It is a race to the bottom. Scary.

The Koran says a woman is worth half of what a man is worth and that she cannot testify in court due to "faulty human development." How can women in the Muslim world not feel oppressed by their religion?

Amen to "Dark Horse's" and "independent's" July 19, 2006 posts on this issue.

I couldn't have said it any better than these two posters did. Everyone, please read their posts.

These bans on same-sex marriage are remniscent of the bans on interracial marriage in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Whenever social change is imminent, reactionary idiots try to stop it. They always fail.

Honestly, why don't they just wear a Hefty bag? This circa-1900 Bloomer-wear is atrocious.

Women have got to stop hallucinating about the level of rights they think they have.

We are still economically oppressed in America (we make less for the same work, actually, we make less for better work) and it is not okay to bash the truthtellers.

We have to stop making excuses for the true hell that many women on this planet endure by diverting attention from it, such as by reflexively making statements when we hear about women's oppression by stating how many "supportive" men there are out there. Has anyone noticed how whenever a feminist reveals some eggregious wrong against women, that someone always steps up to the plate to minimize the issue by suddenly taking about all the nice men there are out there?

A lot of women can't handle the fact that they really are second-class citizens, and that's if they are lucky. Feminists who reveal the unpleasant truths about most women's lot in life deserve to be rewarded, not silenced.

The author states that you "can't get the same kind of death cult brewing" in Buddhism like you can in other religions.

Well I think I need to point out that there is in Buddhism a cult of the devil. It is a subset of Buddhism that doesn't believe in God, but certainly believes in worshipping evil.

(As an aside, personally, I think the 'devil" gets a bad rap. People who fixate on the "devil" simply project all that is bad about humankind onto an invisible being whose existence cannot be objectively validated.)

I'm afraid I'm going to have to take issue with Sara Goldstein's statement that women in low-level white collar jobs don't have the "grooming time" or skills to look and dress well.

The answer is very simple. Buy a nice pair of khakis, a lightweight turtleneck, a nice not-too-expensive blazer, and loafers. Get your hair cut in an attractive short haircut to reduce grooming time. Buy a foundation and some powder that matches your skin tone, one nice dark eye pencil, a lip pencil and a flattering lipstick. You can purchase all of these items during one shopping trip at Target or Kmart. This really takes no time to pull off and you are good to go.

If women in "low-level white collar jobs" want to advance, they have to present a professional appearance.

Of course it did, that was the point.

Unless there are scandalous pictures of Ralph Reed cavorting with Clay Aiken, the rank-and-file who vote against their interests by supporting the Republican party will not believe anything bad about any of their "heroes."

There have to be some investments that, for all intents and purposes, are, essentially, totally safe, baring some unforeseen crisis. Social security is only of those investments.

It has kept our elderly out of the poor house and led to unprecedented wealth as younger members of a family could make money for themselves and focus on their children, instead of being tied to their family of origin by having to care for its older members.

However, if an investment is extremely safe, it won't have the high returns of a more risky investment. This is where the right-wing "conservatives" come in and try to exploit the situation. They claim, somewhat truthfully, that private citizens could make more money investing the their pensions with Wall Street. But there is more risk and private citizens could lose everything.

The average Social Security payment is around $1,000 a month. For a thousand dollars a month, we have social stability and our older members of society can live with a dignity that was previously withheld from them. I've read that Social Security should be well-funded until about 2036. This gives us some time to come up with safe investment vehicles to safeguard payments to people in their old age instead of randomly throwing the money into the stock market.

If this is the workplace, then women are just going to leave.

And men too. I've read that college students and recent college graduates plan to start their own companies instead of working for someone else.

It appears they believe the current workplace is just too unhealthy, both financially and emotionally. So, they are starting their own companies rather than trying to be wage slaves, even the highly-paid kind.

I thought I would just point out that scientific researchers have discovered that eating cooked meat may have caused biological changes in the liver of primitive man that very quickly led to higher brain development and intelligence.

I'm not giving up my steaks anytime soon.

This is an argument for effective birth control. On so many levels.

Ja-Z, Sean "Puffy" Combs, and B. Smith do not own their "media empires."

A search of the corporate records for their companies indicates that they are paid employees, not CEOs or media moguls. They can be fired, just like hourly wage earners.

I think Britney cried because she is under so much stress from her bad marriage.

How can the plight of poor women and children in the developing world be the failure of capitalism when the developing world does not practice capitalism?

There is a school of thought that says people get the political structure they want and/or deserve.