Following Colorado's high-profile gay rights trial, the most contentious issue, oddly enough, becomes the correct translation of an ancient Greek word. In a courtroom rebuttal to the natural law theorist John Finnis, expert witness Martha Nussbaum argues that when Plato used the word tolmêma in referring to homosexual acts, the implication was not pejorative. But Finnis and legal theorist Robert George respond that Nussbaum has distorted the scholarly record and possibly perjured herself. As evidence, they cite the suspicious blob of white-out that appears in one of her affidavits.

At Antioch College, consensual sex takes on a whole new meaning. Explains one Antioch feminist: "If you want to take her blouse off, you have to ask. If you want to touch her breast, you have to ask. If you want to move your hand down to her genitals, you have to ask. If you want to put your finger inside her, you have to ask." Has Antioch dampened students' sexual spontaneity - or challenged them to ever more explicit, erotic pillow talk? Should words fail, LF's Jack Hitt suggests the following lines attributed to John Donne: "License my roving hands, and let them go / Before, behind, between, above, below."

Warren St. John deems Edwin Mellen Press a vanity publisher capitalizing on the desperation of credential-hungry academics. St. John also finds that the Press's offshore adjunct, Mellen University, is little more than a diploma mill. After the exposé, Mellen chief Herbert Richardson, a former University of Toronto religion professor, accuses LF of libel and sues for $15 million. He loses. In September 1994, St. Michael's College, where Richardson holds tenure, dismisses him for "gross misconduct."

Berkeley gender theorist Judith Butler is the subject of a lascivious fanzine, Judy! In a telephone interview with LF's Larissa MacFarquhar, the 'zine's languid editrix, Miss Spentyouth (a.k.a. Andrea Lawlor-Mariano, a University of Iowa undergraduate), wears only Chanel No. 5 and remarks that Judy! is a critique of "the whole diva thing" in queer theory. An issue later, Butler rejoins: "If the fanzine signals the eclipse of serious intellectual engagement with theoretical works by a thoroughly hallucinated speculation on the theorist's sexual practice, Lingua Franca reengages that anti-intellectual aggression whereby scholars are reduced to occasions for salacious conjecture rather than as writers of texts to be read and seriously debated."