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My husband and I went to see Milk, the film about the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, a few months ago. We enjoyed the movie, with some exceptions, and I predicted Sean Penn would win the Oscar for best actor — he was just that transcendentally good. And the supporting cast was also amazing.
I’ve been debating whether to write about Ariel Levy’s “Lesbian Nation” essay for The New Yorker‘s March 2 issue. An abstract is here. The full article is available to non-subscribers for $4.95.
One would think it might be a challenge to write about the subject of death and dying without discussing religion and faith. Of course, the absence of religion or faith in the subjects’ lives could limit the range or scope of the discussion. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t part of the story.
Day after day, the press releases (left and right) and news reports flow into my inbox. They started late in the 2008 primary season and this digital tide tends to rise sharply in the hours just after One Of Those Appointments by the staff of President Barack Obama.
A few months ago we looked at media coverage of the promulgation of a Bush administration rule dealing with the legal right of health care professionals to practice according to their consciences. Health care professionals who work at organizations that receive funding from the federal government have been protected from being forced to perform abortions since the 1970s. This rule — which costs “only” $44 million to implement — is about making sure those protections are enforced since some medical organizations and societies have penalized or were planning to penalize medical professionals who objected to various abortion-related procedures.
In this year of anniversaries and celebrations, dead scientists like Darwin and Galileo are getting their due. Live ones, like the atheist former Oxford don Richard Dawkins, attract media attention pretty much every time he opens his mouth or slings a godforsaken poster on a bus.
As you would imagine, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the Rocky Mountain News the past week, especially once the final word came down on the shutdown of the newspaper where I worked during most of the 1980s. I still have lots of friends out there and, of course, that is also the paper that the Divine Ms. MZ Hemingway grew up reading, as well. Lots of memories.
One of the things I wish we saw more were casual inclusions of religion in stories about general life. It seems that there’s a lot of compartmentalizing of religion — as if stories are completely secular or they’re pigeonholed as religion news.
Dan Gilgoff, who runs the God & Country blog over at U.S. News & World Report, picked up on a little noticed but terribly interesting development in civil religion. Apparently President Obama’s public events are now being launched with prayers from local leaders.
