In honor of this special day, Outer Blogness (and the Bloggernacle) are full of touching tributes to mothers and cute pictures of baby animals. And adventures in motherhood. (Also, let me plug my own mom’s cool history blog.)

Naturally, this holiday leads us to reflect on Heavenly Mother, with some standard criticisms.

On to women’s issues in general: The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has come out with a new policy condoning a “ritual nick” — as a medical procedure — as an answer to the cultural practice of female genital mutilation. Folks didn’t mince words when explaining what’s wrong with that. Holly has discovered some interesting historical connections between feminism and vegetarianism. Aerin discusses the ad-hominem of claiming that a woman who isn’t a mother can’t understand nurturing. Tara’s is perhaps tangential (there are many women in the service industry) but she explains a bit about being considerate of restaurant workers. And JulieAnn has been doing some very interesting research on sexuality.

And, while we’re discussing women’s issues, let’s not forget that racism is still alive and well, not to mention homophobia. Plus there’ve been some other interesting holidays lately: May Day and Cinco de Exmo.

And on a totally unrelated note, popular commenter Seth R. did a podcast episode on apologetics for Mormon Expression! It was so thought-provoking that somebody started whole new blog just to respond to it! But if debating isn’t your style, then maybe you’d like to tell the fMh crowd why you’re not at church or just spend the day singing the best atheist songs!