The Coup Against Vatican II

by Michael S. Patton

For many reform-minded Catholics, the Second Vatican Council promised a bold new era of humanistic change within the Catholic Church. But with the hard-line papacy of John Paul II has come a deliberate dismantling of progressive gains.

Cover Story:

How Your Tax Dollars Support the Boy Scouts of America

by Larry A. Taylor

Since 1916, the Boy Scouts of America has parlayed a federally protected monopoly into huge financial and institutional success. But should an organization that engages in religious and sexual discrimination receive costly goods and services from local, state, and federal governments? (Read Article)

Science's Fall from Grace

by Dorothy Nelkin

The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 brought an end to a cozy and long-standing relationship between NASA and the press. The legacy of the Challenger disaster has been a new and contentious debate concerning journalistic accuracy and scientific honesty.

The Myth of the Liberal Campus

by Michael Parenti

Accourding to conservative critics, American universities are in the grip of a "politically correct" left-wing McCarthyism that has ruthlessly stifled academic discourse. But a look at who controls the purse strings at American universities reveals a much different kind of censorship.

Slicing Up the Rain Forest on Your Breakfast Cereal

by John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto

"Mainstream" environmental approaches have too often ignored a crucial issue: First World corporations that force Third World citizens into modes of unsustainable development. Can a "political ecology strategy" help us to better understand what is happening to the rain forests?

...By Any Civilized Standard

by Ruth B. Ward

In courts across America, adults who were adopted as children are petitioning to gain access to their birth and adoption records. How can the biological parents' fundamental right to privacy be balanced against their children's equally fundamental right to an identity? Bad cases usually make bad law—especially in this complex and emotionally charged issue.

Copyright © 2002, the American Humanist Association