Focus on the Family Founder James Dobson stands accused of misrepresenting the research of Carol Gilligan and Dr. Kyle Pruett, who were both cited in Dobson’s recent Time magazine guest column arguing against same-sex parenting, “Two Mommies Is One Too Many.”

Media Matters has a good breakdown of Dobson’s cherry-picked assertions and the response from Giligan and Pruett, the latter of whom has asked Dobson to refrain from quoting from his research in “media campaigns, personal or corporate, without previously securing my permission.”

Dobson began his column by noting that he and other social conservatives were asked to respond to the news that Mary Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, is pregnant and will raise the child with her partner, Heather Poe.

To which I have to ask: Why? What does Dobson have to say that we haven’t already heard before?

Was it enlightening for any Time reader to learn that Dobson believes “birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples”?

Or that “traditional marriage is God’s design for the family and is rooted in biblical truth”?

Dobson writes near the top that implicit to the invitation to comment on Mary Cheney “is an effort to get us to criticize the Bush Administration or the Cheney family,” and he uses that as cover for writing a supposedly non-political response “about what kind of family environment is best for the health and development of children, and, by extension, the nation at large.”

But Dobson’s views on the best family environment are nothing but political — and pathetically over-played. The fact that he’s misrepresenting research to suit his politics is the only newsworthy item. Maybe Time will invite commentary about his truthiness.

There are so many interesting stories in The New York Times today, a round-up is in order.

First up, an anti-abortion bill was rejected Wednesday when it failed to garner the necessary votes:

On a 250-to-162 vote, backers of the measure fell short of the two-thirds majority necessary to pass the bill, which would require medical personnel to inform women that a fetus could experience pain and to offer anesthesia for the fetus. The supermajority vote was required under special rules used to consider the bill.

Democrats accused Republicans, who will no longer be in the majority next year, of trying to score political points. The measure had no chance of becoming law in the last few days of this session.

“We are wasting time today on a bill that is laden with rhetoric but very little science,” said Representative Lois Capps, Democrat of California.

Gay ordination and same-sex commitment ceremonies are permissible according to the highest legal body of Conservative Judaism, though it will be up to individual synagogues to decide whether to accept or reject gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies.

The decision, which followed years of debate, was denounced by traditionalists in the movement as an indication that Conservative Judaism had abandoned its commitment to adhere to Jewish law, but celebrated by others as a long-awaited move toward full equality for gay people.

“We see this as a giant step forward,” said Sarah Freidson, a rabbinical student and co-chairwoman of Keshet, a student group at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York that has been pushing for change.

The Cheney’s newest grandchild will have two mommies, and while we think that’s just peachy, conservatives are less than thrilled by Mary Cheney’s pregnancy:

Family Pride, a gay rights group, noted that Ms. Cheney’s home state, Virginia, does not recognize same-sex civil unions or marriages.

“The news of Mary Cheney’s pregnancy exemplifies, once again, how the best interests of children are denied when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens are treated unfairly and accorded different and unequal rights and responsibilities than other parents,” said the group’s executive director, Jennifer Chrisler.

Focus on the Family, a Christian group that has provided crucial political support to President Bush, released a statement that criticized child rearing by same-sex couples.

“Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for children,” said Carrie Gordon Earll, the group’s director of issues analysis. “Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean it’s the best for the child.”

A new Canadian television series, “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” looks at Muslim family life in North America post 9/11. The creator, Zarqa Nawaz, a 39-year-old Canadian Muslim of Pakistani origin and mother of four, tells the Times, “It rests on my shoulders to get the balance right between entertainment and representing the community in a reasonable way … You have to push the boundaries so you can grow and evolve as a community.”

Attitudes toward the hijab and women’s dress are central issues on the show:

When a Muslim girl flounces into her immigrant father’s presence with her navel showing, he recoils in horror, saying, “You look like a Protestant.”

She counters, “Dad, you mean a prostitute?”

He responds, “No, I meant a Protestant.”

Ms. Nawaz’s humor also emerges in the pool episode. Johnny, the male water aerobics instructor, is gay, and he pointedly says that the sight of the women’s hair would not be the least bit arousing.

“I always try to start these debates in my community like: Does gay count? Do you have to cover your hair in front of a gay man?” Ms. Nawaz said with a chuckle. (It is not the kind of question that arises in Muslim countries, where being openly gay is virtually out of the question; such behavior is punishable by a death sentence in some places.)

Fellow Muslims often dismiss her thoughts and questions as too outrageous, she admitted. “But now I have a whole series to express them.”

Finally, with “Ouch! My Bag Is Killing Me” listed as the second-most-popular e-mailed NYT story (as of early afternoon), I have to ask: must we injure our bodies with our bags?

Accepting children “who do not conform to gender norms in their clothing and behavior” is becoming more common, but integrating those children into school is fraught with conflict, according to this story in The New York Times.

The author, Patricia Leigh Brown, does a good job, through interviews with well-informed pediatricians and school officials, of respecting and validating the experience of transgender or gender-variant children — and their parents’ attempts to affirm, rather than dismiss or demonize, that identity.

But it almost feels like she is tackling a little too much, especially when she discusses, only in passing, the use of “blockers” (“hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases where it could be psychologically devastating”) or one doctor whose goal is to “help these kids be more content in their biological gender,” at least temporarily.

Ultimately, the most revealing and worthwhile aspects of the article come from caring parents who respect their children’s sense of their own identity — but fear the intolerant world those children are about to enter. Brown writes:

Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature of the day-to-day reality. “It’s hard to convey the relentlessness of it,” she said, “every social encounter, every time you go out to eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid’s self-esteem and protecting him from the hostile outside world.”

For other parents, it was a longer road:

Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children’s hospital in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s, says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and “hypermasculine activities” like karate. She said she and her husband became “gender cops.”

“It was always, ‘You’re not kicking the ball hard enough,’ ” she said.

Ms. Tuerk’s son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking has evolved since she was a young parent. “People are beginning to understand this seems to be something that happens,” she said. “But there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone.”

Introducing the 23rd Carnival of Feminists — “This edition has a special focus on women and health care because issues of access and treatment — whether we’re talking about breast cancer, emergency contraception, rape, or a visit to a specialist for further tests — are ultimately issues of control.”

When Is Thin Too Thin? — “Despite perennial complaints that models are too thin, there is a new sense of concern that designers are contributing to unhealthy and potentially life-threatening behavior among models vying to appear in their shows.”

I was uncomfortable with the fact that the Times chose to run a photograph of a grotesquely slender model presented through a distortion mirror on the front page of the Style section, where this story ran (because sickly models are still a style issue — which might explain the Ralph Lauren fashion show ad that pre-empted the online story). The non-distorted inside photo of a lone model on the runway was even more alarming; the difference between the two images is barely noticeable. (As of posting time, this model shot was only in the newspaper, not on the website.)

U.S. Recommends Routine Testing for the AIDS Virus — “By rolling an HIV test into routine blood testing to measure blood sugar, kidney function, hemoglobin count and myriad other health indicators, the policy would make AIDS unique in another way. It would become the only infectious disease tested for more or less automatically in medical encounters. Pregnant women are tested for AIDS, syphilis and hepatitis B, but the CDC policy would cover everyone 13 to 64 years old.”

Nurturing Young Mothers — “A University of Chicago study released Wednesday found that girls in foster care are 2.5 times more likely than their peers to become pregnant before age 19. [...] Experts say the data expose a need for collaboration between child-welfare and pregnancy-prevention advocates that goes beyond basic sex information. The girls, they say, must be motivated to plan for their futures.”

Sterile Victims Stand Up, Decry Legacy of Eugenics — “After Riddick became pregnant from a rape, doctors on the Eugenics Board of North Carolina decided in 1968 that she was too “feeble-minded” to ever be a good mother and wanted to ensure that she would never get pregnant again. So doctors tied her tubes and never bothered to tell her. Thirty-eight years later, Riddick, a 52-year-old with a quiet demeanor, has emerged as a voice for thousands of victims of state-sponsored sterilization programs that were part of the eugenics movement that spread through the United States between the 1920s and the 1970s. Riddick and others are coming forward and forcing states to address their role in a horrific social experiment that went awry.”

Final Results From WomenTK.com: Ratio of male to female writers in national “general interest” magazines, compiled from September 2005 to September 2006: 3:1

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.