After winning a court case that changed a California law against men taking their wives' last name, Michael Buday picked up his new driver's license bearing his new name -- Michael Bijon, according to Reuters.

Two years ago, Michael and wife Diana Bijon were surprised to learn that for him to take her surname, he would have to pay $350 and face a barrage of bureaucracy, including court appearances and paper work usually not obstacles for women. The couple took their case to the American Civil Liberties Union -- and won.

"Women have fought for so long for equal rights and it feels like this is part of that fight," said Diana Bijon. "When we got married, the law basically said, 'Don't be silly, only a woman can change her name when she gets married."'

"I am really, really proud of him. Not many men would do this," she said.

A subsequent lawsuit led to a new California state law guaranteeing the rights of both married couples and registered domestic partners to choose whichever last name they prefer on their marriage and driving licences.

"This disposes of the rule in California that the male surname is the marital name to the same trash bin where dowries were once tossed out," said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the Southern California chapter of the ACLU.

Michael said he decided to take his wife's last name because he is closer to his father-in-law than his own father.

I learned about this story through Salon's Broadsheet.

This New York Times story was heartbreaking: Billy Wolfe is a 16-year-old special needs student in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with a big target on his back. He is constantly being beat up by other boys at his school -- to the point he needs stitches and gets bruises -- and is taunted online and offline.

It began years ago when a boy called the house and asked Billy if he wanted to buy a certain sex toy, heh-heh. Billy told his mother, who informed the boy’s mother. The next day the boy showed Billy a list with the names of 20 boys who wanted to beat Billy up.

Ms. Wolfe says she and her husband knew it was coming. She says they tried to warn school officials — and then bam: the prank caller beat up Billy in the bathroom of McNair Middle School.

Not long after, a boy on the school bus pummeled Billy, but somehow Billy was the one suspended, despite his pleas that the bus’s security camera would prove his innocence. Days later, Ms. Wolfe recalls, the principal summoned her, presented a box of tissues, and played the bus video that clearly showed Billy was telling the truth.

Things got worse. At Woodland Junior High School, some boys in a wood shop class goaded a bigger boy into believing that Billy had been talking trash about his mother. Billy, busy building a miniature house, didn’t see it coming: the boy hit him so hard in the left cheek that he briefly lost consciousness.

Ms. Wolfe remembers the family dentist sewing up the inside of Billy’s cheek, and a school official refusing to call the police, saying it looked like Billy got what he deserved. Most of all, she remembers the sight of her son.

“He kept spitting blood out,” she says, the memory strong enough still to break her voice.

Of course, bullying and taunting is nothing new. We have even discussed how to handle bullies here at MT.

Many of you know by now that I'm an accidental lactivist-- that is to say, I never felt strongly about a woman's right to breastfeed until I had a baby of my own. Matter of fact, seeing women nurse used to make me downright squeamish. But now that my nursing days are behind me, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to see a suckling baby. And I get predictably irate when idiots like  Bill Maher or uptight flight attendants try to interfere with a woman's legal right to nurse her child. I've blogged it, I've written letters...and should I ever have the good fortune to have another baby, you can bet I will be attending some nurse-ins.

So this story got my hackles up when I first read it. It seems a Boston woman was denied extra break time so she could pump breast milk during her nine-hour medical licensing exam:

Norfolk Superior Court Judge Patrick Brady said Currier has other options, beyond asking the board to change its rules for her.

"The plaintiff may take the test and pass, notwithstanding what she considers to be unfavorable conditions. The plaintiff may delay the test, which is offered numerous times during the year, until she has finished her breast-feeding and the need to express milk," he said.

Say WHAT?! That last statement? Me no likey.

Currier, of Brookline, has finished a joint M.D.-Ph.D. program at Harvard University while having two babies in two years. She has been offered a residency in clinical pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital in November, but cannot accept it unless she passes the test. Her goal is a career in medical research.

Currier has taken the test once already, in April when she was 8 1/2 months pregnant, but she failed by a few points.

"The judge's conclusion that there is no harm to a woman to putting her career off for a year is the basis of discrimination," Currier said. "Men do not have to put off their careers because they are feeding a child."

So at this point I am all full of righteous indignation, and full of sympathy for this remarkable woman, who has had two babies in two years while attending medical school at Harvard, no less, AND overcoming multiple learning disabilities.

You go girl! Let's delve a little further: