Kathleen Peratis
By Kathleen Peratis
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Opinion To Have an Impact, a Ban on Cluster Bombs Must Be Absolute
A kind of miracle will take place May 19: The representatives of more than 100 countries will gather in Dublin to finish their negotiation of a treaty banning — banning! — the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster bombs. This treaty process, called the Oslo Process, began last year when Norway invited countries serious…
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Opinion A Defense of Marriage Divorced From Reality
Same-sex couples that establish a legal relationship in a state that allows it and then move to a state that does not might be stuck in the relationship with no access to divorce. At least 10 states and the District of Columbia allow some form of “relationship recognition,” including marriage (Massachusetts), civil union (four states),…
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Opinion Discrimination By Any Other Name
In a speech early last month, Reverend Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the world’s 80 million Anglicans, was just a bit too Muslim-friendly. He spoke of the “inevitability” of some “constructive accommodation” between British law and Sharia. Williams’s use of the terms “accommodation” and “Sharia” in the same sentence freaked…
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Opinion Bring Civil Rights Enforcement Out of the Shadows
More than 40 years ago, Congress banned most forms of job bias in almost all places of employment across the United States, through a sweeping law known as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At the same time, whether cynically or due to a political compromise, it created a weak system for…
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Opinion Tell Colombia Free Trade Comes at a Price
Last November, the Bush administration signed a free-trade agreement with Colombia that would give the Andean country access to American markets on favorable terms. In the months since, Colombian president Alvaro Uribe has conducted a high-priced lobbying campaign in Washington to persuade Congress to ratify the deal, officially known as the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion…
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Opinion Can We Still Say That a Fetus Does Not Suffer?
The Supreme Court’s recent decision on partial-birth abortion is sickening. Its four-paragraph description of an abortion doctor at work, only snippets of which have been quoted in the mainstream press, sounds like something out of Jeffrey Dahmer’s basement. Such as: “The doctor grips the fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the…
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Opinion Back Bill To Ban Cluster Bombs
The United States and Israel, as well as dozens of other countries that are makers, sellers or stockpilers of weapons, are in the cross hairs of an international movement to abolish cluster bombs. Weapons are, of course, meant to kill, and are a fact of war. But cluster bombs, like landmines, kill indiscriminately, and therefore…
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Opinion And the Award Goes to… Queer Yiddishkeit
Last week’s Grammy Award to the Klezmatics for their first all-English album, “Wonder Wheel,” was joyously reported by many Jewish news outlets, including this newspaper. For all the media coverage, however, no mention was made of the Klezmatics’ iconic status in the Queer Yiddishkeit movement. Never heard of the Queer Yiddishkeit movement? Until last summer,…
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