First, the news:

The last five months have been eventful for Steav Bates-Congdon.

First he got married. Then he got fired.

The popular music director at St. Gabriel Catholic Church in south Charlotte lost his job last month for marrying his longtime partner in New York, one of seven states to recognize same-sex marriages.

Yes, well, you saw that coming, even if Steav — no typo — didn’t.

But here’s the thing:

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“Gonorrhea, one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the United States, is increasingly showing resistance to one of the last known effective antibiotic treatments, leading researchers from the Centers for Disease Control to ‘sound the alarm’ about potentially untreatable forms of the disease.” [USNews]

While writing Monday’s Morning Blather, we considered including the statistic everyone’s been mentioning the past week: That 98 percent of American women used contraception. This, we discovered upon chasing down the source, is true.

Only it doesn’t exactly say what everyone says it says.

Andrew Sullivan, ruminating on the subject yesterday, expressed it this way:

The Bishops fail to see any difference. They want contraception, practised by 98 percent of Catholic women, and critical to preventing higher rates of abortion, kept out of any healthcare plan an employer decides.

The study we found — a 2010 CDC survey — doesn’t include the faith of respondents, but otherwise it’s in, um, broad agreement:

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“First came Spreading Santorum, Dan Savage’s crude attempt at redefining Rick Santorum’s name on Google after Santorum said some crude things about gay people. Now comes Spreading Romney, a similar attempt to redefine Mitt Romney’s name on the Internet — as a verb, meaning ‘to defecate in terror.’” [Newser, via Blogenfreude]

“Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a measure legalizing gay marriage in a ceremony in Olympia on Monday. It made Washington the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.” [AP/Seattle PI]

Our guest columnist is YouTube, responding this morning to a video we posted on November 25, 2008.

Dear stinque,

Your video, “Joe the Plumber hawks DTV”, may have content that is owned or licensed by The Young Turks.

No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.

Sincerely,

– The YouTube Team

We don’t know why, but we found ourself thinking about Terri Schiavo last night.

No, not Schiavo the person. Not even Schiavo the issue. More like Schiavo the moment.

The moment when the business of government came to a screeching halt so Republicans could grandstand over a dying woman in Florida. And, as it happens, the moment that Republican overreach was so spectacular, our jaw dropped.

A moment not unlike this:

Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday.

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