I Am My Beloved's: Jewish-American Couples Talk About Their Marriages is a work in progress that aspires to become a collection of 30 interviews of Jewish North American couples who discuss, intimately and honestly, their relationships, their spirituality, and how the two intersect. Their voices are poignant, sometimes humorous, often profound. These couples reflect both the diversity and the unity of the American Jewish community, and mirror contemporary American society as a whole: observant and secular, gay and straight, able-bodied and disabled, urban and rural, young and old. http://sites.google.com/site/belovedbook/homeI Am My Beloved's: Jewish-American Couples Talk About Their Marriages is a work in... more
A Bulgarian schoolgirl, aged 11, has given birth to a baby girl on her wedding day.
Kordeza Zhelyazkova reportedly went into labour during her marriage to the child's father, 19-year-old Jeliazko Dimitrov.
Her husband now faces up to six years in jail for having sex with a minor.
And rightly so, She had a child's body, not a woman's and a child's body should not give birth.
Spend some time with a group of brave Afghan lawyers and their young clients, the girls who have so far been hidden under the blue cloth, and watch them challenge the legal system to gain back their legal rights.Spend some time with a group of brave Afghan lawyers and their young clients, the... more
"Maine voters want to be tolerant of gays, but unfortunately, they weren't born that way."Can't Get Queer From Here
"Maine voters want to be tolerant of gays, but... more
A painful diagnosis shattered their dream of parenthood. They learned that Julie Boyde was allergic to her husband’s semen.A painful diagnosis shattered their dream of parenthood. They learned that Julie Boyde... more
The Maine gay-marriage initiative went down to defeat Tuesday. But the real tragedy is that it should never have been put to a vote in the first place.
I was there in the ballroom with the No On One campaign watching the results come back. I was there with friends of mine who had worked our asses off on this campaign, watching as the northern precincts of the state started coming in, and we started losing our lead.
Suddenly "No on One" was only 300 votes ahead. Then a few more northern precincts came in, and we were 6,500 behind. Then 10,000 behind. Then 15,000 behind. Then 65,000 votes behind. It became clear that the 40,000 absentee votes left to be counted couldn't possibly carry the margin.
Justice, Equality, and Human Decency have lost this election.
==============================================
PORTLAND, Maine – Cecelia Burnett and Ann Swanson had already set their wedding date. When they joined about 1,000 other gay marriage supporters for an election night party in a Holiday Inn ballroom, they hoped to celebrate the vote that would make it possible.
Instead, they went home at midnight, dejected and near tears after a failed bid to make Maine the first state to approve same-sex marriage at the ballot box.
"I'm ready to start crying," said Burnett, a 58-year-old massage therapist, walking out of the ballroom with Swanson at her side. "I don't understand what the fear is, why people are so afraid of this change.
"It hurts. It hurts personally," she said. "It's a personal rejection of us and our relationship, and I don't understand what the fear is."
With 87 percent of precincts reporting, gay-marriage foes had 53 percent of the vote in a referendum that asked Maine voters whether they wanted to repeal a law allowing same-sex marriage that had passed the Legislature and was signed by Democratic Gov. John Baldacci.
"The institution of marriage has been preserved in Maine and across the nation," said Frank Schubert, the chief organizer for Stand for Marriage Maine, which lobbied for the repeal.
For the gay rights movement, which has gained a foothold in New England, it was a stinging defeat. Gay marriage has now lost in every state — 31 in all — in which it has been put to a popular vote. Gay-rights activists had hoped to buck that trend in Maine, framing same-sex marriage as a matter of equality for all families in a campaign that used 8,000 volunteers to get out the message.
Five states have legalized gay marriage — Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut — but all did so through legislation or court rulings, not by popular vote.
Portland resident Sarah Holman said she was torn, but decided — despite her conservative upbringing — to vote in favor of letting gays marry.
"They love and they have the right to love. And we can't tell somebody how to love," said Holman, 26.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gay_marriage_maine
I was there in the ballroom with... more
[BREAKING] Once again, the American population is showing the world that they are unable to treat it's citizens like human beings. Citizens of Main voted no on a law that would allow Same-Sex couples to wed...http://www.perpetualradio.com/news.php?action=read&article=81
[BREAKING] Once... more
SAN FRANCISCO — Same-sex couples who identify as married are similar to straight spouses in terms of age and income, and nearly one-third of them are raising children, according to Census data released Monday that provides a demographic snapshot of gay families in America.
The study released by a think tank based at UCLA also found that Utah and Wyoming were among the states with the highest percentages of gay spouses in 2008, despite being heavily conservative states with no laws providing legal recognition of gay relationships.
...
"It's intrinsically interesting that same-sex couples who use the term spouses look like opposite-sex married couples even with a characteristic like children," said Gary Gates, the UCLA demographer who conducted the analysis. "Most proponents of traditional marriage will say that when you allow these couples to marry, you are going to change the fundamental nature of marriage by decoupling it from procreation. Clearly, in the minds of same-sex couples who are marrying or think of themselves as married, you are not decoupling child-rearing from marriage.
---
Wow, really? Seriously, don't you think it might be time to let all families get married?SAN FRANCISCO — Same-sex couples who identify as married are similar to straight... more
"I think this would be a good time for a beer," Franklin D. Roosevelt said upon signing a bill that made 3.2-percent lager legal again, some months ahead of the full repeal of Prohibition. I hope Barack Obama will come up with some comparably witty remarks as he presides over the dismantling of our contemporary forms of prohibition—laws that prevent gay marriage, restrict cannabis as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, and ban travel to Cuba. "You may now kiss the groom," perhaps, or—a version of the comment he once made about smoking pot—"I inhaled—that was the point."
Prohibition now is different from Prohibition then. When the 18th Amendment went into effect in 1920, it was a radical social experiment challenging a custom as old as civilization. Its predictable failure—the gross insult to individual rights, the impossibility of enforcement, the spawning of organized crime—came to an end when Utah, of all places, became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment in 1933. Today prohibition is a byword for futile attempts to legislate morality and remake human nature.
Our forms of prohibition are more sins of omission than commission. Rather than trying to take away longstanding rights, they're instances of conservative laws failing to keep pace with a liberalizing society. But like Prohibition in the '20s, these restrictions have become indefensible as well as impractical, and as a result are fading fast. Within 10 years, it seems a reasonable guess that Americans will travel freely to Cuba, that all states will recognize gay unions, and that few will retain criminal penalties for marijuana use by individuals. Whether or not Democrats retain control of Congress, whether or not Obama is re-elected, and whether they happen sooner or later than expected, these reforms are inevitable—not because politics has changed but because society has.
The secret to a happy marriage for men is choosing a wife who is smarter and at least five years younger than you, say UK experts.
These pairings are more likely to go the distance, particularly if neither has been divorced in the past, according to the Bath University team.
They found that if the wife was five or more years older than her husband, they were more than three times as likely to divorce than if they were the same age.
If the age gap is reversed, and the man is older than the woman, the odds of marital bliss are higher.
This article fails to ask the question 'the younger the wife the happier the marriage'?
Is this why, is islam the male is nearly always quite a bit older than the wife, what about child marriages? oh wait, they are only successful because the girl is forced into it and would probably be killed if she wanted a divorce.
Anyway the article doesnt focus on the muslims tradition of marriage, but surely it all comes down to a match of attraction and intellect that keep 2 people together, regardless of age.The secret to a happy marriage for men is choosing a wife who is smarter and at least... more
Mr and Mrs Lamar Odom have compounded last month's hasty decision making, with another odd choice.
The two, playing at husband and wife, have gotten each other's initials tattooed on their hands.Mr and Mrs Lamar Odom have compounded last month's hasty decision making, with another... more
Several years ago, Morgen and I visited Germany—more specifically, the region in southeastern Germany known as Bavaria. Although Germany ranks third in per-capita beer consumption (after the Czech Republic and Ireland), it is clearly a place where people take their beer very seriously. Bavaria, in particular, is home to the oldest (non-religious) legal standard of food production still in force: The legendary Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, known in German as the Reinheitsgebot.
The Duke of Beers
The short version of this law, which was enacted on April 23, 1516 by Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV (a.k.a. William IV), is that beer may contain only three ingredients: barley, hops, and water. Ostensibly, this makes the law one of the oldest “consumer protection” regulations, instilling confidence in purchasers that the beer they get will contain no questionable grains or additives. (Among the additives the law sought to ban were some commonly used herbs that had hallucinogenic effects.)Several years ago, Morgen and I visited Germany—more specifically, the region in... more
SAN ANGELO, Texas — The first jury trial in more than a decade in the sleepy West Texas town of Eldorado involves an alleged polygamist and an accusation of sexual assault of an underage bride, a far cry from the occasional drunken driving cases that normally occupy the Schleicher County court system.
Attorneys on Monday will begin culling the largest jury pool ever called in Eldorado to try to find 14 people in a county of 2,800 who can set aside what they have heard about a polygamist sect whose alleged marriages involving underage girls triggered a police raid that swept more than 400 children into state custody last year.
Raymond Jessop, 38, will become the first man from the Yearning For Zion Ranch to go on trial here. He is charged with sexual assault of a child — an underage girl he allegedly married first — and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He is also charged with bigamy for allegedly marrying a second underage girl, but will be tried on that charge separately.
In all, 12 sect men have been charged with crimes ranging from failure to report child abuse to bigamy and sexual assault at the ranch, where women and girls wear braids and pastel prairie dresses. They have all denied wrongdoing.
The cases began after a woman in Colorado allegedly called a Texas domestic abuse hot line in March 2008 and pretended to be a teenage girl with a much-older husband who raped and beat her. State authorities swooped in, taking 439 children away from their sheltered lives and hundreds of boxes of documents and family photos to build their case. The Texas Rangers have acknowledged the hot line information was false, but the caller has never been charged.SAN ANGELO, Texas — The first jury trial in more than a decade in the sleepy West... more
Why Mormons discontinued the practice of polygamy is ultimately a religious one but don’t you think it’s a question of sanity too? Especially for men?
-Why Mormons discontinued the practice of polygamy is ultimately a religious one but... more
Philip Spooner, an 86 year old veteran and life long republican gives his point of view for Maine's marriage equality bill on April 22, 2009. Nearly 4,000 people attended the hearing, with marriage equality supporters out-numbering the opposition 4 to 1.
Every person is equal and dissevers the same rights.Philip Spooner, an 86 year old veteran and life long republican gives his point of... more
Girlfriends and gaming don't usually go together, but this lovestruck nerd was an exception to the rule and managed to inject some romance into a Super Mario video game.
A gaming geek proposed to his girlfriend inside a Super Mario World level by spelling out the words "Lisa Will You Marry Me?" using gold coins.
According to the Telegraph, the romantic techie used an editing program called Lunar Magic to make the proposal inside the vintage game, then after she'd seen it, got down on one knee to offer a real ring.
Watch his proposal -- and his fiance's reaction (she said yes) -- below.
We have to wonder: was she as impressed by his proposal as he was? What will they tell their grandkids?Girlfriends and gaming don't usually go together, but this lovestruck nerd was an... more
Housework may seem like the ultimate romance-killer. But guess what?
A new study shows that for husbands and wives alike, the more housework you do, the more often you are likely to have sex with your spouse.
Earlier studies have hinted at this connection for men; the sight of a husband mopping the floor or doing dishes sparks affection in the hearts of many wives. But the more-housework-equals-more-sex link for wives, documented in a study of 6,877 married couples published online recently in the Journal of Family Issues, is a surprise.Housework may seem like the ultimate romance-killer. But guess what?
A new study... more
