In a new column rife with his usual brand of audacious conjecture, Keith Ablow of Fox News’ Medical A-Team takes aim at Hilary Rosen and all working moms (and arguably all feminists), suggesting they are “anti-gender” and “despise the parts of themselves” drawn to motherhood:

These “anti-gender” women have it in for anyone who embraces her femininity, maternal instincts and capacity to nurture as their highest priority — postponing or passing up other laudable opportunities to work at, say, a law firm or as a marketing executive.  They despise the notion that some women may indeed be drawn — instinctively and happily — toward creating special and loving environments in which to raise their children, while spending all their available time sustaining and enriching those environments and those children.

They despise the parts of themselves that may be drawn to such roles, as well.  That’s why women like Hilary Rosen make such outlandish statements, to begin with.  They’re essentially talking to themselves — albeit, with the rest of the world forced to listen — trying to reassure themselves that their own choices in life weren’t only equally as good as those of other women, but better. Far, far better. They feel like their choices are better because they have thrown off the shackles of roles that were once “expected” of them, leaving them not only freer than, but superior to, those women who don’t feel enslaved at home, but feel fulfilled at home.

Unsurprisingly, Ablow assumes that gender norms are good and haven’t been used to discriminate against women for almost all of humanity. Perhaps he’d like to roll back all of the freedoms women have fought for over the past century so they can fully embrace their “maternal instincts” with nothing to distract them from what he seems to see as their true calling. Ablow, of course, includes a jab at Rosen for being a lesbian, suggesting she’s only capable of supporting “alternative lifestyles.”

As Carlos Maza points out at Equality Matters, Ablow’s column includes all his usual pop-psychology tropes:

• Violating professional ethics standards by diagnosing a public figure without permission or a formal examination
• Peddling unscientific and sexist stereotypes about how men and women are supposed to behave
• Using any excuse to take an unprovoked potshot at the Obama administration

But all of that aside, Ablow accidentally concedes that the intention of Rosen’s comments was exactly right, suggesting that many of his clients “wouldn’t be going to work for very long if their spouses made millions as investors (as Mitt Romney has done).” If Ann Romney really didn’t go to work, choosing instead to “allow her husband to go out and make the money to support all of them,” why doesn’t Ablow simply agree with Rosen?

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has issued a new Statement on Religious Liberty, which complains that the Catholic Church should have a right to impose its values on fellow citizens “for the common good.” The long, wordy statement includes a list of “concrete examples” of how “religious liberty” has supposedly been compromised that includes when university campus groups are not allowed to discriminate against gay students and when Catholic Charities isn’t allowed to discriminate against same-sex couples. It then reiterates an oft-heard threat that the Catholic Church should be able to impose its public services however it pleases or it won’t at all:

Religious liberty is not only about our ability to go to Mass on Sunday or pray the Rosary at home. It is about whether we can make our contribution to the common good of all Americans. Can we do the good works our faith calls us to do, without having to compromise that very same faith? Without religious liberty properly understood, all Americans suffer, deprived of the essential contribution in education, health care, feeding the hungry, civil rights, and social services that religious Americans make every day, both here at home and overseas.

What is at stake is whether America will continue to have a free, creative, and robust civil society—or whether the state alone will determine who gets to contribute to the common good, and how they get to do it. Religious believers are part of American civil society, which includes neighbors helping each other, community associations, fraternal service clubs, sports leagues, and youth groups. All these Americans make their contribution to our common life, and they do not need the permission of the government to do so. Restrictions on religious liberty are an attack on civil society and the American genius for voluntary associations.

The statement also has the gall to invoke Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” suggesting that any restrictions on the Church’s free reign over society are “unjust” laws. Claiming not to ask “for special treatment,” the statement nevertheless encourages Catholics to intentionally disobey any laws that prevent the Church from imposing its will. Given its will so often includes policies that discriminate against women and the LGBT community, this is a complete bastardization of King’s intent. King, in fact, was challenging moderate Christian leaders that they had to do more to support equality for all and push back against laws that were unjust to others. The Catholic hierarchy has repeatedly demonstrated that it only cares about its own dominance over society, a perspective anathema to addressing “injustice anywhere.”

Yesterday, the administration defended its decision not to issue an executive order prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in federal contracting by arguing that the administration would rather build support for the more comprehensive Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA). “The approach we’re taking at this time is to try to build support for passage of this legislation, a comprehensive approach to legislate on the issue of non-discrimination,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney explained during an eight minute exchange with journalists at his daily briefing. “And I would make the comparison here that pursuing that strategy, the passage of ENDA, is very similar to the approach the President took for the legislative repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

But the reporters remained dubious, pressing, “if he does support ENDA, why not sign this executive order which relates to a smaller part of the population to get that policy started?” NBC’s Kristen Welker wondered, “Is this a political calculation”?

Carney stressed that the campaign did not shape the administration’s decision but suggested, remarkably, that in this case, the president was willing to make that perfect the enemy of the good — abandon interim reforms that would have extended protections for millions of Americans in favor of sweeping comprehensive change that has little hope of advancing in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The argument is untenable — unbelievable — and even Carney’s comparison of employment nondiscrimination to the legislative repeal of DADT falls flat on closer examination.

After all, before Congress passed legislation that eliminated the policy in December of 2010, the Defense Department took a series of steps to ease the implementation of the ban. In February of 2010, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered a 45-day review into how the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell military policy could be enforced more humanely, and in March of that year, he announced more lenient guidelines for enforcing the ban against homosexual conduct and behavior. The new rules limited enforcement of the policy to those cases where servicemember actively outed themselves.

Obama ultimately rejected calls to use executive authority to end the discharges, but his administration did accelerate the repeal process through administrative action. And that approach, to use Carney’s words, should be “instructive here in terms of the approach the administration [should take] at this time.”