“Where are the women?”; NC’s Amendment 1 impacts opposite gender couples too

Good morning all! Happy Sunday to you! I am writing this from a very cold, very gray Ohio. And NO, I have still not found a wedding dress.

Obviously, most of the news this week centered on the “contraception controversy” as I like to call it – the idea that religious institutions ought not to have to provide contraceptives to their employees if the institution is morally opposed to it – yet Viagra is still on the table, apparently. Anyway, below is a different look at the pane that was convened among other news you may have missed.

Carolyn Maloney, Eleanor Holmes Norton walk out of contraception hearing

• Focuses on the reasons the two women walked out of the Congressional hearing on contraceptives last Thursday;
• The five witnesses on the first panel were all male religious leaders or professors, including a Catholic bishop;
• The folks on the panel didn’t feel it necessary to include women because the topic was “religious freedom and liberty,” not contraception.

Proposed same-sex marriage ban’s impact on heterosexual couples debated

• The Winston-Salem Journal article finally addresses the impact the May amendment will have on opposite-gender couples;
• Amendment supporters say this is distraction from the real reason for the amendment, legal scholars say otherwise;
• 2 PDFs attached to the article illustrate the possible consequences – I’ve included them here – Amendment 1 Summarized – and here – Potential Legal Impact Report.

Last but not least, I’m reading a new book. I will put it in the Read This section of the blog, but thought I would throw it out here too.

The Trouble with Diversity: How we learned to love identity and ignore inequality

• By Walter Benn Michaels;
• Michaels concludes that by constantly focusing on the diversity we can see, we can ignore the growing economic inequality happening in America;
• Michaels argues that the only folks getting anything out of “diversity training” are the diversity trainers themselves – making money at the expense of focusing on the real problem of the growing gap between the rich and poor.

And now, back to becoming a Mob Boss…