PREGNANTSOMETHINGS: Slate review of "Notes from the Underbelly"

Babies: the scariest status symbols?
posted by Eve at 11:51 PM | Link | 0 comments

The blog Child of Divorce/Child of God

...has a lot of great posts up.

Everybody gets divorced (everyone I know/goes away in the end)

ten ways to help a child of divorce in your life

new children's books on divorce

Or you could just read her every day.
posted by Eve at 11:43 PM | Link | 0 comments

ARIZONA HOUSE BILL THAT WOULD DENY CUSTODY TO POLYGAMISTS IS DEAD: Mojave Daily News

here
posted by Eve at 11:41 PM | Link | 0 comments

SSM Update: CT House Judiciary Committee Passes SSM Bill

Story here.
posted by maggie at 4:25 PM | Link | 0 comments

Same-Sex Conception: Scientists Seek Ethical Approval in U.K.

In case any of you do not read Drudge, from the April 13 U.K. Independent:

"Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today.

Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue.

The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm. . ."

posted by maggie at 9:12 PM | Link | 13 comments

Just When You Thought

Everyone was tired of the Mommy Wars. . .The Feminine Mistake comes out swinging. (Funny thing was I recall in the 80s wanting to write a book called "The Feminist Mistake" another play off of The Feminine Mystique, about orthodox feminism's derogatory view of motherhood. . . Or was that Mona Charen?)
posted by maggie at 4:54 PM | Link | 2 comments

Are Same-Sex Couples More Stable?

Psychology Today recently claimed so (arguing couples were more attuned and less deceptive if gay), and Brad Wilcox points out nationally representative samples show same-sex couples are actually more likely to break up, and lesbians more than gay men. This is not what John Gottman found in his widely reported research. BUT, that just goes to affirm what ought to be self-evident that convenience samples, however large, cannot provide good scientific information on how the average person (gay, straight or child thereof), does.
posted by maggie at 11:13 AM | Link | 0 comments

Should Incest Be Legal?

Time magazine wonders.
posted by maggie at 11:04 AM | Link | 0 comments

Adoption Website Case

There have been some recent news stories on a recent federal court decision in a lawsuit brought by same-sex couples against a website offering adoption-related services. Although the decision was issued at the end of March, news coverage has been more recent.

The case involves a California same-sex couple who sought to have their profile added to a website dedicated to making available profiles of prospective adoptive parents. The Arizona company that runs the website had a policy of allowing only married opposite-sex couples to post profiles on their site, so they declined to post plaintiffs’ profile. The lawsuit followed alleging marital status and sexual orientation discrimination and both sides sought an early resolution.

The March 30 decision refused to end the lawsuit, instead leaving a number of issues to be decided (like whether there was sexual orientation discrimination) in a trial that will be scheduled later this month. The court held that there was probably a conflict between California and Arizona law on the discrimination claims. The court also held that failure to apply California law could defeat the purpose of that state’s discrimination statute (as applied to California customers) so the claims can still be made. Although the court would not allow the plaintiffs to seek damages it ruled they could still seek to force the website to change its policy.

The court also rejected the defendant’s claim that they were engaged in speech protected by the First Amendment. The court said that publishing “information written by prospective parents does not suffice to transform defendants’ discriminatory conduct into ‘speech itself.’” Even if it were speech, the court argued, California’s “interest in combating discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is compelling.”
posted by William Duncan at 3:03 PM | Link | 1 comments

Jennifer Roback Morse on The Future of Marriage

David Blankenhorn's new book. Here.
posted by maggie at 9:57 AM | Link | 1 comments

Japanese Matchmakers Fight Birth Dearth

Wade Horn used to like to say the President's new marriage initiative was not a federally subsidized matchmaking service. But in Japan, aqccording to this Reuters story. . .:

"Proud to be a busybody matchmaker, Juryo belongs to a 200-member women's group in Fukui which makes door-to-door visits to single people's homes in a bid to marry them off and raise the birth rate of the sleepy prefecture in western Japan.

Subsidized by the local government, the matchmakers have helped around 50 couples tie the knot in the past year. They are also credited with helping Fukui become the only one of Japan's 47 prefectures to raise its fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime -- in 2005, just as the nationwide count hit a record-low of 1.26.

Juryo's travails -- from knocking on doors to organizing matchmaking parties -- reflect the hurdles Japan faces turning its birth rate around in the face of a rapidly ageing population. Japan's population of around 128 million is set to decline in coming years as the number of elderly far exceed the number of births. Japan is home to the world's highest proportion of old people, with 20 percent of the total population aged 65 or older.

Shoko Mitsunari, the group's octogenarian head, says getting people to marry and have children is no easy task, an unthinkable situation when she was young and most women married by age 20.

``People need to know that if you don't marry and have kids, the country will simply die away,'' she said, tagging along on the matchmaking visits. ``It's not just a problem for the individual.''

posted by maggie at 9:51 AM | Link | 2 comments

DISNEY LEGALIZES SAME-SEX UNIONS: Jesse Walker

...This is why I don't buy what has been called the Hayekian argument against gay marriage, after F.A. Hayek, the economist and philosopher who celebrated social orders that emerge from below rather than being imposed from above. Jonathan Rauch—who doesn't buy the argument either—summed it up in a 2004 article for Reason. The position, he wrote, "warns of unintended and perhaps grave social consequences if, thinking we're smarter than our customs, we decide to rearrange the core elements of marriage. The current rules for marriage may not be the best ones, and they may even be unfair. But they are all we have, and you cannot re-engineer the formula without causing unforeseen results, possibly including the implosion of the institution itself."

My objection: Marriage isn't being re-engineered. It is evolving in an impeccably Hayekian fashion, as folkways appear on the ground and are gradually ratified by imitation, then market acknowledgement, and then, only lastly, by the law. For eons, same-sex couples have quietly lived as though they were married. As social mores changed and gays came out of the closet, so did those longtime-companion relationships. Before long, lovers were holding their own marriage ceremonies, which were not recognized by the government or (at first) by any established church but did carry weight with family, friends, and neighbors. Couples started to draw up marriage-like contracts, in an effort to establish rights privately that they couldn't acquire publicly. Businesses had to decide whether to extend benefits to gay spouses; with time, more and more did.

more
posted by Eve at 9:18 PM | Link | 10 comments

SSM Updates: California and Kansas

Arnold Schwarzenegger will apparently veto same-sex marriage bill if it passes the California legislature again. Meanwhile Kansas Attorney General has issued an opinion that the Kansas constituiont (which incoludes a state marriage amendment) does not bar cities from establishing domestic partnership registries for same-sex couples, story here.

The Kansas state marriage amendment reads:

"Marriage (a) The marriage contract is to be considered in law as a civil contract. Marriage shall be constituted by one man and one woman only. All other marriages are declared to be contrary to the public policy of this state and are void. (b) No relationship, other than a marriage, shall be recognized by the state as entitling the parties to the rights or incidents of marriage." Kansas Const. Art. 15, sec. 16 (2005)

posted by maggie at 12:58 PM | Link | 7 comments