Sexologist Nancy Friday, author of the groundbreaking collection of women's sexual fantasies "My Secret Garden," opens the book's sequel "Forbidden Flowers" by remarking, "Sexual mores and practices have...

It would be relatively easy for me never to think about extreme poverty in my day-to-day life, if I weren't getting at least weekly phone calls from some extremely poor people in Ghana, that is. At this...

Given the political flurry around the issue of abortion in South Dakota and in Supreme Court appointments, I've felt more and more pressured to have a clear stance on abortion, something that isn't especially...

The Minor's Consent to Health Services Act was signed into Minnesota law in 1971 allowing minors to receive some limited health services without parental consent or notification. Lawmakers at the time...

The media coined the adage "If it bleeds, it leads" to describe why death and misery dominate the news. Although bloodshed isn't always featured on these opinion pages, they are, more often than not, rife...

I'm writing this column as a kind of intervention - for me and for the hipster boys, sorority girls and soccer moms who enjoy the pleasures of Diet Coke and other diet pops a bit too liberally. "What's...

Despite that more than 400,000 people have been killed in the ongoing genocide in Darfur, the situation has received scant attention in mainstream media with the exception of the occasional editorial and...

Pornography is available more than ever, even accessible on cell phones. Once exciting and chic, pornography seems like a mundane topic to many of us, a mere tool individuals use for entertainment and...

Advertising has fundamentally changed the moral fabric of our society, and while each of us is exposed to more than 3,000 advertisements a day, we continue to disbelieve that this onslaught affects us...

On any given day, Iíd reckon itís impossible to not get a recommendation about what one should or should not be eating or drinking from at least one media source. Weíre bombarded with messages proclaiming...

The world is full of polarization, bifurcation and dichotomization. One of the most distressing examples of this is the way secular liberals have been pitted against Christians, or rather, the way liberals...

In his renowned ethical treatise "Animal Liberation" philosopher Peter Singer remarked, "When non-vegetarians say that "human problems come first,' I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they...

In my last column I told a story of how my heart was opened to volunteer work and activism by a boy named Ed. This week I'll continue my self-indulgent streak by sharing a story about my feelings toward...

Since when did being an "activist" become synonymous with being a person who probably votes once every four years and who rants about politics with like-minded friends when drunk? Of course, there is the...

Our modern society doesn't give us much opportunity to interact with animals, let alone reflect on what those experiences mean. Our understanding of animals comes largely from occasional trips to zoos,...

Turkeys are destined to receive a lot of attention this week both as the centerpieces of many families' holiday meals and in animal protectionists' op-ed pieces showing the suffering those turkeys endure....

In my most recent column, I suggested that as people seeking a better world we need to consider three different consequences of having children when deciding whether we will have them: the negative environmental...

Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar of Arkansas recently had their 16th child. If the Lord is willing, they say, Michelle and Jim Bob plan to continue growing their family. I wonder if this is what the god of...

Unless you're from Hawaii, you probably haven't heard of the native-only Kamehameha Schools or the controversy surrounding them today. A non-native teenager recently sued the schools for denying him admission...

The University wasted a whopping $2.7 million recently by purchasing licenses of Microsoft Office and Windows XP Pro for each registered student as Don Parris pointed out in his Sept. 15 letter. The opportunity...

Hurricane Katrina has been in the news for more than two weeks now, and yet I continue to feel dumbfounded seeing its effects. The loss of New Orleans and its vibrant history is certainly tragic, but it's...