Following up on the New Jersey state Supreme Court decision that calls for equal rights for gay and lesbian couples but left the matter of marriage up to the Legislature, The New York Times has great coverage, assembled together here: News Analysis | Court Outlines Rights | A Fresh Fight | The Plaintiffs | The Justices | McGreevey’s Reaction | AUDIO: Back Story (mp3) | The Decision (pdf) | Empire Zone Blog

If you’re pressed for time, jump right to the AP’s simple Q&A about the state Supreme Court decision (via the Boston Globe). Reuters published a round-up of reactions from same-sex marriage activists, opponents and public officials.

And did you hear about Hillary Clinton? Via The Empire Zone:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton told a group of gay elected officials last night that she would support a gay marriage law in New York if a future governor and legislature chose to enact one, according to three participants at the meeting.

Mrs. Clinton listened and spoke for more than an hour with the three-dozen officials from New York, as they sat down — by coincidence — a couple of hours after the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that gay couples were entitled to the same legal rights and financial benefits as heterosexual couples.

Continue reading Patrick Healy’s post here.

Healy also points to Paul Schindler’s story at Gay City News, which offers more details about Clinton’s exchange with participants. As for Clinton’s previous stand on gay marriage and how she got to this point:

She also suggested that language she used when she first ran for the Senate in 2000 explaining her opposition to marriage equality based on the institution’s moral, religious, and traditional foundations had not reflected the “many long conversations” she’s had since with “friends” and others, and that her advocacy on LGBT issues “has certainly evolved.”

On Wednesday, Clinton presented her position on marriage equality as more one of pragmatism.

“I believe in full equality of benefits, nothing left out,” she said. “From my perspective there is a greater likelihood of us getting to that point in civil unions or domestic partnerships and that is my very considered assessment.”

Every so often a discussion kicks up over whether men can be feminists or if men should call themselves “feminist allies” or “pro-feminist.”

For me, I’ve always considered the issue kind of a non-issue; I’m lucky to know guys who have considered themselves feminists longer than I have (relax: I wasn’t talking yet). They claim it because they support social, political and economic equality, period.

Then there’s Spain. “We have a prime minister who not only says he’s a feminist — he acts like a feminist,” María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, Spain’s first vice president, told the Washington Post, referring to Prime Minister José Luis Rodríquez Zapatero. “In two-and-one-half years, we have done more than has ever been done in such a short time in Spain.”

Half of Zapatero’s cabinet members are women — the highest proportion in any government in Europe. From the WP:

New divorce laws not only make it easier for couples to split but stipulate that marital obligations require men to share the housework equally with their wives.

To draw more women into the armed forces, the government is shrinking the height requirements for women entering the National Guard and opening child-care centers on military bases.

Not even the royal family is immune: Zapatero wants to abolish the law giving male heirs first rights to the throne.

The push for gender equality in one of Europe’s most macho cultures comes as both internal and outside forces are creating seismic social shifts: Spanish women are taking greater control of their own lives by waiting longer to marry and having fewer children. The European Union is exerting more pressure on members to enforce equality. And the growth of high-tech businesses with a greater sensitivity to hiring women is expanding job opportunities.

After he was elected, Zapatero affirmed his commitment to feminist principles. “One thing that really awakens my rebellious streak is 20 centuries of one sex dominating the other,” he said. “We talk of slavery, feudalism, exploitation — but the most unjust domination is that of one-half of the human race over the other.”

Of course, not everyone is down with the program. “Just because Zapatero says by law men have to do dishes, men are not going to do dishes,” Alberto Fuertes, a 37-year-old factory owner, told the WP. “That’s ridiculous. It’s totally absurd.”

All of his 11 employees are women mostly between the ages of 46 and 55. “If I hire a 36-year-old, the problem is that she’s going to take a lot of days off to take her child to the doctor. She knows her rights and knows I can’t do anything about that,” Fuertes said.

He notes that his mother does everything for his father — but he doesn’t want that kind of life for his 2 1/2-year-old daughter. “I would not be happy,” Fuertes said. “It would go against everything I’ve tried to teach her.”

Back in the U.S., when was the last time you saw feminist in a headline — and it didn’t apply to a woman? “Educator, Integrationist, Feminist Dies in Port Washington”

The story, from Long Island’s local Northender, an online publication, is about the death of David Saltern, an educator who in the 1960s oversaw the desegregation of schools in New Rochelle, N.Y. In 1958, he appeared as an expert witness in federal court and argued for immediate school integration in Little Rock, Ark., which the school board at that time was fighting to delay for two and one-half years.

“When certain types of surgery have to be done, it should be done quickly,” he said, according to The Associated Press.

The Northender included this quote, which seems to be from an interview with Networking Magazine in 2002:

“Surrounded as I am – first by three sisters; later, daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters – I have always been an outspoken feminist – understandably so … the enormously powerful potential of women has not as yet been fully tapped in American industry, government and civic affairs. We have a long, long way to go.”

Saltern was influential enough that the New York Times also published a bylined obit (alas, with no mention of his feminist credentials).

Two representations of male feminists in the media in one week!

So, readers, if more men self-identify as feminists, will it have any impact on the number of women who claim, “I’m not a feminist, but …”?

In some rural parts of China, local custom puts a high premium on marriage — even in death. “To ensure a son’s contentment in the afterlife, some grieving parents will search for a dead woman to be his bride and, once a corpse is obtained, bury the pair together as a married couple,” writes Jim Yardley in The New York Times.

The family of the deceased will go to great lengths to find a female corpse, even paying the equivalent of $1,200, though the average farmer makes only about $300 per year. “Families of the bride regard the money as the dowry they would have received had death not intervened,” notes Yardley.

A woman’s family may also see it as a favor to their daughter:

Guo Yuhua, a sociology professor at Qinghua University in Beijing, an expert on folk traditions and burial customs in the Loess Plateau, said the minghun custom stemmed from both dread and sympathy for the dead. She said parents with dead daughters, like those with dead sons, were also carrying out an obligation to their child. They will sell their bodies as a way of finding them a place in a Chinese society where tradition dictates that a daughter has no place on her father’s family tree.

“China is a paternal clan culture,” said Professor Guo, who did postdoctoral work in anthropology at Harvard. “A woman does not belong to her parents. She must marry and have children of her own before she has a place among her husband’s lineage. A woman who dies unmarried has no place in this world.”

And no say about the afterlife, either.

Read the NYT article.

If your tolerance for stories about the “mommy wars” has reached its limit, you might want to cross the border and give this Toronto Star story a read before calling it quits for good. Writer Andrea Gordon provides a good overview of the issues that are debated ad nauseum in the media — and the concerns and voices that are lost in the crossfire.

Readers should also take note of a terrific resource that rises above the media clutter: The Mothers Movement Online covers the social, cultural, economic and political issues that affect the well-being of mothers by publishing a smart mix of news analysis, commentaries, reviews and interviews.

Editor Judith Stadtman Tucker last month brilliantly deconstructed Michael Noer’s now-infamous Forbes article “Don’t Marry Career Women.” Features from the most recent summer issue include a review of Linda Hirschman’s book “Get to Work,” and a reflection on Adrienne Rich’s “Of Woman Born.”

Stay tuned for September’s issue on the need for a mother’s revolution — and advice on how to start one.

After all, it’s much more rewarding to make movements, not war.