The fire in the bellies of the good people who work for a more fair and just world for all of us - that spark never fails to inspire me and warm my heart.

Power posing! I do it before any appearance and recommend it to everyone. Gold!

Our challenge is to find the compassion for others that we want them to have for us.

What haven't I been called? Every antigay, misogynist, anti-Semitic, anti-liberal smear you can think of. I don't think I can transform those smears; I can't even repeat them! But I proudly embrace the identities beneath them.

I'm a woman and a lesbian and a feminist and a Jew and so many other things, and those identities are a source of pride and strength for me.

But perhaps the next step isn't to, once again, expand the otherwise narrow definition of marriage but to altogether abolish the false distinction between married families and other equally valid but unrecognized partnerships.

Women are more than half of our globe, more than half of our promise and potential. And we have been not only underusing that resource but suppressing it.