"A close relation is pregnant with her first child and is having a gender-reveal party. She is overjoyed with the addition to our family, as am I. However, I am adamantly opposed to attending the gender-reveal party because it violates my moral code. I have worked in activism for my entire professional life and, though I am cisgender, I have strong feelings about gender politics and equality.

Much more is involved in the new sexual politics than simply sexual license. Ubiquitous demands for "power" and "empowerment" reveal that what has emerged is a true ideology, reminiscent of the older ideologies of Communism and Fascism (and even, more recently, Islamism). Unlike its predecessors, however, this ideology uses sexual leverage as its main political instrument and weapon.

The photo sparked a frenzy. Nothing, it seemed, could so neatly encapsulate the religious right's backsliding as Falwell Jr. giving a thumbs-up in front of the very magazine his father had singled out as symbolic of America's moral decay--while standing shoulder to shoulder with a man who had appeared in a softcore porno flick and who reportedly, as Jimmy Carter might have put it, screwed a bunch of women outside of marriage, including a Playboy model and hardcore adult-film actress.

The interment comes 20 years after Shepard was found beaten and hanging on a wooden fence in Laramie, Wyoming. His assailants had pistol whipped him over a dozen times and set his body of fire. He'd been there, barely alive in the cold Wyoming October, for almost a full day before he was discovered. Just 21 years old and a student at the University of Wyoming, Shepard would die five days after his body was found, in a hospital.