When you're in the closet, you feel like the sky will fall down if anyone finds out. A lot of the fear is self-generated.
— Jane Velez-Mitchell
What's it like to figure out you're gay and then begin the process of coming out? Well, for most of my life, I felt doomed. I could imagine no path that would allow me to realize my authentic self. I felt the need to lie, even to myself, insisting: I am straight.
I say peace begins on your plate.
There's no guilt in eating fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains.
We have allowed ourselves to be defined by our consumption instead of by our ability to move beyond it.
Locking minors away for decades doesn't solve anything.
Taking care of our families isn't just about putting food on the table today. It's about ensuring that our children and grandchildren will have a habitable world where they can get to know various species of sea turtles.
The raccoons, foxes, beavers, chinchillas, minks, rabbits, and yes, sometimes even dogs and cats that are killed for fur are not very different from your beloved dog or cat. They all have eyes, ears and hearts. They all experience pain when they are physically maimed. They shake with fear when they experience terror.
Using animals for entertainment is big business, plain and simple.
Cholesterol does not exist in vegetables. Vegetables do not clog arteries.
I actually get quite sad when I smell bacon.
I would much rather devour a piece of well-seasoned squash than a slice of an animal's rotting carcass.
A breeding sow spends most of her life in a tiny cage. It's usually about seven feet long and two feet wide. She cannot turn around. She cannot scratch herself. She must urinate and defecate where she stands. Simply put, I believe she is tortured, day in and day out.
Wouldn't it help Americans more, in the long run, if we were forced to accept some responsibility for the environmental wreckage we prefer to assume is totally out of our control?
Fame is often called a deal with the devil. Reality show fame is a really bad deal with the devil.
In elementary school, we should teach nonviolent conflict resolution and healthy communication skills, which will help children cope with issues like rejection and sexuality later in life.
I've bought perfectly healthy horses for a couple of hundred dollars just as they were about to be loaded on a slaughterhouse-bound truck.
After coming out as gay, I soon felt a lot more comfortable in my life, moment to moment.
What does homophobia look like when it's stripped bare of fancy costumes like family values and tradition? It looks like that group of strange, angry people who protest at the funerals of U.S. soldiers who've died fighting for our country.
I think I would love to have dinner with Gandhi; Jesus Christ; Mother Theresa; Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA; and Madonna.
Unfortunately, addicts don't respond to reason or rationality.
I am what I want. What I seek to consume, possess, and achieve is a mirror that reflects my lusts and cravings, values and priorities, and moral boundaries or lack thereof.
Today, it seems almost everyone knows a friend or relative who is gay.
The natural world is not indestructible.
Nature did not put whales on this earth to splash kids while stuck in a pen.
The killer whale Tilikum has helped SeaWorld sell millions of dollars worth of tickets.
The myriad of serious health risks resulting from poor diet include high cholesterol, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, and even sleep apnea.
The fact is: America's obsession with meat and dairy has pretty much destroyed our sense of taste. The average burger and milkshake meal is so overloaded with fat, salt and sugar that it has numbed our taste buds to virtually anything else.
Scientists have shown that pigs are capable of playing simple video games, learning from each other, and even learning names.
McDonald's says it's phasing out pig gestation crates. When I heard that news, I almost started crying.
Every day, it seems, a new extreme weather catastrophe happens somewhere in America, and the media's all over it, profiling the ordinary folks wiped out by forest fires, droughts, floods, massive sinkholes, tornadoes.
Public downfalls are more painful and humiliating than private ones.
It's time for compassionate Americans to send a wake-up call to their members of Congress and demand passage of legislation to end the wholesale slaughter of America's horses once and for all.
Where do thoroughbreds go after they lose one too many races, throw one too many riders, or develop a limp? Many thousands of thoroughbreds end up being slaughtered for horse meat. The unpleasant truth is horse meat is eaten in Europe and Asia.
Someone once told me that being in the closet is like living in a vertical casket. Perfect description.
Redemption isn't giving a bank robber a job as a teller.
Shopping in the right kind of stores and looking for healthier foods can be a wonderful adventure to health.
We cannot consume our way into personal growth. Yet, millions of us have bought into this cynical concept of faux identity.
If parents don't instruct their kids on the narrow boundaries of respectful behavior toward the opposite sex, their kids won't learn it anywhere else.
Every decision we make - when we choose a vehicle, when we pump gas into that vehicle, when we order food - is not just a personal lifestyle choice. It's an environmental and moral choice.
Unfortunately, fur is still flying off the racks. It's a billion dollar industry.
Capture of a wild animal is invariably traumatic.
Meat production is one of the leading causes of climate change because of the destruction of the rainforest for grazing lands, the massive amounts of methane produced by farm animals and the huge amounts of water, grain and other resources required to feed animals.
Obesity affects every aspect of a people's lives, from health to relationships.
We have been brainwashed into craving a diet that is killing us. What we believe tastes good is generally what we have been socially conditioned to enjoy.
If you know something is morally reprehensible, then it is your moral obligation to stop it as soon as possible.
Go ahead, weathercasters and reporters: Tell Americans precisely what we don't want to hear: namely, that our self-indulgent, carbon-heavy, gluttonous and disposable lifestyle is precisely what is churning up the angry response from the skies and seas.
A study, by its very nature, is an abstraction.
Real life is often sloppy, tragic, ugly, embarrassing, unglamorous, and not made for TV.
There is a severe horse overpopulation crisis caused by overbreeding in the racing industry. It's time for that industry to accept responsibility for its castoffs and take dramatic action to protect a species that has so loyally served humankind.
