...that as soon as the foursomes were seated, the women engaged each other and the men engaged each other.

And I thought, "They double date so that they can chat with the one that interests them and is interested in them."

And you see this play out everywhere: two 50-something men in the front and two 50-something women in the back.

And you also see the married couple sitting across from each with NOTHING to say and likely wishing they'd double-dated that night.

As regards weddings and married folks and those tacky, honkedy-honk processions, more and more, I think, "Straight people flaunting their privilege, which is subsidized, in part, by queer Americans."

Cool. Then Nancy Reagan must be shed her surname, for Ronnie was married to Jane and no one else. Nancy is his mistress. Likewise with all the other adulterers (those married for a second time) who assert that they're husband and wife.

Abortion will never be banned and likewise gay marriage because these issues get the cons to vote, again and again, for their lying leaders.

So many perfectly prickly lines, but this one especially snagged my mind: "Instead of waking up and smelling the shit hitting the fan after 35 or 40 years in the dark, we face down our demons and wrestle with our bad habits and tackle big, important existential questions at least once a day. The midlife crisis has been replaced -- by the midafternoon life crisis."

Ain't it the truth? The next person who tells me they just had (yet another) epiphany, all will be ready to film, "Life After that Particular Epiphanating Person."

...how violent we are. It's in this thread.

Heather, as some folks want you to suffer for theirs sins, I urge to remember that they know not what they're doing.

You, however, when it comes to words and much more, do know what you're doing.

"Within legal bounds, most U.S. citizens, regardless of color, find it perfectly acceptable to use whatever unfair advantage they have to get ahead --longtime friends on search committees, uncles with hiring ability, puffed-up résumés, glamorous Internet profile pictures. Mild corruption's fine as long as it remains hidden and doesn't interfere with the perception that our country is a meritocracy. Playing dirty is part of our national heritage; we began this country by all but evicting its Native American leaseholders."

...it gets Bush voters back to the polls. I don't know that hating gays alone will suffice for high voter turnout.

Imagine America with those tens of millions of aborted babies alive and in their exurb McMansions, emptying the Colorado, Florida's lakes, and prairie aquafers that much sooner and filling the air with that much more carbon from heating and cooling their spacious master bedrooms. The coming Great Dying would be coming that much sooner.

For example, Voice of Your Conscience wrote: "And in the long term, replacement of your dead offspring by someone not of your culture."

Very creepy code for "The browns are coming! The browns are coming! Reproduce, white folks!!!"

VOYC, you used your money to purchase a computer and you fritter your morning tapping keys instead of giving away all you own and serving the poor as the Christ called believers to do. This data suggest you also don't believe in "a risen Christ." And to judge others, as you've done, goes directly against scores of Biblical passages, which urge believers to control their tongues and withhold judgment. However, Christianity has been twisted into hating gays and loving white babies. And loving white babies is overt in my town, where people are brown, white, black, yellow, and red, but all the babies on the anti-abortion billboards are white, white, white.

your story sounds a little like mine. The Pope scared my mom into 7 kids in 9 years (3 to a bed) and collectively, my sibs and I have only given birth to 5 kids.

I like what you wrote about being paid for procreation. If, as some argue, birth benefits a society, then the society should pay for that birth. I've made the same argument about straight folks and their privileges: if straight folks want to discriminate against gay citizens, they should pay for their privilege.

Brightstar, go adopt. There are so many kids needing a home. If you care about kids, then don your tights and cape and go save some.

...last year, I was speaking to a woman who survived Auschwitz. Her father was deeply religious. She said that when they arrived at Auschwitz, her father and her siblings and her mother prayed for divine intervention. She was not religious, so she did not pray. And when the cattle car was opened, her family was gassed. If God was watching, that's all God did. The truth is that none intervened on behalf of the Holocaust's victims. Not the Pope. Not America who rejected Jewish immigrants. Not God. Those who survived did so because they outlasted the starvation and happened to be in the path of the advancing allied armies, who weren't coming to save them, but to kill Nazis.

Therefore, labeling Brightstar a troll and focusing on him relieves all of us of the obligation to consider abortion.

I have good chats with Brightstar, but he is particularly ornery today.

And reiterating one's points is easier than considering one's fallacies. Voice of your Conscience, whose moniker suggests an ethical purity, is unwilling to consider his or her racism. For this poster, morality tips only on the fulcrum of abortion.

I do think that Ms. Loeb passed on some more probing questions. Dr. Wicklund has seen so much more than she had the chance to share.