Author: Andrew Sullivan

A reader writes:

One question: Was the man wearing a condom?

It is just difficult for me to feel sorry for him when he is compelling his girlfriend to both shoulder the burden of birth control (which is a burden – the hormones wreak havoc on the body) and abortion. If he wanted rights then he should have taken some responsibility for preventing the pregnancy.

The article suggests he wasn't; the closest reference was this: "she was on birth control, she says, though its effectiveness may have been diluted by antibiotics she was taking."  Another writes:

The Bruell-Hedrick case strikes me as very simple – at least ethically, if not legally.  The person with a claim to support from Bruell isn't Hedrick; it's their unborn child.  Hedrick collects the money as the child's guardian/executor, but ethically speaking that money belongs to the child, not her.  Since this child wasn't a party to the agreement between Bruell and Hedrick, it doesn't seem right that it can be deprived of the support of its father.

I remember thinking Bruell's way when I was younger. 

I sent an angry letter once to Ann Landers about how a guy outta be excused from paying child support if he wanted the mom to get an abortion and she wouldn't.  Like many young men, the world revolved around me and my needs, and I always knew what was right after a moment's thought.  That justice was always aligned with my convenience was a happy coincidence and nothing more.  When I grew the hell up, I came to understand that this sort of thinking marked me as a douchebag with entitlement issues, and that a child's claim to support from his father trumps the father's claim to hassle-free intercourse.

A year ago the Dish posted on a breakthrough study showing the effectiveness of a male pill. Discovery News recently asked where the hell it is already.

They’ve always been a guilty pleasure for me, but the quality of some of their songs is sometimes revealed by new and fresh approaches. I loved this from Sharon Clark:

Over the weekend, Greenwald congratulated Limbaugh on his fourth marriage:

The disparity is between (a) what same-sex opponents such as Limbaugh claim they advocate (the law's recognition of only Traditional Marriages) and (b) what they actually advocate (having the law recognize completely untraditional marriages, such as Gingrich and Limbaugh's multiple, serial unions).  They don't really advocate the law's recognition of Traditional Marriage, as they claim; rather, they only advocate that the law bar the untraditional marriages they don't want to enter into (same-sex marriages) while recognizing the ones they do (multiple, serial "marriages"). The point is that one cannot oppose same-sex marriage on the ground that the law should only recognize Traditional Marriages, while simultaneously demanding that the law recognize third, fourth and other multiple marriages following divorce: at least one cannot do so coherently.

I think many "conservatives" are for serial polygamy basically, with social blessing. But for gays? Not even one blessing for one committed relationship. Not that I'd outlaw divorce but it would be good not to have such blatant double-standards. Joyner follows up:

What we think of as “traditional” marriage is in fact ever-evolving.   Even half a century ago, divorce was quite taboo; it’s so commonplace today that virtually no stigma is attached, even among fairly conservative people.   A quarter century ago, it was simply expected that the wife stay at home and raise the children if at all economically feasible; now, that’s fairly unusual.

I suspect that, less than a quarter century from now, same-sex marriage will be so normalized as to fit comfortably within the definition of “traditional.”

Jesse Bering explores it:

I’ve never seen myself as a “fag”—although I’m sure many other people do see me this way and unfortunately nothing more—but more importantly I’ve certainly never regarded my many close female friends as “hags.” So I was curious to learn more about the unflattering stereotypes lying at the etymological root of this moniker, which describes straight women who tend to gravitate toward gay men. Enter Mount Saint Vincent University psychologist Nancy Bartlett and her colleagues, who just last year published the first quantitative study of fag hags in the journal Body Image.

…The results were analyzed to test the common assumption that women befriend gay men because they have poor body esteem and feel unattractive to straight men. If this were true, the authors reason, then there should be a meaningful statistical association between a woman’s number of gay male friends and her body esteem and relationship success—in other words, the more pathetic a woman’s romantic life and the more she sees herself as being undesirable to straight men, the more she should seek out gay men as friends. But the data revealed otherwise. In fact, with this sample at least, there was absolutely no link between a woman’s relationship status, the number of times she’d been on the receiving end of a breakup, or her body esteem and the number of gay male friends in her life.

Some girls just like to have fun, without the sexual tension. Vaughan Bell adds:

I wonder whether the disparity between the marking of 'fag hags' and the lack of similar names for men who hang out with lesbians at least partly reflects the fact that gay men have traditionally been more stigmatised than gay women, and hence there is a greater drive to stigmatise those who socialise with them.

I also wonder the situation is simply less common although I can't find any research that has actually looked at the issue.

A blog. My version:

Douthat wants an Israeli strategy:

It is not enough to argue, as many defenders of current Israeli policy do, that “Arab intransigence” is responsible for the bind in which Israel finds itself. Because if the Palestinians are as intransigent as a Charles Krauthammer or a James Kirchick believe them to be, then the case for an Israeli exit strategy from its West Bank entanglements only becomes that much stronger. (After all, if you think they’re intransigent today, just wait till 2030, when there may be more Arabs than Jews in the West Bank and Israel …) Like Noah Millman, I suspect that Ariel Sharon understood this point, and that his Gaza pullout was intended as a dress rehearsal for a similar withdrawal from the rest of the occupied territories. Sharon is gone, and the world has changed since then, but the basic calculus still holds: If comprehensive peace negotiations can’t or won’t succeed, than Israel’s long-term survival may depend on its ability to endure the agonies of unilateral retreat.

Israelis overwhelmingly back the assault on the Mavi Marmara:

Eighty five percent (85%) of the respondents indicated that Israel either did not use enough force (39%) or the right amount of force (46%) regarding the recent ship boarding incident. Only eight percent (8%) of respondents felt that Israel used too much force. Sixty one percent (61%) felt that Israel should not adjust its tactics to elicit a more favorable international reaction. Seventy three percent (73%) of those polled indicated that Israel should not open up Gaza to international humanitarian shipments.

A majority, fifty nine percent (59%) responded that they definitely should not open Gaza to international humanitarian shipments. A majority of those polled, fifty six percent (56%) indicated that Israel should not agree to an international inquiry committee to investigate the incident.

More revealing is the attitude toward the reaction of the US government. Washington, almost alone among capitals, declined to render judgment. That didn't cut any ice:

Seventy one percent (71%) disliked U.S. President Barack Obama with forty seven percent (47%) expressing a strong dislike. In all, sixty three percent (63%) of those polled were dissatisfied with the American government's reaction to the incident.

Israelis view Obama the way Sarah Palin does. And this even after he rolled over completely.

FP has a series of articles marking the anniversary of the Iranian elections. Here's Reza Aslan:

For most of us, the Green Movement was an empty vessel to be filled with our dreams. Its goals became our goals, its agenda our agenda. And so when it failed to do what we wanted — when winter came and the demonstrations dissipated, the regime endured, and the opposition leadership seemed paralyzed — we were quick to declare the movement dead and buried, as Flynt Leverett of the New America Foundation and Hillary Mann Leverett did in a controversial New York Times op-ed in January.

…But there is just as much reason to believe that the memory of last year's struggle will reinvigorate the Green Movement as there is that the movement will fade into history as just another failed attempt to challenge the hegemony of the Iranian regime. Either way, perhaps it's best that we keep our prognostications to a minimum.

(Photo: Olivier Laban-Mattei/Getty.)

ProPublica adds to the rap sheet:

A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways. The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP’s Alaska oil-drilling unit that undermined the company’s publicly proclaimed commitment to safe operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.

(Hat tip: Ken Silverstein. Image captured by Mark and Vicki Cipolle, via Maddow)