Headline of the week from The Daily Mail: “50,000 women abandoning church every year as Buffy the Vampire Slayer turns them on to witchcraft.”

Dr. Kristin Aune of the University of Derby, “said many young women are put off going to church because they link it with traditional values,” the Mail reported, adding, “She also said television icons such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who promote female empowerment, discourage women from attending services.”

Hmm! Reminds me of that classic from BG anti-crush Pat Robertson: “Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

Well. Who says we can’t have it all?

Courtney E. Martin had an interesting piece at The American Prospect the other day about the ways in which the legalization — here and there (but not there) — of gay marriage and has prompted her to reevaluate her own aversion to the tying of the knot. As a feminist wary of wedlock myself, I can’t help but nod along with her argument that historically, marriage is both heterosexist and just plain sexist. At the same time, it’s hard for a straight gal to condemn an institution that once considered women property at the same time that her gay friends are happily flocking to California to make their love public, official, and legit in the eyes of the very law that heretofore shut them out.

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