Yes, Shepherd was targeted because he was gay, but the crime itself is the act of murder. The distinction is important. We cannot criminalize thought, even heinous thoughts, without blurring the distinction between behavior and belief, without making thinking itself subject to political and legal tenants.

This is a dangerous precedent, one that can be flipped from one sensibility to another. If motive or nature becomes a crime, people can be arrested for espousing anti-gay rhetoric just as easily as for being gay.

It is wrong, criminal, to beat up people, to kill them. Law is necessarily limited by its function as check on behavior after the fact. You cannot prosecute people for planning a bank robbery, only for robbing a bank. If you could prosecute for thinking about doing it, movie producers and mystery writers would be writing from prison.

The problem with legislating hate as part of a criminal statute is that it's impossible to know motive. Motive can be explored at trial, but only the crime, in the case of Matthew Shepard, murder, can be prosecuted. The motive, hatred for gays affects sentencing.

That Rep. Foxx cannot distinguish between a hoax and the reality of this brutal murder, might be an offshoot of our conflation of action with attitude. Then again, she might just be willfully ignorant and, therefore, cruel.

In 2005 the EPA found ecoli in the drinking and hand washing water of every airline. Although new inspection protocols and enforcement procedures were agreed upon, there hasn't been a test to verify that conditions for clean water have been met. The air is clean, but either not washing or washing your hands could make you sick.

Because Havrilesky comes off as bitter, angry and spiteful, not wistful, reflective or bemused. The author was unhappy, self-centered and a slob before she has children and remains so afterward. What's the story here? (And, ancillary to that question, why did Salon publish such a badly written and poorly focused essay?)

The story is about how childbearing and child rearing as the new grace, the new moral pedestal, the new virtue. Meanwhile, we singles drink to excess for pointless fun and lead utterly meaningless lives. Forget that we are the ones who take up the slack at work when moms leave early and take extra days off; the ones who pay more taxes to support services, like schools, we don't use; who look after your unruly kids; who buy thousands of chocolate bars, miles of ugly gift wrap and yards of raffle tickets; who pick up the mess your family leaves behind in restaurants, a church halls, houses, parks and sidewalks.

The author's voice has no ironic distance, and her examples are neither extreme nor viewed from a perspective of loving disillusion, so I'm left with the staggeringly insulting idea that the author hates motherhood, the mythology of parenting and the single people who don't buy into it. I suggest reading some Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr or Jean Shepherd for clues as to how to approach the dubious glories of parenthood.

Childlessness has much to recommend it. My home is my own, I have time and energy to contribute to society beyond my own little fiefdom. I get to go on vacations beyond Disneyland, eat in restaurants that offer food with flavor and a noise level that allows for talking to each other in complete sentences. Plus, I can choose when to spend time with children who are usually less self involved than their parents.

My life is not without children. I spend loads of time with my many nieces and nephews, those with both blood connections and emotional ones. I support funding schools and family leave. Using parenthood as an excuse for belittling others and for looking like hell is just a way of teaching your children that despite those self esteem lessons in books, at school, and from Oprah, it's best to sacrifice yourself to a predetermines social role.

As Germain Greer points out, feminists of the 1970's never delivered feminism. If feminism had truly taken hold, the economy wouldn't have shifting toward patriarchal corporatism; workplaces would have changed to support living more balanced lives; equal pay for equal work wouldn't still be a distant dream; and women would be supportive of women in sports, at work and in creative endeavors, like essay writing.