The reality of marriage as the union of a mother and a father is grounded in our very biology.

We believe that marriage, by its very definition, can exist only between a man and a woman. Moreover, study after study - not to mention common sense - show that children fare better in life when raised in a home with a loving father and mother in a stable, committed relationship.

The ingestion of brain-altering chemicals - legal or illegal - cannot be categorized as good stewardship of our earthly lives.

Certainly our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters need to be supported in living out their call to holiness.

He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.

There has to be a readjustment of resources that is being diverted to police and policing as opposed to community health services, and there certainly has to be control over the police by the communities that they are supposed to protect and serve.

I exercise all the time, every morning, and then I do music in the afternoon. I walk two to three miles a day and do Pilates twice a week.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.