It wasn't so long ago that pornography was disrespectable: "Think of Vanessa Williams, crowned the first black Miss America in 1983, and how quickly she was dethroned after her nude photos surfaced in Penthouse." In contrast, Paris Hilton's sex video rocketed her to stardom. Hookers and porn stars are mainstream figures.

This isn't quite the liberation feminism promised. "Raunch culture is not essentially progressive," Levy writes, "it is essentially commercial. By going to strip clubs and flashing on spring break and ogling our Olympians in Playboy, it's not as though we are embracing something liberal -- this isn't Free Love. Raunch culture isn't about opening our minds to the possibilities and mysteries of sexuality. It's about endlessly reiterating one particular -- and particularly commercial -- shorthand for sexiness."

No lustful man would have looked at Gloria Steinem in the 1970s and thought, "She is going to help fulfill my most absurd voyeuristic fantasies." But the currents unleashed by feminism, especially the drive to have women behave like men, have done just that. The mother of the hyper-sexualized pop star Christina Aguilera has said of her daughter, "She's a wonderful role model, trying to change society so that a woman can do whatever men do." Since women don't have the same interest in seeing members of the opposite sex expose themselves and dress in skimpy bunny costumes as men do, acting like men effectively means objectifying women, too, playing along with the sweaty teenage fantasies. Levy describes going to a gathering of a group called CAKE, devoted to female sexuality" and experiencing "feminism in action." It devolves into women performing Sapphic sex acts for the men in the crowd.

All of this isn't healthy for anyone, guys or gals. But men -- at least men without daughters -- will have very little interest in changing it, and as long as the feminist Left associates sexual restraint with outdated prudery, there won't be pressure for change from that quarter, either. So Levy cries in the wilderness, while all around her lascivious men ogle the movable bimbonic feast of American culture and lift their voices to the heavens: "Thank you, God."

National news media accounts of the votes and the vetoes quoted the backers of the proposal as well as the governor's spokespeople, and advocates and opponents on both sides of the debate.

But in no story that I can find did a reporter think to ask a national Democratic leader for their opinion on the vote by their California colleagues. Google News cannot even find San Francisco Democrat and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi's name in the same story as same-sex marriage. Neither can the San Francisco Chronicle over the past 30 days.

Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer made high-profile appearances on national television during the period of the California debate. Of course the big issues they discussed were Katrina relief and the Roberts nomination, but their omission of the California same-sex marriage issue is notable for a couple of reasons....

There isn't an honest journalist in the country who would deny that those are interesting questions which would generate news no matter how Senator Clinton or Senator Reid or Schumer answered. That they haven't been asked--by any reporter in any venue of any big-name Democrat--speaks volume about the mainstream media's bias and its adjunct status to the Democratic party.

The Democratic party's real voice on the issue of same-sex marriage was heard in California, but the media has judged it too soon to launch that debate on the national stage. As Gray Davis once allowed on television, "the people aren't ready for that yet." Exactly.

Why did feminism sell its soul to the sexual-liberation movement in the first place? After all, the original feminists were fighting to be taken seriously. Hugh Hefner, by contrast, said that his ideal girl "resembles a bunny . . . vivacious, jumping--sexy." There seems to be a contradiction here.

Ms. Levy's answer is that, after a brief and failed fight against pornography, feminism joined forces with Hef & Co. to fight for abortion rights. This is a plausible explanation, as far as it goes. Abortion has indeed assumed a primary importance in both feminist "rights" thinking and in the whole culture of soft-core libertinism: Mr. Hefner is a big fan of abortion, for obvious reasons.

But something else may be going on. Feminism grounded itself, in its early days, in the idea that there were no differences between the sexes. A girl wanting to keep her virginity was bad, for sexual reticence amounted to asserting a separate standard, a Victorian one at that. To Hef, modesty was a "hang-up," and to the feminists it was a "patriarchal construct." Ms. Levy believes that feminism was on the right track but then veered off-course: "What has moved into feminism's place . . . is an almost opposite style, attitude, and set of principles."

But maybe feminism's foundations were weak from the start. Everyone in Ms. Levy's book--whether it's middle-class girls who feel anxiety about appearing "hot" or grown women who confess to Ms. Levy that "accumulating sex for its own sake . . . is not that sexual"--shows that a woman's experience of sex and love is very different from that of an adolescent boy or a man. Indeed, the more a woman imitates a man, the clearer these differences become.

For me, at least, it's common sense that the words "under God" in no way establish a religion. Our money, after all, says, "In God We Trust." Every president in my lifetime has signed off with "Thank you, and God bless."

Last I looked, no one was forcing me to pray or attend a church or synagogue.

Thank God. Or rather, "thank my chosen belief system."

Atheists, agnostics, civil libertarians, constitutional purists and the rest of us should be concerned with the other part of the First Amendment. Particularly, the phrase that reads "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Right now, reciting the Pledge is voluntary. If it's found to be unconstitutional, the Pledge may be outlawed in schools.

Which one of those options truly impedes free speech?

The question isn't whether we're under God or not. I'll find out soon enough. It's whether the establishment clause is violated or whether a minority wants to expunge the word "God" simply because it makes the few (parents) uncomfortable.

Unlike lawmakers who injected God in 1954 as a McCarthyite sneer at godless communism, many people now recognize that atheists, agnostics, animists and Buddhists -- none of whom believe in an all-encompassing God -- can be wonderful citizens. For all the renewed interest in religion in this country, it's unlikely today's Congress would add "under God."...

Even judges who back the divine wording sometimes provide cogent arguments for why it should be omitted. Last month, a Virginia appeals court upheld a state law requiring the daily recitation of the pledge in public schools. "Undoubtedly, the pledge contains a religious phrase, and it is demeaning to persons of any faith to assert that the words 'under God' contain no religious significance," Judge Karen Williams wrote. However, she decided that the pledge is a patriotic activity, not a religious one.

Religion ought to be a private matter and should play no role in a daily, government-sanctioned ritual. Children aren't required to say the words, but what Williams rightly calls a "religious phrase" is chanted each day in their presence, and they and their parents have no choice. It's unlikely, though, that anyone has ever been converted to a monotheistic religion simply from listening to repetitions of the phrase....

The colonists, though, had the right idea for carrying forward government in a truly patriotic way -- "for all," as the pledge ends. The pledge doesn't need deification. Its best and highest use is to bind us together as common citizens, regardless of faith, with a common commitment to this nation.

Hamas could one day amend a charter calling for the destruction of Israel and hold negotiations with the Jewish state, a political leader of the Islamic militant group in the West Bank said.

"The charter is not the Koran," Mohammed Ghazal told Reuters in an interview in Nablus on Tuesday.

"Historically, we believe all Palestine belongs to Palestinians, but we're talking now about reality, about political solutions ... The realities are different."

Ghazal said it was still early to talk about recognizing Israel "while Israel doesn't recognize me as the victim."

He said any Hamas talks with Israel would still depend on its withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to allow an independent state as well as a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees who fled in 1948 and their descendants.

He acknowledged a "strong belief" that those conditions were never likely to be met.

Last week, a federal judge again rejected Mr. Newdow's standing but ruled in favor of the two families. Judge Lawrence Karlton said he had no choice, given the appeals court ruling, but acknowledged that the decision would "satisfy no one involved." He's right - except for demagogues on both sides.

The phrase "under God" was inserted into the pledge in 1954 in an absurd attempt to link patriotism with religious piety at the height of anti-Communist mania. It should never have happened.

But in the half-century since, the phrase has become part of the backdrop of life. It hardly amounts to a prayer and is no more a constitutional violation than the singing of "God Bless America" at the Army-Navy football game. No child is required to say "under God" when reciting the pledge - or even to recite it at all. The court cases trivialize the critical constitutional issue of separation of church and state, and undermine important battles to be fought over prayer in school and the use of public money to support religious activities.