Feminists who want to censor what they regard as harmful pornography have essentially the same motivation as other would-be censors: They want to use the power of the state to accomplish what they have been unable to achieve in the marketplace of ideas and images. The impulse to censor places no faith in the possibilities of democratic persuasion.

If enough money is involved and enough people believe that two plus two equals five the media will report the story with a straight face always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that mathematicians however say that two plus two still equals four.

I have received many touching letters and emails from people who live in the most religious parts of the country, in places like rural Texas, saying it is so good to see someone be able to say I am an atheist without shame.

One of the reasons there are largely Catholic and largely Protestant regions of Germany today is that people did sort themselves out geographically.

Every brand of religion maintains, and is, a permanent mechanism for transmitting ideas and values - whether one regards those values as admirable or ridiculous. Secularist organizations, with their generally looser, nonhierarchical structures, lack the power to hand down and disseminate their heritage in such a systematic way.

one of the great weaknesses of the women's rights movement over the past two hundred years has been the tendency of its history to disappear, so that it must be resurrected for each new generation.

The more intelligent and competent a woman is in her adult life, the less likely she is to have received an adequate amount of romantic attention in adolescence.