This is a good illustration of the situation: they have used violence to the extent that they can get away with it, such as slashing at womens legs with razor blades, but when this was exposed steps were taken to stop it. That is the difference, they didn't stop themselves. Any change will likely be incremental; someone will push until they are pushed back with sufficient force that a limit is set. For various reasons historically Christian societies have in the last two hundred years given birth to ideas and institutions that limit the reach of authoritarian religion and Moslem societies mostly have not, or have done so much less. There is abundant evidence that fundamentalists would use to govt. to force everyone to live by christian doctrine if they could.

Say what you will, this IS a real change. After two months (hopefully no more) of the right wing's ecstatic embrace of Ms Palin (happy now?) it will be amusing to watch them try and stuff this genie back into the bottle, if they even bother to try.

they apparently involved members of the opposite sex. For a Republican office holder this does indeed make her a maverick.

unfortunately if the election goes the wrong way the whole country will be taking it from both of them.

I HOPE it is still a requirement, if it is we should be ok.

Are women EVER going to be able to come to terms with the fact that if a woman is ANY kind of attractive (and often if she isn't), it will ALWAYS be about sex, (maybe about other things too but sex will always be a factor, usually a big one).

Yes, he would: men are CONTINUALLY mocked by men AND women (see PUMA above for a good example) in an equivalent way, but most women apparently don't realize, or don't admit, that it is happening.

This is exactly the point: laws and govt. actions which interfere with a woman's right to control her own body or an adults right to have consensual sex with another adult ARE contravening the civil rights of others and they ALWAYS HAVE contravened the civil rights of others. Nobody said that Chritianists are AS EXTREME in all their views and actions as Islamists (whether it is self restraint on their part is a separate question) but BOTH GROUPS have in common the fact that they think they have the right to override other peoples human and civil rights in order to impose gods will on everyone.

It absolutely is a violation of the first amendment because you are using the power of the state to force someone to follow your religious beliefs. For nearly one hundred years after the founding of the country slavery was constitutional too. Nobody is "getting over it". One thing a lot of people HAVE gotten over is gun control. When so many people believe that their religion and their interpretation of the constitution entitles them to force other people to follow their religion you don't want to make it too easy for them.

What is it going to take to convince "christians" that they don't have the right to force us to live by their religious opinions? Conservatives are right about one thing: there is evil in the world. Slavery was always evil even when it was legal and "constitutional", and "leaving it up to the states" didn't exactly resolve the issue did it? REAL freedom of religion is a moral absolute. Get usued to it.

Unfortunately Bushite and "Rummite" incompetence have put a crimp in their timetable. This is really the only thing a lot of people have against him, so it was a forgone conclusion that they would be back home with the Republicans when it counted.

This is absolutely untrue. Many of them were Deists and some were skeptics if not downright atheists, or Episcopalians, and the beliefs of even those who were considered devout, like Adams, bore very little resemblance to the end times wet dreams of whack jobs like Palin.

are you a former democrat too? or perhaps a former Hillary Clinton supporter, now devout Palin supporter, saddened by the sexist treatment of two such fine upstanding women?

not all of them, but most of the really hysterical ones that go on at great length.

if it contradicts the Word of God no amount of evidence or logic can make any of it true, wait, what? oh never mind.

What unbelievable stupidity, men who MAKE A LOT OF MONEY, are able to ACQUIRE traditional wives BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALREADY MADE A LOT OF MONEY (or demonstrated a high likelihood of doing so) Talk about lack of critical thinking.

As long as women require that men prove themselves to women by providing some social or economic goods for women which women can't, won't, or don't want to provide for themselves before men will be taken seriously by women this will not end. Women have always done this and there is not a shred of evidence that they will ever stop doing it. If women were to start taking every man seriously because he has a dick, the way men take every woman seriously because she has a pussy, men would be very little concerned with "extreme poles of gender identity". Obviously though for reasons of yes, biology, this can never happen.

after slobbering over Palin for two months. Watching the representative of "traditional values" hover/take cover in her shadow is pretty hilarious too.

It seems very clear that half the population, at least, (and many of them are women/and or who claim to be liberal and not conservative) are as demented about sex as any medieval cleric or mullah. Actually this really comes as no surprise to those of use who have been listening to the anti porn, anti prostitution, anti sex feminists over the years.