I don't know the statistics, but there sure seem to be a lot of women ministers in the Protestant sects that permit it. And if the Catholics allowed women priests, I imagine there would be a lot of them.

I think there are a number of factors. One of them is an influx of women into an area that was forbidden to them until recently. Haha - sort of like the great blossoming of Jews into various fields that once had been forbidden to them. Sort of a natural thing, no? But then it will ease off, I presume.

But there is also, I think, an insidious thing that men don't want to share leadership and prestige. If Hilary had won, and the next prez had been a woman too, the presidency might well have become less desirable for men. Okay, not really - the presidency is too small a class of people for the phenomenon to work.

It may be a *natural* thing - but civilization has been a process of our overcoming *naturalness* and striving towards ideals and (eventually) fairness. Which ultimately benefits even the 'losers' in the process - gentiles (is this term even current?) have benefitted greatly from letting Jews participate in general society, and men will benefit from letting women do the same. (Also blacks - with the next prez giving that whole process a bump.) One of the great disadvantages Islamic societies have is their waste of half of their human resources.

In the specific matter of religion - clergy doesn't seem to me to be a vital profession, and if men are less and less attracted, and congregations are shrinking and can't afford to pay their (women) clergy sufficiently, well, maybe there's hope that the whole religious thing will become less important. America is still riddled with religion, but Europe (except for the Muslim immigrants!) has got out from under pretty well... As a woman, I'm incensed that men may be devaluing religion because of women 'taking over' (being allowed to participate on equal footing), but whatever it takes...

It's too bad about those Muslim women, but I for one am grateful to be spared all the phony faux-outrage on Fox (and CNN for that matter, tho CNN would be in the 'refuting' role perhaps) if a bunch of obvious Muslims had been in the background of an Obama appearance.

..."the half-white, half-black house"?

I'm really looking forward to an Obama presidency. It won't wipe out racism, but it will help a lot. Some of those racists will come to realize that Obama (and his kin - black kin, that is) isn't the bogey-man. As one of the LWs said, after a couple years in the white (or whatever) house, Obama can puke on the Japanese PM and no big whoop. So to speak.

I didn't grow up with white-sheet-wearing kinfolk, like one of the LWs, but they were rural redneck types, who didn't like Jews, blacks, furriners, etc. Not that they actually knew any. Then a black principal took over at the local school and now blacks are *okay* - Jews and furriners are still on the, um, black (?) list...

This is what I think all people posting in these forums should do - give their name and address. Especially the ones who excoriate the columnists.

(However, as a woman living alone, and having experience of the kind of abuse that is possible, I'm not following suit!!!)

I don't know where these people think they're getting their "information" about how our medical system in Canada is "failing". I live in the country near a small town and have lots of medical practitioners and facilities at hand, and never have to worry about not being able to pay for care. Comes out of taxes, sure, but proportionately to income. What gets Americans all worried, I think, is that the "single payer" is the government. But the system seems to work quite efficiently and there is no insurance-company profiteering. What is the big deal about government paying the doctors? You Americans want private organizations running your highways, your bridges, your army? (Oh wait a minute, re the latter, seems you DO have a private army thing going on in Iraq...)

"Quick survey of the letters...Confirms my belief that there's really not much point in reading Salon.com letters anymore, as editor Joan Walsh has allowed the site to become overrun with nasty little Rethuglican trolls."

I am finding that reading the letters is depressing (tho not all the trolls and other unpleasant people are Rethuglican). But I'm wondering how Joan "allowed" this? People write in on their own initiative. The only way to disallow nastiness is to require that letter writers post their real names and their faces, all same as Joan and the other writers on this forum. Otherwise, anonymity will always be a venue for viciousness.

The posters who routinely condescend to Joan make reading the letters annoying-to-impossible, depending on my mood. Anonymous (which is synonymous with cowardly) people who castigate someone who puts her name and face to what she says - and, as Greenie points out, the outrage comes from Joan's not being totally in sync with their opinions. It's not as if they've caught her advocating kicking puppies.

People, it really is possible to say what you think without couching it in personal insults. And WITH giving a teensy bit of thought to other people's feelings.

A passing thought - perhaps this phenomenon of the Salon letters demonstrates what Maureen Dowd in the referenced column called the "sulfurous national game of “Kill the witch.”" (Which Dowd herself indulged in ad infinitum re Clinton.) Do any of the male Salon writers engender (haha) this kind of response?

for removing that offensive post.