I voted for Hillary in the primaries and am unusually heartbroken about her impending defeat. However, I can imagine being able to overcome my sadness just long enough to vote for Obama . ... if he chooses a female running mate. It doesn't necessarily have to be Hillary, I can understand the problems it might present, but I really think a female vice president on the ticket will be Obama's ticket to the white house. If he chooses yet another man, I am going to the polls to write in Hillary's name in protest.

Mr. Bayard has come up with a well-written article that I generally enjoyed and agreed with--up until the last paragraph where he writes that, "Watching Lawrence and Gardner pleasure each other, those two officers must have understood at some level that they, too, could be entered and dominated. And if they weren't careful, they might enjoy it."

Please. The idea that sexual intercourse equals domination by the person using the penis and submission by the person using the orifice is ridiculous. Then it must follow that when heterosexuals engage in sexual intercourse that the man is 'dominating' the woman everytime he enters her? And that she must 'enjoy' getting dominated in this way? This reduces sexual intercourse between two people, hetero or homosexual, to an act of violence, an act of dominance and submission.

Perhaps the author could have taken it to the next logical step and reasoned that what really scares America about anal intercourse is that it 'proves' that men can be reduced to mere passive submittors just like women! That would surely make our masculine culture quake in its boots!

Mr. Bayard is clearly a progressive-minded individual in many ways, but he should step back and think about this line of reasoning.

Joan Walsh what were you thinking?!!!!

I am repulsed by Sarah Palin and everything she stands for, but this is a base attack based upon sexualized steroetypes of women. This is what the media did to Hillary and the pages of Salon did the honborable thing and cried foul.

I think that the answer to one of the most taboo questions the primary season brought us has become clear: Sexism is currently much more acceptable than racism is. If McCain had picked Bobby Jindal, would you have allowed a crude & cliched racial screed to appear in the pages of Salon? I think we all know the answer to that one.

Joan Walsh, I have had much respect for you as an editor, writer, and thinker, but you need to explain yourself.

I think allot of us are not saying that she "earned" the right to her opinions, rather that everyone has the right to participate in the public sphere without being attacked based upon their race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity, etc.

Attack her on the issues, one of which is her ridiculously pinheaded religious extremism, not the fact that she is an attractive woman.

By the way- I share your alarm over the increasing influence that religious zealots weild in Washington. Chrisitan zealots are far more terrifying than Muslim zealots to me because many more of them are far closer to home.

I wished there was a hell-so that women whose position and power in life would not be possible without decades of hard-won FEMINIST goals-but who stand on the backs of those accomplishments and then denounce everything that EQUALITY has meant for feminism can occupy the innermost circle.

Also- Don't tell me that points of view that aim to deny women the right to choose weather or not to carry a pregnancy to term deserve to use the name feminist. These people, and many of the conservative women posting on here are not feminists. Sorry, but abortion is a pivotal issue because it is LIFE AND DEATH.

And spare me your whining about how all pro-choice women view embryos as insensate clums of tissue. I for one don't even think it matters weather or not an embryo-or fetus- feels pain or fear, or is in fact a person in every sense of the word. The fact is that before that glob or person -whatever you call it or it is- leaves a woman's body and is able to survive without her biological support systems, it is that individual woman who has the innate and natural dominion over weather to continue to provide life-support services and allow it to develop into a full-fledged baby person.

I had an abortion and believe me, even if my embryo had turned to me on the ultrasound screen that day and frantically communicated in sign language that it had wanted to become a baby someday, I would have kicked it out because every fiber of my being screamed that I wasn't ready to be a mother, that it wasn't the right time to bring a baby into the world. Even if abortion was illegal and I had to endure some back-alley hangar job or travel to Canada or Europe or Mexico to get it done I would have done it.

Women deserve to make safe, informed choices about the embryos and fetuses inside their bodies and nobody who wishes to make this decision for a woman can call her or his self a feminist.

You have hit the nail on the head with this one, MS. Traister, please continue to keep us informed. I was afraid this was going to happen to Michelle and so dismayed about it. I was really hoping for a first lady that would show the world that being a wife and a mother is not the only things that women can do well. I had really hoped she would keep her career, or if not, then transition into a driving force behind some exciting white house initiatives, like health care and women's rights, it would be such an inspiration to women in America and around the world.