There's a nastiness to conversations about U.S. education reform, which are characterized by the kind of stark taking-of-sides that's usually reserved for debates over guns or abortion rights.
About specific social issues, there is a great deal to say that departs very far from truism and is, accordingly, significant and controversial.
The old adage that polite conversation should not include talk of politics or religion is understandable because both subjects are so heavily laden with emotion that discussion can quickly turn to shouting. Blood is shed over politics, religion and the two in combination.
On abortion: We are talking about ambiguous issues of a complicated kind where you have to balance conflicting interests and concerns.
When you start talking about same-sex marriage, you start talking about abortion, and I think those issues are very very important and very interesting and very right for us to talk about, but when we allow those issues to cannibalize all other issues we find ourselves homeless while we debate about it.
When writing sex scenes, there is often no pleasing anyone, except perhaps the writer herself.
Science fiction is a literary field crowded with strong opinions, and no SF novelist delivered himself more memorably of his views - on politics, sexuality, religion, and many other contentious topics - than Robert Heinlein.
Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.
When I was very young, I would occasionally stick 'f****' where I knew something contentious might happen so that the editor could remove the word 'f***' very proudly and leave whatever else was around it.
There’s all this Christian right, and abortion. These are not the issues that drive people’s concerns.
Son of President George W. Bush
