We've had a culture war roaring away, and the kinds of people who want to abuse and discriminate against gay people who are adults can't really lay their hands on us unless they want to be gay-bashers and go to jail. They abuse us from afar and in the abstract, they abuse us with checkbooks and ballots, but their kids go to school on Monday morning. And there's a gay kid. And they feel they have license to beat that gay kid up in a way that I don't think they did when I was in school. I think it's gotten worse.

A huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves.

When I was a kid, and I was odd, the default assumption was that I was odd, not that I was gay. Now when a kid is odd in a Greensburg, gay or straight, the default assumption is gay.

Yes, yes: Taking out Saddam Hussein means war, and war is bad for children and other living things. I went to grade school in the 1970s, and I recall the poster. But there are times when war is not only a tragic and unavoidable necessity, but also good for children and other living things.

Every question is a hypothetical question for everyone but the person who asks it.

Women can go on marrying and pretending that their boyfriends and husbands are Mr. Darcy or some RomCom dream man. But where's that going to get 'em? Besides divorce court?

Mother's Day is a torment if your mother is dead. Valentine's Day is a torment if you don't got one. And at some point in our lives, we will be tormented by Valentine's Day even if we're relatively lucky in love.