Those gender, race, and ethnicity conscious progressives at the New York Times feature a front-page story at their website touting the increased number of women in the U.S. Senate. The Times pushes the line that a senator's sex matters in the outcome of legislation. Surely, with men and women being entirely equal (particularly in combat), a female senator would be no less different, bringing nothing more to Senate proceedings than her male colleagues.

Err, well, maybe -- maybe not. Evidently, the grandees in the Times' editorial offices think women are different. There is inequality between men and women, we learn.

Here's the nub of the difference, as reported by the Times:

"I don't want to generalize, because this isn't true of all of them, but they tend to be interested in finding common ground," said Senator Rob Portman], Republican of Ohio [recently 'sensitized' to gay marriage by his homosexual son and now worthy of being quoted in the Times]. "So I think it's going to have, and is having, a positive impact on the Senate." [Commentary added, of course.]

You mean to say that women are more often conciliators, compromisers? Doesn't this play to a stereotype of women? How do those feminine qualities work on a battlefield, pray tell? Does the Taliban want to be made nice with? Yeah, well, the Senate's a battlefield, right, so maybe the model's transferrable to Afghanistan? Chuck Hagel's up for anything.

The Times' bias favors women (what else?). The gal... senators are the superior sex because they're getting things done that the Times' likes; namely, pushing legislation favorable to lib causes.

Yet another tidbit from the Times' report:

While partisan division is the central characteristic of the modern Congress, women have begun to crack away at the gridlock by forming coalitions that have surprised leaders of both parties. Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, and Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, led the repeal in the Senate of "don't ask, don't tell" in 2010, allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the military.

Maine's Susan Collins ain't exactly a stalwart conservative, so that she crossed the aisle to make nice with New York Democrat Kristen Gillibrand on gays in the military isn't quite a headline. And, needless to say, the legislative compromise would have to concern gays (for the enlightened New York Times to mention it).

(Can someone do a content analysis of the Times to determine how many stories concern gays and lesbians or how frequently the terms "gay" and "lesbian" pop up in stories? Perhaps the Times can hold a contest like the old "How many jellybeans in the jar" contests; instead, how many times "gay" and "lesbian" show up in just a daily edition of the Old Gray Lady? The Old Gray Lady, huh? Maybe she's a cross-dresser? Throw cross-dressers and transgenders into the contest mix, too.)

This last burp from the Times' crack reporting:

On a practical level, the women's growing ranks have overtaken the physical facilities available to them. There are, at present, a mere two women's bathroom stalls near the Senate floor, which often means long lines. But the senators have learned to use the situation to their advantage: Ms. Stabenow said recently that she and Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat, spent their time in the bathroom line strategizing over how they might get a new farm bill passed.

"It's a good problem to have," Ms. Stabenow said. "We have enough of us now that we can negotiate in the ladies' room."

Girls chatting it up in restroom lines and in the toilets. Unheard of.

But in the blessed name of equality, what's wrong with unisex restrooms for senators? Now there's a cause for the Times' editorial pages.

As the ever equality-loving Denver Post reports:

Arizona's measure -- and the response it received on Wednesday -- reflects a growing national debate over what kind of restroom can be accessed by men and women presenting as a gender other than what they were born as.

Seems those dirty-dog, reactionary conservatives in Arizona want to clamp down on men who were women and women who were men using whichever public lavatories they weren't born to use. Is that confusing?

Next we'll read in the Times about the need for a front and center debate in the U.S. Senate over transgenders access to public toilets of their surgically-altered choice. Surely, the gal-senators can bridge the differences -- genitals be damned.

The New York Times bruiting inequality between the sexes doesn't mean unequal access to public toilets, does it? We can all imagine that toilet equality is the coming thing on the Times' pages. Count on it.