Yet, Another reason why I don't have cable...

KIM KARDASHIAN
FILES FOR DIVORCE reports TMZ

The couple was married on August 20 in a lavish ceremony (see below) in Montecito, CA. There are reports that the wedding cost as much as $10 mil, which means $138,888 for every day until today.

Saddest Commercial Ever

Dear Cousin, Please...

Dear Cousin,

Please don't change your Facebook status from married to single and state how happy you are to be free, but fail to mention it's because your husband is out of town with the children only for a few days.

Sincerely, Your divorce fearing younger cousin

Based on the Internet Meme "Dead Blank, Please Blank"

Dafydd Ab Hugh: Discriminating Discrimination

Discriminating Discrimination:

[...]

It's not that gays want the right to live together, to consider themselves married, or even to be declared married in the eyes of God, according to a particular church; for they already have those rights (and I completely support them). Rather, they demand not merely that you allow them to pursue their own happiness, but that you agree with and support their lifestyle... and that you consent to equate an outré sexual relationship with the traditional Western and American relationship called marriage.

(Not merely outré but antithetical to what I consider the main point of traditional, even more axiomatic than the raising of children: the union of the female and male elements of humanity, the yin and yang. Opposite-sex marriage serves to moderate the extremes of both sexes, producing a stable and fruitful (in several senses) society. By contrast, SSM tends to exaggerate the bad tendencies of both sexes, leading to extremism and even fanaticism.)

Enforced SSM sails directly athwart the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion, speech, and association: If we're forced to equate same-sex couples with opposite-sex couples for purposes of marriage -- speaking of them as married, suppressing any religious-based criticism, and compelled to let them live together as if married, even in a room I might rent out within my own house -- then dissent from liberal orthodoxy is criminal, upon penalty of prosecution or administrative punishment.

Thus conservatives (I am not one) fall into grave error when they accept the idea that there is a "gay agenda," defined as the collection of all laws or policies that most homosexuals and many libertine liberals want to enact. Discrimination in this case is vital, and the real divide is between liberty interests (allowing the individual to live his life as he sees fit) and social reprogramming -- forcing society to transmogrify from the traditional American Borg culture into a limp, squishy, bowl of moral pablum, where all that matters is feeding the maw of every special-interest group temporarily important to the ruling class.

It's easy to draw the line between freedom of association and the right to defend oneself, one's loved ones, and one's society on the one hand, and the peremptory demand that all of us espouse the absurdity that same-sex relationships are identical to opposite-sex relationships.

It's like legally declaring cows to be vegetables, just so that everyone can be called a vegetarian.

I'm as good as you

You can get him to practise, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided.

The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I’m as good as you.

The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: “Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.”

-- CS Lewis, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" published Dec 19, 1959 in the Saturday Evening Post

In the time since that was written "Superiority" and "Inferiority" has moved further from a statement of usefulness to reading as a statement of subjugation -- as if to underline the message given by Screwtape all the more.

what does that even mean…

what does that even mean…

I often hear people profess to not believe in marriage. How does that even work? It’s not like marriage is Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. -The Crescat

Interesting comments otherwise in the link.

Proposal to repeal same-sex marriage heading to House in 2012

Proposal to repeal same-sex marriage heading to House in 2012 from the Nashua Telegraph

Rep. David Bates, R-Windham, the bill’s prime author, said marriage should be restricted to a man and a woman and letting any two adults to enter a civil union is the proper compromise.

“We have heard for a number of years that the government needs to get out of peoples’ bedrooms,” Bates said. “This does not contemplate the sexual relationship of the parties involved.”

Rep. Gregory Sorg, R-Grafton, said marriage must be equated with the procreation of children.

Rather surprised it made it this far.

Why should single moms be treated differently in public policy?

What are they missing to deserve preferential treatment? All families types are equal to each other. Right?

Single mothers & their children should receive more support (European Union's Parliament)

I agree they deserve appropriate charity. Still it is not in my nature, but it is common to state in sympathy and need to mention if someone is a single parent. No one ever does out of their way to mention they're married parent. I don't think it would be charitable of anyone to state, "So what one parent, two parent, or three, no parent in a group home, all the same you know. It doesn't make a difference."

Be Ware? Trial Recordings Release on Hold

Our good friend Maura Dolan reported at LATimes.com on the latest action around the trials around the California Marriage Amendment, duly adopted by the majority of voting Californians via Proposition 8.

A federal appeals court Monday put a temporary hold on a decision to make public the video recordings of the Proposition 8 trial and decided to rule on the matter expeditiously.

A three-member panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said in a brief order that Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware's ruling this month to release the video recordings may not be enforced pending a decision by the appeals court.

The court set an accelerated schedule for written arguments and a hearing for Dec. 5.

And how many federal trials do you know of that have been taped and released for public viewing?

Marriage neutering advocates are frothing at the mouth to release the tapes, so that they can have more material with which to ridicule those who, like every major civil rights leader of the past, every great religious or moral teacher of the past, the people who wrote and adopted the Constitution and every Amendment, and every President, actually think that marriage is inclusive of a bride and a groom. Because, you know, marriage neutering advocates never appear strange themselves.

Previously: Even the 9th Circuit Put a Hold on Release of Prop 8 Tapes

Over in the U.K.

Article about single women receiving publicly funded IVF

Single women being offered IVF on the NHS

“It’s one thing for a mother to find herself a single parent because of tragic circumstances. It’s quite another to plan for a situation where the child comes into the world without having a father or any possibility of having a father.” Most local health authorities stipulate that couples must have been in a relationship for two or three years to qualify for IVF treatment.

That requirement is based on guidance issued in 2004 by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the NHS rationing body,.

It states: “Couples in which the woman is aged 23–39 years at the time of treatment and who have an identified cause for their fertility problems ... or who have infertility of at least three years’ duration, should be offered up to three stimulated cycles of in vitro fertilisation treatment.

"

What fathers in the home prevent.

More services needed to support fathers, Oklahoma legislative panel told

Leon Skillens III, a fatherhood program coordinator with the Tulsa Health Department, said one out of three children in the U.S., or 24 million children, live in a home without a father. Children growing up without a father are nearly five times more likely to commit suicide, 24 times more likely to run away from home, 6 times more likely to drop out of school and 15 times more likely to end up in jail or prison while still a teenager. Children in fatherless homes also are five times more likely to be poor, Skillens said.

It's not about preaching morality, it's about accepting reality.

Someone Voted on Their Marriages

Tony Perry reports at LATimes.com that "Three Marines in San Diego Ousted For Sham Marriages".

To which I ask, what exactly is a sham marriage?

Three Marine corporals have been given bad-conduct discharges after pleading guilty to sham marriages meant to allow a lesbian couple to receive housing allowances, the Marine Corps said Monday.

The Marines -- two men and a woman -- were assigned to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and based at Camp Pendleton. The fourth person in the sham marriages is a civilian and thus untouchable by military law, officials said.

Cpl. Ashley Vice and her partner, civilian Jaime Murphy, said they needed the housing allowances so they could afford to live together in an off-base apartment "like a normal couple."

Vice and Murphy each found a male Marine willing to marry them so that they could get the $1,200 a month housing allowance meant for married Marines, officials said.

How does that make this a sham marriage? We hear all of the time that same-sex couples need marriage licenses for the sake of monetary benefits and hospital visitation.

Even with the end of the ''don't ask/don't tell" policy banning gays and lesbians from serving openly, same-sex couples will not be eligible for married housing allowances because federal law defines marriage as between a man and woman.

Unmarried couples -- gay or straight -- are not allowed to live together in base housing.

I fully understand same-sex couples who think they should be provided the same things as bride+groom couples, but even if the federal law wasn't prohibitive, the fact is that the pairing of two women or two men is not the same thing as the joining of the sexes.

But back to my question – what is a sham marriage? How can the motivations be judged? People get married for many different reasons, right? We are told that families come in many different types.

Why would cohabitation be necessary? More an more homes are being built with two "master" bedrooms. If a man married a woman and she birthed children, and the man always lived in another bedroom or even in a house three doors down (never filing for separation), wouldn't the courts in states with "husband is the father of her children" laws still assign him legal paternity? If they were to file for divorce, wouldn't the court still recognize that they had been married and divide the assets and assign alimony accordingly?

Surely, we can no longer rely on consummation through "PIV" intercourse as indication of the marriage being genuine. 1) Such intercourse is legal outside of marriage and does not assign marital recognition. 2) Some bride+groom couples are unable to engage in this activity for whatever reason, including age, but are still recognized as married. 3) This is not possible when there isn't both a "P" and a "V", and in some states such brideless or groomless couples are considered married under state law.

How much longer will military and immigration law be allowed to declare marriages as shams with consistency to marriage law in general?

Why bother?

Mexico City considers two-year marriage licenses from Belief.net

Why bother? As in the article you still have to split up the property and consider custody of the children. You just won't consider yourself divorced. In my area we call that the engagement period, most engagements are 18-30 months long.

How long does the couple know each other, that the idea of a two year marriage contract is needed? If you don't know your potential spouse well enough, don't get engaged!

Oh yes, make your family and loved ones waste a perfectly good Saturday evening, guilt them into a 250 dollar check as a gift, and celebrate a two year marriage contract in an over priced white dress and with bad country club function food and cash bar.

Now I'm just being snarky

"All the Single Ladies"

All the Single Ladies by Kate Block in The Atlantic

But what transpired next lay well beyond the powers of everybody’s imagination: as women have climbed ever higher, men have been falling behind. We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up—and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.

Wonderful article, it covers a lot of ground.

Michael Brown Looks at the Slippery Slope

From his recent column:

The slippery slope argument really is quite compelling, and yet there is a fundamental fallacy which is often overlooked in the contemporary debate. Specifically, it is the fallacy that polygamy is further down the slope than same-sex marriage. Actually, the reverse is true, even if it may not be chronologically true in America.

Simply stated, throughout human history, the essential components of marriage have always been a man and a woman, not merely two people. This means that polygamy represents a less radical redefinition of marriage than does same-sex marriage, since polygamy includes the essential components of male and female.

And, even though the vast majority of Americans are fundamentally opposed to polygamy (for good reason), it has been practiced throughout history and it remains common in many countries today.

As I have said before, it is ridiculous to compare “same-sex marriage” to polygamy or incestuous marriage. After all, the latter two have precedents throughout history in various cultures, being recognized as valid marriages and perpetuating society, uniting both of the sexes that comprise all of society.

"The child with two mothers and two fathers who went to court over her"

"The child with two mothers and two fathers who went to court over her" from The Guardian in the UK.

P's problem is not that she has two mothers. P knows that her mother RWB and her mother's civil partner SWB are her family and she is happy with that. What makes P so miserable is she and her six-year-old sister L also have two fathers. P says she likes seeing ML and his long-term partner AR. But, according to a grownup who was looking after the 10-year-old a few months ago, "she cannot just pretend that ML is her father in order to make him happy". Except that he is. ML, 50, is indeed the biological father of the two girls. They were conceived by IVF after the lesbian couple (as they described themselves) had advertised in the Pink Paper in 1999 for a gay man or couple who might want to start a family with them.

Sigh.... If P and L were conceived naturally through heterosexual behavior, even as a one night stand, there would be no argument. In a heterosexual relationship, no matter how casual the sex was, a mother can not deny a relationship between her child and her father, unless it was an issue of her safety or abuse.

Equal application of the law means we can't change the elementary understanding that everyone has a mom and dad, and it's not good for the child when a mom and a dad are uncooperative with one another. We know that, gay or straight no 'baby mama' or 'baby daddy' issues please.

Study: Modern Economies "Rise and Fall" with Nuclear Families

Study: Modern Economies "Rise and Fall" with Nuclear Families:

A strong economy is built on strong families and vice versa:

If the wealth of a nation is tied to both the quality and the quantity of its people, then modern trends toward cohabiting instead of marrying, easy divorce and fewer children born to couples will have sweeping economic consequences, a new report says.

The “long-term fortunes of the modern economy rise and fall with the family,” the Social Trends Institute says in its new report, “The Sustainable Demographic Dividend: What Do Marriage and Fertility Have to Do With the Economy?”

This is because economic growth, viability of welfare programs, size and quality of a workforce, and profitability of large sectors of an economy - health care and food, for instance - are intertwined with the family decisions of the populace, says the report, which is co-sponsored by six international institutions and the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

... Marriage also matters, the report says. Children raised in married, mother-father homes are the most likely to acquire the skills and behaviors conducive to becoming a “well-adjusted, productive” workforce. Also, “men who get and stay married work harder, work smarter, and earn more money than their unmarried peers.”-- Washington Times

'From Fatherless To Fatherhood'

'From Fatherless To Fatherhood': The Impact Of Paternal Absence On Black Families via Huffington Post

The quality of male and female relationships is the primary barrier that we face. Not every attractive person is intended to be your mate. Being in a relationship with someone you can plan and grow with makes a difference. The economy obviously represents a great challenge, but Black people have accomplished much more, with much less than we have available to us today. It's more important for the fathers to be active, because if it's a challenge for a man to provide, can you imagine what it means for one person (usually a woman) to do it all by herself? Single mothers need to be commended and we must all embrace, encourage and prepare our men to become better fathers.

If liberals really believed and acted upon in their belief of social justice, they would understand what marriage really does and can do.