SSM Update: Sweden's Govt. Enables Lutheran SSM

I can't really figure this one out, as it seems to involved a change in law. Perhaps it is that if pastors in churches perform same-sex ceremonies, the government will recognize them, regardless of whether the Lutheran Church does?:

"Church weddings for gays soon a reality in Sweden
June 28, 2007 (EST)


"If the so-called "gender neutral" marriage legislation is adopted, the Scandinavian country would become the first in the world to allow gays to marry within a major church.

Other countries only allow gays to hold civil ceremonies.

Sweden's current law from 1987 defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. The new law would strike any reference to gender. While heterosexuals can currently marry in either a civil ceremony or a church ceremony, homosexuals are only allowed to register their partnerships in a civil ceremony.

"I think it would be great if the Swedish law passed. In changing the law everybody could be equal in the eyes of the law," Soeren Andersson of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights told AFP.

"It's a kind of a revolution in a way. Because when you look at the big Swedish Church, if you would have asked it five years ago it would probably have said 'no we would not accept this'," he added.

The Lutheran Church, which was separated from the state in 2000, has since January 2007 offered gays a religious blessing of their union. Some pastors are ready to go further and marry gay couples.

"If today we are blessing homosexuals, I see no reason not to celebrate gay marriages," pastor Arne Wikstroem of the Oscars parish in central Stockholm said. "I think all people are equal before God. And no man is unholy or unblessed. We are all equal and all need God's blessings in our lives," he said. "If God has created people as homosexuals, we must accept them and we must bless them," he added.

On the political side, six of the seven parties represented in parliament have indicated that they are in favour of gay weddings. They are now pressuring the centre-right government to push through the new legislation.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, of the conservative Moderate Party, is in favour of a new law though some members of his party are against it. The Christian Democrats, a junior member of the coalition, is the only party firmly opposed.

. . .The Lutheran Church, which has 7.2 million members out of a population of 9.1 million, said in an initial reaction that it preferred the term "marriage" be reserved for heterosexual unions. It also said it wanted pastors to be free to choose whether or not to perform a gay marriage ceremony.

However, the Church has yet to take a definitive stand on the issue.
"The official state report is right now under consideration. There will be an answer from the Church during the late autumn," Church spokeswoman Annika Sjoeqvist Platzer told AFP.

In the meantime, pastors say they have not been flooded with requests from gays for religious blessings of their civil unions, since most gay couples prefer to wait and see if a new marriage law will enter into force in January."

posted by maggie at 8:26 PM | Link |  

Lawler/Creighton and the Catholic Church Part Ways over Premarital Cohabitation

A small story for most folks but of interest to those of us in the old marriage movement:

"Archbishop calls CU professors' essay contrary to Catholic doctrine
BY MATTHEW HANSEN
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

After spending years together preparing Roman Catholic couples for marriage, the Omaha Archdiocese and Creighton University's family ministry center are getting divorced.

The grounds: A dispute over premarital sex.

Michael Lawler, director of the Creighton Center for Marriage and Family, was co-author of an essay in U.S. Catholic magazine that says unmarried Catholic couples should have the option of living together if they plan to get married.

In the June issue, Lawler and co-author Gail Risch wrote: "Our experience with young adults leads us to doubt the claim that they are living in sin. It would appear closer to the truth that they are growing, perhaps slowly but nonetheless surely, into grace."

Archbishop Elden F. Curtiss wrote a response to the magazine, denouncing the article as contrary to Catholic doctrine and said neither Lawler nor Risch is a reliable theologian. Lawler is professor emeritus of Catholic theology at Creighton and Risch an instructor of ethics.

"Because the position of the authors is contrary to church teaching about the intrinsic evil of fornication, I have disassociated the Omaha Archdiocese from the Center for Marriage and Family at Creighton University," Curtiss wrote.

Thus ends a relationship that had previously worked together to study marriage preparation and sexual education.The Omaha Archdiocese is considered a national leader in premarital counseling. FOCCUS, a marriage preparation inventory developed by the archdiocese's Family Life Office, is widely used nationally and internationally by both Catholics and Protestants.

Creighton's Center for Marriage and Family has conducted a study to evaluate the effectiveness of FOCCUS and deemed it an effective program. The center also issued a report on the archdiocese's adult sexual education program, according to the Creighton Web site.

The Rev. Joseph Taphorn, chancellor of the Omaha Archdiocese, said the rift shouldn't affect the archdiocese's overall relationship with Creighton, a Jesuit-run university.

Taphorn declined to say whether Curtiss had discussed the essay or his subsequent letter to the editor with the Rev. John Schlegel, Creighton president.
The letter was sort of simply notifying the public that we're (the archdiocese) not responsible for this, putting people on notice that this is not something we stand behind," Taphorn said. "We disagree with the work."

. . .A Creighton spokeswoman said the university "respects the academic freedom of its faculty to dialogue on societal issues."

"However, we also recognize that the archbishop has the final say (in the archdiocese) with regard to the moral theology of the Catholic Church," said Deb Daley, the spokeswoman.

In the article, Lawler and Risch say their proposal reflects Catholic tradition. They noted that in the 13th and 14th centuries couples were often first betrothed — a mutual consent to spend the rest of their lives together — before they were actually married.

"The first sexual intercourse between the spouses usually followed the betrothal — a fact of the Catholic tradition that has been obscured by the now-taken-for-granted sequence of wedding, marriage, sexual intercourse," Lawler and Risch wrote.They called for a modern-day betrothal, marked by a public ceremony in which the man and woman agree to marry in the future. Then the couple could live together and have sexual relations if they chose. Then the couple would marry.

This process would bring the Catholic Church more in line with today's social norms, Lawler and Risch wrote, saying about 5 million unmarried couples already live together in the United States.

"Such a process would meet the legitimate Catholic and social requirement that the sex act must take place only within a stable relationship," they wrote.

No it wouldn't, Curtiss wrote in his letter to U.S. Catholic. The issue is crystal clear, he said: "Couples who live together without marriage do in fact live in sin objectively." . . ."

posted by maggie at 10:20 AM | Link |  

U.K. Marriages Fall to All-Time Low/Civil Union stats

From the June 28, 2007 (U.K.) Telegraph:

"Marriages fall to all-time low

The number of marriages in England and Wales has slumped dramatically to the lowest level on record.

Provisional figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a 10 per cent fall to 244,710 weddings in 2005.

The drop - which followed three years of increases in numbers getting hitched - coincided with a Home Office crackdown on "sham marriages" by immigrants. Rules were changed in February 2005 to make it more difficult for non-Europeans to win the right to stay in Britain by staging a fake wedding. . .

But analysis of the statistics suggests the short-lived rise in the number of marriages - when there was a noticeable jump from 249,000 in 2002 to 273,000 in 2004 - may have been driven by sham couples.

Crucially, the number of marriages taking place in ethnically-diverse London fell by a staggering 35 per cent between 2004 and 2005, the ONS said.

. . .The proportion of marriages which were religious ceremonies showed a continued decline in 2005, the ONS said.For the first time, fewer marriages were held in churches and other religious institutions (numbering 84,400) than in "approved premises" such as stately homes and hotels, which are now allowed to conduct civil ceremonies (88,710). The remainder of the 244,710 overall total took place in a register office.

Separate ONS figures showed there were 18,000 civil partnerships between gay couples between December 2005 - when the form of "gay marriage" was introduced - and December last year. Two-thirds of all civil partnerships were male.

The ONS said 10 per cent of men and 24 per cent of women entering a civil partnership had previously been married."

posted by maggie at 8:42 AM | Link |  

SSM Update Massachussetts: IV with Christine Canavan

"Rep. Christine Canavan on the MA gay marriage vote
by Laura Kiritsy
Bay Windows
Thursday Jun 28, 2007

Having resisted efforts to be lobbied by the state's most powerful political leaders, state Rep. Christine Canavan had largely been written off as a potential vote change by marriage equality activists early in the effort to defeat an anti-gay constitutional amendment. So the Brockton Democrat's "no" vote at the June 14 constitutional convention (ConCon) was a shocker for advocates on both sides of the issue, not to mention her husband of 38 years, Paul. In an interview with Bay Windows on June 20 Canavan, who serves as Second Division Chair in the House, spoke for the first time since last week's ConCon about how, after three years of voting the way she believed the majority of her district wanted her to, she decided to follow her conscience.

Her previous votes put her at odds with the LGBT community in the Brockton-Easton-West Bridgewater district she has represented since 1993 and Canavan conceded that the pressure she received from marriage equality advocates only steeled her resolve to continuously vote in favor of amending the constitution. Canavan, who was one of nine legislators whose change of heart sealed the amendment's defeat, expressed the hope that her vote last week is a step toward mending fences. Read on for Canavan's candid take on her decision to finally cast a vote in favor of marriage equality.

Q: What's it been like these past few days? I know that your vote surprised folks on both sides of the issue.
A: What's it been like the past few days? Well, actually, inside my own heart and soul it's been very peaceful. But I have stayed away from situations and I have not picked up the phone if the caller I.D. cannot identify who it is so that I can avoid the fringe elements of either side in order to just - oh, I don't know how to explain it. I never wanted to vote the way I had been the past several years. I had fully expected when the entire amendment came up way back three and a half years ago, that I was going to vote against it. Then my district started calling me about "Well, why can't I vote, why can't I vote?" And I was taken totally by surprise. I then called several people on my own whose opinions I respected who had been very helpful in the campaigns and found that there was a good amount of people who wanted to vote on it. So I did and every time I pressed the button I wasn't too happy.

And then the more flak I got from the families and the gays and lesbians themselves in my area - even though I don't fault them for it, because I would have been very upset if it had been me - but it just made me angry and so it kind of made me more steadfast and just continue to vote to put them on the ballot. No matter what the question was, as anyone can see from my record, it didn't matter what the question was. And then when this one came up here, it was the final vote. It was the vote that really meant something, that would actually have initiated something good or bad and it was just very anguishing for me. It was terrible. It was terrible.

Q: How so?
A: I didn't want to vote the way I had been and I believed to some extent - I'm not convinced - but I believe that enough time has gone by that most of my district is not as keen on seeing the question on the ballot. I don't know if that's true but I think that a lot of people - I think a lot of people feel, "Well who cares, just leave them all alone. Let everybody be." And I thought that maybe, well maybe I just haven't heard from [amendment supporters] because people expect me to vote a certain way. And then I just said, "The heck with it." And I had not decided truthfully how I was going to vote until late the night before.

Q: Oh my gosh.
A: Even as I walked into the chamber and sat down it was still very much to me, like, 'Oh my God.' And I've never hid anything from people in my life. This was one of the worst experiences of my life. ... I just wanted it over and I wanted my vote to be recorded as not wanting to put the state through any more of this. And just accepting the fact that people need to understand that nothing has changed [with gay marriage]. ... I also thought about how horrific, how absolutely horrific it would be next fall with any kind of campaign if this was a ballot question. It would be hateful, the fringe elements on both sides would make it hateful, children would be hearing all of this - [they] would be exposed to it. Those three days [of the 2004 constitutional convention] I went through in the beginning were awful enough and I didn't want to go through anything for months next year. And I kept thinking I have grandchildren ... now do I want my 5-year-old granddaughter - she's actually almost 6 - hearing this? Because I don't want them to grow up hating anybody for any reasons. ... There really is not one specific reason why I changed my vote. I know that it surprised people on both sides because I kept it close to the vest.

Q: I spoke with Sarah Peake after the vote and she said that she sits next to you-
A: She does.

Q: And she was so excited, she said you had tapped her on the shoulder -
A: Well, kind of. I didn't tap her on the shoulder. But I remember going in sitting down, and saying to Sarah, "Sarah, this must be very exciting for you to be able to vote on this." And she said, "I am more nervous now than I was when I got married." And so she voted and I didn't vote right away because it was a really big deal for me to turn around and change my vote like this. And I waited and I knew that I wanted to - I like Sarah very, very much and I wanted to make it important to her - and I reached over and I grabbed her, I held her forearm ... and I said, "Sarah, what color should I be?" and she kind of didn't know what I was saying and she just looked at me and I said, "Watch this," and I pressed the [red button]. She was just ecstatic. ... She had spoken to me before and she knew that I had no problem with gay marriage whatsoever and that it was mostly a district thing that was just tearing my guts out. But I wanted it to mean something to her and so that's how it really happened. ... And then I remember she gave me this huge hug and she was jumping up and down and hootin' and hollerin.' She was watching to see how the numbers would come out and then she was jumping up and down. So it was you know, I gotta tell ya, I don't know if I sealed my defeat in the election next year or not, but what the heck.

Q: So far no one who has supported gay marriage has been defeated. Do you find consolation in that?
A: A little bit. But you know, it has to be proven to me for my [district]. Understand I'm not a lawyer, I'm not an insurance agent that happens to be in the legislature. I'm a registered nurse and for me, my fundraisers are $15 spaghetti suppers. And I don't have, $100,000 or $150,000 or whatever people who have fundraisers do so I always worry that there's going to be someone so well-financed that they're just going to be able to buy the election. And I don't know for sure, I know that there are many people in my district who have no problem with gay marriage at all and they wanted to vote. Then I know there's many people who have no problem at all and don't want to vote. And I don't know how many are silent just so they don't engender an argument [who] might go in the ballot box and vote against putting a change in the constitution. So I don't really know those numbers.

During the process my district was targeted [by MassEquality canvassers] and people went around and knocked on doors and asked to call me to change my vote. I sometimes got - not tens and twenties, maybe less than 10 - but I would get some phone calls back from people who would say, "I only made that call because someone was standing there and dialed the phone and handed it to me." You know a few like that. And that kind of bothered me a little bit, that people actually wanted to call me back and tell me that they actually wanted it on the [ballot]. I don't know - it's been an extremely strange time.

Q: Did you consult with other folks in the legislature or your constituents? It sounds like you made this decision on your own.
A: I rely heavily on my husband. My husband is actually extremely astute about all things political and he can see - like that old saying goes - "the pulse of the people" because he belongs to so many clubs in the area and he's so active, whether it's the VFW, or the French Club or the White Eagles or the Italian Bocci Club or whatever [laughs]. When he hears people talking - and I'll tell you it's amazing when you go to those places and you hear people, what they're talking about is basically a good [way] to figure if the rest of the district is [feeling] the same way. And I asked him, "I said what are you hearing?" He says, "People just aren't talking about it the way they used to." He said, "You'll always have your haters." And I drove the poor guy crazy for two weeks, so finally he said to me, "You have to stop anguishing about this and just make a decision about what you're going to do and do it. And I talked to a very dear friend, John Walsh, I've known him - God, it's got to be 15 or 20 years - I asked him what as the new chairman of the Democratic Party what he's hearing out there, what are their polling numbers. I did consult him on that. I talked to my son Derek, my oldest son, he's always good to bounce things off of. He's a history teacher in the city. And I raised both my kids to be very .. street smart and I raised them to be very tolerant of everyone and everything, so they're good to talk to. And I called my other son. And [State Rep.] Tom Kennedy, in the legislature, he's the only one of our delegation that actually voted [against the amendments] - it was a brief pass-by type thing. ... My father, but my father - it's a generational thing, he's 84 and the people he hangs with [Laughs] ... they really wanted to vote. I talked to a priest who calls me all the time, and, amazingly, he told me, rather than asking me point blank to vote to put it on the ballot, he basically did not ask me that this time. ... He basically said to me, "Christine vote your conscience."

Q: Oh wow.
A: And that surprised me, not that he would have swayed me because he basically called me, I didn't call him, but I took the opportunity to talk to him. Then I basically [thought], I just can't have my vote - I didn't know what the vote was, I didn't know if it was going to pass or not pass and I didn't want my vote to be that one vote that could have put something on the ballot that would have done this to people.

Q: Everyone talks about how influential the governor and the House speaker were, but did you talk to them?
A: We talked, yup. Actually even Therese Murray, very briefly she caught me. Well we've been friends, Senate President Murray and I have been friends [since] we both came in together in 93 and we both covered the town of West Bridgewater, so we campaigned at the same time. She stopped me at a dinner and asked me if she could talk to me but we didn't we never did talk because I told her no, that I couldn't at that point in time. This was very early. Then the speaker was looking for me but I didn't return his phone calls for a couple of days. And the governor wanted to meet with me and I had all sorts of offers to meet with the governor. And I kept saying no, I didn't need to meet with the governor to make up my mind. And eventually on that last morning I did call and I said, "You know I do think I'd like to talk to him for just a minute. I wanted to find out what he experienced polling-wise - I mean he just ran for governor of the entire state, so he should have some idea of how the public feels. And I wanted to know that, I wanted some more confirmation to hear that.

But no nobody swayed me because nobody had to - it wasn't as if someone had to convince me about civil rights or about whether it's okay for gay marriage or anything else. I don't have a problem with that and I never have. It was ... representing my district and voting the way the majority of my district wanted [me to]. And I do think ... the majority is not as polarized on this as they used to be. So I felt comfortable changing my vote somewhat but it was still one of those things that I just don't know whether I am going to now pull a very right-wing fringe candidate running against me who could be financed, and I am not financed. Time will tell. I don't want to not get re-elected. I have some good pieces of legislation that I'm fighting for and I want to still be there to fight for them. My grandson has PKU [Phenylketonuria, a genetic disorder] for example, and I'm fighting for some PKU pieces and I would dearly love to be there. I would not like to not win the election and thereby not be there to fight for those.

Q: Are you worried?
A: I feel a little good about having voted the way I would have voted four years ago if my district had not asked me - the majority so to speak had not said what's wrong with letting us vote. You know Laura, in my district I have some large senior citizens housing complexes. One of them actually has over 300 apartments and it actually also is a polling place when there's voting. So they don't even have to get in a car, they just have to walk out of their apartment and walk downstairs and I heard a lot from people there who wanted just the right to vote. But I don't really think - I'll find out when I go there for office hours, if people start saying things to me, but I don't know.

I'm glad it's over. I'm just thoroughly glad it's over. ... I just couldn't understand creating three classes of people [married straight people, married gay people and banned-from-marrying gay people]. And I said that for the longest time. I just can't imagine how [the amendment] would have passed constitutional muster, how it would have passed the Supreme Court, I just can't imagine. I think it would have been immediately challenged if it had passed next fall. And I think it would have been suspended until the Supreme Court looked at it. I don't know how you could have three classes of people.

Q: Do you have any idea what your constituents think about your vote?
A: I got a nasty call on Father's Day. I picked up the phone because I had company coming and I figured that the "unknown" [on the caller I.D.] was one of the people coming. And I picked up the phone and it was a fellow. And he said to me, "Is this Christine Canavan?" And I said, "Yes it is." And he said, "That was a good vote you took the other day." And I said, "Well, thank you." And he said, "You're a disgrace to every father in the state of Massachusetts. And then I just kept saying, "Thank you," and he continued on. I said, "Thank you," and he continued and I said, "Thank you. And surprisingly that call didn't bother me."

Q: Really.
A: It didn't bother me. I was quite surprised and finally I kept saying to him, "What's your name? What's your name?" but he wouldn't tell me his name. And finally he said, "My name is Bill Votes." And I said, "What's your real name?" Finally I laid the phone down on the couch until the guy hung up and gave up because I wasn't going to hang up on him. But I said to my husband, "I can't believe he doesn't bother me; this doesn't bother me."

Q: That's creepy.
A: Yeah. Yeah.

Q: Did anyone in the leadership know how you were going to vote?
A: [On the day of the vote] I went to the speaker's office and told him how I was leaning. I am part of leadership and I wanted him to know that because I owe it to him. But the governor had no idea what I was doing. I left the governor's office not having told him what I would or wouldn't do.

Q: Did you purposely dodge the meeting with Senate President Murray?
A: No she never asked for one. We were at a dinner and she asked if she could talk to me and I said, "Terry you can talk to me about anything, what?" And then she brought [the amendment] up and I said, "No, I don't want to talk about that. I just can't talk about it. I can't talk about it anymore, it rips the guts out of me every time someone wants to talk to me about it."

So she said, we're friends [and that] she understood and it was no problem. And she stepped back and I appreciated that and I will always appreciate that.

But the day of the vote, I'm coming in [to the State House] and I'm very leery about somebody stopping me in the hallway as I'm coming from my car to my office. And I see three people walking real fast towards me that I don't recognize and I stepped aside from my door thinking they could go in and maybe they didn't know who I was. And I said, "Go ahead go on in," and they followed me when I walked away from my door [laughs]. And I actually put my hand up to push them away and I said, "I don't want to talk about gay marriage. Get away from me I don't want to talk about it. It was Ed Sullivan from the Mass. Teacher's Association. I had no idea. And he said, No, no, no. I just want to tell you that you have our support if you decide to change your vote. And I realized he wasn't someone that was hostile. I wasn't sure you know? [laughs.] And I let him come in the office and I said, "Thank you." But I also said to him, "Ed I don't know what I'm going to do. I know what I'm leaning. I know what I want to do, but I don't know what I'm going to do." And the first person actually who knew what I was going to do was Sarah Peake.

Q: Are you kidding me?
A: No. My husband didn't know. Nobody knew. I said to my husband, "I think I'm going to vote for everything that I want, that I think is right and in the best interest of everybody in the district, and if I'm going to not get re-elected next year then I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory." [laughs.] Might as well, you know? Might as well.

Q: Anything else you want to add?
A: For all the anger and all the very, very rude and cruel and what-have-you type e-mails that I received from both sides - I don't really hold it against anybody some of the horrific things that were said to me. I understand the passion behind it. What I would like to say though to anybody is that I hope that they will look at this final vote, because it was the only one that really counted, and that they will once again talk to me. You know what I mean? Because a lot of people are my friends and I just hope that I haven't - I hope this final vote, the vote that actually counted and meant something and the fact that I have took it totally risking whether or not I would get re-elected, that they would, I don't know, forgive me, I guess."
posted by maggie at 8:34 AM | Link |  

US CATHOLIC BISHOPS: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR YOUR MARRIAGE TODAY?"

via this blogger:

Coming soon to a diocese near you (Austin is one of the first), is an advertising campaign from the US Bishops asking the question, "what have you done for your marriage today?"

I like the idea, but I am glad they are doing a full blitz, but rather testing markets to see how it received.

The website is very well done with practical and theological parts to it (though some parts are incomplete). Check it out. There are some good TV spots that will air in some parts of the country soon.

link
posted by Eve at 10:56 PM | Link |  

Taking a Break From Comments

This is not a decision prompted bby anyone's post. I'm feeling in need of a break. Most likely, I'll eventually bring back comments. IN the meantime, in the comments section on this post, those of you who want to continuethe conversation can post the URLs on which you can find one another.
posted by maggie at 9:24 PM | Link | 6 comments  

FEWER PEOPLE ARE STARTING THEIR OWN HOUSEHOLDS: Wall Street Journal economics blog

Worries about the economy could be discouraging people from living on their own. Household formation, measured by the increase in housing units occupied by owners or renters, took a huge drop in the first quarter. If the pace holds, it could mean trouble for a housing market already facing high inventories and falling prices.

Households had been forming at a pace of about a million a year, but that has dropped more than half in the first quarter. At the end of the period the total number of households stood at 109.7 million, an increase of just 415,000 from a year earlier, according to the Census Bureau.

The pace of formation typically declines during economic slowdowns. So the latest drop is surprising amid a strong job market, rising wages, record household wealth and a stock market near record levels, said Lawrence Yun, senior economist at the National Association of Realtors.

more
posted by Eve at 7:41 PM | Link | 0 comments  

REVIEW OF "PUSHED: THE PAINFUL TRUTH ABOUT CHILDBIRTH AND MODERN MATERNITY CARE"

here
posted by Eve at 8:18 PM | Link | 0 comments  

Masssachusetts Catholic Church Launches New Campaign for Marriage

No, it has nothing to do with the SSM vote:

Catholic Church pressing nuptials
New campaign goes statewide
By Brian R. Ballou, Boston Globe | June 24, 2007
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/06/24/catholic_church_pressing_nuptials/

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley has launched a campaign in which Catholic priests across the state will promote marriage through sermons and postings on bulletin boards and lead prayers for the institution's survival.

The unusual effort, which will include the printing of a million prayer cards for distribution to parishioners, comes in response to a what church officials say is a crisis in which fewer men and women are getting married.

. . .But a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston said the Church's push has little to do with the vote and had been in the works for months.

"The decline of marriage has been over a very long stretch, and it's been something that has been a deep concern in the church for a very long time," spokesman Terrence C. Donilon said yesterday.

In a blog item posted on the archdiocese's website on Friday, O'Malley said, "In our country, more and more people are opting not to get married but instead to cohabitate. In Massachusetts, the government has redefined marriage away from its original purpose, which is so intimately connected with having and raising children.
"Certainly, the vocation to marriage, which is the way most people live out their discipleship, is something that is very, very important. And it certainly is being obscured in our modern and secular culture," he wrote. ". . .We hope this campaign will help people to refocus on the sacramental meaning of marriage."

The campaign will also include an educational program in the fall with video presentations and speakers, including married couples, focusing on the sacrament of marriage. That program is expected to continue for at least a year, church officials said.

Church officials said the campaign would also be launched in the Worcester, Fall River, and Springfield dioceses.

From 1986 to 2006, the number of Catholic marriages recorded in the Archdiocese of Boston has plummeted, from 12,274 to 4,519, about a 60 percent decline , church officials said.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the number of marriages in Massachusetts has dropped in recent years, too -- from 47,696 in 1990 to 39,074 in 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is in the midst of a multi year National Pastoral Initiative on Marriage to respond to the declines, the archdiocese said.
"We're clearly concerned in the Catholic Church that the whole state of families is being redefined, and the ruling last week was very unfortunate. But this is something that is larger than the debate that's currently going on," said Donilon. '
Edward Saunders, executive director of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Church, said a million prayer cards were recently printed, and up to 800,000 would be distributed in the coming weeks in Catholic churches and communities in the state.

Saunders said the prayer "asks for the Lord's help and intercession in helping individuals recognize the importance of the vocation of matrimony and . . . for His help in the challenges that they may encounter in this vocation."

About 18 months ago, the conference's family life and pro-life subcommittee began talking about the need to focus on boosting marriage. The committee decided to launch the effort on the day that commemorates the Feast of St. Thomas More , a married man who cherished the vocation of marriage. On Friday, the Rev. Richard Erikson, vicar general of the archdiocese, gave a sermon discussing the importance of marriage. During the Mass, the first few dozen prayer cards were passed out. "The need for all this is identified by the statistics," Saunders said. "The trend is going in the opposite direction to what everyone would want, and our hope is to make people stop and think about the importance of marriage in our society."

The campaign is the most intensive since a 1999 effort, called "In Support of Life," intended to rally parishioners against assisted suicide, Saunders said.

Carisa Cunningham , a spokeswoman for Gay and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders in New England , said, "The political process has come to an end, and we will be living with same-sex marriage for the foreseeable future, so it is hard to see what impact this would have outside the church. We do consider marriage an important ingredient to strong communities. . . ."

posted by maggie at 4:56 PM | Link | 1 comments  

New Study: Sex American Style

One-quarter of American women have had no more than one sexual partner their whole life and 15 percent of Americans abstain from sex until they are at least 21. From the AP story June 23, 2007:

Survey documents sexual activity of US adults

By David Crary, Associated Press | June 23, 2007

NEW YORK -- A new nationwide survey, using high-tech methods to solicit candid answers on sexual activity and illegal drug use, finds that 29 percent of American men report having 15 or more female sexual partners in a lifetime, while only 9 percent of women report having sex with 15 or more men.
The median number of lifetime female sexual partners for men was seven; the median number of male partners for women was four. The survey, released yesterday, is based on data collected from 1999 to 2002 for the National Center for Health Statistics, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. . .

This time, data was gathered from 6,237 adults, aged 20 to 59, in what are called computer-assisted self-interviews -- a method designed to provide complete privacy and produce more honest answers. "This is the first time we've used this technique," said Dr. Kathryn Porter, who served as medical officer for the survey. "The participants have a headset on, they hear questions, they touch the screen with responses. There's no one else in the room and they can take as long as they want."


. . .Other findings
About 96 percent of US adults have had sex.

Sixteen percent of adults first had sex before age 15, while 15 percent abstained from sex until at least age 21.

The proportion of adults who first had sex before age 15 was highest for non-Hispanic blacks (28 percent) compared with 14 percent for both Mexican-Americans and non-Hispanic whites.

Six percent of blacks abstained from sex until age 21 or older, fewer than Mexican-Americans (17 percent) or non-Hispanic whites (15 percent).

Black men and women were more likely to report having 15 or more partners in a lifetime (46 percent and 13 percent, respectively) than other racial or ethnic groups.

Seventeen percent of men and 10 percent of women reported having two or more sexual partners in the past year.

Twenty-five percent of women and 17 percent of men reporting having no more than one partner of the other sex in their lifetime."

posted by maggie at 4:51 PM | Link | 0 comments  

Steinfels: "A Liberal Explains Why He Opposes SSM"

A Liberal Explains His Rejection of Same-Sex Marriage
By PETER STEINFELS, NYT

Could legalizing same-sex marriage actually strengthen marriage as a social institution? “If I could believe this,” writes David Blankenhorn, “I would support gay marriage without reservation.”

Mr. Blankenhorn is a self-described liberal Democrat and “marriage nut,” a veteran leader in the movement to strengthen marriage, and especially fatherhood, in the United States.

His book, “The Future of Marriage,” published last month by Encounter Books, explains why he doesn’t believe same-sex marriage will serve that cause. But given the charged nature of the subject, his book may also set a record for optimism about the human capacity for rational discussion.

Mr. Blankenhorn, who opposes same-sex marriage, believes that the national debate about the issue can be rescued from the polarized clash of gut reactions, religious injunctions, emotional appeals and accusations of bigotry. He even believes the debate could provide “an invaluable opportunity for Americans to have a serious national discussion about marriage’s meaning and future.”

The problem with that debate until now, as he sees it, is that “almost always, the main focus is ‘gay,’ not ‘marriage.’ ”

Mr. Blankenhorn cites what he calls the “wafer-thin” definitions of marriage that increasingly turn up in court decisions and polemical articles about same-sex ties: “a unique expression of a private bond and profound love”; “a private arrangement between parties committed to love”; “the exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other.”

Some of this commitment talk sounds sweet, and some of it, like “committed, interdependent partnerships between consenting adults,” sounds more like a real estate transaction than a marriage. But for Mr. Blankenhorn, these definitions miss the point. He is amused, for instance, at their neo-Victorian avoidance of any mention of sex. Similarly, these definitions dodge any mention of children and parenthood. They emphasize marriage as private and too diverse (“unique”) to be pinned down.

On the contrary, Mr. Blankenhorn writes, marriage is a “social institution,” a set of shared understandings and public meanings that shape expectations and conduct. Marriage has evolved and, yes, may be “constantly evolving”; here Mr. Blankenhorn moves through biology, prehistory, history and anthropology, from ancient Mesopotamia to the Trobriand Islands. But marriage fundamentally involves sexual intercourse and the affiliation — emotionally, practically and legally — between any child created and both parents.

“If this book had a subtitle,” Mr. Blankenhorn writes, “it would be ‘An Argument About Institutions.’ ” He captures his ideas of marriage as an institution with a quotation from a wedding sermon that the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer sent to a young couple from his Nazi prison cell. Bonhoeffer, soon to be executed for his role in a plot against Hitler, wrote, “It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

Mr. Blankenhorn readily admits that the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage that he fears — the redefinition of what he considers the nation’s “most pro-child institution” as a private adult relationship stripped of public meaning — has been under way for a long time. Deeply rooted in American individualism and the quest for self-fulfillment, that redefinition “has been growing for decades, propagated overwhelmingly by heterosexuals.” Same-sex marriage only further erodes marriage as a pro-child institution, he believes.

Mr. Blankenhorn wishes it weren’t so. Unlike many other opponents of same-sex marriage, he explicitly recognizes the rights and needs of gay men and lesbians to be respected and accepted and to form “loving, stable partnerships.”

The debate is not “a simple issue of good versus bad,” he writes. “The real conflict is between one good and another: the equal dignity of all persons and the worth of homosexual love, versus the flourishing of children. On each side, the threat to something important is real. It wastes everyone’s time to pretend that this question is an easy one, and that only bad people can fail to see the right answer.”

Is this conflict really as inescapable as Mr. Blankenhorn believes? Jonathan Rauch, for one, doubts it, as the title of his book, “Gay Marriage: Why It is Good for Gays, Good for Straights and Good for America,” suggests. In his book, published by Times Books in 2004, Mr. Rauch argues that legalizing same-sex marriage will actually “shore up marriage’s unique but eroding status.”

“How I wish he were right!” Mr. Blankenhorn replies. He contrasts Mr. Rauch’s views with those of numerous social scientists and legal theorists who have long been critics of marriage and now suddenly support same-sex marriage precisely because they believe it will destabilize and “deconstruct” what they consider an oppressive institution.

At this point, one wonders whether academic ideology and legal theory aren’t upstaging the lived experiences of gay and lesbian couples. But as long as the movement for same-sex marriage takes place largely in the courts rather than legislatures (New York could prove to be a significant exception), academic ideology and legal theory will inevitably weigh heavily.

Meanwhile, Mr. Blankenhorn hopes his book will stimulate “a better conversation” between opponents and proponents of same-sex marriage. In a phone interview Thursday, he said his own recognition of “many good reasons to support gay marriage” had been matched by some proponents’ recognition of “legitimate reasons to be concerned” and that, therefore, “being opposed to gay marriage is not necessarily the expression of bigotry.”

“Anything that causes an interesting new conversation where both sides recognize the validity of some of the other side’s concerns,” he said, “who knows, maybe an interesting new dynamic could emerge.”

In fact, “The Future of Marriage” may have much to say to many others who, like Mr. Blankenhorn, oppose same-sex marriage. It could be profitably read, for example, by the many conservative allies, especially religious ones, that Mr. Blankenhorn has earned through his work on behalf of strengthening the family.

His book does not explicitly address these allies, some of whom have been as adamant in declaring support for same-sex marriage morally unthinkable as supporters have been adamant in treating opposition as reactionary. “I didn’t want to start finger-pointing and set myself up as an arbiter of who is a bigot,” Mr. Blankenhorn said. “I wanted to model a different way of arguing.”

That way of arguing concludes with his own list of proposals, including government assistance, not for fighting same-sex marriage but simply for strengthening marriage as an institution.

“To the degree that it makes any sense to oppose gay marriage,” he writes, “it makes sense only if one also opposes with equal clarity and intensity the other main trends pushing our society toward post-institutional marriage.”
posted by maggie at 3:00 PM | Link | 15 comments