March 2004 
Mel and His Critics(Comments Off)
Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ opens in theaters on Ash Wednesday (February 25). It is too early to tell whether Gibson has achieved his aim of creating an artistically compelling account of the last 12 hours of Christ’s life that is also faithful to the Gospels, although those who have previewed the film are nearly universal in their praise.
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“Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Man”
My father believed in progress almost to the end of his life, when changing his mind would scarcely have made any difference. Like most liberals, he regarded traditional institutions as so many barriers to man’s continued improvement, and yet, like most good men who are liberals, his head was contradicted by his heart: He despised the British monarchy, but he was willing to fight to defend the rights of the Stuarts.
(Con)fusion on the Right
or the last year or so, neoconservatism has been the subject of an astonishing number of discussions, examinations, and denunciations by the far and “mainstream” left as well as by the right, soft and not so soft. The reason for the scrutiny, of course, is that you cannot expect to engineer an entire war, concoct a series of bold-faced lies about why the war should be fought, and identify the interests of Israel as being indistinguishable from those of the United States, and then denounce everyone who disagrees or criticizes you as “unpatriotic” and “antisemitic” without inviting comment.
Straight Eye for the Queer Guy—March 2004
Thomas Fleming on manhood, Roger McGrath on a boy’s life, and Fr. Hugh Barbour on the proper relationship between the sexes. Plus, Stephen B. Presser on the legal history of marriage in America, and Virginia Deane Abernethy on why homosexuality is becoming more popular.