1. William Salatan over at Slate writes:
Now, I like to think of myself as an open-minded guy. And I love my mother-in-law, really. How many guys can honestly say they love both their home-renovation contractor and their mother-in-law? I am truly blessed. Still, the thought of my mother-in-law carrying my child … well, let’s just say it hadn’t occurred to me.
But now, here it is. Motherhood is splintering. You can have a genetic mother, a gestational mother, an adoptive mother, and God knows what else. When one of your moms is Grandma, it’s even more confusing.
To which I must reply: Get the fuck over it. Is there some god-given right I’m aware of to not be confused or made uncomfortable by the choices of others?
Plus, for gods’ sake, Motherhood is not splintering any more than it ever has splintered. People all the time find out that the person they thought was their mother isn’t or that the person they thought was their grandmother is really their mother or that they are adopted or whatever. And they’ve been finding those things out for millenia and yet we still have not managed to kill ourselves off, so maybe we can stop acting like we’re all teetering on the edge every time these women get some newfangled idea.
2. Between The Black Snob and Flea you can find everything there is left to be said about Sarah Palin at this point. I want to quote for you all of Flea’s post with a “Yes, see, that’s just what I was saying” about every other sentence, but that’s probably bad form. Here’s the part that sticks with me, though:
God, it’s predictable. I can only assume Palin was one of those women who thought she was the exception, the special one that didn’t need feminism, just can-do conservative bootstraps to pull herself up with. She was the one who didn’t need to “play the victim.” And she was perfectly willing to sell out all other women who weren’t as special as she is, because there can only be one token woman, anywhere, anytime.
Sucks for her to find out she’s not special after all, she’s just a slut in a towel that can be blamed and shamed like the rest of us, so the McCain boys can slink away, untarnished by their own cataclysmic mistakes.
Amen, Flea, amen.
3. Clearly, I should have spent my afternoon downtown at the protests. It looks like they had a nice turnout. But this part? “One of their stated goals is to reverse the basic gains gays and lesbians have made in their rights to adopt.” It brought me up cold.
I had not heard this. I read it and I am sore afraid it’s true, but I had not heard. Have any of you?
Some days, when I think about what is about to happen in Tennessee, I feel so helpless. What can we do in the face of so much evil, especially when that evil is preached and reinforced in churches across the state every Sunday?
Some days I feel like all we can do, effectively, is to stand up and speak honestly about what we’re seeing, to bear witness to it and to fight it every step of the way, even though we will surely lose, so that when they try to turn around in ten or fifteen or fifty years and say “You just don’t understand. That’s just the way things were back then. Everyone was like that. It wasn’t anything against gay people, it was just how society was. Nobody thought it was wrong. We didn’t know any better.” We can say, “Fuck you, we told you, every step of the way.”
Tiny Cat Pants 
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Thanks for the healthy reminder, in your last paragraph, that issue advocacy can be worthwhile in and of itself, even with a seemingly unreceptive audience. Sometimes we are called to speak, and that in and of itself is reason to do so.
Years later, if the unreceptive audience denies that it was warned, I guess I’m OK with making sure the historical record is accurate and reminding people at the same time that there are still messages out there that aren’t sinking in. But any derivative finger-pointing would probably be counterproductive.
I could have written the first paragraph. I do, however, disagree with Sarcastro’s take. My meltdown over having my character assassinated by complete lies and gossip is very real and the after effects remain. It even cost me a job. The Internet is made up of real people with real feelings and real lives.
Generally speaking, I try not to say anything I wouldn’t say to someone in person.
I also think your last paragraph is brilliant. Sometimes you put together words in a manner that is just fucking brilliant.