The week we’re in goes like this: the census defines fathers caring for their children as babysitting and mothers caring for their children as parenting. It’s February 2012. Yes. The Catholic Church is pitching a giant hissy fit about contraception, trying with all its might to push the Obama administration around in some convoluted double standard that would allow public money and private, religious decisions to be at odds in the most unfair, arcane way. By the way, unintended teen pregnancy is down dramatically. Why? Because birth control really works, that’s why. Or else, everyone is watching Teen Mom, not just me.

Call all that two-steps back (at least).

Meantime, gay marriage received good news in California (Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional and in Washington State. Call it one step forward.

My eighth grader mused that perhaps it’s possible to forgive the lawyers over the 2000 election case now that Prop 8 has been overturned. Penance of sorts, he imagines. He’s a smart young man. He reads the newspaper every morning. And, much to his somewhat proud chagrin, he’s becoming a New Yorker fan, too.