Pope Benedict: Divorce, Abortion "Serious Offenses"

Divorce, abortion an offence to God, pope says

". . .The ethical judgement of the Church on divorce and abortion is clear and well-known," he told participants in a Catholic congress on marriage and the family.

"They are serious offences... which violate human dignity, inflict deep injustice on human and social relations and offend God himself, guarantor of conjugal peace and origin of life," he said.

However he added that there were people who had committed such "errors" but "suffered from wounds to the soul" and "sought peace."

"The Church has the duty to be close to these people with love and delicacy," the pope added.

"Divorce and abortion are choices... which sometimes develop in difficult and dramatic circumstances... and are a source of profound suffering for those who take such decisions.

"They also affect innocent victims, the barely-conceived and unborn infant, the children caught up in divorces."

posted by maggie at 10:39 PM | link

David Benkof Joins MarriageDebate.com

Who is David Benkof??

David Benkof is a Ph.D. student in American Jewish history at New York University. He is the author of Modern Jewish History for Everyone and Gay Essentials: Facts for your Queer Brain. From 1995-2003 he founded and ran Q Syndicate, which became the largest provider of content to the gay and lesbian press, and also coordinated newsletters, awards, and events for gay press professionals.

Since 2003, David has identified as an Orthodox Jew, and he has been openly celibate for more than seven years. He spent 2004-6 in Israel at both a yeshiva and Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and he plans to relocate permanently to Israel in the near future. Among his other accomplisments, David Won Ben Stein's Money in 1998 and published crossword puzzles in the New York Times in 2000 and 2006. He currently lives in St. Louis.

We look forward to some unusual vantage points from David in the near future.
posted by maggie at 4:18 PM | link

Barna Poll: Catholics, Evangelicals, Asians Least Likely to Divorce

A Barna poll released March 31 finds:

"In addition to finding that four out of every five adults (78%) have been married at least once, the Barna study revealed that an even higher proportion of born again Christians (84%) tie the knot. That eclipses the proportion among people aligned with non-Christian faiths (74%) and among atheists and agnostics (65%). . .

The study showed that the percentage of adults who have been married and divorced varies from segment to segment. For instance, the groups with the most prolific experience of marriage ending in divorce are downscale adults (39%), Baby Boomers (38%), those aligned with a non-Christian faith (38%), African-Americans (36%), and people who consider themselves to be liberal on social and political matters (37%).
Among the population segments with the lowest likelihood of having been divorced subsequent to marriage are Catholics (28%), evangelicals (26%), upscale adults (22%), Asians (20%) and those who deem themselves to be conservative on social and political matters (28%).

Born again Christians who are not evangelical were indistinguishable from the national average on the matter of divorce: 33% have been married and divorced. The survey did not determine if the divorce occurred before or after the person had become born again. However, previous research by Barna has shown that less than two out of every ten people who accept Christ as their savior do so after their first marriage. . ."

posted by maggie at 4:05 PM | link

National Student Genderblind Campaign

Yes, it really exists, as part of a national campaign for social justice on the important issue of "genderblind" dorm rooms--i.e men and women sharing bedrooms in the coed dorm (Eve posted also posted this story below as "just roommates"). The Boston Globe piece adopts the obligatory attitude that any inference of prurient interest on the students part is misguided. I also learned this nuggest about Dartmouth's housing policies:

"Dartmouth's housing application form for gender-neutral housing states that the college "seeks to provide a living environment welcoming to all gender identities; one not limited by the traditional gender binary."

It asks students their personal gender identity and if students have a third-person pronoun they wish to be addressed by. . ."

posted by maggie at 3:56 PM | link

McCain Stands by GOP Platform on SSM

"McCain won't fight platform on abortion, gays
By Ralph Z. Hallow, Washington Times
April 2, 2008

SANTA ANNA PUEBLO, N.M.— Advisers to Sen. John McCain's presidential bid say he will not try to "soften" the Republican party's platform on abortion and same-sex marriage to appeal to more voters.

McCain associates told The Washington Times that his operatives are not going to work behind the scenes to eliminate the party's calls for constitutional bans on abortion and homosexual marriage before the GOP convention in September. . ."

posted by maggie at 3:49 PM | link

Poland Passes EU Charter, Except for Gay Rights

"Poland Passes EU Charter With Provision To Ignore Gay Guarantees
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: April 2, 2008 - 5:00 pm

(Warsaw) Poland's upper house has approved the European Union's proposed charter of rights, but with a provision that could allow the country to ignore EU guarantees of equal rights for gays and lesbians.
The Senate voted 74-17 on Wednesday to adopt the Lisbon Treaty. Six senators abstained.

The lower house approved ratification Tuesday, following a deal between the government and opposition-linked President Lech Kaczynski that ended weeks of fighting in which Kaczynski claimed the treaty would force Poland to endorse homosexuality and legalize same-sex marriage. . ."

posted by maggie at 3:47 PM | link

"WHAT DO AMERICANS THINK IS SINFUL?"

(from a research group about which I know nothing)
posted by Eve at 11:49 PM | link

PREGNANT TRANSGENDER MAN TO APPEAR ON "OPRAH": Rebecca Armendariz

here

and from ABC News, "Young children more easily adapt to news that a parent is transgender":

Figuring out that he was transgender and making the decision to take hormones to transition his body from female to male was difficult for Jace Martinez. But figuring out how to tell his 5-year-old daughter, he says, was "really a challenge."

So Jace, 23, decided to write a picture book, simply titled "My Mommy Is a Boy."

Written from his daughter Amaya's perspective, the self-published book, intended for an audience of one, explains Jace's feelings and his decision to change his name, wear men's clothes and begin taking testosterone to change the appearance of his body.

more
posted by Eve at 11:41 PM | link

TWO BLACK AMERICAS: Eugene Robinson

...The African American poor are a smaller segment than they were 40 years ago, but arguably they are further from full participation in society than they were in King's era. It's not that they have no interest in climbing the ladder, it's that too many rungs are missing.

more
posted by Eve at 11:37 PM | link

JUST ROOMMATES: Boston Globe

...Now, some colleges are crossing the final threshold, allowing men and women to share rooms. At the urging of student activists, more than 30 campuses across the country have adopted what colleges call gender-neutral rooming assignments, almost half of them within the past two years.

Once limited to such socially liberal bastions as Hampshire College, Wesleyan University, and Oberlin College, mixed-gender housing has edged into the mainstream, although only a small fraction of students have taken advantage of the new policies so far. Clark and Dartmouth universities introduced mixed-gender rooms last fall, and Brown and Brandeis announced plans last month to follow suit.

The University of Pennsylvania, Skidmore and Ithaca colleges, and Oregon State University also allow roommates of different genders. Students at New York, Harvard, and Stanford universities, among many others, are calling for gender-blind dormitory rooms.

"It's definitely a growing movement on campuses across the country," said Denise Darrigrand, dean of students at Clark, where about 30 students are living in mixed-gender rooms. "It's a new world, and gender has taken on all kinds of new definitions. It's about being more inclusive, and it's about keeping pace with the times." ...

Supporters hail the trend as a key advance for homosexual and transgender students that eliminates a gender divide they see as outdated, particularly for a generation that has grown up with many friends of the opposite sex. Traditional rooming policies, they say, infringe upon students' rights and perpetuate gender segregation. ...

Scores of colleges have established gender-neutral bathrooms and specific housing for gay, lesbian, and the small number of transgender students, and some already allow male and female undergraduates to live together in on-campus suites and apartments. Most maintain single-sex floors as an option for students, however, and for practical and moral reasons have been reluctant to allow male and female students to share a room.

But a range of students are pressing administrators to eliminate gender altogether as a factor in student housing. These include gay students who feel more comfortable living with the opposite sex and transgender students who don't identify as either sex.

It also includes straight students who want the option of choosing to live with members of the opposite sex as friends. Students say that although administrators and parents may perceive gender-blind housing as essentially sanctioning sex, the vast majority of mixed-gender roommates are platonic. Their living situations are about mutual compatibility, not romance, they say.

more
posted by Eve at 11:17 PM | link

YOUR EGGS, MY UTERUS: SHARED MOTHERHOOD: The Globe and Mail

When Melanie Parish and Mel Rutherford decided to have a baby together, both women wanted to have a biological connection to their child.

So, four years ago, they harvested Ms. Rutherford's eggs, inseminated them with a donor's sperm through in vitro fertilization and implanted the embryos into Ms. Parish's uterus. Today, Ms. Rutherford is the genetic mother and Ms. Parish is the gestational mother of twin three-year-old boys -- and they both feel equally "related" to their kids.

"For me, motherhood is about carrying the baby," says Ms. Parish, an executive coach living in Hamilton. "For her it is about being genetically connected."

It's a new shared-motherhood model that's increasingly being considered by same-sex couples, says Rachel Epstein, co-ordinator of the LGBT Parenting Network at the Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto. ...

Though their daughter was born to Jen and their son to Kaye, genetically the kids are full siblings. For Jen, that's not so important. "Genetics for me is scientific," she says. "Our family is not based on genetics."

Kaye feels slightly differently. "I wanted them to have that connection," she says, "of feeling they're connected to each other and to us."

more
posted by Eve at 11:13 PM | link

AZ SSM Ban Derailed

From "Same-sex marriage measure dealt blow," Arizona Republic, April 3, 2008:

The effort to amend the [Arizona] state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage was derailed Thursday in the state Legislature, dealing a shocking defeat to supporters who thought a fall referendum on the issue was secure.

Opponents in the House of Representatives changed the measure to tie it to expanded legal rights for domestic partners, causing most Republicans to withdraw their support.

A spokesman for House Speaker Jim Weiers said Weiers would not bring the amended version of the referendum to a final vote. Senate President Tim Bee said late Thursday he does not plan to move the Senate version of the measure, which has been stalled in the chamber for months...

In 2006, Arizona voters became the first in the nation to reject a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. That measure, which also would have blocked governments from providing benefits to gay or straight domestic partners, failed 48 percent to 52 percent.

The referendum in the Legislature was the chance to send voters a marriage amendment again, without the domestic-partner provision that observers say doomed the 2006 measure. Same-sex marriage is already illegal under Arizona law, but supporters have pushed for a constitutional amendment in order to counter potential court challenges...

posted by Imapp Staff at 10:35 AM | link

IN "JUNO," ADOPTION PAIN IS LEFT ON CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR: Jean Strauss

here
posted by Eve at 3:10 PM | link

LITTLE KIDS LABELED AS SEXUAL HARASSERS: Washington Post

more
posted by Eve at 3:09 PM | link

THE CURIOUS LIVES OF SURROGATES: Newsweek

...In the course of reporting this story, we discovered that many of these women are military wives who have taken on surrogacy to supplement the family income, some while their husbands are serving overseas. Several agencies reported a significant increase in the number of wives of soldiers and naval personnel applying to be surrogates since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. At the high end, industry experts estimate there were about 1,000 surrogate births in the United States last year, while the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART)—the only organization that makes an effort to track surrogate births—counted about 260 in 2006, a 30 percent increase over three years. But the number is surely much higher than this—in just five of the agencies NEWSWEEK spoke to, there were 400 surrogate births in 2007. The numbers vary because at least 15 percent of clinics—and there are dozens of them across the United States—don't report numbers to SART. Private agreements made outside an agency aren't counted, and the figures do not factor in pregnancies in which one of the intended parents does not provide the egg—for example, where the baby will be raised by a gay male couple. Even though the cost to the intended parents, including medical and legal bills, runs from $40,000 to $120,000, the demand for qualified surrogates is well ahead of supply.

more
posted by Eve at 3:05 PM | link

The Opium Brides of Afghanistan

From "The Opium Brides of Afghanistan," Newsweek, March 29, 2008:

...Afghans disparagingly call them "loan brides"—daughters given in marriage by fathers who have no other way out of debt. The practice began with the dowry a bridegroom's family traditionally pays to the bride's father in tribal Pashtun society. These days the amount ranges from $3,000 or so in poorer places like Laghman and Nangarhar to $8,000 or more in Helmand, Afghanistan's No. 1 opium-growing province. For a desperate farmer, that bride price can be salvation—but at a cruel cost. Among the Pashtun, debt marriage puts a lasting stain on the honor of the bride and her family. It brings shame on the country, too. President Hamid Karzai recently told the nation: "I call on the people [not to] give their daughters for money; they shouldn't give them to old men, and they shouldn't give them in forced marriages."

All the same, local farmers say a man can get killed for failing to repay a loan. No one knows how many debt weddings take place in Afghanistan, where 93 percent of the world's heroin and other opiates originate. But Afghans say the number of loan brides keeps rising as poppy-eradication efforts push more farmers into default...

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:43 AM | link

Domestic Partners Win Benefits in AZ

From "Domestic Partners in Ariz. Win Benefits," AP, April 1, 2008:

PHOENIX (AP) — A panel in Arizona, where voters once turned down a constitutional ban on gay marriage, approved a plan Tuesday to provide taxpayer-subsidized health coverage for the domestic partners of state employees and retirees.

The Governor's Regulatory Review Council, which has the final say over many agencies' proposed rules, voted 4-0 to approve changes floated by the Department of Administration with support from Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat. Some Republican legislators opposed the move.

Dependents of domestic partners also will qualify. Employees will be able to sign up for benefits as of Oct 1...

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:20 AM | link

EU Court Ruling on Same-Sex Unions

From "EU backs gay man's pension rights," BBC, April 1, 2008:

A gay man in Germany may be entitled to his dead partner's pension following a ruling by the highest court in the EU.

[The man’s] partner died in 2005 but the pension fund refused him a widower's pension and the case was sent to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

The court ruled that refusing a pension was direct discrimination if the partnership was comparable to marriage...

The court based its ruling on an EU directive which states that there should be no discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Although German law considers only heterosexual unions as marriage, the ruling makes it clear that any country in the EU that gives same-sex couples rights equivalent to marriage should treat the two as comparable...

[One of the man’s lawyers] said the ruling would have significant repercussions for the UK and Scandinavia where same-sex partners had "mirror institutions" to marriage, rather than French-style civil contracts...

GAY MARRIAGES IN THE EU

• Full marriage recognised: Spain, Netherlands, Belgium
• Legal partnerships similar to marriage: Germany, Sweden, Denmark, UK, Czech
  Republic, Slovenia, Hungary, Finland, Portugal
• Civil contracts: France, Luxembourg
• No provision: Austria, Baltic states, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Romania,
  Bulgaria, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia

posted by Imapp Staff at 3:47 PM | link

Marriage Algorithm Creator Dead at 86

From "David Gale, Who Created Marriage Algorithm, Is Dead at 86," NY Times, March 31, 2008:

...[Mathematician David Gale] was widely recognized for work on the so-called stable marriage algorithm, a concept he developed in the 1960s with the economist and mathematician Lloyd S. Shapley.

The problem begins with the assumption that equal numbers of men and women are in search of potential partners. Is it possible to pair the individuals in such a way that all achieve a satisfactory match? The solution developed by Dr. Shapley and Dr. Gale was to have each participant rank the members of the other sex in terms of desirability. The researchers then developed an algorithm that directed each participant to his or her next choice of partner, if rejected by the first or second choices.

The result was that everyone would be matched in a “stable” pairing, a term meant to suggest that no two members of the opposite sex would rather marry each other than the ultimate partner provided by the algorithm.

The findings were published in 1962 in The American Mathematical Monthly, and were soon recognized as having broad applications to other situations...

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:22 AM | link

Korean Bachelors Seeking Vietnamese Brides

From "Wed to Strangers, Vietnamese Wives Build Korean Lives," NY Times, March 30, 2008:

...A combination of factors — including the rising social status of [South] Korean women and a surplus of bachelors resulting from a traditional preference for sons — is forcing many Korean men to seek brides in Southeast and Central Asia and China.

In a country that defines itself as ethnically homogenous, marriages to foreigners accounted for one of eight marriages in 2006, more than triple the rate in 2000...

posted by Imapp Staff at 9:22 AM | link

Ivy League Abstinence

From "Students of Virginity," NY Times Magazine, March 30, 2008:

...The Ivy League’s abstinence clubs began emerging several years ago about the same time as student sex blogs, sex columns and, at Harvard and Yale, student sex magazines…[T]he Princeton club [was] the first to form in the Ivy League in 2005...

[The Princeton club members so admired the logic of Catholic thinker Elizabeth Anscombe, the philosopher and student of Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose arguments] against premarital sex are as impressive as they are difficult to summarize, [that] they named their society after her...

[S]tudents at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were the first to follow with another Anscombe Society...

The Harvard abstinence club came next, in 2006...[The founders] decided that their club would focus on the issue “most immediately relevant” to people on campus — premarital sexual abstinence — and would try to persuade people toward it with arguments less philosophical than scientific...

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:46 AM | link