As the Economist first reported over the weekend, greeting card behemoth Hallmark is preparing to roll out some bold new messages in 2014 – including cards that take on tough topics like terminal illness. "Our paths came together in this life," reads one. "You're in some of the best memories I have and you always will be."

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Lopez was performing over the weekend in the small Soviet bloc country of Turkmenistan at an event hosted by the China National Petroleum Corporation. It was there that she, in the words of her publicist, "graciously obliged" a request to serenade the birthday boy, president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. "It was our pleasure. And we wish you the very happiest birthday," she said at the time. A Human Rights Watch report from just this past April cited the country's "high levels of repression," "harassment and intimidation of journalists" and "longstanding use of imprisonment as a tool for political retaliation." It did not, however, mention any predilection for Pitbull collaborations. On Sunday, Human Rights Foundation president Thor Halvorssen said that Lopez's actions "utterly destroy the carefully crafted message she has cultivated with her prior involvement with Amnesty International's programs in Mexico aimed at curbing violence against women," and asked, " What is the next stop on her tour, Syria? The dictator of Kazakhstan's birthday is July 6, maybe she will also pay him a visit?"

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Popular poultry purveyor Chick-fil-A has a long and well documented history of support for "traditional," man-lady marriage. But after Wednesday's Supreme Court rulings, the company's president, Dan Cathy, couldn't resist sharing his observation, via Twitter, that it was a "Sad day for our nation, founding fathers would be ashamed of our generation to abandon wisdom of the ages re: cornerstone of strong societies." Yes, I am totally sure that self-described cougar chaser Ben Franklin, along with Thomas Jefferson, a man who likely fathered six children with his slave, would be appalled. Cathy quickly deleted the tweet, and issued a corporate statement that he "realized his views didn't necessarily represent the views of all customers, restaurant owners and employees and didn't want to distract them from providing a great restaurant experience." In other words, oops, he forgot that thoughts go on the inside, and that conflating "shame" and civil rights can be bad for business.

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USA Today isn't exactly a bastion of profound insight – it's best known as the newspaper you find outside your hotel room door in the morning. But it still deserves a very special shout-out for condescending, heterosplaining crap anyway. In the story, Sharon Jayson says that "Just because same-sex couples can legally marry doesn't mean they will" and that "marriage isn't for everyone." Whoa whoa whoa SLOW DOWN, USA Today. The Supreme Court didn't just make marriage mandatory for every homosexual in America? Jayson goes on to quote a University of Minnesota researcher who observes, "Some gays and lesbians clearly want to get married, but others are unsure or reject marriage for themselves." I feel a "The more you know" rainbow coming on here.

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Jeantel does not fit the comfortable image of the grieving girl. As Rachel Samara wrote Wednesday in Global Grind, "A predominantly white jury is not going to like Rachel Jeantel," a girl "who has no media training and who is fully entrenched in a hostile environment." There is confusion over whether or not she was Martin's girlfriend, which eradicates her chances of being depicted as a devastated young quasi-widow. On the stand, she has been blunt, hostile and at times seemingly confused. Online, she has a documented history that includes partying. She is not thin or blond or demure. So there goes her credibility.

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Jones has spent her entire career establishing herself as a walking collection of pure, bona fide nonsense. She's a gasbag, even by Daily Mail's notoriously incoherent standards. Long before her riled-up column on what a "toxic role model" Rihanna is earlier this week, she'd already made a name for herself as the columnist who most resembles that one relative with no filter you just try not to get into a fight with at holiday dinners. She's declared overweight people "lazy," homeless people "ignorant," and insisted that women "most definitely, incontrovertibly, do not want sex once they have children." That's why it wasn't exactly a shocker when she declared that Rihanna "promotes drug-taking, drinking and the sort of fashion sense on stage that surely invites rape at worst, disrespect at least" and is "infecting our High Streets with her gun tattoos, her false nails and fake hair, her bogus bad-ass shenanigans."

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I'm not asking we forget marriage equality. I'm not requesting that one inch of the hard-fought ground gained Wednesday recede. I'm saying instead that as we recognize that two men or two women can forge together loving, enduring, legally recognized unions, it's time to retire the belittling phrase "gay marriage" itself, once and for all. Calling it "gay marriage" is like calling it "black marriage" or "geriatric marriage" or any other absurd, insulting modifier. It anoints the institution with otherness and makes it seem outside the norm. Marriage Substitute. Marriage Lite. I Can't Believe It's Not Marriage! The term doesn't even have the brilliant hilarity of American Family Association director Bryan J. Fischer's definition of the Supreme Court ruling Wednesday as a victory for "sodomy-based marriage." At least that sounds fun.

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There is a default expectation that a woman should be visually and temperamentally pleasing – especially to males. When, a few years ago, a female friend started taking Japanese lessons, she was surprised that the instructor taught females students to speak at a higher pitch. And as stories in both the Atlantic and Slate this month pointed out, women are considered suspect when their natural resting face is anything but soft, smiling and pliant.

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On Monday, the Cut profiled Alonso Mateo, the current bad boy of male fashion. Mateo is 5. Mateo has of late been dominating on Instagram thanks to his effortlessly cool fashion sense and his attendant grown-ups' liberal use of hashtags. Typical entry: "That's how you do it. #MateoStyle #fashion #mensfashion #kidsfashion #instafashion #instapic #kidsinstyle #fashionista #instastyle #coolestkid #handsome #boys #instacute #follow #followme #igdaily #swag #ootd #igers #shoutout #instacool #instaworld #lookbook #trendy #streetfashion #fashiondiaries." Mateo, whose look can be described as "young Steve McQueen – really, really young Steve McQueen," favors slouchy jackets, jeans and aviators. He likes expensive boots. He likes to mix things up – sometimes accessorizing with a jaunty scarf, sometimes with a plush car seat. In one photograph, he is seen chilling with a book on the floor of his closet, in front of a collection of shoes that would seem generous by Kardashian standards. Mateo has over 11,000 followers.

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The father of a Norwood student says that after a wrestling tournament last year, three of his then 13-year-old son's teammates "bound him with duct tape and sodomized him with a pencil" on an empty school bus. The attack came to light when the victim's father heard one of the perpetrators bragging about it to his dad afterward. But that was just the start of the family's nightmare. The boy's father was the school's principal. Two of his attackers? The coach's sons.

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Carrey has in recent months become increasingly outspoken about gun violence. In March, he played both a clenched Charlton Heston and a suave country and western singer crooning the anti-gun anthem "Cold Dead Hand" for Funny Or Die. Sample lyric: "Only the devil's true devotees could profiteer from pain and fear." It quickly became one of the most viewed clips in the site's history, and led to a predictable amount of frothing from fans and in conservative outlets like Fox News. In response, Carrey described the network as a "media colostomy bag that has begun to burst at the seams."

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Doughty, who has lived in the U.S. for more than thirty years, had wanted to become a naturalized citizen, but objected to the required pledge to bear arms in defense of the country. She explained, "I deeply and sincerely believe that it is not moral or ethical to take another person’s life, and my lifelong spiritual/religious beliefs impose on me a duty of conscience not to contribute to warfare by taking up arms… my beliefs are as strong and deeply held as those who possess traditional religious beliefs and who believe in God."

Maybe it was the mention of deeply held beliefs that tripped up Immigration. Conveniently ignoring the whole part of her explanation where she implied she doesn't have "traditional religious beliefs," it then demanded Doughty provide documentation to support her status as a conscientious objector "on official church stationery, attesting to the fact that [she is] a member in good standing and the church's official position on the bearing of arms."

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On Friday morning, Deen was scheduled to appear on the "Today" show, but at the last minute, Matt Lauer announced, "We just found out she's a no-show." He added that everything had seemed a go for an "an open and candid discussion, no holds barred" interview when he'd spoken to her Thursday, but now her representative had simply said she was "exhausted."

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This month, Vintage has issued a 20th anniversary edition of Prejean's seminal work, with a new introduction by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and afterwords by Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and Prejean herself. "I cannot write this without fierce anger and distress at the blindness and unfairness of the current Court," she writes in it, "which continues to sanction the death penalty in case after case as if there were not abundant evidence that their 'machinery of death' does not work."

Salon spoke to the 74-year-old nun about the current state of capital punishment, her feelings on the new pope, and why sisterhood is powerful.

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In an interview called "The Great One" Rolling Stone posted on Tuesday, the tennis champ held forth on everything from her career to her nails, but it was her comments about the Steubenville rape that got most immediate – and strongest – reaction. As she watched a news report on the case with journalist Stephen Rodrick, she asked, "Do you think it was fair, what they got? They did something stupid, but I don't know." In March, 17-year-old Trent Mays and 16-year-old Ma’lik Richmond were found guilty of raping an unconscious classmate in August of last year. The assault first came to light after blogger Alexandria Goddard  exposed a series of damning social media evidence from the night joking about the incident. "I'm not blaming the girl," Williams said before going on to blame both her and her parents, "but if you're a 16-year-old and you're drunk like that, your parents should teach you: Don't take drinks from other people. She's 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn't remember?"

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"May a lesbian marry a gay man?" he told the crowd. "My answer is 'yes,' because in that instance the capacity to consummate the union is there. The anatomy is there. The possibility of conception is there." Apparently in Cruz's mind, "consummation" is limited strictly to those activities which can result in conception, and conception is good enough to call it a marriage. Cruz went on to to discuss marriage equality, saying, "For the Church, even if you turn it upside down and call it by another name, it would still not be marriage. For the Church, even if a hundred [judges] bless a same-sex wedding, it would still not be effective." Who needs love or even a like-minded orientation to get the Church's blessing anyway, when you've got straight up anatomy?

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Give credit where it's due in the latest example of this old trope – when the Cut ran a story on "Fucking on the First Date? How It Worked Out for 8 Women" Monday, it did at least include a few ladies whose entire lives were not ruined just because they were down for it right away. Inspired by a new book (called "It's Okay to Sleep With Him on the First Date," a title straight out of the Department of Things I Didn't Know We Needed Permission For), author Alyssa Shelasky admits she'd never go all the way that soon. But she also cites women who managed to find their soul mates, who fondly assert relationships launched with "our pure and uncomplicated sexuality from the start."

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So it came as stunning news Sunday when the Mirror's People page published a series of photographs showing the British food writer and television personality apparently being choked by her husband, Charles Saatchi, during a recent lunch at Scott's restaurant in London. In the series of photographs, the man's hand is seen extended across a table and around Lawson's throat. As the Mirror sensationally describes it, "At first he used only his left hand, then both. At one stage he tweaked her nose then pushed both hands in her face. Twice Nigella jerked her head backwards as if in fear." Strangely, soon after, she reportedly kissed him on the cheek. Another photo shows her apparently crying and visibly upset, leaving the restaurant. Police are now investigating the incident but have not launched a formal investigation.

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When Boing Boing and MAKE editor and beloved Internet happy mutant Mark Frauenfelder's teenage daughter was flying through Los Angeles Airport Sunday, she says a TSA agent had some unsolicited wardrobe advice. She texted her father that the agent was "glaring" as he was checking passenger identifications and mumbling in her direction. He then reportedly told her, "You're only 15, COVER YOURSELF!"

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