I used to have a public-access TV show called From Left Field where my male co-host and I would periodically challenge the anti-abortion blowhard in our town. I would come home to find threatening messages on my answering machine, but he didn't.

I would also do interviews on Detroit talk radio, where they would hang me out as liberal red meat just before Rush's daily show. One caller talked of having a gun on his front seat, headed to where I live.

Now I blog occasionally for the Detroit News, but from the tone of the comments that get through, I can only imagine what is said in the ones they filter.

What are our choices? Laugh off the threats? Let them make us cower in silence? Or keep fighting the good fight (and the paranoia)?

Debra, Debra, Debra. You and I could eat outselves into blimpdom without every acquiring haunches like Buffie's. It appears she has the inherited trait for steatopygia - check it out in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steatopygia This is an adaptive mechanism that evolved among women in hot climates, allowing them a greater body mass that allows cooling.

Your body Nazi approach to muscling others to follow your rules would benefit from a greater understanding of human diversity.

Bonnie B

Clicking on my sig will take you to the Web site I built on the first anniversary after Kimmy died from a toxic combination of alcoholism and bulimia. The issue is not what the condition is called, but how dangerous it is. What young people need to know is that these two diseases in tandem are far more quickly lethal than either is by itself.

Kim has now been dead for 13 years, and I think of how much life she missed. Yet, as her story tells us, she was losing large chunks of her life for years -- the evenings she couldn't remember the next day, the times she passed out drunk and never made it to celebrations.

I just wish we had known as much back then as people do now. These are terrible diseases that collude in ruining people's lives. I just hope that we keep finding better answers.