Dear [insert name here],
I sense you may be a little stressed. Spring of junior year can be a whirlwind of expectations and obligations; and it can seem nearly impossible to concentrate on homework, grades, standardized test scores (here's hoping you get an easy Critical Reading passage!), prom, extracurricular activities, meaningful summer activities that will set you apart in the college admission process, and the fact that your [fill-in-the-blank] teacher rarely gives advance notice for [quizzes/tests/projects worth half your grade]. Maybe the person you wanted to go to prom with is going with someone else, or perhaps you are really struggling in your advanced math class. Clearly, you have a lot on your plate.
It is also likely that your internal anxiety and fear about the...
Lifestyle
Dear Tal,
Like many others, I read your piece this week "Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege" -- a retort to the motto "check your privilege" which, you argue, aims to devalue your opinion as a white male and make you feel guilty for your privilege. I was moved to respond because of the similarities we share. Although we do not know each other, we both come from families of Holocaust survivors, grew up in Jewish-American homes, and studied at Princeton. Indeed, our families lived through many of the same horrors and transformations. And I agree -- we do not need to apologize for our origins. Nothing about this notion, however, justifies blindness to inequality.
My maternal grandfather grew up in Nuremberg, Germany. After barely escaping a Hitler Youth attempt...
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Mr. Bryan Fischer:
Please explain to me how you can say, "Public policy should be based on reason, not emotion," when you attempt to scare the public into adopting your point of view whenever you speak publicly about homosexuality and/or gay marriage. Aren't you guilty of trying to sway public policy through emotion rather than through reason?
I want to believe that at your core, you are an intelligent, honorable man, but that is very difficult to do when you preach such hate and untruths. You talk about the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God," but homosexuality exists in species other than our own. I'm sure you would say that we are above animals and should be able to "control" ourselves, but if everything is created in God's image, especially the human race, then why would...
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Dear Madonna,
Thank you.
Earlier this week, after a month-long sojourn in Malawi, my family arrived home in California with our newly-adopted son, Vasco Fitzmaurice Mark David Possley.
His adoption would not have been possible without you and the bold actions you took in Malawi last year when its High Court denied you the adoption of your precious daughter, Chifundo "Mercy" James.
You didn't take no for an answer.
You didn't buy their argument that allowing your adoption of Mercy would encourage human trafficking. You didn't agree when they said Mercy would be fine at an orphanage and without a loving family from a foreign land.
When you appealed that myopic ruling and then won approval of Mercy's adoption from the Malawi court of appeals, you effectively made case law...
2,314
Dear Tarek,
Early yesterday, a friend sent me a message linked to a Facebook post you had put up. Unsurprisingly, he attached an "lol" to it. I'm accustomed to your posts, usually calling this or that individual an Islamist or attaching the Muslim Brotherhood label to some harmless and well-meaning Muslim organization in Canada. Then there are the occasional bizarre posts -- a cell-phone photo taken in secret at a café of a woman in a hijab who is showing "a little too much butt crack" -- followed by your meandering thoughts about her hypocritical nature. As Canada's very own fake-outrage machine, most of us ignore your statements or shake our heads at them in disgust.
This particular post, however, didn't sit right with me, and I felt I had to respond. Muhammad Robert Heft, founder...
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Dear Media,
I'm writing today to issue a plea on behalf of the sane, reasonably well-adjusted people all across this country of ours. It's, admittedly, a move borne out of desperation and spawned from the mind of someone who's been pushed to the brink of madness, but I would only hope that this fact underscores the anguish being felt by the American people and therefore the seriousness of what I'm about to say.
Please, in the name of all that's decent, stop, stop, stop treating the Duggars like they're celebrities.
Yesterday morning, like clockwork, the Duggar family -- Jim Bob, Michelle, her clown car vagina, and the 18 kids whose names all inexplicably begin with the letter "J" -- made their traditional appearance on NBC's Today to show off the latest addition to their...
2,170
Dear Mom and Dad,
I was filling out an application the other day. It asked me what I felt my greatest accomplishment thus far was. I thought for a moment and answered that I am most proud of surviving all that came with coming out to you as a lesbian.
I am an adult and a college student with a job and a life apart from you. I've been told that I don't need you, and for the most part I rarely think about your absence. I have said before that I sometimes forget that I ever had parents; my life is too busy to dwell. Part of that is denial, isn't it? Being 20 years old hardly makes me an adult, and one always needs family, no matter his or her age.
I have lost friends, extended family and mentors as a result of coming out, but all those are secondary to parents. Friends come and go,...
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Dear Mr. Perkins,
Let me again express my strong condemnation of the shooting at the Family Research Council offices, as well as my support and concern for all those affected. Security guard Leo Johnson, who took a bullet (and luckily did not lose his life, and is currently in stable condition), is a hero who saved others from being shot. I'm enormously grateful for that. As I wrote here last week, whatever the gunman's motives, they are twisted and utterly unacceptable. This shooting is an outrage and should send a chill through everyone on both sides of these debates. You and I have debated gay rights, civilly, on TV and in other media. That's how these disagreements should always be addressed: via civil discourse, never through violence.
In that post last week, I also stated that...
2,640
Dear Parents-to-Be,
You have no idea -- NO IDEA -- what you are getting into.
I am thrilled to be a mother. Really, I am. My three darling children cause me -- in addition to the rare headache and occasional string of obscenities -- boundless degrees of happiness and immense pride. I love being "mommy." I can't get enough hugs and kisses, despite the excessive mucus that sometimes accompanies them. I adore the idea of molding these little beings into contributing members of society. It's a challenge I relish.
Despite being madly in love with motherhood, I can't help waxing poetic on occasion about my pre-child days. If anyone tries to tell you that your life will be the same after children as it was before, they are lying to you, plain and simple.
Honestly, everything changes...
1,169
Dear Human Rights Campaign,
Where is the outrage?
Do something. At the very least, say something. I started to send this letter after Zimmerman was acquitted after killing unarmed Trayvon; I started again to send this letter after a grand jury declared a mistrial in Michael Dunn's killing of unarmed Jordan Davis; and now, the non indictment after Darren Wilson's killing of unarmed Michael Brown. This whole exercise has become a sickening exposition of this country's ongoing and escalating brazen racial terrorism -- a perverse, unending mad-lib of innocent Black murders met with White impunity:
"__________________ (unarmed black man's name) was shot and killed by ________________________ (white police officer's/ or white private citizen's name) and was ____________________ (not...
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