SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico's governor said Wednesday he would not block a referendum to toughen a ban on same-sex marriage in the U.S. island territory even though he believes the proposed constitutional amendment is unnecessary and divisive.

Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila told reporters he would sign the bill authorizing a May referendum if the measure gets the required two-thirds majority of votes in the island's House of Representatives. It has already passed in the Senate...A vote has not yet been scheduled in the [House].

Resolution 99, as the measure is known, would amend the Puerto Rican constitution to establish that marriage is between a man and woman and that no other types of unions could be recognized as a marriage. It would make it harder in the future to allow civil unions or grant marital rights to unmarried couples...

posted by Imapp Staff at 12:47 PM | link

About eight in 10 black children in Indiana are born to unwed parents -- a start to life that sets them up for problems during adolescence and beyond, according to an Indiana Black Expo report [being released Friday]...

Child Trends, a nonpartisan national children's research organization, reports children born to single mothers are more likely to:

• Live in poverty and experience social and emotional problems.
• Have low educational attainment, engage in sex at younger ages and have a premarital birth.
• Enter adulthood neither in school nor employed, or have lower occupational status and income, and more troubled marriages and divorces than those born to married parents.

The issues that spin out of struggling single-parent families show up throughout the new Black Expo report, including the teen birth rate of 81 per 1,000 for blacks. That is almost twice the state's overall teen birth rate of 43.5 per 1,000.

About 35 percent of black children live in families headed by married parents, compared with 69 percent of all Indiana children, according to the report...

posted by Imapp Staff at 2:04 PM | link

Marriage isn’t what it used to be. Though divorce has declined from it’s peak, marriage certainly is no longer considered an unbreakable covenant. For millions of cohabiting couples, marriage seems optional, or distant. With gay and lesbian couples demanding their own nuptials, marriage isn’t even just for straight people anymore. Family is a crucial building block of a decent society, but marriage has always been at the center of family formation. If marriage-as-we-know-it is on the rocks, can the family, and society, be far behind?

Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage kicks off this month [at at Cato Unbound] with a learned lead essay ["The Future of Marriage"]. Reacting to Coontz, we’ve lined up the Manhattan Institute’s Kay Hymowitz ["The Marriage Gap"], author of Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age; economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania ["Marriage and the Market"]; and Norval Glenn ["Against Family Fatalism"], professor of sociology at the University of Texas...

The folks over at the libertarian-leaning CATO Institute have produced a debate over marriage that demands attention...

Rarely are such substantial essays found in such an accessible form...

[T]he essays taken together demonstrate the inevitable collision between conservative and libertarian worldviews...

posted by Imapp Staff at 9:50 AM | link

...[In an ad for the movie “Juno,” a character says that] the best you can do is find someone [to marry] who really loves you for who you are.

What wretchedly wrong advice! It captures the current marriage zeitgeist -- nothing more than the manifestation of love for however long that lasts, or doesn't...

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:54 AM | link

Living together is just as good as being married, even when it comes to bringing up children, British people now believe.

Fewer than a fifth of people think there is much difference between being married or living together and more than half (53 per cent) say that weddings are more about celebration than life-long commitment.

A comprehensive study of public opinion found that only 28 per cent think married couples make better parents than unmarried pairs and there is broad support for step-families, who are widely seen to be doing a good job. More than three quarters of the public believe that a mother and a stepfather could bring up a child just as well as two biological parents.

The research also discovered that most people think divorce is a normal part of life, with two thirds saying that it can be “a positive step towards a new life”. Even when children are involved divorce is no longer seen as a disaster, with 78 per cent of the public saying the end of a marriage in itself does not harm children, although conflict between parents does...

The findings, in this year’s annual survey of British Social Attitudes, helps to explain why the rate of marriage has plummeted to a 100-year low. The number of Britons choosing to get married fell to the lowest level in 111 years in 2005, when only 244,000 weddings took place...

posted by Imapp Staff at 12:09 PM | link

Steven L. Nock of Charlottesville died on Sunday, January 20, 2008, after a life-long battle with complications from diabetes.

A memorial service and reception will be held in Old Cabell Hall on the Lawn at the University of Virginia from 3 until 5 p.m. Saturday, January 26, 2008...

In lieu of flowers, charitable contributions may be made to Hospice of the Piedmont in Charlottesville, 2200 Old Ivy Rd., Suite 2, Charlottesville, VA 22903 or The Virginia Consort, 1658 Brandywine Dr., Charlottesville, VA 22901.

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:52 AM | link

CHARLESTON — Once again, a move is afoot in the House of Delegates to accord West Virginia voters a chance to define marriage as an act between one man and one woman...

Introduced early on in this session, the proposed Marriage Protection Amendment would prohibit the state from recognizing homosexual marriages and prohibit recognizing a legal status for relationships of similar nature.

The current law in force is the In Defense of Marriage Act, which recognizes marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman, but some legislators fear this could be overturned in the state Supreme Court...

posted by Imapp Staff at 3:31 PM | link

A Saudi couple had their marriage annulled without their knowledge after relatives complained that the woman had married beneath her.

Thanks to the bizarre ruling, the couple can no longer live together and [the lovelorn woman] says she will kill herself if King Abdullah does not grant an appeal and reunite her with her husband...

Saudi women have limited rights and can only marry with relatives' permission.

[The woman] got the go-ahead from her father to marry...but a half-brother wanted the marriage canceled because the groom was from a lesser tribe.

Even though they have two children, a judge ruled the couple couldn't be married - and cops tossed them in jail when they tried to live together anyway...

posted by Imapp Staff at 12:47 PM | link

Stockholm - As Sweden's centre-right government is wrestling with how to draft new legislation allowing same-sex couples the right to marry, a new poll published Monday suggested strong public support for the concept. A poll commissioned by the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper suggested 71 per cent favoured allowing same-sex couples to marry, 24 per cent were against while 6 per cent were undecided or doubtful.

Polling institute Sifo polled 1,000 people during January 14 to 17...

Same-sex couples have since 1995 been able to form a union in Sweden via registered partnership which later was amended to allow them to adopt children.

posted by Imapp Staff at 12:33 PM | link

Newswise — New research at the University of Chicago finds evidence for a clever way that people manage to alleviate the pain of loneliness: They create people in their surroundings to keep them company.

“Biological reproduction is not a very efficient way to alleviate one’s loneliness, but you can make up people when you’re motivated to do so,” said Nicholas Epley, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. “When people lack a sense of connection with other people, they are more likely to see their pets, gadgets or gods as human-like.”...

Loneliness is both painful to experience and potentially deadly. “It’s actually a greater risk for morbidity or mortality than cigarette smoking is. Being lonely is a bad thing for you,” he said.

But anthropomorphizing pets or God may actually confer many of the same psychological and physical benefits that come from connections with other people...

posted by Imapp Staff at 11:43 AM | link

A few days ago, I was interrogated for 90 minutes by Shirlene McGovern, an officer of the government of Alberta. I have been accused of hurting people's feelings because, two years ago, I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed in the Western Standard magazine.

Ms. McGovern's business card said she was a "Human Rights Officer." What a perfectly Orwellian title.

Early in her interrogation, she said "I always ask people … what was your intent and purpose of your article?"
It wasn't even a question about what we had published in the magazine. It was a question about my private thoughts. I asked her why my private feelings were of interest to the government. She said, very calmly, that they would be a factor taken into account by the government in determining whether or not I was guilty.

Officer McGovern said it as calmly as if I had asked her what time it was.

When she's doing government interrogations, she always asks people about their thoughts.

It was so banal, so routine. When she walked in, she seemed happy. With a smile, she reached out her hand to shake mine. I refused — to me, nothing could have been more incongruous. Would I warmly greet a police officer who arrested me as a suspect in a crime? Then why should I do so for a thought crime? This was not normal; I would not normalize it with the pleasantries of polite society.

This was not a high-school debating tournament where Human Rights Officer McGovern and I were equals, enjoying a shared interest in politics and publishing. I was there because I was compelled to be there by the government, and if I answered Officer McGovern's political questions unsatisfactorily, the government could fine me thousands of dollars and order me to publicly apologize for holding the wrong views.

I told her that the complaint process itself was a punishment. Even if I was eventually acquitted, I would still lose — hundreds of hours, and tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills. That's not an accident, that's one of the tools of these commissions. Every journalist in the country has been taught a lesson: Censor yourself now, or be put through a costly wringer. I said all this and then Officer McGovern replied, "You're entitled to your opinions, that's for sure."

But that's not for sure, is it? We're only entitled to our opinions now if they don't offend some very easily offended people.

One of the complainants against me is someone I would describe as a radical Muslim imam, Syed Soharwardy. He grew up in the madrassas of Pakistan and he lectures on the Saudi circuit. He advocates sharia law for all countries, including Canada. His website is rife with Islamic supremacism — offensive to many Canadian Jews, gentiles, women and gays. But his sensitivities — his Saudi-Pakistani values — have been offended by me.

And so now the secular government of Alberta is enforcing his fatwa against the cartoons.

It's the same for Mohamed Elmasry, the complainant against Maclean's magazine for publishing an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book, America Alone. Egyptian-born Elmasry has publicly said that any adult Jew in Israel is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack, a grossly offensive statement.

Both the Canadian and B.C. Human Rights Commissions are now hearing his complaints against Maclean's.

How did it come to be that rough and, I would say, bigoted men such as Mr. Soharwardy and Mr. Elmasry could, by simply claiming that their tender feelings were hurt, sic a government bureaucracy on a magazine, or anyone for that matter?

On this point, I agree with Mr. Soharwardy and Mr. Elmasry: I blame the Jews.

A generation ago, illiberal elements in the "official" Jewish community pressed Canadian governments to introduce laws limiting free speech. The targets of those laws were invariably poor, unorganized, harmless neo-Nazi cranks and conspiracy theorists such as Ernst Zundel and Jim Keegstra — nobodies who were turned into international celebrities when they were prosecuted for their thought crimes.

But now come Mr. Elmasry and Mr. Soharwardy and their ilk, using the very precedents set by the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Before Mr. Soharwardy went to the Alberta Human Rights Commission, he went to the Calgary Police Service and demanded that they arrest me. He's done that three times now, and they've rejected him every time. But he only had to ask the willing enforcers of the human rights commission once.

What a strange place Canada is in 2008, where the police care more about human rights than the human rights commissions do, where fundamentalist Muslims use hate-speech laws drafted by secular Jews, and where a government bureaucrat can interrogate a publisher for 90 minutes, and be shocked when he won't shake her hand in greeting.

Ezra Levant, an Alberta lawyer and author, was publisher of the now-defunct Western Standard magazine from 2004 to 2007.

posted by Imapp Staff at 11:25 AM | link

Hundreds of anti-gay marriage protesters, many sporting "let us vote" stickers, swarmed the Statehouse on Wednesday, demanding that voters be allowed to decide the same-sex issue...

At issue is whether Iowans should get to vote on amending the state's constitution to ban gay marriage. For that to happen, the Legislature must approve it in two consecutive sessions. That means the soonest the issue could appear on the ballot would be in 2009.

The rally was timed to coincide with [a speech by the Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, who was singled out] because a Polk County judge struck down a state law banning gay marriage last year, and that case is now before the high court.

Critics say the decision underscores the need to amend the state's constitution to ban gay marriage and take the issue out of the court's hands...

Republicans have demanded that majority Democrats allow them to debate -- and vote -- on the issue during the session. Democratic leaders said the courts should decide before lawmakers address the issue...

posted by Imapp Staff at 9:41 AM | link