E.J. Graff

Why Does The Atlantic Hate Women?


Jerry Sandusky and Horace Mann


My, My, My Vagina


Why is William Saletan Apologizing for Slate's Mistake?

Two days ago, I wrote that Slate’s editors should be ashamed of having published Mark Regnerus’s propagandistic tripe about his “study” comparing how children fare under intact families versus how they fare when their biological parents have a rocky time because one discovers or accepts that he or she is lesbian or gay.

Chart of the Day: What War on Women?

I know, we're all used to hearing "war on women" mean the fight to defund and limit women's reproductive health. But this chart just astonished me. Take a second to compare (all) American deaths in combat with women's deaths at the hands of men who putatively loved them. Now, which war, again, is being funded with billions of dollars and covered every day with high-profile news coverage and media punditry?

Almost Time To Go Back to the Boy Scouts


Last week, I was a guest at the LGBT Connect day at Netroots Nation, meeting all kindsa people I've mostly encountered online. You know how these kinds of conferences go: glasses are hoisted, gossip is swapped, and you learn the story behind the story.



Sally Quinn Laments The End Of (Her) Power

In the Washington Post Magazine this weekend, Sally Quinn—wife of former legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, former religion columnist and social lioness—wrote a jaw-dropping piece about How Washington Has Changed For The Worse. As a friend said, "Every time you think this column can't get more deranged, there's another paragraph." Here's a summary: Crude people like the Kardashians and the Gingriches are getting attention, instead of my husband and me. That's appalling. We important people used to be in charge of getting things done here in Washington.

How the Gay-Rights Movement Won

(AP Photo/ Ron Lewis )

Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution—How a Despised Minority Pushed Back, Beat Death, Found Love, and Changed America for Everyone  By Linda Hirshman, Harper Collins, 464 pages, $27.99


Ho-Hum, Another Day, Another DOMA Defeat

How boring are marriage equality wins now? So boring that yesterday's DOMA defeat isn't even on The New York Times home page this morning, as I write this.

November’s Looking Good for Marriage Equality


Are Men Just Better Than Women at Everything?

Well, yesterday I got all Tigger-ish about marriage equality


Wedding Bells in Illinois?

(Flickr/Benson Kua)

You all have got to be tired by now of me celebrating good news for LGBT rights, bouncing around in my Tigger-y fashion, showing yet another way that we're winning. But I can't help it. As we've discussed, I grew up in the Pleistocene era, when you still had to look over your shoulder leaving a gay bar. Now I'm married to another woman, at least in the eyes of Massachusetts. It's crazy to live through so much social change in just a few decades. (A friend of mine says: "E.J., you sound like one of those older black folks who talk about how miraculous it is to no longer live under Jim Crow." Well, it's true! Being me is no longer a felony!)

I'm Married in Massachusetts—But Am I Married in the United States?

Oh, gosh, it's so confusing. I'm married when I visit my stepson's school. I'm not married when I file federal taxes. I'm married when I fill out forms at the doctor's office. I'm not married when I'm visiting my brother in Texas. Or am I?

The New Wave

Contraception is once again up for serious public debate in the United States. How much fun is that?

Yes, fun. For years, feminists have been warning that, underneath all the attacks on women’s reproductive rights—the multiplying restrictions on abortion, the attempts to defund Planned Parenthood’s health 

services, the “conscience clauses” that let pharmacists choose which pills they’ll dispense—lies a determined opposition to contraception and to women’s independence generally. The mainstream media rolled their eyes at feminist paranoia and moved on.