almost certainly are not five votes for judicially-imposed gay marriage on the current court. Furthermore, I said, an anti-marriage equality ruling would suck the air out of the ... Read More
At Home and Abroad
Today was a good day. The Democrat-dominated House of our wonderful northern neighbor Vermont overrode GOP Governor Jim Douglas’s veto on a law to legalize same-sex marriage (picking up three votes from moderates that had opposed the legislation the first time). The liberal grassroots – text message, Facebook, Twitter, email lists, you name it – erupted in jubilation. “Four down, ... Read More
Comeback to the Future
A proposal for rejuvenating the Republican Party American conservatism is in disarray. Democrats won decisively in the 2006 midterm and 2008 presidential elections. Once reliably conservative constituencies like married couples and regular churchgoers are shrinking in size, and young voters voted overwhelmingly Democratic. Conservatism is out of power and out of steam. With both the White House and Capitol Hill ... Read More
Symbol or Savior?
Can Michael Steele lead blacks to the Republicans? The recent election of Michael Steele, the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee, may be taken to symbolize the necessary modernization of the Grand Old Party, or merely cynical tokenism at its worst. Steele’s victory ended a racially charged contest in which one candidate, Katon Dawson, was discovered to have ... Read More
A Detente in the Culture War
Social issues move off center stage At the 1992 Republican National Convention, conservative media personality Pat Buchanan fired the opening salvos of the ongoing national culture war, declaring, “There is a religious war going on in our country…it is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.” ... Read More
The Decline of Social Liberalism?
The Democratic Party and California's Proposition 8
Civil Rights in the Courts
A changing legal landscape In American history civil rights issues have often found their footing in the high courts. Decisions such as the recent Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts’ ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in Goodrige v. Department of Public Health exemplify the courts’ ability to swiftly expand civil rights. However Proposition 8 in California, which amended the state’s constitution to ... Read More
The Ties that Bind
Bush, Evangelicals, and the Republican PartyBy Ray Duer ‘11 Coming on the heels of President Clinton’s scandal-ridden second term, and campaigning in 2000 as a “compassionate conservative” with the promise of a return of moral fortitude to the Oval Office, George W. Bush won the heart of one of America’s most powerful voting blocs, Protestant Evangelicals. In 2004 family values ... Read More
