Per Andrew Sullivan: activist Amy Balliet.

“In marriage, God and family keep us accountable. But government is supposed to provide the rights to help us stay accountable. If we are outside of Washington state, for example, and one of us goes into the hospital, the absence of those rights makes it impossible to be able to take care of each other and to live up to the commitments we have made to one another,” she says.

Respek.

We read (and write) gossip about celebrities because they’re celebrities, but we like and care about a much more select few because they’re, you know, real. Perhaps this leads, in certain grisly cases — even just terrible celebrity breakups — to overly frenzied TMI coverage of someone’s very real pain. But I think the instinct, somewhere, is sincere. All of which is to say that BG has been terribly saddened by the unfolding Hudson family tragedy, but just hasn’t known how to express it. Now, finally, Mark Caro at the Chicago Trib reminds us of exactly what, and all, there is to say.

Update: People Magazine on JH and her mom. Read/weep.

I remember family reunions and Thanksgiving dinner tables that occasionally turned into the freaking Nuremberg trials when family members debated politics.

And weren’t we supposed to absorb those sorts of lessons and avoid repeating those mistakes in our own adult relationships?

Wait, or are we supposed to transcend the pettiness of politics in our quest for true love?

I’m so confused. But I now know this: I’m relieved, all partisanship aside, that I will not be present at The McCain Family Christmas.