...How does marriage benefit children? The answer is not that marriage confers general respectability or practical benefits. If that were true, then children in remarried families would do better than children with unmarried parents. And they don't, on average.

Marriage benefits children to the extent that it keeps the child's own mother and father in a permanent, not-too-high-conflict union. ...

I do not think same-sex marriage will serve child well-being in any appreciable way, and I don't think there is much sign that that is the goal. The gay community is by and large supporting same-sex marriage as a right, not as a norm at all. Relatively few same-sex couples enter same-sex marriages [PDF] and the dissolution rates (at least in Sweden, where we have hard data) are extraordinarily high (roughly 50 percent higher for gay men, 100 percent higher for lesbian couples [PDF]).

Labels: culture, gay marriage, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage

posted by Eve at 12:11 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

In 2008, the divorce rate in England and Wales fell to 11.5 divorcing people per 1,000 married population compared with the 2007 figure of 11.8, a fall of 2.5 per cent. The divorce rate is at its lowest level since 1979 when it was 11.2.

For the fourth consecutive year, both men and women in their late twenties had the highest divorce rates of all five-year age groups. In 2008 there were 26.3 divorces per 1,000 married men aged 25 to 29 and 27.8 divorces per 1,000 married women aged 25 to 29. This compared with 16.8 divorces per 1,000 married men aged 45 to 49 and 14.6 divorces per 1,000 married women aged 45 to 49 in 2008.

Labels: divorce, Marriage, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 12:24 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Granting easy access to marriage annulments is an offense against both justice and charity, said Pope Benedict XVI on January 29.

The Pope’s message has a particular resonance in the US, whose Catholic Church tribunals account for more than half of the world’s annulment decrees. Pope Benedict, like Pope John Paul II before him, has repeatedly argued for a more vigorous defense of the marital bond.

In an address to the Church’s highest tribunal for marriage cases, the Holy Father warned against “the tendency--widespread and well-rooted though not always obvious--to contrast justice with charity, almost as if the one excluded the other.” He reminded the tribunal’s judges and advocated that the marriage laws of the Church are oriented toward the spiritual welfare of the individuals, and applying those laws properly is itself a work of charity. Ultimately, he reminded them, “the Church's juridical activity has as its goal the salvation of souls.”

“Without truth charity slides into sentimentalism,” the Pope told officials of the Roman Rota, at the opening of its judicial term. “Love becomes an empty shell to be filled arbitrarily. This is the fatal risk of love in a culture without truth.” ...

The Pope went so far as to suggest that tribunals should do their best to save marriages intact whenever that is possible. In most American dioceses, couples are required to file for a civil divorce before submitting an annulment application. But the Pontiff suggest that “effective efforts be made, whenever there seems to be hope of a successful outcome, to encourage the spouses to convalidate their marriage and restore conjugal cohabitation.”

Labels: annulments, Catholic Church, divorce, Marriage, religion

posted by Imapp Staff at 1:59 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...What Gallagher and her cohorts are contending is that EVEN IF we were to take the consequentialist arguments off the table, there will still be the problem that same-sex marriage promotes a lie, much like calling a chicken a duck.

Let’s pause to consider a seemingly silly question: apart from consequences, what’s the problem with calling a chicken a duck—or more precisely, with using the word “chicken” to refer to both chickens and ducks?

If I go to the grocer and ask for a chicken and unwittingly come home with a (fattier and less healthful) duck, that’s a problem. But (1) same-sex marriage poses no similar problem: no one worries about walking his bride down the aisle, lifting her veil, and discovering “Damn! You’re a dude!” And (2) such problems are still in the realm of consequences.

If there’s an inherent problem with using the word “chicken” to refer to both chickens and ducks, it’s that doing so would obscure a real difference in nature. Whatever we call them--indeed, whether we name them at all--chickens and ducks are distinct creatures. ...

That might begin to get at what marriage-equality opponents mean when they claim that same sex marriage involves “a lie about human nature” (Gallagher’s words). But if it does, then their argument is weak on at least two counts.

First, one can acknowledge a difference between two things while still adopting a blanket term that covers them both. Both chickens and ducks are fowl; both silver and platinum are precious metals.

So even if same-sex and opposite-sex relationships differ in some fundamental way, there’s nothing to prevent us from using the term “marriage” to cover relationships of both sorts--especially if we have compelling reasons for doing so (for example, that marriage equality would make life better for millions of gay people and wouldn’t take anything away from straight people).

The second and deeper problem is that both the chicken/duck example and the silver/platinum example involve what philosophers call “natural kinds”--categories that “carve nature at the joints,” as it were. By contrast, marriage is quintessentially a social, or artifactual, kind: it’s something that humans create.

Labels: gay marriage, John Corvino, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 1:53 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

In a recent newsletter, the National Organization for Marriage cites a new government study as evidence that gay marriage will hurt kids, because the research finds that kids suffer less abuse with married biological parents than with a single parent, a parent living with an unmarried partner, or a parent and step-parent.

They got it half right. Having two married biological parents is good for kids, and better than the alternatives the study examined. We here at IGF are all for it. But that doesn't make having, say, an unmarried mom and mom better than having a married mom and mom. As a correspondent points out:

Does NOM never, ever learn? These same figures indicate that for either two-adult family structure (both biological parents, or one biological and one step-parent) the chance of abuse to the child goes down drastically IF THE COUPLE GETS MARRIED. For the first kind of family, the risk drops 80 percent. For the second kind of family, the risk drops nearly 60 percent. Even for single biological parents, the child's risk drops by about 15 percent if that single parent finds and marries someone.

Labels: cohabitation, gay marriage, gay parenting, Jonathan Rauch, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage, NOM, parenting, remarriage, single parenting

posted by Eve at 1:47 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

At the statistical intersection where increased life expectancy balances out the divorce rate, there is a surprising new cultural demographic: More Americans are reaching and exceeding the 40th wedding anniversary.

What's keeping more married couples together 'til death do them part? Todd Migliaccio, a Sacramento State associate professor of sociology, is working to figure that out in a series of interviews with area couples married 30 years or longer, or with a surviving spouse.

"We tend to focus on the fact that more people get divorced now," said Migliaccio, 37, who set the demographic bar for his research at 30 years of marriage to include more couples' stories. "But maybe we should focus on the increasing number who stay married longer."

It's a sunnier approach, after all. There's only so much the group most at risk of divorce – newlyweds married five years or less – have to share with the world.

On the other hand, couples who have stuck it out through thick and thin might have a few things to teach us.

So far, Migliaccio has interviewed six couples, some of whom he found after posting a request for volunteers at Sacramento's Hart Senior Center. His plan was to videotape them talking about their long and happy marriages as a way to sweeten the dose of reality he provides students in class. ...

"I loved his family," said Metzinger, a 79-year-old state worker who lives in Carmichael. "When I met his family, I could see this would be a happy marriage and a happy life."

It was, through raising four kids – who have since produced 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandkids, with one more on the way – and through their share of ups and downs.

"Leaving was never an option," she said. "Even in some of our darkest days, it was never discussed. We loved each other. We were going to go forever."

Labels: divorce, Marriage

posted by Eve at 8:07 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Maybe education can lead to marital bliss, too. College-educated women were more likely to be married at age 40 than women without a college education, new research showed.

And college-educated women were more likely to say they were happy in their marriages, said economists Betsey Stevenson and Adam Isen of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. The study, to be released Tuesday, was conducted for the research group Council on Contemporary Families. It was based on several data sets and surveys on men and women. ...

Having a college education also appeared to make women happier in their marriage. That's perhaps because both college-educated men and women were less likely to see marriage as a source of financial stability, Ms. Stevenson said, approaching it instead as "a source of personal fulfillment." That could also be a reason divorce rates among the college-educated were lower than for groups with less education.

Labels: economics, Marriage, men, universities, women

posted by Eve at 8:04 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Anyway, I was surprised to see the issue come up immediately in this trial. Judge Walker interrupted Olson's opening statement to ask (among other things) if California could get out of the marriage business altogether and just provide domestic partnership for all couples. He pressed the point through additional questions, even though Olson said the state would never "get out of the marriage business."

Subsequently, according to Prop8trialtracker.com, (scroll down to 3:20 pm update), the judge asked one of the plaintiffs, Sandy Stier,

"If the state were to get out of the business of using the term marriage, but created another name for it for all people, domestic union or whatever, would not that put you on the same plane as all others?

Sandy: I believe so. Yes. If we had the same access, I’d feel equal.

Judge: Even though the term marriage is not used?

Sandy: Yes, because if it’s not a legal status sanctioned by the state or government, I'd not have to worry about access to it because no one else would either."

Note that this is not the common answer from proponents of marriage equality. Yet it is precisely the glorification of marriage that I find so disturbing about same-sex marriage advocacy. On the same day of testimony, Sandy's partner, Kris Perry, (scroll to 2:46 pm)testified that:

"I don’t have access to the word to describe our relationship. Marriage appears to be really important to people. I’d like to use the word, too. You chose that person over everyone else. You feel that it should stick. You want the public support and inclusion that comes with marriage. If we got married, it would be an enormous relief to our straight friends who feel sorry for us. I can’t stand it. They have a word. They belong to this institution. Sandy and I went to a school football game. I realized they were all married and we’re not."

And in what I find the most disturbing portrayal of marriage, plaintiff Jeff Zarrillo said (scroll to 11;34 am):

"We have not had children because Paul and I believe that it’s an important step for us to be married before we have children. It would make it easier for us and our children to explain our relationship. It would afford different protections for our child. If we enter into that institution, we would want all of the protections so nothing could eradicate that nuclear family."

Of course this is completely in keeping with the argument that children do best with married parents, but that's an argument with its origin in opposition to same-sex marriage (Just look at the Hawaii litigation, for example.) Back when marriage equality was not a prominent item on the gay rights agenda, LGBT rights advocates opposed that reasoning, arguing that children do just as well with a gay or lesbian parent or with a same-sex couple. Now in furtherance of marriage equality, advocates assert that children with same-sex parents will be better off if those parents are married. Let me tear my hair out now. The tangible benefits of having two parents are not supposed to turn on whether those parents are married. I've written about this at length.

Labels: beyond marriage, gay marriage, Marriage, Nancy Polikoff

posted by Eve at 8:43 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Beagy Zielinski is a German-born 28-year-old stylist who moved to New York to study fashion in 1995 and stayed. Just before Christmas, she broke up with her blue-collar boyfriend, who repaired Navy ships.

“He was extremely insecure about my career and how successful I am,” Ms. Zielinski said.

An analysis of census data to be released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that she and countless women like her are victims of a role reversal that is profoundly affecting the pool of potential marriage partners.

“Men now are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women,” said Paul Fucito, spokesman for the Pew Center. “In recent decades, with the rise of well-paid working wives, the economic gains of marriage have been a greater benefit for men.”

The analysis examines Americans 30 to 44 years old, the first generation in which more women than men have college degrees. Women’s earnings have been increasing faster than men’s since the 1970s. ...

The education and income gap has grown even more in the latest recession, when men held about three in four of the jobs that were lost. The Census Bureau said Friday that among married couples with children, only the wife worked in 7 percent of the households last year, compared with 5 percent in 2007. The percentage rose to 12 percent from 9 percent for blacks, among whom the education and income gap by gender has typically been even greater.

“I’m not married, I would like to be married, and my friends are all in a similar situation,” said Dr. Rajalla Prewitt, a 38-year-old psychiatrist in New Jersey. “We’re having difficulty finding someone where there’s a meeting of the minds, where we can have the same goals and values.”

“Particularly, African-American men who are educated want a traditional home where they are the breadwinner,” said Dr. Prewitt, who is a black woman.

Labels: culture, gender differences, Marriage, men, race, women

posted by Eve at 4:39 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Adoption is arguably one of the Christian social ministries most central to evangelical theology. It has—to a greater extent than church positions on issues such as abortion and marriage—avoided becoming entangled in politics. Until now.

A foster dad's court challenge to a Florida law banning adoption by gays and lesbians has made headlines in recent months. So has a proposed same-sex marriage law in the District of Columbia that the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington warned could force it to cancel its social service programs, including adoption.

At the federal level, U.S. Rep. Pete Stark introduced a bill in October dubbed the "Every Child Deserves a Family Act." The California Democrat's proposal immediately drew the ire of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance (IRF). IRF claims the proposed law could run "roughshod over the convictions of many faith-based adoption agencies" and "require every state to forbid every agency that it licenses from preferring mother-father families over gay families or single parents." ...

On the other hand, voters in Arkansas last year passed a referendum banning unmarried couples from adopting or fostering children—a direct attack on gay parenting. Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat and active member of an Episcopal Church, voiced concern in November that the law hinders the state's ability to recruit qualified parents.

Labels: adoption, Arkansas, Catholic Church, Christianity Today, DC, Florida, gay parenting, Marriage, religious liberty, single parenting

posted by Eve at 5:33 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

In a matter of seconds 27 years ago in a crowded New York City hotel ballroom, David Moffitt's parents went from total strangers to an engaged couple after being divinely matched by Unification Church founder the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. It was the 1980s, when thousands of young people like them ditched their educations, careers and families to live out of vans, sell flowers at airports and follow a Korean who calls himself a messiah.

Flash-forward to a Bowie living room on a recent weeknight, when Moffitt and a few dozen other "blessed children" of Moon-arranged mass weddings were discussing something perhaps as revolutionary: going mainstream.

"Our parents' generation were much more all-out. . . . You could say they were fighting a war," said Moffitt, a 24-year-old University of Maryland junior who works part time as a personal trainer. "Our generation is more focused on happiness and prosperity, going to college, getting jobs. It's important to be part of the culture. If you're above the culture, you can't change the world."

Their quest for a less-radical version of their faith comes during great uncertainty and change within the Unification Church. With Moon turning 90 in February, how the movement will survive beyond him is unclear. Moon's children are at odds over how to run the church's business empire, including the money-losing Washington Times, which laid off 40 percent of its staff this past week.

For church members, figuring out how to stabilize the movement has a feeling of urgency, particularly for Moffitt and others his age. Church officials estimate there are 21,000 active Unificationists in this country, including 7,500 blessed children, who members believe were born free of original sin and have a special spiritual status. A significant number of blessed children live in the Washington area, long a hub for Moon businesses and church lobbyists.

The church's future lies with this second generation, who were born into a religion some view as a bizarre cult. Their own beliefs run the gamut from those eager to follow in their parents' footsteps to those who haven't attended a Unification worship service for years.

Labels: arranged marriage, culture, DC, Marriage, religion, Unification Church

posted by Eve at 12:21 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Still, law professors Adam Candeub and Mae Kuykendall are arguing that what worked for the Ferschkes and other couples should be able to work for anyone, gay or straight.

The two Michigan State University professors argue that no couple should have to be physically present to be married and that any two adults should have the freedom to take advantage of another state's marriage laws, whether or not the pair resides in that state.

How exactly? With the help of the Internet, in what Candeub and Kuykendall are dubbing "e-marriage."

"Building on deeply rooted but overlooked precedent in both ancient and modern law concerning marriage by proxy, telephone, and mail, we propose `e-marriage,"' Candeub and Kuykendall write in their proposal, "E-Marriage: Breaking the Marriage Monopoly" for the Social Science Research Network.

Candeub and Kuykendall contend that "e-marriage" could help extricate states from the controversy surrounding same-sex marriage.

With "e-marriage," an Alabama gay couple, for example, could easily take advantage of Vermont's same-sex marriage laws though Alabama itself wouldn't necessarily recognize that marriage.

"Every type of e-marriage will not be enforceable everywhere," Candeub and Kuykendall write. "We argue, however, that marriage satisfies a unique human need for socially sanctioned commitment, which a simple contract cannot satisfy ... E-marriage can more efficiently distribute the `status good' of marriage, even if it cannot provide a legally enforceable relationship in every state."

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Marriage

posted by Eve at 2:43 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Regardless of their politics, Americans owe Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins gratitude for this: that their 23-year relationship unraveled, and ended, far from the public eye.

The couple separated over the summer, and apparently no fire hydrants were harmed in the process, no emergency medical technicians were summoned. It was late December before word of the break-up trickled out to the tabloids, and two weeks later the actors are still not talking, except to confirm through a publicist that they split. ...

Capisce, we do. Ms. Sarandon, whose seemingly golden "domestic partnership" with Mr. Robbins was the stuff of Hollywood legend, is desirous of preserving marriages on screen, but not so much in real life. She famously declined to wed Mr. Robbins, the father of her two sons, because she worried such a stuffy and archaic ritual might harm their relationship.

"I won't marry because I am too afraid of taking him for granted, or him taking me for granted," she once said. "Maybe it will be a good excuse for a party when I am 80."

Of course, many married people have a good excuse for a party when they're about 80--they're called golden anniversaries, and they're great. A pinnacle of married life, the 50th-anniversary party is a joyous celebration of love, perseverance and forbearance, virtues no less noble because they are lightly enforced by the state. The marriage certificate, surrendered at a divorce hearing, does not guarantee a happy union, but neither does the absence of one, as Ms. Sarandon learned.

Labels: culture, divorce, domestic partnership, Marriage

posted by Eve at 2:38 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Some married couples would pay thousands of dollars more for the same health insurance coverage as unmarried people living together, under the health insurance overhaul plan pending in Congress.

The built-in "marriage penalty" in both House and Senate healthcare bills has received scant attention. But for scores of low-income and middle-income couples, it could mean a hike of $2,000 or more in annual insurance premiums the moment they say "I do."

The disparity comes about in part because subsidies for purchasing health insurance under the plan from congressional Democrats are pegged to federal poverty guidelines. That has the effect of limiting subsidies for married couples with a combined income, compared to if the individuals are single. ...

For an unmarried couple with income of $25,000 each, combined premiums would be capped at $3,076 per year, under the House bill. If the couple gets married, with a combined income of $50,000, their annual premium cap jumps to $5,160 -- a "penalty" of $2,084. Those figures were included in a memo prepared by House Republican staff. ...

Democratic staff who helped to write the bill confirmed the existence of the penalty, but said it cannot be remedied without creating other inequities.

For instance, they said making the subsidies neutral towards marriage would lead to a married couple with only one bread-winner getting a more generous subsidy than a single parent at the same income-level.

Labels: cohabitation, Marriage, poverty, tax policy

posted by Eve at 2:32 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Stand on the front lines of the recession, as therapist Erica Karlinsky has, and the view for married couples isn't rosy.

Karlinsky, a Lake Mary, Fla., psychologist, now spends a lot of her time counseling men who've lost their jobs -- or wives who are dealing with an unemployed husband who won't get off the sofa or won't stop crying.

The stress of job losses is impacting families from all backgrounds, but perhaps none are more affected than blue-collar families, who have been hit hard by the recession, according to a new report from the National Marriage Project.

And experts worry that when the recession ends and the economy improves, the divorce rate will spike again -- with many of the divorces concentrated among the working class. That may further widen what sociologists call the nation's "divorce divide" -- a growing gap between the divorce rates of working-class Americans and college-educated Americans.

"Working-class couples are already vulnerable," said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. "The recession is probably shaping up to be one more factor driving working-class marriages down."

Men have borne the brunt of this recession, accounting for 75 percent of the job losses, according to the report, titled, "The State of Our Unions, Marriage in America 2009." And blue-collar men have been hit hard. In September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 4.9 percent of college-educated women and 5 percent of college-educated men were unemployed, while 8.6 percent of women with a high-school diploma and 11.1 percent of men with a high-school diploma had lost their jobs.

For those men particularly, the recession has been devastating.

Labels: divorce, economics, gender, Marriage, men

posted by Eve at 10:43 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Kirsty Young begins a history of how British families have changed since the Second World War by looking at marriage.

Using vibrant archive footage and bittersweet interviews, she examines how, from the 1940s to the late 1960s, marriage was transformed from a sometimes stifling institution into a more equal relationship. She discovers that although many marriages are now happier, the growing tide of divorce continues unstemmed.

Labels: Marriage, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 10:37 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Call it shacking up, living in sin or love without the paperwork -- more older Canadians are choosing it over traditional marriage.

The most recent census figures show big increases in the number of people over age 50 in common-law unions, with the most significant growth in the early-60s crowd. At the same time, the practice has nearly flatlined or even declined among the twenty- and thirtysomethings who used to scandalize their parents by moving in together.

The baby boomers are inflating the ranks of the 50-plus in general, but experts say that between more liberal social attitudes, a "been there, done that" mentality among those who have been divorced and the lack of financial incentive to marry, many older Canadians simply don't feel the need to walk down the aisle.

"We choose to stay common-law because, quite frankly, there's nothing in it for us to get married. There's no financial advantage; we need to file our income tax together anyway," says Jenni Hopkyns, 61, who's been living with her partner, Mike, in Victoria for four years. "We said 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' It seems to be working well."

Hopkyns had been married twice before and her 67-year-old partner had been married once, and she says seeing marriage vows break down makes another ceremony less enticing.

"It's not to mean that we're any less committed, because I wouldn't say that at all," she says. "We've just made a commitment to each other every day."

Between 2001 and 2006, the most recent year for which census data are available, the number of Canadians in common-law relationships shot up 77 per cent among those ages 60 to 64 and between 44 and 64 per cent for all other age groups over 50.

Labels: Canada, cohabitation, committed relationships, common-law, Marriage

posted by Eve at 12:08 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Today, National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) released Mama Says: A National Survey of Moms' Attitudes on Fathering, the first-ever national survey taking an in-depth look at how today's mothers view fathers and fatherhood.

The survey's most revealing findings deal with the enormous gulf between the assessments of fathers by mothers who are married to or live with their children's dads and those who do not. More than 8 in 10 mothers married to or living with the father of their children were satisfied with his performance as a dad, but only 2 of 10 mothers not living with the father were satisfied.

Furthermore, only 1 of 3 moms not living with dad reported a "close and warm" relationship between their child and the father, while nearly 9 in 10 married mothers classified the relationship as close and warm. A majority of mothers - 2 of 3 - agreed that fathers perform best if they are married to the mothers of their children. ...

The most troublesome finding for those who view fathers as playing unique roles in their children lives is the majority opinion among mothers that fathers are replaceable by moms or other men. More than half of the moms agree that fathers are replaceable by moms, and 2 of 3 moms agree that fathers are replaceable by other men. However, in a national survey of dads' attitudes on fatherhood, Pop's Culture, released by NFI in 2006, similar but slightly lower proportions of fathers agreed with these statements.

Therefore, it seems to be a majority view in the American public that fathers are replaceable despite near universal agreement that there is a father absence crisis in the United States - 93 percent and 91 percent of moms and dads, respectively, agree that such a crisis exists. The mothers who feel fathers are replaceable but feel there is a father absence crisis may believe that while possible, it is unlikely that an adequate substitute for a missing father can be found.

Labels: cohabitation, Fathers, Marriage, motherhood, National Fatherhood Initiative, out-of-wedlock births

posted by Eve at 11:58 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Since the launch of Webcameron, when David Cameron allowed a “homemade” video of himself to be broadcast online, the Conservative leader has made it clear that the Tories are the party for families, and that they back marriage. In a speech in March at the Welsh Conservative Conference, he affirmed this, saying: “We want to see a more responsible society, where people behave in a decent and civilised way, where they understand their obligations to others, to their neighbours, to their country. And above all, to their family. Families are the most important institution in our society. We have to do everything in our power to strengthen them.”

Now Labour, recognising the success of this idea, are to publish a green paper in January supporting wedlock and conceding that children fare better when parents stay together. “In the past I think our family policy was all about children. I think our family policy now is actually about the strength of the adult relationships and that is important for the progress of the children,” Ed Balls told the Sunday Times.

Labels: family policy, government interest in marriage, Marriage, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 11:56 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

More than 1,000 followers of a multi-religious sect in northern India have pledged to marry female sex workers who want to escape exploitation.

Young Hindu, Muslim and Sikh men have been queuing up at the Dera Sacha Sauda (Abode of the Real Deal) in the town of Sirsa as "wedding volunteers".

They say they are doing so to stop the women from being exploited in brothels.

They also claim that their move is part of a campaign to stop the spread of the HIV/Aids virus.

The Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS) is one of many religious sects operating in northern India.

Most take root by offering community services, social welfare and spiritual leadership but over time, as their followings grow, they often seek political influence.

Correspondents say that in religious terms, the DSS is hard to classify. Many experts argue that it is not, as some have said, an offshoot of Sikhism.

More than 1,200 DSS members have signed pledges to marry the sex workers following a call from DSS chief Ram Rahim Singh a little over a month ago.

Mr Singh commands a huge following of predominantly lower caste Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs across the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Labels: Hinduism, India, Islam, Marriage, poverty, prostitution, religion, Sikhism

posted by Eve at 11:27 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...As it turns out, desire is exactly what's at issue here. Human beings desire variety. We desire multiple partners. It's a simple fact that's built into our biology. And while some choose monogamy simply because it feels right, I think many more of us choose it because we think it's what we're supposed to do. You don't want to end up an old maid or a lonely bachelor, do you?

Monogamy just isn't always realistic. There's nothing wrong with admitting that. It simply doesn't work for some. And just as people choose different religions, eating habits, and places to call home, I believe we should be able to choose different ways to live out our relationships.

Several years after my affair, my husband and I jointly decided that monogamy just wasn't for us. We love each other and want to be together, but monogamy is not the cornerstone of our partnership—trust is. So we decided to open up our relationship to other people.

First we both dated the same woman. Then my husband dated her and I saw other people. And then they broke up and I dabbled until I met a woman who, like my husband, I cannot imagine being without. And so now it's her and me and him and me, and we are all fabulous friends. Everyone gets their needs met. No one feels left out or guilty, and the only time any of us questions our lifestyle is when we let those Disney movies come creeping back into our heads.

Let me be very clear here: I have no problem with monogamy. I think conscious, honest, true monogamy can be a wonderful thing. What should not be tolerated is hypocrisy—and that's where Tiger’s vow of marriage got him into trouble. If you want to be monogamous, great—but don't think you can claim it while you sleep around. It's not fair and, quite frankly, it's exhausting.

Labels: adultery, Jenny Block, Marriage, open relationships, polyamory

posted by Eve at 11:20 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Before praying the Angelus on this Sunday of the Holy Family, the Pope reminded the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square that "God wished to reveal Himself by being born in a human family, and hence the human family has become an icon of God.

"God is Trinity", he added. "He is communion of love, and the family - with all the difference that exists between the Mystery of God and His human creature - is an expression thereof which reflects the unfathomable mystery of God-Love. ... The human family is, in a certain sense, the icon of the Trinity because of the love between its members and the fruitfulness of that love". ...

The Holy Father them addressed some remarks to participants in the Feast of the Holy Family which is being celebrated today in Madrid, Spain. "God, by having come into the world in the bosom of a family, shows that this institution is a sure way to meet and know Him, and a permanent call to work for the loving unity of all people. Thus, one of the greatest services which we as Christians can offer our fellow men and women is to show them the serene and solid witness of a family founded upon marriage between a man and a woman, defending it and protecting it, because it is of supreme importance for the present and future of humankind.

Labels: Catholic Church, Marriage, religion

posted by Imapp Staff at 11:06 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Among the many challenges that can rock a marriage, birth order is drawing increasing attention from some researchers.

We have posted in the past on how birth order tends to shape personality. It's wise not to make too much of birth order: Gender, temperament, spacing between children and a myriad of factors play big developmental roles.

Nevertheless, some researchers say certain birth-order pairings in marriage are better than others, and couples should be encouraged to discuss how birth order affects their relationships.

Two firstborns, for example, may have to battle the fact that each partner has "this notion of being No. 1" -- which only works if your partner agrees with you, says Dan Eckstein, a professor of medical psychology at Saba University School of Medicine, in the Netherlands Antilles, West Indies, and author of an article on the topic in the current issue of the Family Journal.

Labels: Marriage

posted by Eve at 9:41 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Pity the man whose wife writes a memoir.

Consider Elizabeth Weil's husband, Dan. On Sunday, in the New York Times Magazine, Ms. Weil previewed a memoir she is writing about their effort to improve their marriage. She doesn't stint on the frisky bits—or rather, what she proclaims to be the insufficiently frisky bits. The conjugal part of their equation is apparently "not terribly inventive." Ms. Weil derides their "safe, narrow little bowling alley of a sex life" and tells us that she and her husband "hadn't been talking to each other while having sex. And not making eye contact either." One thing's for sure: If that hesitation to make eye contact suggested a certain reticence, Ms. Weil has overcome it.

Dan's wife is just one of the legion of women scribblers eager to divulge the intimate details of their marriages. The hot new genre is the tell-all of sexual disappointment written by women having their Peggy Lee moment: "Is That All There Is?" Male writers are well behind this curve, retaining some vestigial hesitation to expose their wives in print. This reflects a basic social norm: No husband I know speaks out of school about his wife. You wouldn't trust any man who did. Say what you will about the male half of the species—famous for its promiscuous and predatory proclivities—but they can be remarkably discreet about the intimate aspect of marriage. Whether this is stoicism or a residual chivalry, it is a core part of the male code. Consider Tiger Woods's alleged transgressions: Perhaps the most appalling of them is the report that he prattled on to one of his cookies about how she connected with him in a way his wife did not. As if cheating weren't bad form enough.

Women, by contrast, seem to be at somewhat greater liberty to share private matters.

Labels: adultery, culture, Marriage

posted by Eve at 9:38 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Judging by recent press reports, the family fallout associated with the Great Recession has been severe. Take the Bachmuth family, profiled last month in the New York Times. After Paul Bachmuth lost his job at a Texas electric consulting firm in December of last year, his life and marriage took a turn for the worse. Often dejected, he would spend hours surfing the Internet or watching television.

Paul and his wife, Amanda, fought over money. She also resented the part-time job she had to pick up at a day-care center to keep the family solvent, especially since she continued to shoulder the bulk of the family's cooking, cleaning and laundry. "She kind of had something in the back of her mind that it was partly my fault I was laid off," Mr. Bachmuth told the Times. The couple is now seeing a counselor.

The Bachmuths' experience is by no means unique, according to "Money & Marriage," a report released this week by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values. As the report notes, the financial pressures associated with the Great Recession can lead to a downward spiral of marital recriminations, tension and conflict as spouses struggle to pay bills, adjust to the loss of a job or find themselves forced out of their home. This downward spiral is especially likely to unfold when a husband loses his job—a particularly salient reality in the current recession, where more than 75% of the job losses have fallen on the shoulders of men.

In some cases, this spiral leads directly to divorce court. In recent years, couples who report disagreeing about money matters once a week are about twice as likely to divorce compared with couples who disagree about money less than once a month, according to the report.

But there may be a silver lining in all this financial pain. For most married Americans, the Great Recession seems to be solidifying, not eroding, the marital bond. The divorce rate is actually falling. It declined to 16.9 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2008 from 17.5 divorces in 2007 (a 3% drop), after rising from 16.4 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2005 (a 7% increase).

Labels: culture, divorce, economics, Marriage, National Marriage Project, W. Bradford Wilcox

posted by Eve at 9:29 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A NEW survey [pdf] from the National Fatherhood Initiative finds that 93% of American mothers believe there is a "father-absence crisis" in the country.

And absent fathers tend to have worse relationships with their children. Mothers are much more likely to report that the father of their child has a "close and warm" relationship with that child if he is living with the family.

A hefty 89% of married mothers thought this, and 85% of co-habitees. But in cases where the father is not living with the family, only 34% of mothers thought he had a warm and close relationship with a given child.

Interestingly, this survey finds little difference between married and co-habiting fathers. But Kathryn Edin, a professor of public policy at Harvard, warned that co-habiting relationships in America are much more likely to break up than those in some European countries.

Labels: cohabitation, Fathers, Marriage, National Fatherhood Initiative

posted by Eve at 10:29 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The State of Our Unions monitors the current health of marriage and family life in America. Produced annually, it is a joint publication of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values.

The 2009 State of Our Unions makes clear that money matters for contemporary American marriages. In particular, this edition of The State of Our Unions answers the following questions:

* How is the Great Recession affecting the institution of marriage, as measured by changes in marriage and divorce rates in the U.S.?
* How do family finances—especially credit card debt and family assets—shape the quality and stability of contemporary married life in America?
* What do evolutionary psychology and the contemporary study of finance have to tell us about the best division of financial labor for husbands and wives?
* Is the Great Recession likely to foster egalitarian relationships between husbands and wives?

Labels: culture, divorce, economics, gender, gender differences, Marriage, National Marriage Project

posted by Eve at 4:59 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Here’s the glass half-full take on the National Marriage Project’s annual “State of Our Unions” report, which tackles the Great Recession’s impact on American wedlock. As it turns out, the strain of the downturn hasn’t pushed the divorce rate higher; instead, economic stress seems to have made American marriages slightly more stable overall, as couples develop a “new appreciation for the economic and social support that marriage can provide in tough times,” as the study’s lead author, Brad Wilcox, puts it. ...

Here’s the pessimistic take. Yes, divorce rates are dropping, but marriage rates are down as well. People aren’t getting divorced because they can’t afford it, not because they’re suddenly happier with their spouses. Meanwhile, the recession’s job losses have been heavily concentrated among working class men, who aren’t necessarily equipped to make a smooth adjustment to playing stay-at-home dads while their wives support the family. (Whelan’s essay acknowledges that “flexible or egalitarian gender roles may be more attractive to well-educated, affluent Americans than less-educated, working-class couples,” and Wilcox notes that his own research suggests that “husbands are significantly less happy in their marriages, and more likely to contemplate divorce, when their wives take the lead in breadwinning.”)

Labels: culture, divorce, economics, Marriage

posted by Eve at 4:56 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

I have a pretty good marriage. It could be better. There are things about my husband that drive me crazy. Last spring he cut apart a frozen pig’s head with his compound miter saw in our basement. He needed the head to fit into a pot so that he could make pork stock. I’m no saint of a spouse, either. I hate French kissing, compulsively disagree and fake sleep when Dan vomits in the middle of the night. Dan also once threatened to punch my brother at a family reunion at a lodge in Maine. But in general we do O.K.

The idea of trying to improve our union came to me one night in bed. I’ve never really believed that you just marry one day at the altar or before a justice of the peace. I believe that you become married — truly married — slowly, over time, through all the road-rage incidents and precolonoscopy enemas, all the small and large moments that you never expected to happen and certainly didn’t plan to endure. But then you do: you endure. And as I lay there, I started wondering why I wasn’t applying myself to the project of being a spouse. My marriage was good, utterly central to my existence, yet in no other important aspect of my life was I so laissez-faire. Like most of my peers, I applied myself to school, friendship, work, health and, ad nauseam, raising my children. But in this critical area, marriage, we had all turned away. I wanted to understand why. I wanted not to accept this. Dan, too, had worked tirelessly — some might say obsessively — at skill acquisition. Over the nine years of our marriage, he taught himself to be a master carpenter and a master chef. He was now reading Soviet-era weight-training manuals in order to transform his 41-year-old body into that of a Marine. Yet he shared the seemingly widespread aversion to the very idea of marriage improvement. Why such passivity? What did we all fear?

That night, the image that came to mind, which I shared with Dan, was that I had been viewing our marriage like the waves on the ocean, a fact of life, determined by the sandbars below, shaped by fate and the universe, not by me. And this, suddenly, seemed ridiculous. ...

Still, Dan was not 100 percent enthusiastic, at least at first. He feared — not mistakenly, it turns out — that marriage is not great terrain for overachievers. He met my ocean analogy with the veiled threat of California ranch-hand wisdom: if you’re going to poke around the bushes, you’d best be prepared to scare out some snakes.

Labels: culture, Marriage

posted by Eve at 9:50 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

True love may be the key to a long and happy marriage – but being a dentist or an agricultural engineer helps, too, according to new research.

A paper that correlates occupations with divorce and separation rates, to be published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, reveals that those employed in extrovert and stressful jobs are highly likely to divorce, as are those who work in the caring professions.

Dancers, choreographers and bartenders have around a 40% chance of experiencing a relationship breakdown. But also at high risk are nurses, psychiatrists and those who help the elderly and disabled. Conversely, agricultural engineers, optometrists, dentists, clergymen and podiatrists are all in occupations which carry a 2-7% chance of family breakdown. ...

Dr Michael Aamodt, an industrial psychologist at Radford University in Virginia, invented a formula to work out the likelihood of success of a marriage based on the occupation of one of the partners. The formula (separated plus divorced) divided by (total population minus never married) was used to establish the percentage of people in 449 occupations who were once in a marital relationship.

Aamodt rated professions and trades according to their likelihood of a successful marriage. "I looked at the divorce rate for each given occupation after controlling for gender, race, age and income characteristics," said Aamodt. "By controlling for demographic variables that might be related to divorce rates, we also obtained race, gender, age and income information for each occupation."

However, shift work, overtime and weekend work made no significant difference, he said.

Labels: culture, divorce, Marriage

posted by Eve at 9:43 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Counselors and those who study dating, marriage and divorce say plenty of couples get married when they shouldn't. And their numbers may be increasing, because more couples are casually living together, which can complicate decisions about whether to marry, says Scott Stanley, co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver.

Stanley says his research on couples who cohabit before marriage has found that "some of those wouldn't have married if they hadn't been living together."

"People have committed themselves before talking about the commitment to the future, and that can get you walking down the aisle not being sure that's the right thing, or what you want to do," he says.

Stories of people entering marriages they felt were doomed from the start intrigued Carl Weisman of Torrance, Calif., whose book, So Why Have You Never Been Married? 10 Insights Into Why He Hasn't Wed, arrived last year. He says a divorced woman he knows said something he thought was quite profound: "I didn't listen to my inner voice. I knew I was going to divorce him before I even married him." That led Weisman to thinking about others who went into a marriage knowing it wouldn't last. But he couldn't find any academic research on the subject.

So Weisman, 50, who recently married for the first time, surveyed 1,036 people across the country and conducted in-depth interviews with dozens more for his new book, Serious Doubts: Why People Marry When They Know It Won't Last.

Those surveyed had one thing in common: "They all ignored their inner voice," he says. "They knew it wasn't going to last." ...

Donahue, who cohabited before her 11-year marriage (which ended five years ago), says she didn't heed some early signals, including religious differences. Her parents also didn't approve of their living together without being married, which Donahue says encouraged her to wed. "I was thinking that we were in love and we're going to make it work. I believed in this whole fairy-tale thing on marriage."

Other reasons for proceeding in the face of doubts may also sound familiar – like pregnancy.

That's why Neumann, 26, a non-profit market researcher from Chicago, says she went ahead with it. "I had some concerns in the relationship, but I thought if I got married, we would grow together," she says. "I was 18 at the time and thought it would all work out in the end."

Others may think a partner is too good a catch to pass up – even though there's no spark.

Rasmussen, 51, an office manager in Boise, says she tried to convince herself that she and her second husband were a good match. They enjoyed many of the same activities, including travel. She had financial resources, yet he offered to help her with her kids' college expenses.

She wasn't head over heels, but he was attractive and generous, so Rasmussen told herself "You can learn to love this guy."

Labels: cohabitation, culture, divorce, Marriage, pregnancy, premarital sex

posted by Eve at 5:41 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Mohammad, a 40-year old Lebanese Shiite who lives in Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs, was holding forth on the virtues of resistance, loyalty, and sex. "You could create the most loyal army by providing political power, social services and fulfilling the desires of your men -- namely, sexual ones," he declared.

"And Hezbollah has been very successful in this regard," Mohammad continued. It is hard to disagree. Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, expanded the Shiite community's political power within the country, and has provided social services, such as health care and education, to its constituency since the 1980s. Today, it is also working to fulfill the sexual needs of its supporters, though a practice known as mutaa marriage.

Mutaa is a form of "temporary marriage" only acceptable within Shiite communities, one that allows couples to have religiously sanctioned sex for a limited period of time, without any commitments, and without the obligatory involvement of religious figures. In conservative Muslim societies known for their strict sense of propriety, mutaa offers an escape clause. The contract is very simple. The woman says: "I marry myself to you for [a specific period of time] and for [a specified dowry]" and the man says: "I accept." The period can range between one hour and a year, and is subject to renewal. A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, but a Muslim man can temporarily marry a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish woman, as long as she is a divorcée or a widow. However, those interviewed for this article confirmed that Hezbollah-the "Party of God"-has allowed the practice to spread to virgins or girls who have never married before, as long as the permission of her guardian (father or paternal grandfather) is obtained.

Temporary marriage has long been practiced by Shiites around the world. However, it has recently become more commonplace in Lebanon, notably within Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut's southern suburbs and in southern Lebanon after the 2006 war with Israel[.]

Labels: culture, Islam, Lebanon, Marriage, sex, temporary marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 7:16 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

WHEN Kimberly Spring-Winters told her mother she was in love, she didn’t expect a positive response — and she didn’t get one.

“It’s wrong, it’s taboo, nobody does that,” she recalled her mother saying.

But shortly after the conversation, Ms. Spring-Winters, 29, decided to marry the man she loved: her first cousin.

Shane Winters, 37, whom she now playfully refers to as her “cusband,” proposed to her at a surprise birthday party in front of family and friends, and the two are now trying to have a baby. They are not concerned about genetic defects, Ms. Spring-Winters said, and their fertility doctor told them he saw no problem with having children.

The couple — she is a second-grade teacher and he builds furniture — held their wedding last summer on a lake near this tiny town in central Pennsylvania. But their official marriage took place a month earlier in Maryland, at Annapolis City Hall, because marriage between first cousins is illegal in Pennsylvania — and in 24 other states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — under laws enacted mostly in the 19th century.

While many people have a story about a secret cousin crush or kiss, most Americans find the idea of cousins marrying and having children disturbing or even repulsive. The cartoonish image of hillbilly cousins giving birth to cross-eyed, deformed and mentally disabled children has endured in the national psyche. But even in the United States — one of the few countries in the world where such unions are illegal — marriage between first cousins may be slowly emerging from the shadows.

Although it is still a long way from being widely accepted, in recent years cousin marriage has been drawing increased attention, as researchers study the potential health risks to children of cousins. And the couples themselves have begun to connect online, largely through a Web site called Cousincouples.com, which bills itself as “the world’s primary resource for romantic relationships among cousins,” and is trying to build support for overturning laws prohibiting cousin marriage.

For the most part, scientists studying the phenomenon worldwide are finding evidence that the risk of birth defects and mortality is less significant than previously thought. ...

Historically, marriage between cousins has been seen as desirable in many parts of the world, and even today, slightly more than 10 percent of marriages worldwide are between people who are second cousins or closer, Dr. Bittles said. In the United States, the percentage is thought to be much smaller, although it is difficult to estimate, since such marriages have long been an underground phenomenon, because of laws forbidding them and because of the lingering incest-related stigma.

Labels: cousin marriage, culture, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 7:11 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Conservative Christian leaders unveiled a declaration Friday calling on Christians not to comply with rules and laws forcing them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage and other ideals that go against their religious doctrines.

The declaration urges Christians to practice civil disobedience to defend their convictions, even though some signers of the document backed away from the strong language. ...

"We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them," the declaration says. It lists the "fundamental truths" as the "sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty."

The declaration is signed by more than 125 Orthodox, Catholic and evangelical leaders. Other leaders at the news conference at the National Press Club included Cardinal Justin Rigali, outgoing chairman of the U.S. Catholic bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Activities; Pentecostal leader Harry Jackson, pastor of a Beltsville church; and evangelical activist Tony Perkins. Other signers include evangelical leader and Watergate-era figure Chuck Colson and academics Timothy George and Robert George.

The leaders are urging the public to sign the online document.

Labels: abortion, Christianity, gay marriage, Marriage, religion, religious liberty

posted by Eve at 3:58 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Senate Democrats' health care bill would create a new marriage penalty by imposing a tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more. ...

Democrats said the bill will offer lower health care costs for small businesses and families, and said the new taxes are aimed at upper-income earners, so costs would not go up for the middle class. They said that makes good on President Obama's campaign pledge not to increase taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year, which explains the reason for the new marriage penalty.

"We wanted to make this provision consistent with the president's pledge not to increase taxes on singles making under $200,000 and married couples making under $250,000," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who wrote the Senate bill.

"Yes, this structure can create a 'marriage penalty' for some couples. It also creates a 'marriage bonus' for others," he said. "A married couple with one wage earner can earn up to $250,000 without facing this higher tax, whereas a single person in the same job with the same pay would be hit by it."

But a married couple in which each earner makes $150,000 would be hit with the tax, whereas an unmarried couple living together with the same incomes would not.

Labels: cohabitation, Marriage, marriage penalty, poverty, tax policy

posted by Eve at 3:30 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: Catholic Church, contraception, divorce, gay marriage, gender, Marriage, religion

posted by Eve at 12:01 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Baumgardner also allows that Greer’s books may have self-contradictory elements, and I must admit that as a 21st-century reader, I’ve found that they can be choppy and manifesto-like, with off-putting wild generalizations and quasi-magical terminology. (Of course, this can also be said of third-wave feminists’ writings, e.g., Naomi Wolf’s.) Shulamith Firestone deems motherhood “a condition of terminal psychological and social decay, total self-abnegation and physical deterioration.” And Greer veers off in some directions that left me nonplussed (the taste of the menstrual blood of myself or others is something I’m happy to leave to the imagination). But then I turned to her chapter called “Family,” in which she argues that “stem”—or extended, multigenerational—households are inordinately stable; as opposed to today’s two-parent nuclear families, stem homes can never be “broken,” as their success does not “rest on the frail shoulders of two bewildered individuals trying to apply a contradictory blueprint.

Bingo. What better phrase to describe marriage among those of my own bewildered demographic slice—parents of the Creative Class? We start with the best of intentions. In her 20s, the Creative Class female carves out a cool Creative Class career, like Writer. She meets a man with an equally cool Creative Class job—say, Devoted Documentary Filmmaker of the Obama 10-Year African Kiva Water Project. In their 30s, the baby comes: the Creative Class mom is pitched into hormonal bliss (at least at first); the very same week—argh, the timing!—Gates Foundation money suddenly comes through for the Obama-kiva-water-project documentary. Clinking champagne glasses, both spouses agree that Dad must fly to Africa for two months to finish filming while Mom cares for the baby. (The last thing she wants is be a 1950s nag—and how rarely does Gates money come through, how important is drinking water for Africa?)

After kissing her husband goodbye, the Creative Class mother now begins to care for their baby, alone, in New York, or Los Angeles, or whatever cool city they’ve moved to. She’s isolated from her stem family—the grandma, aunts, and in-laws (who all love children!) have long been left behind in notoriously un-Creative Lompoc, Fort Lauderdale, or Ohio. She can barely maneuver the stroller down the four flights of stairs to get to Gymboree ($20 for 45 minutes, and you have to actually stay with your nine-month-old and drum). Result: the 21st-century Creative Class mom’s life is actually far worse than that of her 1950s counterpart. Her husband works as many hours (and travels more), but life is uncomfortable on his salary alone, and the isolated mom has no bingo-playing moms’ group to ease the unnatural, teeth-chattering stress of one-on-one care of her child.

Labels: adultery, extended family, Marriage, motherhood

posted by Eve at 11:58 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

There is a lingering suspicion among girls (as the unpopularity of science subjects demonstrates) that boys don’t value cleverness as an essential quality in a life partner. Given a choice between gorgeous or brainy, there is no guarantee they’ll do the right thing, because men think they’re clever enough for two. Well, it turns out they’re wrong. Swedish scientists have discovered that long life and good health have nothing to do with a man’s education and everything to do with his wife’s. Men married to smart women live longer — simple.

However, before you ring up your girlfriend to tell her that the man who left her for a bimbo will drop dead of brain atrophy, this is not a victory for women’s intelligence in general. It would be nice if our stimulating observations about FlashForward and the Tory agenda were keeping our men alert and full of life. Unfortunately, it’s simply our skill at processing advice about healthy lifestyles, and passing it on. All it boils down to is that “educated” married women have long since banned their men from eating pork pies at every other meal. They instinctively know about the importance of breakfast, the downside of dips (men think hummus is a diet aid) and the virtues of Green & Black’s 85% (the chocolate that doesn’t count). The Carla effect, in other words, is alive and well beyond the boundaries of the Elysée Palace.

Labels: Marriage, men, women

posted by Eve at 3:39 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Want to be a happy married couple? Consider having kids. A new study found that having children boosts happiness. And the more, literally, the merrier.

But unmarried couples shouldn't expect to find greater happiness through child-raising. The study, published in the Oct. 14 online edition of the Journal of Happiness Studies, suggests that having children has little or no effect on boosting happiness among couples who aren't hitched:

* The findings contradict previous research that suggested that having more offspring doesn't lead to greater happiness and might even make people less satisfied with their lives.

Labels: cohabitation, Marriage, parenting

posted by Eve at 11:46 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Most of us know people who are in love, plan to marry and currently live together. It’s sort of the new premarital counseling program. I visited a church out West that had a “pre-marriage” ceremony for a couple living together. No license. No wedding dress. Just a prayer of blessing to hold them over until the couple walked down the aisle—a kind of marital “appetizer,” I guess. I asked the pastor why they did it. He said, “The couple believes they are married in the eyes of the Lord, and we just wanted them to feel affirmation in our community.”

Labels: cohabitation, committed relationships, culture, Marriage, premarital sex, religion

posted by Eve at 4:45 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

"How would same-sex marriage hurt your marriage?" Advocates of changing our marriage laws tell us this is an unanswerable question.

A typical couple -- Mary and John, married for 15 years -- may find it tough to answer. That's because it's the wrong question. Mary and John won't stop loving each other or be bounced out of their house if same-sex marriage prevails. To get at what's really at stake, we need a different question: "How will same-sex marriage harm the institution of marriage -- and in the long run, all of us?"

Marriage is a universal human institution. Across the world and throughout history, it's been exclusively male-female. That's not because of antigay bigotry, but because marriage is anchored in a primal biological and social fact: Sex between men and women creates new human beings.

Labels: gay marriage, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 3:56 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A new analysis of Census data shows that same-sex couples who identify as married are similar to opposite-sex couples in age, income and even parental status, regardless of whether they are legally wed. ...

It also found that Utah, Wyoming and other states that don't offer any legal recognition of gay relationships had some of the highest percentages of same-sex couples who describe themselves as husbands or wives.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, Marriage

posted by Eve at 4:37 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Marriage is not just an outlier, it is the only outlier. The fringe of the right will complain about any legal protections for lesbians and gay men, but they can’t put together a majority on any issue except for full marital equality. An enormous majority of Americans even support repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, though political cowardice on that issue still lingers in Congress -- the same cowardice that got us the policy in the first place.

This chart shows that more than a majority in virtually every state, including the ones with the most anti-gay sentiment, supports employment and housing protection, hate crimes laws and health benefits for homosexuals. The trailing issue in all states is always marriage, with majority-plus support in only six states.

In short, these are hard times for homophobes. That’s why gay marriage is such a satisfying issue for the ones who are left. It is the only issue where they can rouse up enough residual bias against gays among otherwise fair-minded people to win an election.

And the importance of that last word cannot be overemphasized. It is direct elections where anti-gay prejudice about marriage can best be exploited. This may be the most toxic consequence of Maine. It is a warning shot to legislatures to avoid exercising their best judgment about fairness for gay citizens. The anti-gay bias that short-circuits rational debate in the electorate at large will make legislative action futile, so don't even bother to try.

Labels: discrimination law, gay marriage, Maine, Marriage

posted by Eve at 8:04 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Hollywood has always been preoccupied with that most exciting, most mercurial of human emotions: romantic love. There's nothing particularly surprising about this obsession, of course: Filmmakers have long been drawn to those moments when human emotions run highest and most transparent, and if that isn't a textbook definition of eros, I don't know what is.

But despite the miles of celluloid dedicated to the rosy beginnings of mankind's seminal institution, Hollywood generally pays little more than lip service to married life itself. It may be called "happily ever after," but it's so heavy on the "happy" as to verge on the giddy -- and there's really no "ever after" to speak of.

While the film industry as a whole may focus on the silver linings at the expense of the clouds, there remains a small-but-powerful stable of films that offer a more complex, more realistic view of marriage. It's not always pretty, but it is profoundly important and deeply meaningful. And for those few films willing to recognize these facts, viewers should be deeply grateful.

A quick sampling of some of those films, classic and recent, that are particularly noteworthy....

Labels: culture, Marriage

posted by Eve at 1:20 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...About 800 weddings are recorded in our diocese each year, and our pastors and parish staffs do many things to help these couples prepare for the most important moment in their life together. Many couples have found and continue to discover, in Worldwide Marriage Encounter, a wonderful program of “ongoing formation” for marriage.

A Marriage Encounter Weekend is not a retreat, or a marriage clinic, or group sensitivity, or a substitute for counseling; but a time for spouses to rediscover their love for each other in a new way, and to invite Jesus Christ more deeply into their vocation: “to help turn a good marriage into a great marriage.” ...

Inviting You to a Special Mass - For nearly 30 years, Worldwide Marriage Encounter has held an Annual World Marriage Day. This year our Diocese and the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas will celebrate a special Mass together on that day, Sunday, February 14, 2010, at 3:00 in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. I plan to be there, as will Archbishop Naumann. We would like to invite not only all couples who have made a Marriage Encounter Weekend at some time, but also other couples, to join us in asking God to bless and strengthen your individual marriages, and also the sacrament and vocation of marriage in our community. I hope you will join us!

Labels: Catholic Church, Marriage, religion

posted by Eve at 8:50 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Marriage as the intersection between the personal and political is not new in the United States. In an upcoming book, ‘Til Death or Distance Do Us Part: Love and Marriage in African America, Frances Smith Foster challenges the received wisdom that black families were destroyed during American slavery. She marshals convincing, historical evidence refuting the assumption that enslaved people accepted that their marriages were not "real" because they were not recognized by the state.

Her study of slave marriage does not reveal fragile, transient attachments; rather Foster uncovers a rich legacy of love, struggle, and commitment among enslaved black people. By choosing whom to love, how to love, what to sacrifice, and how long to stay committed, black Americans carved out space for their human selves even as enslavers tried to reduce them to chattel.

In spite of the fact that their marriages were not legally sanctioned, many enslaved people formed lifelong attachments, sacrificed personal security and freedom to maintain their relationships, protected their fidelity despite unthinkable obstacles, and remained deeply attached to their identities as married persons.

Some black men and women chose to remain in slavery or to submit to more brutal enslavers in order to stay married to their chosen partners. Foster's stories of these marriages challenge any idea that marriage is just about health insurance and burial rights. Clearly marriage is rooted in something far more personal and spiritual. To sustain marriage some were willingly to endure slavery. ...

Together Foster's text and Bardwell's policy are reminders that marriage is a complex interplay between private choice and public practice. Marriage is never exclusively about loving attachment and commitment among consenting adults. It is also about state recognition of and ability to confer a specific bundle of privileges on particular individuals and relationships. But these privileges and state recognition are not enough to explain why people desire and chose marriage. The power to love, commit, and consent is more deeply human than that.

Enslaved people desired marriage, performed marriage ceremonies, and understood themselves as married, but without the protection of the state their marriages could be disrupted without their consent. They fought back, resisted, and sacrificed in order to stay married, but without the state they were vulnerable both as persons and as spouses.

To be gay in America today is not the same as being a slave in the 19th century. Despite the civil inequality faced by LGBT communities, little in human history compares to the realities of intergenerational, chattel slavery. But there are important connections between the realities of marriage for the enslaved and for contemporary gay men and lesbians. ...

But, there is more than one lesson to be learned from the parallels between racial and same-sex marital exclusion. Today, black Americans can securely marry one another. And despite the bigotry of officials like Bardwell, they can legally marry opposite-sex partners of a different race. But despite this formal, legal equality, marriage has never been more rare or more insecure among African Americans.

Labels: beyond marriage, gay marriage, Marriage, race

posted by Eve at 3:08 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...The fact of the matter is, whether opponents of equality and some of us don’t like it, lesbians and gays are getting married and the time will come when all Americans can marry if they so choose. But how the act and institution will change us is an interesting question.

In her recently published book, "When Gay People Get Married: What Happens When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage," economist and LGBT researcher M.V. Lee Badgett asks, “Will marriage change gay people?”

She writes that “Some hope so, arguing that gay men will be more monogamous and gay relationships more stable if same-sex couples can marry, and gays and lesbians will be better assimilated into the larger culture. Opponents of marriage equality believe that gay and lesbian people will not be able to gain from marriage, though. Others in the gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities fear that distinctive features of gay life will be transformed in negative ways.”

At a book reading last week, she added that there are those who fear that the relationships of lesbians and gays who opt to stay in domestic partnerships or in alternative arrangements (such as polyamory) will be deemed inferior to those of married couples.

Labels: beyond marriage, gay marriage, M.V. Lee Badgett, Marriage

posted by Eve at 2:29 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

On the season finale of “Entourage” this week, one of the characters, Eric, proposes to his girlfriend, Sloan, only it wasn’t a romantic get-down-on-one-knee proposal, so much as it was a seemingly spur-of-the-moment declaration of his commitment to her. “You’re never going to be able to commit — not to anyone,” Sloan accuses during a heated argument. “I’ll get in that car right now, drive to Vegas, and commit to you for the rest of my life,” Eric shoots back before pulling an engagement ring out of his pocket. It’s not exactly the kind of grand proposal women dream of, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s more than most of us get these days ... and if maybe that’s OK.

Marriage is such a huge, life-altering decision, it’s only natural that it be a choice two people make together, after much discussion and personal soul-searching. And if the decision is made mutually, is there really any need for a proposal to be made — a question to be asked — for which both parties already know the answer? For a lot of people, the answer is “no.” They make the decision, perhaps they go ring-shopping together (that way, the woman’s sure to get something she likes), they make the announcement to their friends and family, and then they change their relationship status on Facebook. Done and done.

Labels: culture, Marriage

posted by Eve at 7:37 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A ground-breaking series of studies, published next month, show liberal attitudes towards the make-up of the family, religion and cultural integration among the modern generation of girls and young women.

The survey, which questioned a representative sample of 1,109 seven to 21 year-olds across the UK, found that a third of girls in the younger age group thought they would be "grown up" by the age of 15, while 90 per cent of 16 to 21-year-olds regarded themselves as "grown up".

Girls were generally positive about marriage but less than half thought it should come before parenthood. One in four thought it was "OK to get married several times", rising to a third in the 16 to 21 age range.

One finding suggested that some teenagers actively plan to become single mothers. Of the girls questioned who had left schools and were unemployed, almost half (45 per cent) expected to have a baby before they were 21.

Labels: adolescence, childhood, children, culture, family structure, Marriage, out-of-wedlock births, remarriage, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 3:28 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Labels: Louisiana, Marriage, race

posted by Eve at 3:10 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The Tories are to go ahead with their plans to recognise marriage in the tax system, the shadow minister for families said today.

Maria Miller said the Conservative party "unashamedly supports families and unashamedly supports marriage", rallying around the tax pledge, a policy that has come in for criticism from liberal members of the Tory party and opposition parties but remains one of David Cameron's highest profile promises.

The Conservative leader is known to regard the policy highly but senior Tories and pressure groups are uncertain that the best way of supporting families is necessarily through recognising marriage because unmarried couples would also receive the tax break under Conservative proposals.

Speaking at the Tory conference in Manchester, Miller indicated no weakening of resolve. This afternoon she said: "It is not because we want to go back to any 1950s ideals of family life. It's because it's empirically proven that marriage provides a stable framework for our lives. With the evidence right in front of us, it's madness not to support marriage. That's why we're committed to introducing the recognition of marriage in the tax and benefit system.

"In turbulent times, it's our family who we turn to. The family, not the state, is our best support system."

Labels: cohabitation, family policy, government interest in marriage, Marriage, tax policy, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 10:16 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Eleanor Holmes Norton started to become concerned about marriage among black people when her first child was born in 1970. She told those gathered at an Urban League convention there was reason to worry -- fully 30 percent of black children were then being born out of wedlock.

Two weeks ago, before a standing-room-only crowd at the Congressional Black Caucus Conference, she provided a startling update: "What was 30 percent then is 70 percent today," she said, eliciting a collective murmur of disapproval. ...

That day's conversation continued 175 miles south of Washington last week, with the launch of Hampton University's National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting, an academic organization focused on studying black relationships and developing resources to improve them. ...

Linda Malone-Colon's goals are more concrete. Malone-Colon, chairwoman of Hampton University's psychology department, intends for the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting to become a clearinghouse for research on marriage in the black community and a resource for organizations looking to get involved with the issue.

Labels: Linda Malone-Colon, Marriage, race, single parenting

posted by Eve at 5:44 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

At first glance, the forum didn’t seem to belong among the weighty discussions of the day, which included surviving the recession, increasing minority businesses, caring for homeless veterans, and decreasing deaths from cancer.

But examining the state of Black marriages and families was as integral to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 39th Annual Legislative Conference as the other workshops, said its sponsor, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton.

“I’m not having a forum on the kinds of things that as a policy wonk you might expect me to have,” the Washington, D.C. Democrat told the overflow crowd gathered for a discussion titled “Single Women, Unmarried Men – What Has Happened to Marriage in the Black Community.” “[But] the kind of policies I’m dealing with in Congress... are at least significantly tied to what is happening to the African-American family.”

Having a substantive conversation on the matter has been difficult, the longtime lawmaker said.

“Ever since the Moynihan Report, people didn’t want to talk about single-parent households,” Norton said. “That’s because, first of all, the Moynihan Report didn’t come out of us. And it came out just after the civil rights bills had passed and it made people angry because White America hadn’t taken responsibility for its huge part of what had torn the African-American community apart. So nobody wanted to hear it.”

The Moynihan Report, officially called, “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action” was a paper published in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who would go on to become a U.S. senator.

“At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family,” Moynihan said in the report.

According to Moynihan, an increasing number of single-mother, welfare-dependent homes and the matriarchal design of Black families diminished the male’s authority, one sign of a crumbling family structure. He predicted that “so long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.”

Despite criticism of the report as racist and unfounded, Norton said Moynihan was “prescient.”

Rates of incarceration, drug use and trade, high school dropouts, teenage pregnancy, poor health outcomes and other social ills have increased, it seems, with the breakdown of Black families.

Statistics show that in 2008 only 34 percent of Black children lived in homes with two married parents and 3.7 million Black children live in single-mother homes with mothers who have never been married, more than any other demographic.

“If you think the Black nation can survive whole if only Black women are raising their children, I want you to show me how ,” Norton said. ...

The proliferation of incarcerated and unemployed Black men are among the reasons for the paucity of partners. ...

District resident Alphonso Coles said young people have to be counseled and prepared for marriage and parenthood. “Crucial conversations are needed before sex, before marriage and after marriage,” he said.

Girls must be trained to assess their partners wisely and to look beyond the outer trappings of wealth, beauty and possessions in choosing a mate.

“Is he kind to you, does he make you smile—those are far better questions,” Perrault said, adding that like first lady Michelle Obama, women must be willing to nurture the potential in their partner. “Ten years this woman was the [main] breadwinner…I was touched by Michelle’s ability to look at his [Barack’s] trajectory rather than his current circumstances.”

Labels: Barack Obama, culture, DC, Marriage, men, motherhood, poverty, race

posted by Eve at 11:44 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

FARGO — The case is unusual: A Fargo father accused of trying to kidnap a 14-year-old Kentucky bride-to-be for his teenage son.

But a variety of area agencies have contended for years with a custom among some local immigrants to marry daughters and sons very young. The practice springs from the culture of Roma immigrants from Bosnia and other Balkan countries.

Efforts by Fargo police and other groups to stress the legal repercussions of keeping that custom alive in America have had mixed results: Some families are holding off until their children are 16, when the couple can wed legally with their parents’ consent. Others are keeping traditional ceremonies under wraps. And, in rare cases, girls are rebelling against the custom.

Many Roma do not agree with the practice of early arranged marriages. In any case, snatching a girl with-out her parents’ consent — as was allegedly the case in the Kentucky incident — is uncommon. ...

Hatidza Asovic, a coordinator at the Metro Interpreter Resource Center, says these marriages are rooted in customs dating back centuries.

Asovic explained that at the heart of the custom is a powerful stigma attached to a girl who has sex outside of marriage and a sense that early marriage protects girls against a life of promiscuity and ruin.

“They don’t want to have a little Britney Spears running loose,” she said. “At least these Roma teens have parental supervision.”

Fargo police and the Interpreter Resource Center both try to impress upon parents that they can run afoul of the law. They also tell girls they can choose their spouse in this country and urge them to stay in school.

In 2004, the Cass County state’s attorney charged two sets of parents with encouraging the deprivation of a minor because of sexual relations between their married children, ages 15 and 20. That case and education efforts have made an impression. Some families have become more patient, others simply more discreet.

“Now they fully understand it’s illegal; they’re more savvy about being quiet about it,” said Jacobsen. “So in some ways, you could say our education is having an effect, just not necessarily the effect we hope.”

Immigrant advocates are especially concerned about the custom because young brides tend to drop out of school. A few years ago, the Fargo Public School District tracked graduations by ethnicity. Virtually no Roma Bosnian girls graduated, said Assistant Superintendent Lowell Wolff.

“They were marrying much younger and dropping out,” he said.

Labels: arranged marriage, culture, Marriage, North Dakota, Roma, sex

posted by Eve at 5:28 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton had to "sweet talk" the fire marshal because so many people packed her Congressional Black Caucus forum, "Single Women, Unmarried Men: What has happen to Marriage in the Black Community?"

"In order to stay married you have to be willing to be committed to each other," said Alice Carter, a resident of Northeast, during the forum that featured relationshp author and radio host Audrey Chapman and psychologist Shane Perrault.

"Sometimes nothing is better than too little," said Perrault, who added that some women are better off alone than in a bad relationship.

Labels: culture, DC, Marriage, race

posted by Eve at 5:25 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Unions and Christian Marriage has acknowledged what has been clearly demonstrated in debates, governing body votes and judicial decisions throughout the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): Presbyterians are not of one mind on the role of same-gender relationships in the church.

The special committee, authorized by the 2008 General Assembly, unanimously approved its preliminary report to the 2010 Assembly here Sept. 17, answering the central question before it -- What is the place of covenanted same-gender partnerships in the Christian community? -- with a three word response: "We cannot agree." ...

The complexity of the relationship between church and civil law is particularly troublesome, said special committee member the Rev. William Teng of National Capital Presbytery.

"I believe we have to address two issues," he said, "Practical help on how to deal with ministers and sessions in states where same-sex marriage is legal and the whole relationship between church and state. Personally, I think we should encourage ministers not to serve as agents of the state [in formalizing civil marriage contracts] as a practical solution."

The report states, "We acknowledge that current law, in which clergy act as agents of the state, is a source of confusion. On behalf of the state, ministers are granted the authority to officiate at marriages, and yet no authority is granted them to dissolve such unions. Some argue the church should relinquish its state-sanctioned power to marry. Others feel that, even in confusion, it should be retained to further the cause of the gospel."

The report poses three prevalent perspectives it says are held in the church, with
"proponents of each view believing that their position is rooted in Scripture":

* That "laws that fail to give benefits equal to marriage to same-gender couples and their families violate the standards of social justice/equal protection," noting "the different cultural settings between modern society and biblical times ..."

* That differences in benefits don't violate social justice/equal protection norms because "traditional marriage is foundational" and that it's not true that "all family formations are equally stable and nurturing for children ..."

* That the church should not be complicit in "further separating appropriate sexual activity from marriage between a man and a woman" because such sexual activity is "explicitly proscribed by Scripture."

Labels: culture, gay marriage, homosexuality, Marriage, Presbyterian Church, religion, sex

posted by Imapp Staff at 4:59 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Hotaru Ferschke just wants to raise her 8-month-old son in his grandparents' Tennessee home, surrounded by photos and memories of the father he'll never meet: a Marine who died in combat a month after marrying her from thousands of miles away.

Sgt. Michael Ferschke was killed in Iraq in 2008, leaving his widow and infant son, both Japanese citizens, in immigration limbo: A 1950s legal standard meant to curb marriage fraud means U.S. authorities do not recognize the marriage, even though the military does.

Ferschke and his bride had been together in Japan for more than a year, and she was pregnant when he deployed. They married by signing their names on separate continents and did not have a chance to meet again in person after the wedding, which a 57-year-old immigration law requires for the union to be considered consummated.

"She is being denied because they are saying her marriage is not valid because it was not consummated — despite the fact that they have a child together," said Brent Renison, an immigration lawyer in Oregon who has advised the family. ...

The couple were together about 13 months before he left for Iraq in April 2008. He had proposed and they were trying to conceive a baby before he deployed, Hotaru Ferschke said.

About two weeks after he left, she found she was pregnant. He wanted to get married quickly so she could start getting health benefits as the spouse of an American soldier, she said.

They agreed on a proxy wedding, which has a long history in the military and in some other cases where bride and groom can't be in the same place for a ceremony.

Labels: Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 4:49 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Hell doesn’t freeze over, the land is not engulfed in floods or flaming brimstone, and the participants are not struck dead by lightening. Neither do married straight people rush to divorce court to end their association with the now-sullied institution or reform their behavior to prove that they really are better than gay people. Instead, at least in the case of the Netherlands which has allowed gay marriage since 2001, gay people get married for much the same reasons as straight people while the marital behavior of straight people scarcely changes at all.

This is the conclusion of When Gay People Get Married, a refreshingly even-tempered and well-researched book by M.V. Lee Badgett, a Professor of Economics and director of the Center for Public Policy & Administration at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and research director of the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law. ...

So gay marriage seems to be good for gay people: how does it affect straight people? According to the conservative commentator Stanley Kurtz, it hastens moral decline by separating the act of procreation from the act of marriage. He points to decreasing marriage rates in the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, the increase in unmarried heterosexual couples, and increasing numbers of children born outside of wedlock as evidence that straight people take legal recognition of gay marriage as a sign that parenthood and marriage need no longer be connected.

But Badgett refutes these conclusions by looking at marriage rates in six countries, five of which have a long history of granting rights to same sex couples: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, the Netherlands, and the United States. All six have seen a decline in marriage rates since the 1970s, but several of the countries which allow gay marriage have seen an increase since the ‘90s (while the US has not). She doesn’t attribute the increase to the influence of gay marriage (the trend started earlier) but points out that the historical data offers no support for Kurtz’s opinions. Similarly, divorce rates and nonmarital birth rates showed little change after the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Labels: cohabitation, Europe, gay marriage, M.V. Lee Badgett, Marriage, Netherlands, out-of-wedlock births, Stanley Kurtz

posted by Eve at 4:19 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Will same-sex marriage be taught in schools, if it becomes legal in Maine? No — nothing in law, or curriculum, mandates any Maine student be taught about marriage, same-sex or otherwise.

Should same-sex marriage be taught?

Again, the answer is no. Marriage should not be part of a curriculum. Either as a secular tradition or a religious sacrament, marriage is better left to families to teach, or provide examples of.

A school is not responsible for teaching marriage to kids. What should be taught is respect and tolerance for all peoples, a founding tenet of our society. Schools would do our children and civilization a disservice if they couldn't perform this function.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Maine, Marriage, schools

posted by Eve at 4:12 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: adultery, culture, Marriage, parenting, polyamory

posted by Eve at 4:09 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Til death do we part" wasn't such a big deal when the life expectancy was 30. When it's 80, marriage becomes a tall order. So you can imagine how surprised I was recently to learn that marriage is becoming more resilient, not less. America's divorce rate is down to 36% — the lowest since 1970. That means nearly two-thirds of those getting married today are likely to fulfill their lofty wedding-day promise. ...

Robert Money, a well-respected family therapist in my home state of Tennessee, says Americans are staying married because we're getting better at it. And consequently, we're enjoying it more. Money's 40 years in the business tells him that intimacy is the key.

"Intimacy is one of our deepest needs and greatest pleasures. And one cannot experience intimacy in marriage except from a position of mutuality. Some religious groups may not get this, but the secular culture does. Men and women now perceive themselves as mutual partners, and this is transforming our marriages," he says. ...

And when married couples experience problems — as they inevitably do — they're turning to trained professionals, rather than preachers, for help. They're no longer willing to settle for pious platitudes even when they come from the Bible.

Finally, our secular culture also is steering couples toward delaying marriage. The early 20s used to be the norm; now it's the late 20s or early 30s. Couples who marry later stand a better chance of staying married, and again, it's the secular culture — not organized religion — that encourages sexually active adults to hold off on tying the knot.

Labels: culture, divorce, Marriage, marriage counseling, religion

posted by Eve at 6:41 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: Andrew Cherlin, children, cohabitation, divorce, Marriage

posted by Eve at 1:59 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...As I see it, we won't talk about the crisis in black marriages because of:

• The unfortunate politicization of marriage. Marriage-strengthening efforts have been associated with a conservative political agenda. Also, conversations about marriage in the public square are often diverted to or focused on same-sex marriage. While this is an important issue in its own right, the urgency of the black marriage crisis and the 72 percent of black children who are born out of wedlock demands our unqualified and focused attention. ...

• The concern that efforts to strengthen black marriages devalue single-parent and extended family households. This is due in part to the propensity in the past of some to define as deficient and unacceptable legitimate and functional aspects of African-American family life. This resistance also stems from concerns about stigmatizing large segments of the black community (particularly single parents) and devaluing their adaptive strategies and those of their extended families. However, noting the value of married family homes does not deny the value or the integrity of a variety of family forms.

• The concern that marriage-strengthening efforts give blacks false hope. There is an implicit suggestion by some that to inspire African-Americans (particularly low-income women) to have healthy marriages gives them hope that they can achieve something that is likely to be unattainable. After all, there simply aren't enough African-American men available to marry. Fewer available men does present a major but surmountable challenge and demonstrates the need for black women to consider other options (including marrying outside of the race).

• The personal relationship challenges and failures and associated pain, guilt and anger experienced by many Americans (including public leaders). These experiences cause many leaders to feel incapable of (or less credible in) identifying solutions and reluctant to approach a topic that requires personal reflection and self-honesty to be addressed adequately. In fact, our greatest solutions will be birthed from those who have experienced and overcome significant relationship challenges and failures.

Labels: culture, Linda Malone-Colon, Marriage, men, race

posted by Eve at 5:57 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

So, the truth of Veronica Lario's marriage to Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, is finally coming out. "I cannot be his babysitter," she writes in her book, Tendenza Veronica, published last week. But the surprise is not that the usually private and silent Veronica is now very publicly complaining about her husband, but more importantly: what took her so long?

For 19 years, Veronica Lario not only tolerated her spouse's wayward behaviour – alleged hair transplants, affairs – but concealed it from the world. Then, in April, she snapped. Her husband was photographed with an 18-year-old model at a party; Veronica thought he was on business in Naples. "It was the latest lie. Better, then, to try to seek a last way to respect myself, better to divorce," Veronica said. "I'm done."

What changed? "He broke the open rules," says Maria Princeton, 51, a businesswoman. "She knew he had an independent private life, knew he had affairs, but what he is doing is dissing her and dissing the kids, and that is out of bounds." ...

"Everybody assumes in those [Mediterranean] cultures that a prominent man will have one if not two mistresses," says Maria, who is half Italian and herself the daughter of a high-profile philandering father and a devout mother (who put up and shut up). "In fact, in Spain, you don't have as much status if you're not into that." But the controlling force behind it all is the family. "The Italians understand that it is not good for children or for the wife to divorce, because divorce means there will be another family."

"Veronica Lario kept her mouth shut for years because of her family," echoes Accettura. (Berlusconi has two children from his first wife; three children from Veronica.) "She did her best to protect her three children, because how do you divide the assets when there are five children?"

But what of the emotional cost? Does living separate lives really work? The actress Tilda Swinton certainly thinks so. She lives with John Byrne, the artist and writer and father of her two children, but also turned up at the Baftas last year with her boyfriend, Sandro Kopp.

"It's really, really straightforward," she has said. "Very, very often, people have children with people they are no longer sweethearts with… and then they have a relationship with someone new, right? What rarely happens is that they are still completely good friends and continue to live in the same house. But that's all it is." She said they would never separate. "We have a really lovely life bringing up the children together."

Labels: Europe, Italy, Marriage, open relationships

posted by Eve at 5:45 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

It seems, to many, like the sensible thing to do: Move in with your boyfriend or girlfriend, spend more time together, save money by splitting the rent and see if you can share a bathroom every morning without wanting to kill each other.

But if you were Scott Stanley's kid, he'd beg you not to do it.

Stanley, a University of Denver psychologist, has spent the past 15 years trying to figure out why premarital cohabitation is associated with lower levels of satisfaction in marriage and a greater potential for divorce.

At a conference last month, Stanley and his colleagues presented the latest findings of a five-year study being sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He estimates that between 60 and 70 percent of couples today will live together before marriage, and that for two-thirds of them, cohabitation is something that they slid into or "just sort of happened."

And a study Stanley co-authored in February found that of the 1,050 married people surveyed, almost 19 percent of those who lived together before getting engaged had at some point suggested divorce, compared with 10 percent for those who waited until marriage to live together.

Those findings mimic the reports from the mid-1990s that first peaked Stanley's interest, showing that men who cohabitated before marriage were, on average, less dedicated to their relationships than those who didn't.

"It was one of those kind of findings that I wouldn't have suspected," Stanley, 53, recalls. But he immediately had a theory: "The basic idea was, 'Okay, there's a group of males there that married someone they wouldn't have married if they hadn't moved in with them.' "

Labels: cohabitation, divorce, Marriage

posted by Eve at 3:35 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Despite the old saying “opposites attract,” scholars have found that in almost every way imaginable, people tend to choose mates who look, sound and act as they do.

But in the area perhaps most fraught with potential conflict — money — somehow, some way, people gravitate toward their polar opposite, a new study says.

“Spendthrifts” and “tightwads” (which, as it turns out, are actual academic terms) tend to marry the other. Unfortunately, these dichotomized duos report unhappier marriages than people with more similar attitudes toward spending.

How do we know all this? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan and Northwestern University looked at several surveys that asked a married couple to assess separately their personal feelings toward spending money. (While the study used the responses of a self-selected group of online news readers, it was bolstered by a randomized poll commissioned by the researchers.)

Respondents were then rated on a Tightwad-Spendthrift scale. The labels refer not to how much people earn or spend, but how people described their feelings about spending.

Spendthrifts, on this scale, say they experience too little pain when spending, leading them to spend more than they should; they later regretted their financial recklessness.

Tightwads, by contrast, report feeling too much pain when spending. They have trouble parting with their pennies, and yet they frequently kick themselves for having so much difficulty living life. In other words, they live in a perpetual state of nonbuyer’s remorse.

From such yin-and-yangness, love blossoms. (At least to a modest but statistically significant degree, the study found.)

“Almost all prior research has found that birds of a feather flock together,” said Scott I. Rick, a University of Michigan marketing professor who is a co-author of the study. “People have tried to find evidence of complementarity, but they usually can’t.” The major previously identified exception to that rule is on dominant and submissive personalities, traits for which opposites do tend to attract.

Labels: Marriage

posted by Eve at 3:31 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

There was spontaneous applause when Allan Carlson announced the winner of the 'family cup': a man who put nine children on the world, all within the same marriage.

That makes one a successful man in the eyes of the fifth World Congress of Families, which is being held in Amsterdam's RAI congress centre this week. The floor was then given to the winner's wife, who spoke of her husband's love and dedication to their family and God -- until he died of cancer last year.

Allan Carlson is the secretary of the World Congress of Families and the president of the US-based Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. He is the author of The Natural Family: A Manifesto, in which he argues that "we welcome more babies and larger families while others wage war against human fertility".

In his opening statement in Amsterdam on Monday he said families that deviate from the 'natural family' (man, wife, children) are at considerable risk of developing 'problems'. "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state," Carlson said. ...

One of the speakers –- albeit via video link –- was the Dutch minister for youth and family André Rouvoet, a member of the orthodox Christian party ChristenUnie. Rouvoet wished the participants "every success".

Rouvoet's participation in the World Congress was controversial from the start. His critics said it legitimised what they said was a right-wing religious gathering. Intellectuals, members of parliament for the Green party and the liberal parties VVD and D66, as well as a handful of demonstrators demanded that Rouvoet either stay away from the gathering or come out in favour of gay marriage, abortion and divorce.

The minister didn't go quite that far, although he did call on the participants to "build bridges" and to "think about how we can live together in a multicultural society with differing attitudes to the family".

Labels: abortion, divorce, Europe, family size, gay marriage, Marriage, Netherlands

posted by Eve at 3:23 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...The utterly ridiculous thing is that my husband is ovulating too. It happens. He sniffs me out, and the drive to procreate becomes just as fierce in him as it does in me.

The bedroom dialogue when I’m ovulating:

Husband: “Come here. Let me just rub your back. We won’t do anything. I promise.”

I hide in the bathroom, picking my zits or something. “Just a minute.” I peak through the crack in the bathroom door to see if he’s fallen asleep yet. Much as I want that backrub, I know where they lead. They’re dangerous. Dangerous.

Contrast with bedroom dialogue when I’m not ovulating:

Husband: “Wanna do it?”

Me: “Is that foreplay?”

Husband: “Yeah, but if it helps, I’ll let you see me naked too.”

Ooooh….That’ll do it.

Well, I’m not falling for it this time. I’m not going in for that backrub. I am going to invest my creative energies in something other than procreation. The [Natural Family Planning] experts say that spouses should not avoid one another during fertile periods--that they should not abstain from signs of affection while they are abstaining from sex. I find that advice a little naïve.

If I have to go seven days without showering or brushing my teeth, I’ll do it. I’ll wear the hijab. I’ll hide in the closet when my husband comes fee, fie, foe, fumm-ing home from work. I’m serious this time.

Labels: Catholic Church, contraception, family size, Marriage, sex

posted by Eve at 11:53 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York told CNA last week that the Catholic Church is currently facing many challenges, four being: the vocation to marriage, the state of Catholic parishes and schools, the great number of lapsed Catholics and finally the difficulties in a culture desperate to keep the Church and morals out of the public square. ...

The archbishop then broke down Jesus’ words into four practical challenges the Church currently faces in preaching the Gospel to all people, the first being the instability of marriage and family.

“That’s where we have the real vocation crisis,” he remarked, noting that “only 50% of our Catholic young people are getting married.”

“We have a vocation crisis to life-long, life-giving, loving, faithful marriage. If we take care of that one, we’ll have all the priests and nuns we need for the church,” Dolan said.

Labels: Catholic Church, demographics, Marriage, New York, religion

posted by Imapp Staff at 3:51 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Fewer highly educated black women in the United States are getting married and starting a family, researchers say.

Yale University sociology Professor Hannah Brueckner, who co-wrote a study regarding highly educated black women, said a growing number of them have been focusing on education rather than families and marriage during the last 40 years, the American Sociology Association reported Saturday.

"In the past nearly four decades, black women have made great gains in higher education rates, yet these gains appear to have come increasingly at the cost of marriage and family," Brueckner said.

The study on family formation and marriage longitudinal trends in the specified demographic found the marriage gap between highly educated black and white women increased dramatically between the 1970s and recent years.

Labels: Marriage, race, universities

posted by Eve at 3:35 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

What's in a name? Apparently a lot, especially if it's your last name.

About 70% of Americans agree, either somewhat or strongly, that it's beneficial for women to take her husband's last name when they marry, while 29% say it's better for women to keep their own names, finds a study being presented today at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in San Francisco.

Researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah asked about 815 people a combination of multiple choice and open-ended questions to come up with the findings. ...

Hamilton says that about half of respondents went so far as to say that the government should mandate women to change their names when they marry, a finding she called "really interesting," considering typical attitudes towards government intervention. "Americans tend to be very cautious when it comes to state intervention in family life," she says.

Labels: culture, gender, gender differences, Marriage

posted by Eve at 1:30 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Jon Rowe argues against both me and Robert P. George in favor of a libertarian position in which no-one gets married but civil unions are available for all. I sure understand the theoretical reasoning for this, but I have two objections.

The first is simply that there are some minimal tangible social goods associated with marriage that I believe would be enormously beneficial for gays and straights: the institution encourages stability and commitment in an emotional and sexual world which often pulls us away from that. It encourages shared sacrifice; it instills the disciplines of shared living; it promotes thrift; it integrates gay people into their own families and society; it harms no-one. In that sense I'm a weak libertarian, believing in a minimal state that can nonetheless encourage core shared values and social goods and treats the equal inclusion of minorities as something worth sacrificing for. That's the social conservative side of marriage equality - and the evolution of gay culture even in the past decade shows how that could occur, especially as the first generation of gay kids grows up knowing in advance that marriage is an option.

In fact, a great deal of this symbolism has to do with gay kids more than adults.

Labels: adolescence, childhood, civil unions, gay marriage, government interest in marriage, Marriage

posted by Eve at 7:11 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

LET’S say you have what you believe to be a healthy marriage. You’re still friends and lovers after spending more than half of your lives together. The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s — gazing into each other’s eyes in candlelit city bistros when you were single and skinny — have for the most part come true.

Two decades later you have the 20 acres of land, the farmhouse, the children, the dogs and horses. You’re the parents you said you would be, full of love and guidance. You’ve done it all: Disneyland, camping, Hawaii, Mexico, city living, stargazing.

Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”

But wait. This isn’t the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It’s a story about hearing your husband say “I don’t love you anymore” and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result.

Here’s a visual: Child throws a temper tantrum. Tries to hit his mother. But the mother doesn’t hit back, lecture or punish. Instead, she ducks. Then she tries to go about her business as if the tantrum isn’t happening. She doesn’t “reward” the tantrum. She simply doesn’t take the tantrum personally because, after all, it’s not about her.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying my husband was throwing a child’s tantrum. No. He was in the grip of something else — a profound and far more troubling meltdown that comes not in childhood but in midlife, when we perceive that our personal trajectory is no longer arcing reliably upward as it once did. But I decided to respond the same way I’d responded to my children’s tantrums. And I kept responding to it that way. For four months.

Labels: divorce, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 4:11 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The key to a lower divorce rate and healthier marriages starts before the vows are taken, according to advocates for mandatory premarital counseling.

Many states, including Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Maryland, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Arizona, have laws in place that provide economic incentives for couples who attend a specified number of hours of marriage education. Citing research proving the success of premarital counseling in reducing long-term divorce rates, some organizations are pushing for legislation that provides even more reasons for couples to attend premarital education.

In Florida, the Marriage Preparation Act proposes to raise the price of a marriage license by a $100 fee that can be waived if the couple attends eight hours of premarital counseling. It also raises the number of required hours from four to eight and promotes a premarital inventory test as part of the education. The act, which increases the statute already in place, is supported by the Christian Coalition of Palm Beach County and the Florida Family Policy Council, both Christian organizations that promote pro-life and traditional marriage legislation in the state.

However, couples seeking premarital education can choose a “secular” version, as well, potentially raising questions about just what defines premarital counseling. Some popular marriage inventory services, such as FOCCUS, provide “general” and “Christian” versions. The marriage handbook provided by Florida State steers clear of religious overtones, instead emphasizing the magnitude of marriage through lessons on divorce’s economic and legal impact.

Opponents complain that the act is equal to cash in the pockets of the church, because while the required premarital counseling does not necessarily have to be Christian, much premarital counseling comes from that perspective.

Labels: Christianity Today, divorce, divorce reform, Florida, Marriage, marriage counseling, religion

posted by Eve at 10:59 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Marriage as God intended it is compatible for fulfilling the Image of God, the Image we were created in. So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27) Originally joined together and created in the Image of God, the one-flesh union we call sex brings men and women back to the original oneness from which we originated ( Gen 2:21-23).

Our attraction for what we call sex is actually a spiritual, God-given desire to experience and glorify the full Image of God found in a one-flesh union. ...

Though countless single parents do a great job raising children the reality is that children from fatherless homes in the US account for 70 percent of long-term prison inmates, 71 percent of high school dropouts, 85 percent of youth prisoners, and 90 percent of runaways. Daughters who live without their dads are 92% more likely to divorce. http://www.fathersunite.org/statistics_on_fatherlessnes.html

And that's just kids without dads. Kids without moms--well, everyone knows they need a mom. Taking the position that traditional marriage is an option teaches kids
that moms and dads are optional. Sadly this indoctrination is being imposed in many states on first graders, communicating to kids that their parents are bigots if they do not agree.

Marriage as God intended it models what should be our relationship with God. In the Old Testament God is described as His people's husband. Jesus' life is also a model for how marriage should work. While each spouse is to submit one to another, the husband is specifically directed to lay down his life for his wife just as Jesus laid down His life for His bride, the church. Jesus also claimed that traditional marriage foreshadows His future wedding in Heaven between Him, the Groom and His bride, the church: "Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready" (Revelations 19:7).

Labels: Marriage, religion

posted by Imapp Staff at 12:30 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Shifts in a culture are often signaled by unexpected developments that represent far more than may first meet the eye. The cover story in the August 2009 edition of Christianity Today may signal such a shift among American evangelicals. In this case the cultural shift is nothing less than an awakening to the priority of marriage. At the very least, it represents a public airing of the question of the delay of marriage among evangelical young people. In that sense, it is a bombshell.

In "The Case for Early Marriage," sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas in Austin argues that far too many American evangelicals have attempted to deal with sex without understanding marriage. In particular, he asserts that the "prevailing discourse of abstinence culture in contemporary American evangelicalism" has run aground. While not devaluing abstinence, Regnerus explains that his research has led him to believe "that few evangelicals accomplish what their pastors and parents wanted them to do" -- which is to refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.

Regerus understands that many evangelical parents and pastors are most likely to respond to this reality with the reflex mechanism of an even greater emphasis upon sexual abstinence. Nevertheless, the data reveal that the majority of evangelical young people -- most of whom have been targeted for years with messages of sexual abstinence -- are engaging in sexual intercourse before marriage. ...

In making his own argument, Mark Regnerus helpfully dispels many of the common arguments against early marriage. Of equal importance, he also points to a concern peculiar to American evangelicalism. "The ratio of devoutly Christian young women to men is far from even. Among evangelical churchgoers, there are about three single women for every two single men. This is the elephant in the corner of almost every congregation -- a shortage of young Christian men." This is a sobering but very important observation. As Regnerus also notes, men often delay marriage believing that they can always marry when ever they are "ready." Meanwhile, their evangelical sisters are often very ready for marriage, even as they watch their prospects for both marriage and fertility falling.

Labels: Christianity Today, evangelical Protestantism, Marriage, religion

posted by Eve at 10:05 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Why are we getting married? ask commenters. Why not simply live together, and avoid the tax hit?

Well, it's outre, I know, but I sort of believe in marriage. I believe in the act of committing for life to another person. I believe in the power and the joy of facing your life as a team. I think you can have a very happy, fulfilled life without being married, and before I met Peter, I was preparing to. But my life is even happier and more fulfilled with him. So naturally, I want to start building that life as Team McSudelman.

There's a reason for the social role of "spouse". And there's a reason for all of the legal and social systems that have grown up around that role: they reinforce and strengthen it. It would be much harder to do many of the things we want and intend to do, for and with each other, without that useless little piece of paper.

But more to the point, once we'd decided to do what spouses do, why wouldn't we, well, become official spouses? Just because I enjoy akward five-minute conversations about how my "partner" is a he, not a she, and you know, we really love each other, but we just don't believe we need society's ratification . . . I don't, I assure you. And I'm happy to have society's ratification. Celebrating our marriage will be one question upon which society and I agree 100%.

Labels: beyond marriage, culture, Marriage

posted by Eve at 3:12 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

PRINCETON, NJ -- A Gallup analysis of more than 29,000 interviews conducted in June highlights a continuing and significant marriage gap in party identification. The percentage of all Americans who identified as Republican in June was 28%, but is higher at 33% among those who are married, and a lower 21% among unmarried Americans. On the other hand, Democratic identification in June was at 35% overall, but 31% among married Americans, and 41% among those who are not married. This marriage gap in party identification is evident across races as well as age groups.

This marriage gap in American politics today is not new, but the current analysis underscores the fact that marital status remains one of the most reliable predictors of party identification among major demographic variables in the U.S. in 2009.

Being "unmarried" in America today encompasses a number of different life situations -- including those who are single and have never married as well as those who are separated, divorced, widowed, and those living in a domestic partnership. The large sample size for this data set allows for a detailed subdivision of unmarried Americans into each of these specific categories.

As can be seen in the accompanying graph, the particular circumstances of being unmarried do not appear to make a great deal of difference in terms of party identification. Democrats have a significant identification advantage over Republicans across each of these segments.

Labels: culture, Marriage

posted by Eve at 12:12 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

TOKYO: Dressed to the nines on a balmy summer night, a crowd of young Japanese filled the reception area of a Tokyo wedding hall, a white mansion with Greek columns romantically festooned with fairy lights.

The setting may have seemed a little gaudy, but the 100-odd men and women there, clutching their cocktails and scanning the room, were seriously focused on their goal -- finding the love of their life.

The twenty to forty-somethings are part of a new fad sweeping Japan: "konkatsu" or "marriage-hunting", a word play on "job hunting", that suggests finding Mr or Mrs Right is a matter of good research and thorough planning.

An expert in the field had some advice for the assembled lonely hearts.

"Try not to make that instant decision," said Helen Fisher, a US anthropologist and special guest at the Match.com party in Tokyo's upmarket Nakameguro district. "Go up and talk to them and find out about them.

"The whole point of this evening is to try to fall in love."

This year Japan has gone konkatsu-crazy, with the trend spawning countless magazine articles, a weekly TV drama and a best-selling book.

Labels: Asia, culture, demographics, Japan, Marriage

posted by Eve at 12:09 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The Church of England is offering couples a two-for-one service - marriage for them and baptisms for their children.

The church says it is recognizing the changing reality of British families. Statistics show that 44 per cent of children in Britain are born to unmarried women. ...

The church said it was responding to demand, but still believed the best place for sex was within marriage.

Labels: Church of England, culture, Marriage, out-of-wedlock births, premarital sex, religion, sex, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 7:21 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...This column was to be entitled, “Why Priests Hate Weddings,” but I thought that might be a bit too strong. Nevertheless, ask any priest about his work and he will quickly share with you the challenge of dealing with the Sacrament of Matrimony today.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that the real practice of weddings and marriage today is far different than the ideal of Holy Matrimony as instituted by Christ and taught by the Church.

It begins with the fact that so many couples (perhaps 40%) are living together before they are married. This cohabitation, along with the sexual activity that presumably accompanies it, reveals a lack of understanding about the sanctity of the marriage covenant. ...

Wedding liturgies themselves become parties rather than prayer, making it nearly impossible to maintain any sense of decorum, any sense of the sacred. Guests arrive late, the bride goes into hiding, the groomsmen have been sitting in the church parking lot drinking; flower girls and ring bearers are very cute but too young to walk up the aisle without crying; the music is chosen from the “top forty list” and the photographer scrambles over the pews to direct the action rather than record it.

It’s exceedingly difficult for the priest to stand in the pulpit with any degree of conviction; to speak about the permanence of marriage when guests are involved in their second or third marriage; about fidelity when spouses have been or will be unfaithful; about sanctity when the newlyweds process out of church never to be seen again; about children when so many brides and grooms carry a contraceptive mentality into their marriage.

Labels: Catholic Church, cohabitation, contraception, Marriage, religion, remarriage, weddings vs. marriage

posted by Eve at 8:12 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Living happily ever after needn't only be for fairy tales. Australian researchers have identified what it takes to keep a couple together, and it's a lot more than just being in love.

A couple's age, previous relationships and even whether they smoke or not are factors that influence whether their marriage is going to last, according to a study by researchers from the Australian National University.

The study, entitled "What's Love Got to Do With It", tracked nearly 2,500 couples -- married or living together -- from 2001 to 2007 to identify factors associated with those who remained together compared with those who divorced or separated.

It found that a husband who is nine or more years older than his wife is twice as likely to get divorced, as are husbands who get married before they turn 25.

Children also influence the longevity of a marriage or relationship, with one-fifth of couples who have kids before marriage -- either from a previous relationship or in the same relationship -- having separated compared to just nine percent of couples without children born before marriage.

Women who want children much more than their partners are also more likely to get a divorce.

A couple's parents also have a role to play in their own relationship, with the study showing some 16 percent of men and women whose parents ever separated or divorced experienced marital separation themselves compared to 10 percent for those whose parents did not separate.

more

Labels: Australia, cohabitation, divorce, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 7:52 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Because of what you read in the the writers of imperial Rome. Some people are indeed homoerotic by nature. But others, as Aristotle noted, develop this as an acquired passion. Homoeroticism is, to a large degree, socially constructed. It turns out that where homoeroticism is granted full social sanction, as it was in Rome, it flourishes -- so much so, that one writer noted that the emperor Claudius exhibited an unusual trait: he was sexually interested in women alone!

Men, we learn from ancient Rome, will enjoy sex with other men, if there is no social censure. Now, all of this should be fine for us as well -- after all, we should let free choice and tolerance reign.

The real problems begin, however, when we read what these writers had to say about marriage.

Labels: gay marriage, homosexuality, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 5:04 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Homosexuals can "lay equal claim to their married heterosexual counterparts when bringing up children in stable relationships" the head of the highly regarded British Catholic marriage counselling service, Marriage Care, will tell a gathering of homosexualist activists this weekend.

Marriage Care is registered as a Catholic charity whose president is the sitting Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, who is represented on the board by Fr. Michael Cooley. The organization, formed after the Second World War, calls itself "a Christian organisation, developed from within the Catholic community." The group operates from 80 locations and 53 relationship counselling centres in England and Wales.

Terry Prendergast, Chief Executive of Marriage Care, is to be keynote speaker at the annual conference of the homosexualist organisation Quest, a group that is trying to convince the Catholic Church to abandon its "policies" on sexuality and the nature of marriage. Prendergast will call upon the Catholic Church to "rethink" the nature of the family this weekend.

"Statistically, children do best in a family where the adult relationship is steady, stable and loving," Prendergast will tell the group in his prepared remarks. "Note that I stress adult, not married, since there is no evidence that suggests that children do best with heterosexual couples," he will add.

In a press release, Quest said it was looking forward to the appearance of Prendergast at its annual conference this coming weekend, the theme of which is "We Are Family: New Thinking for the Twenty First Century." Quest describes Prendergast's upcoming talk as focusing on the "romantic image" built up by the Church of a "golden age of the nuclear family" which excludes those who "do not fit." These, the group says, include single parent families, "and also co-habiting and same-sex families." ...

Terry Prendergast told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview that a significant source of the group's funding and other support comes from Catholic dioceses, one of which pays the rent for offices, and from individual parishes across the country. But, he said, the group's purpose is not necessarily to uphold the Catholic teaching on marriage and family.

Labels: Catholic Church, cohabitation, gay marriage, Marriage, marriage counseling, religion, single parenting, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 11:15 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...So I'm all for resisting conformity. I just get so very sick of seeing the equation of marriage with conformity.

Do you actually think the dominant culture values marriage? It values heterosexual couplings, and maybe weddings, to the extent that they're an excuse to buy stuff. But the actual work of growing in harmony with another person, of shaping your lives to be a joint project of service to one another and the community, is vastly undersold. The joy of an ever-deepening connection that involves two people's bodies as much as their souls is nearly invisible in the mainstream media.

Instead, we're largely served a glamorized picture of singleness as perpetual youth, and promiscuity as self-empowerment. We see this in the adult entertainment that most men consume, and in TV series that continually break up their characters' romances in order to keep the storyline moving forward without pushing the characters to evolve beyond our initial impression of them. ...

Instead of this dead-end debate over whether gay marriage is assimilationist, let's work to make everyone's marriage a little more queer. There's no necessary association between a lifetime commitment to your true love and a retreat into apolitical consumer contentment. Think about gender: which traditional roles suit you, and which feel confining? Can your partner help you appreciate all the roles you play?

Labels: gay marriage, gender, Marriage

posted by Eve at 8:38 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Maggie Gallagher es una conocida periodista norteamericana, que publica su columna sobre temas familiares en más de 30 periódicos norteamericanos -entre los que se encuentra The New York Times, The Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal- y ha escrito tres libros de gran éxito sobre el matrimonio, en los que aboga por lo que ya se conoce como el "Movimiento por un nuevo matrimonio". El más reciente se titula "The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially". Es conocida su actitud de nunca rechazar una invitación para hablar del matrimonio, lo que le ha llevado a innumerables debates de televisión -entre los que destaca su participación en el programa de Larry King o en los principales programas de la NBC- y de radio, a numerosas universidades y entidades públicas y privadas, así como a intervenir repetidas veces como experta en el Senado de los EE UU y en varias cámaras legislativas estatales. Hace algunos años creó el Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, del que es presidenta y cuya misión es realizar la investigación y la acción educativa necesarias para que la legislación y las políticas públicas protejan y refuercen el matrimonio como institución social.

Con ocasión de su participación en un Encuentro The Family Watch en Madrid, ha respondido a nuestras preguntas. La entrevista también puede verse grabada en vídeo aquí.

Labels: Maggie Gallagher, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:32 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Most unmarried couples who live together aren't trying to test their relationship. They just want to spend more time together.

That finding, from a new national study of dating and cohabitation, seemingly contradicts the popular wisdom of cohabitation as a trial marriage. It's among early results from the study, scheduled to continue for years, and it gives researchers new insight into the burgeoning number of couples who cohabit.

Cohabitation has increased so rapidly that the data about it haven't kept pace with the growing numbers, researchers say. The latest U.S. Census for 2008 reported 13.6 million unmarried, heterosexual couples living together. Researchers say 50% to 60% of couples who marry today lived together first; some note that 70% of young adults will cohabit. Most couples who live together either marry or break up within two years. ...

Other research by Stanley and Rhoades, along with the center's co-director, Howard Markman, published this year reinforces previous findings about cohabitation and is similar to the new Denver study. A survey of 1,050 people who were married less than 10 years published in the Journal of Family Psychology suggests cohabiting before engagement is associated with lower marital satisfaction. A study of 120 cohabiting couples in the Journal of Family Issues also found unmarried partners cohabit to spend more time together, not to test the relationship.

Labels: cohabitation, Marriage

posted by Eve at 10:54 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

44. The notion of rights and duties in development must also take account of the problems associated with population growth. This is a very important aspect of authentic development, since it concerns the inalienable values of life and the family. To consider population increase as the primary cause of underdevelopment is mistaken, even from an economic point of view. Suffice it to consider, on the one hand, the significant reduction in infant mortality and the rise in average life expectancy found in economically developed countries, and on the other hand, the signs of crisis observable in societies that are registering an alarming decline in their birth rate. Due attention must obviously be given to responsible procreation, which among other things has a positive contribution to make to integral human development. The Church, in her concern for man's authentic development, urges him to have full respect for human values in the exercise of his sexuality. It cannot be reduced merely to pleasure or entertainment, nor can sex education be reduced to technical instruction aimed solely at protecting the interested parties from possible
disease or the “risk” of procreation. This would be to impoverish and disregard the deeper meaning of sexuality, a meaning which needs to be acknowledged and responsibly appropriated not only by individuals but also by the community. It is irresponsible to view sexuality merely as a source of pleasure, and likewise to regulate it through strategies of mandatory birth control. In either case materialistic ideas and policies are at work, and individuals are ultimately subjected to various forms of violence. Against such policies, there is a need to defend the primary competence of the family in the area of sexuality,111 as opposed to the State and its restrictive policies, and to ensure that parents are suitably prepared to undertake their responsibilities.

Morally responsible openness to life represents a rich social and economic resource. Populous nations have been able to emerge from poverty thanks not least to the size of their population and the talents of their people. On the other hand, formerly prosperous nations are presently passing through a phase of uncertainty and in some cases decline, precisely because of their falling birth rates; this has become a crucial problem for highly affluent societies. The decline in births, falling at times beneath the so-called “replacement level”, also puts a strain on social welfare systems, increases their cost, eats into savings and hence the financial resources needed for investment, reduces the availability of qualified labourers, and narrows the “brain pool” upon which nations can draw for their needs. Furthermore, smaller and at times miniscule families run the risk of impoverishing social relations, and failing to ensure effective forms of solidarity. These situations are symptomatic of scant
confidence in the future and moral weariness. It is thus becoming a social and even economic necessity once more to hold up to future generations the beauty of marriage and the family, and the fact that these institutions correspond to the deepest needs and dignity of the person. In view of this, States are called to enact policies promoting the centrality and the integrity of the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman, the primary vital cell of society, and to assume responsibility for its economic and fiscal needs, while respecting its essentially relational character.

Labels: Catholic Church, demographics, family policy, Marriage, religion, sex

posted by Imapp Staff at 4:09 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Only 17% of American women haven’t married by age 35, compared to 25% of men, new research indicates.

But many people marry a lot younger, the study indicates.

There’s a 50% probability that women will marry for the first time by age 25, researchers say; the probability of marriage for men doesn’t hit 50% until age 27.

The report, published today as the National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief No. 19, is part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy Marriage Initiative, which is investigating matrimonial trends because, the authors say, marriage has “potential benefits.”

Results are based on the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, which involved 12,571 people -- 4,928 males and 7,643 females between 15 and 44 years old.

The report “Who Marries and When? Age at First Marriage in the United States: 2002,” also shows that:

The probability of first marriage by the age of 30 is 74% for women and 61% for men.
By age 40, the probability is 86% for women and 81% for men.

However, the probability of marriage by age 18 among all race and Hispanic origin groups is very low -- 6% for women and 2% for men. Broken down further, the probability of marriage by 18 is 10% for Hispanic women, 6% for non-Hispanic white women, and 3% for non-Hispanic black women.

Labels: Marriage, poverty, race

posted by Imapp Staff at 4:03 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

To be pro-marriage these days is to be dismissed as an eccentric at best or a bigot at worst. You think I'm exaggerating? Then take heed of the following.

This week, new CSO figures revealed that the number of births taking place outside marriage keeps on rising. It is now one birth in every three and among 20-24 year olds it is the majority. But if you point out that this is a cause for alarm, you will be accused of victimising single parents.

Or if you point out that same-sex marriage or civil partnerships are a bad idea, and they are, you are accused of homophobia. If you suggest that the 500pc increase in marital breakdown that has occurred since 1986 is a bad thing, you're stigmatising divorced people.

As for cohabitation, well, it's up 400pc in only 10 years. But on your peril try pointing out that cohabiting couples are more likely to divorce than couples who don't first cohabit, or that cohabiting parents are twice as likely as married parents to split before their children are grown up. Again, you're offending people.

The pro-marriage argument is exceedingly simple. It is based on the indisputable fact that it is best, in general, for a child to be raised by a loving mother and father who are married. All counter-arguments must deny this. All counter-arguments must say that there is no special advantage in a child having a loving, married mum and dad.

But in fact, the argument rarely gets this far because it is short-circuited by accusations of judgmentalism, prejudice and even bigotry. Therefore, most people are now scared to defend marriage, scared to say it's best for a child to have a loving mother and father, scared of being labelled.

Labels: culture, Ireland, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 3:59 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Russia marked Day of Married Love and Family Happiness on Wednesday, an official holiday which coincides with Peter and Fevronia Day, the Orthodox patron saints of married couples.

Festivities in Moscow and other regions included charity concerts and other events involving orphans, newlyweds and elderly couples. ...

Russia's parliamentary speaker, Boris Gryzlov, said on Wednesday that the number of people getting married had increased, while divorces were down despite the ongoing global economic crisis. He also said birth rate has grown over the last few years.

Labels: Marriage, Russia

posted by Eve at 12:36 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

OK guys, time to man up and ask her out on a date! Too many of you men are slow in looking for a bride. When I was ordained twenty years ago I had a lot of marriages. Today there are far fewer, and those that marry are much older. Perhaps maturity is a good thing PRIOR to marriage but couples are really waiting a long time these days. Now I was not born yesterday and I know that part of the reason for the delay is that couples are often fornicating and are just plain shacked up as well. True marriage is delayed as false notions of sexuality and marriage are indulged.

But there is also another phenomenon that is harder to understand. I have quite a number of young women, who are very attractive I might add, tell me that they are seldom asked out on dates, that young men don’t seem very good at taking initiative when it comes to dating and marriage. Now come on guys, be a man and get out there and ask her out!

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, Marriage

posted by Eve at 4:08 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...In her new polemic “A Vindication of Love,” an assault on the idea of safety in romance, Cristina Nehring complains that contemporary couplings have so restrained true passion that “the poor beast has become as impotent as it is domestic.” In a post-divorce essay for The Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh autopsies not only her own marriage but those of her peers, a cohort of middle-aged Los Angelenos who’ve let the quest for security turn them into sexless drudges.

Both writers depict a country where pragmatic anxieties — think of the children! think of the mortgage! — are forever trumping romance and dulling the libido. Theirs is a nation of nesters who have clipped their own wings.

So which is the real America? Is it Tsing Loh’s dystopia, where everyone “works” grimly on their relationships, and post-feminist husbands happily cook saffron-infused porcini risotto but rarely practice seduction on their wives? Or is it tabloid country: The land of Jon minus Kate, and governors who vanish to “hike the Appalachian Trail” — not to mention gossip-column fixtures like Britney Spears (rumored last week to be contemplating her third marriage in six years) and the mistress-parading Mel Gibson? ...

Their complaints about this world’s romance deficit are substantially overstated, obviously — and shot through with a dash of self-justification. (Tsing Loh had an affair; Nehring recently became an unwed mother.) But both do put their finger on a post-sexual revolution paradox — namely, that the same overclass that was once most invested in erotic experimentation ended up building the sturdiest walls against the passions it unleashed.

As Nehring observes, our hyper-educated, socially-liberal elite is considerably more romantically conservative than its blasé attitude toward pornography or premarital sex would lead you to expect. The difficult scramble up the meritocratic ladder tends to discourage wild passions and death-defying flings. For bright young overachievers, there’s often a definite tameness to the way that collegiate “safe sex” segues into the upwardly-mobile security of “companionate marriages” — or, if you’re feeling more cynical, “consumption partnerships.”

Labels: culture, divorce, Marriage

posted by Eve at 2:36 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...A wedding is the weak link in the family system -- the extraordinary attempt to make biological strangers into closest kin. For me, every divorce -- not just Jon and Kate's -- prompts questions:

Is being a wife merely a role I've chosen, a thing I enact so long as it benefits me? Or can I do something else with marriage -- import another human being into the essence of my identity -- make being a wife something I am, like being a mother, not merely something I do? Is it possible to really become one flesh?

Labels: culture, divorce, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage

posted by Eve at 11:41 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Noel Coward's "Design for Living" — now in revival by the Shakespeare Theatre Company — shocked audiences when it premiered on Broadway in 1933. It's not hard to see why.

The play, about a polyandrous relationship between two men and a woman, makes no apologies for its liberationist view of sex and relationships and could hardly be more direct in its sympathetic presentation of gay attachment. "Design for Living" was considered so risque that Coward had to wait until 1939 before staging a production in London for fear of offending British censors.

Seen today, the play shocks, but for an altogether different reason: Its message is so outdated that it's bewildering why any theater would put it on except for its curatorial interest as a period artifact. ...

"Design for Living" premiered in an era when traditional ideas about sex and the role of women in society were being challenged, and the play's notoriety almost surely had something to do with the audience's vicarious envy of the characters' ability to break free of oppressive conventions. In the ensuing 70-plus years, however, America has witnessed the wages of free love, and we've decided they're not pretty. The play's controversy is obsolete; there really is no serious constituency these days arguing for the virtue of non-monogamous relationships. And as much as gays have been cultural iconoclasts, it's difficult to imagine a leading gay playwright of Coward's artistic stature today endorsing the sort of message presented in "Design for Living."

...The D.C. audience seemed to go along with the paeans to honesty and unconventional love for a very long time. Although if you're less committed to total honesty than these characters you may find their impassioned revelations self-centered and cruel, they are drawing on a powerful philosophy which commentator James Poulos has dubbed Eros lo volt! -- romantic love is its own justification.

Coward in some ways stacks the deck in favor of the lovers: Gretchen comments defensively that at least they aren't out "peppering the world with illegitimate children," and in fact none of the main characters have families or a history which precedes their meeting. Their bodies' only vulnerability is in sexual desire; no aging, no pregnancy, no illness. ...

There's something unfinished about Design for Living, some sense that we're still seeing the plot synopsis rather than the full interplay of characters. Perhaps some of the missing aspects become clearer when Coward's play is compared to its recent descendant, Edward Albee's 2002 The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?: Notes Toward a Definition of Tragedy. Albee name-checks Coward in both the stage directions and dialogue, but recasts Design for Living's story as ambiguously-reactionary tragedy rather than ambivalently-liberal comedy. Albee marshals the same ideas of the unstoppable, unimaginable, irresistible power of erotic love… and puts them in the mouth of a man besotted with a nanny goat.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Marriage, polyamory, sex

posted by Eve at 4:31 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Responding to concerns that psychologists might be required to counsel homosexual couples about strengthening their relationship, Catholic leaders in Nebraska are asking for conscience protections for psychologists who refuse to treat or refer clients because of religious or moral convictions.

Speaking during a licensing rules hearing before the Board of Mental Health Practice, Nebraska Catholic Conference executive director Jim Cunningham proposed a “convictions of conscience” rule for psychologists. The Lincoln Journal Star reports that he warned that Catholic Charities in Omaha and Catholic Social Services in Lincoln might have to stop hiring licensed counselors and psychologists if they are not protected by the law. The Lincoln agency provides about $100,000 in free mental health services. ...

The Nebraska Catholic Conference has also argued for conscience protections for social workers and marriage and family therapists.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, Marriage, Nebraska, professional associations, religion

posted by Eve at 6:29 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...My wife and I now have two sons who are both less than 10 years old. Sameera is relentless in asking them to pick up after themselves and help around the house. Recently, she confronted me on my slovenly habits. “You are setting them a bad example,” she said. “If they don’t see you doing any work in the house, they will never take my words seriously.”

It is true that I don’t help much in the house. Not, I am fairly certain, out of any male chauvinistic tendencies but out of simple laziness and my greater capacity to overlook dirty socks and strewn cushions than my wife. “Why get stressed about it?” I said. “They will learn to clean their houses when they need to.”

“You were lucky,” my wife said. “Your parents found a bride for you without you having to lift a finger. My sons won’t have that luxury. They have to find girls on their own, and they will find it difficult to attract good women if they don’t have clean homes.”

My poor sons. How the world has changed. Their mother teaches them to cook and vacuum the house so they can get wives. My mother found me a wife so I wouldn’t have to cook and clean. On the other hand, they, unlike me, will (I hope) have many girlfriends through their teenage years and play the field through their 20s before they each settle down with a wonderful woman.

Most American couples know a lot about each other before they tie the knot. They’ve been on dates, fallen in love, fought, made up, had sex and, most probably, even lived together before going down the aisle.

Our story, of course, is different. That 45-minute meeting was our only contact before we were husband and wife. We went to movies and the beach, fought over important and trivial things, made up and fell in love — all after our wedding.

“How could you marry somebody you did not know?” is a common question that many people have asked us in the West.

The slow discovery of another person and the unraveling of layers of mystery are part of the fun of arranged marriage. This has to be true of all marriages — the husband of five years is not the caring bridegroom, and the mother of a cranky 2-year-old is not the ecstatic bride.

Labels: arranged marriage, India, Marriage

posted by Eve at 7:52 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: beyond marriage, culture, gay marriage, government interest in marriage, Marriage

posted by Eve at 2:19 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: cohabitation, Marriage, National Marriage Project

posted by Eve at 8:56 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A top constitutional law professor who served as a surrogate for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama told CNSNews.com that he would like to see “marriage” replaced in the legal sense with a neutral “civil license.”

“As awkward as it may be, I think the way to untie the state from this problem is to create a new terminology that they would apply to everyone--straight or gay--call it a ‘civil license,’ said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University and author of “Can a Catholic Support Him?’

“The net effect of that, would be to turn over--quite appropriately, it seems to me, the concept of marriage to churches and a church understanding,” Kmiec said.

Kmiec said that one of the things that motivated the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman, “was a genuine concern on the part of religious believers--including myself--that the previous California ruling was not addressing what that would mean for religious practice.”

“After the state of California acknowledged same-sex marriage, would that mean, for example, that churches like the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church, which don’t acknowledge those relationships as a marriage by virtue of their scriptural and theological teaching--would they be subject to penalty? Would they lose public benefits? Would they be subject to lawsuits based upon some theory of discrimination?” Kmiec said his idea would address those questions.

“One of the possible outcomes that would be good in this case, would be if the state got out of the marriage business, did their licensing under a different name--which, of course, would satisfy the state’s interests for purposes of distribution of taxation and
property, but then the question of who can and cannot be married would be entirely determined in your voluntarily chosen faith community.

“We know that religions differ as to how they see that question,” Kmiec said. “But it
seems to me that would be a nice way to reaffirm the significance of marriage as a religious concept--because that is a much fuller concept than just civil marriage.” ...

But Princeton University law professor Robert George, who is also a top constitutional scholar--and a Catholic academic--said that Kmiec’s idea would do away with the public role of marriage--and banish it to the religious “ghetto.”

Labels: beyond marriage, civil unions, gay marriage, government interest in marriage, Marriage, religion, religious liberty

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:58 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT