There are reasons I live in the Midwest.

Conversations like this are one of them.

Have kids if you want them. You don't need to justify it. You just don't. If you have a baby, you made a whole new person. A whole new person who will love other people and make love and make art and make music and maybe be a doctor or a scientist or a great writer, or just someone's good friend. You're making a baby because you want to love a baby, and you want a baby who will love you back. It doesn't need justifying beyond that.

I hope you get through this with as much grace and as little pain as possible.

I had an ovarian tumor removed last year. It was completely treatable and curable, but still scary and unpleasant. The feeling of being out of control was strong, and that was as scary as the cancer. The feeling of being a middle-aged mortal (rather than an immmortal 20 year old) was also scary and unpleasant. The treatment itself was unpleasant. It was all very unpleasant.

It was over soon enough, though, and I was able to get on with my life quickly. I'm a little different now then I was before the diagnosis and treatment -- softer in some places and harder in others. I think my tumor might have done me a favor. I'll let you know in another year or two.

Good luck. Go well and be well.

If you're going to flame and insult the Catholics at least get it right.

Jesus isn't a zombie. Jesus is a vampire.

You know, LW doesn't have to come roaring out of the athiest closet. I didn't. Coming out as an athiest doesn't have to be a huge confrontation. It can be a more gradual process.

She could start by just saying quietly to some point of religious dogma: "I don't know if I believe that." She can start reading atheist books and leave them lying around The God Delusion and Letters to a Christian Nation are good places to start. From there, she can expand to statements that "I'm just not sure about God" then to statements that "I just don't believe in God."

It gives her family some time to get used to it. It's not critical to come roaring out immediately. The baby won't remember his baptism and it will make the family happy. Baptism doesn't hurt the baby.

Flattery also helps. Religious people always ask how someone can be good without religion. I tell them that if they're good it's because they're inherently good and they built that goodness into their religious experience. Good people build good religions Angry or violent or judgmental people build angry, violent, judgmental religions. Religious people never agree with me on that, but they're always a flattered when I say it.

I'm a cradle Catholic, and still find some comfort in the traditions of the Church. The rituals around baptism, marriage and funerals are beautiful. The Ash Wednesday ritual is especially lovely. I hate much of what the Church is as an institution, but most of the kids I grew up with are Catholic, and I still love many people I have met through the Church.

It's just the author. He was over-joyed to have a boy and people responded to his joy. He was less happy to have a girl and people responded accordingly.

He's projecting his sexism and misogyny onto the larger culture.

Christopher1988 -- you're like a Holocaust denier. Seriously.

I worked for four years at a rape crisis center in rural Minnesota. While I was there, I had 3 clients who were sexually abused by a close family member and got pregnant by him. (End result: two babies and one abortion). One was a father, one was an uncle, and one was a much older brother. The entire population of our service area was less than 300,000 people. The family dynamics in each case were incredibly effed up. In all three cases, the girl's mother permitted the abuse and was angry with the girl for seeking services.

Believe it or not. I doubt anyone could convince about the severity of rape in our culture. It doesn't matter how many women will testify that it happened to them or to their friends just exactly as described (or close enough), you are still going to insist that it doesn't happen.

Bigginhotham gets it on the very first try!

I am a lawyer and I work in a very conservative, Republican firm. Some of the lawyers in my office spout the most amazing, ignorant shit. When I feel like it, I argue back. When I don't feel like it, I roll my eyes and shut my office door.

They're trial lawyers -- they're aggressive, abrasive and argumentative by nature. They argue for fun. They don't respect people who don't argue. They'll cross-examine someone over lunch for the sheer joy of it. They'll take the opposite side of an argument and defend it just for the fun of it. It's sort of like a well-fed house cat playing with a bug or a mouse -- they don't really need to eat what they kill, but they enjoy the kill anyway.

The partners in my office don't agree with my positions, but they respect the fact that I have a brain, good argument skills, and a thought out position. I've never faced a penalty for disagreeing with a partner on politics, religion, culture, sports, or any other topic.

If it were me, I'd argue with the guy when I felt like it.

If I didn't feel like I could do that without punishment, I'd find another place to work. Life is too short to work in a crappy law firm.