Forward.com

Even the Scary and the Weird Have RightsThis is not the column I expected to write this week. I expected to cluck-cluck about the shameful, officially sanctioned kidnapping of the more than 450 children from the compound of the Fundamentalist LDS church in El Dorado, Texas, and to compare the deprivation of their rights to Guantanamo Bay.…Read more

To Have an Impact, a Ban on Cluster Bombs Must Be AbsoluteA 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.…Read more

A Defense of Marriage Divorced From RealitySame-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.…Read more

Discrimination By Any Other NameIn 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.…Read more

Bring Civil Rights Enforcement Out of the ShadowsMore 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 enforcing this new law.…Read more