For those of you who were offended by a very genuine attempt at fostering a civil discussion, I apologize. 
 
 About 10 or 15 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made gay marriage legal across the country, including the 13 states that up until now had banned it, a colleague of mine walked into the PennLive newsroom. 
 
 A smile lit up her face and there were tears in her eyes. Up until about 10 a.m. on Friday, my gay colleague sat on pins and needles, waiting to see if nine lawyers were about to throw the life and her and her partner into absolute upheaval. 
 
 We embraced and I offered my congratulations. And then I sat down and thought about what had just happened and what it meant to my other gay and lesbian colleagues who were rightfully celebrating Friday's ruling as a victory for both love and equal protection under the law. 
 
 And as the comments on our main story about the ruling -- many of them openly hostile -- began to pile up, I decided I wanted to send the strongest possible message that the Opinion pages of PennLive and The Patriot-News would be space for civil discussion of one of the most important civil rights rulings of our lifetime. 
 
 I came up with three sentences, which currently read like this: 
 
 "As a result of Friday's ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will very strictly limit op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage. 
 
 "These unions are now the law of the land. And we will not publish such letters and op-Eds any more than we would publish those that are racist, sexist or anti-Semitic. 
 
 "We will, however, for a limited time, accept letters and op-Eds on the high court's decision and its legal merits." 
 
 What almost immediately followed was an object lesson in the law of unintended consequences. And, sadly, the strongly worded message included in our editorial was lost. 
 
 By day's end, I'd received dozens of emails and several phone calls -- not to mention the hundreds of comments appended to the editorial -- accusing me (and this news organization) of being "fascists" opposed to both the First Amendment and the right to freedom of expression. 
 
 And those were just the polite ones. 
 
 And as I rolled it over in my head yesterday, after hearing from professional colleagues and good friends on the right and left who questioned our policy, I reached a number of conclusions: 
 
 First: No one at PennLive and The Patriot-News is an opponent of the First Amendment. It's a right that's foundational to us as a people. And it's a right for which many brave and noble men and women have given their lives. And I would never trample on that legacy or dishonor their sacrifice by limiting our readers' right to express themselves in a civil way. 
 
 Second: And I cannot stress this one enough -- that's in a civil way. More than once yesterday I was referred to as "f****t-lover," among other slurs. And that's the point that I was trying to make with our statement: We will not publish such slurs any more than we would publish racist, sexist or anti-Semitic speech. There are ways to intelligently discuss an issue. The use of playground insults is not among them. And they are not welcome at PennLive/The Patriot-News. 
 
 Third: I fully recognize that there are people of good conscience and of goodwill who will disagree with Friday's high court ruling. They include philosophers and men and women of the cloth whose objections come from deeply held religious and moral convictions that are protected by the very same First Amendment that allowed me to stick my foot in my mouth on Friday. They are, and always will be, welcome in these pages, along with all others of goodwill, who seek to have an intelligent and reasoned debate on the issues of the day. 
 
 These pages, I remind myself finally, belong to the people of Central Pennsylvania. I'm a conduit, I recognize, for them to share their views and to have the arguments that make us better as a people. And all views are -- and always will be -- welcome. 
 
 My mom -- and probably yours too -- once told me what the road to hell was paved with. Yesterday, I was reminded of the truth of that lesson. 
 
 I stand with my gay and lesbian friends who, on Friday, were extended the same protections under the law that the rest of us take for granted. 
 
 But for those of you who were offended by what was intended as a very genuine attempt at fostering a civil discussion, I apologize. ||||| You simply have to love Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler whenever they get together on TV to do one of their hilarious “Really?” Saturday Night Live-style segments. And while they’re not on SNL anymore, the duo reprised their “Really?” roles to shame a Sports Illustrated contributor who took to Twitter to say that women’s sports – not just soccer – aren’t really worth watching. 
 
 Yeah, he said that on the Internet, while this was happening. 
 
 DON’T MISS: The Secret Sites Cord Cutters Use to Stream Pay TV and Movies for Free 
 
 Meyers had Poehler performed the bit on the Late Night with Seth Meyers show, and the video dedicated to Sports Illustrated’ Andy Beniot follows below. 
 
 Everything started when Mark Mravic tweeted that “And here some people (ahem, @Andy_Benoit) argue that women’s soccer isn’t worth watching,” pointing out to a stupendous goal scored in the women’s soccer World Cup – you’ll see the goal it in the following clip, too. 
 
 Benoit, probably not realizing that his fingers were actually typing something that would go up online in seconds, replied that “Not women’s soccer, [but] women’s sports in general [are] not worth watching.” 
 
 Rest assured, Poehler gave Benoit advice on using Twitter, in addition to thoroughly mocking his answer together with Meyers. “Another thing,” she said. “No more tweeting, Benoit, you’re too dumb.” 
 
 The full “Really?” clip follows below. ||||| Wal-Mart is apologizing for a store in Slidell, La., which refused to bake a cake designed as the Confederate battle flag but accepted a request to bake a cake that looked like the ISIS battle flag. 
 
 Chuck Netzhammer, a local resident, presented his story in a YouTube video Friday, saying, “Alright, Wal-Mart, you’ve got some explaining to do. I went to go buy a cake from you all the other day with this image on it and y’all wouldn’t do it. I went back yesterday and managed to get the ISIS battle flag [cake instead].” 
 
 Netzhammer shows the ISIS battle flag cake to the camera as well as the rejection letter Wal-Mart gave him for the confederate flag cake request. Netzhammer also shows the receipt that went along with the ISIS battle flag cake that Wal-Mart agreed to bake. 
 
 WATCH: 
 
 “Wal-Mart, can you please explain why you’re alienating Southern Americans with this trash that you allow to be sold at your store, while at the same point Confederate flag memorabilia is not allowed?” Netzhammer asks. 
 
 The Daily caller was contacted by Randy Hargrove, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, who said in an email, “Our local store made a mistake. The cake in the video should not have been made and we apologize.” 
 
 Hargrove later explained to TheDC, “We made the decision to stop selling Confederate flag related items promoting the flag’s image. For that reason we did not make the cake. [Netzhammer] brought in the other image of ISIS and really, what happened, was our associate didn’t recognize what that image was and what it meant or it wouldn’t have been made.” 
 
 Merchandise that is associated with the Confederate flag was pulled off Wal-Mart and other retailers store shelves this past week following the Charleston, S.C., shooting massacre of nine parishioners at a black church. Photos later showed the gunman, Dylan Roof, posing with the Confederate flag. ||||| TOKYO — For the first time since a crisis erupted over deadly defects in airbags made by his family’s company, the reclusive chief executive of the Japanese supplier Takata publicly addressed the issue on Thursday. He offered an apology but defended Takata’s products as fundamentally safe. 
 
 “I apologize from my heart to those who have died or been injured,” the chief executive, Shigehisa Takada, said after bowing deeply in a show of remorse. “I feel a heavy responsibility.” 
 
 Yet Mr. Takada, the 49-year-old grandson of the company’s founder, did not explain why he had remained all but absent during the crisis that has been at full boil for more than a year. 
 
 Even after Toyota and Nissan said on Thursday that they would recall 2.86 million more vehicles equipped with Takata airbags than first announced, Mr. Takada dismissed suggestions that he should resign over what has become the largest automobile safety recall in history. So far, about 35 million vehicles worldwide have been affected. 
 
 Takata admitted last month that faults in its airbags could cause their inflaters to explode with too much force when they deploy, endangering the drivers and passengers that the safety devices are intended to protect. At least eight deaths and 130 injuries have been linked to the defect. 
 
 Mr. Takada made his remarks at a news conference after Takata’s annual shareholder meeting. He had briefly addressed the airbag issue at the last meeting a year ago, where he apologized to the company’s investors. But until Thursday, he had not spoken directly to the public or taken questions from the news media. 
 
 Mr. Takada shed little new light on the nature of the defects, and he acknowledged that Takata was making slow progress with its investigation. The company said it had identified manufacturing failures, which it says have since been resolved, as being responsible for faults in about 10 million airbag inflaters. 
 
 Defects traced to the manufacturing problems, mainly careless handling of inflater components at two North American factories, were called “alpha cases” inside the company, Takata executives said on Thursday. 
 
 Questions still surround what the company calls “beta cases,” involving inflaters that were not subject to any known mishandling during production but that ruptured anyway. Prolonged exposure to heat and humidity is suspected to be a contributing factor to the failures, but Takata said it was still trying to pinpoint the exact cause or causes. 
 
 Mr. Takada and other executives rejected the theory, put forward by some experts, that the basic design of Takata’s inflaters was dangerous because the company uses an explosive propellant, ammonium nitrate, that other airbag manufacturers have avoided because it is deemed potentially unstable. 
 
 Continue reading the main story Danger in the Steering Wheel Airbags made by the Takata Corporation have a potential defect when they deploy. Some have ruptured, sending metal fragments into the car. At least eight deaths and more than 100 injuries have been linked to the problem. INFLATER/CANISTER PROPELLANT Cutaway view INFLATER/CANISTER STEERING WHEEL AIRBAG HOW IT WORKS: Inside the canister, pellets of a propellant based on ammonium nitrate, a common compound used in fertilizer, are ignited and generate the nitrogen gas that inflates the airbag in a fraction of a second. THE PROBLEM: Takata has said manufacturing problems, together with exposure to moisture in cars in humid regions, can cause the propellant to degrade. This can make the propellant burn too strongly when the airbag is deployed, rupturing the inflater and sending metal fragments into the car’s interior and injuring the driver or passengers. 
 
 “We have been working with ammonium nitrate for more than 10 years, and have tested it in a variety of ways,” Mr. Takada said. “As far as I’m concerned, it is safe and reliable.” 
 
 Some of Takata’s replacement inflaters also use ammonium nitrate, meaning that if the chemical turns out to be part of the problem, devices in cars that have been recalled and repaired may ultimately fail as well. Takata met with harsh criticism from American lawmakers at a congressional hearing this week, as well as with questions about the replacement airbags. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 One automaker, Fiat Chrysler, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that it would no longer use Takata inflaters in replacement of driver’s side airbags in its cars, citing Takata’s use of ammonium nitrate. 
 
 In a technical presentation on Thursday, Hiroshi Shimizu, a senior vice president at Takata, said it was likely that a combination of factors was behind the “beta cases.” 
 
 “There is no evidence that the gas destabilizes on its own,” he said. 
 
 The Takada family took the airbag manufacturer public nearly a decade ago, but it still controls a majority of shares, mostly through a family-owned holding company. And the family has tightened its grip over the course of the airbag crisis. 
 
 Photo 
 
 In December, the Takata board voted to replace Stefan Stocker, the Swiss citizen who became president in 2013, and handed responsibility for day-to-day operations to Mr. Takada, who was then in a more symbolic role as chairman. Mr. Takada is now both chairman and president. 
 
 The move has had little obvious effect on Takata’s response to the crisis, which has been criticized as slow and poorly communicated. 
 
 Takata had planned to allow journalists to observe the shareholder meeting on Thursday, but it denied access at the last moment. 
 
 Takata’s share price has fallen about 40 percent since the shareholder meeting a year ago. The company suspended dividend payments after it reported a net loss of 29.5 billion yen, or $238 million, for the fiscal year that ended in March. 
 
 The company’s official forecast is for a return to profit this year, but with lawsuits in North America and no clear end to the recalls in sight, analysts say the outlook is most likely too optimistic. 
 
 Asked on Thursday if he would resign to take responsibility for the crisis, Mr. Takada said he would not. 
 
 “My first responsibility is to ensure customers’ safety by making sure the company responds firmly to the problem,” he said.
– The biggest apology of the week came from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but it was hardly the only one to make headlines: Shamed: “I apologize from my heart to those who have died or been injured. I feel a heavy responsibility.”—Shigehisa Takada, chief executive of the Japanese supplier Takata, over his company's air bag issues. Unsportsmanlike: "I got carried away responding to playful ribbing ... and, in my stupidity, overcompensated by saying something ignorant and extreme. 100% mistake on my part, for which I'm deeply sorry."—Andy Benoit of Sports Illustrated, after tweetiing that women's sports weren't worth watching. He then got skewered by Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. Flag gaffe: “Our local store made a mistake. The cake in the video should not have been made and we apologize.”—Walmart spokesperson, after a store in Louisiana made a cake adorned with an ISIS flag, ordered by someone trying to make a point about the chain's ban on the Confederate flag. Civil discourse: "But for those of you who were offended by what was intended as a very genuine attempt at fostering a civil discussion, I apologize."—John Micek, opinion editor at PennLive, after announcing a decision to "strictly limit" letters in opposition to same-sex marriage in the week of this week's Supreme Court ruling. The site is affiliated with the Patriot News of Harrisburg, Pa. Celebrity interference: “I sincerely regret not discussing my editing rationale with our partners at PBS and WNET, and I apologize for putting PBS and its member stations in the position of having to defend the integrity of their programming."—Henry Louis Gates Jr., after PBS said it would postpone his Finding Your Roots series because of its Ben Affleck miscue.