A recent study on homosexual relationships finds they last 1-1/2 years on average � even as homosexual groups are pushing nationwide to legalize same-sex "marriages."
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Among heterosexuals, by contrast, 67 percent of first marriages in the United States last at least 10 years�.

However, further down the article introduces an issue that the mainstream media ignores: whether or not same-sex marriage would weaken the marital ethos of monogamy. It cites the Vermont study (which I blogged last January) showing that, of gay men in civil unions, 50 percent of those surveyed thought that sex outside the relationship was acceptable. Indeed, in the gay community, �monogamy� does not naturally imply �sexual exclusivity.� Rather, �monogamy� often means that a couple in a relationship negotiates what outside sex is acceptable. So would gay marriage weaken the ideal of monogamy-as-sexual exclusivity? Maybe. Or precisely because gay relationships are in some ways fundamentally different than hetero relationships, maybe they wouldn�t affect heteros much at all. More to come on Monday, including a back-and-forth with Steve Clark, a professor at Albany Law School, who thinks I�m absolutely wrong about �fairness.�

Eleven--year--old Amalia McCallister lives in two houses, typical of a child living with divorced parents. Her parents share child--rearing responsibilities and make sure Amalia's schoolwork is the main focus during the week while leaving time to participate in various sports activities. Laura McAlpine, Amalia's mother and a licensed clinical social worker, says since Amalia is a fifth grader, having time available to hang out with her friends is important. Amalia's situation is not that different from other children living with divorced parents. She rotates between her parents' houses each week. "It is a very typical divorced family," McAlpine says. "Only with three moms."

A California study has found that babies who spend nights at the different homes of separated or divorced parents have problems making secure attachments to their parents ... The researchers note it's important for parents to keep their problems away from their babies. Parents who are divorced or separated also need to pay attention to their baby's behaviour.

"Marriage", too, is a brand name; perhaps the world's most successful. Knowing a couple is married tells you a lot about them. Marriage also seems to bring about many benefits as couples who get married tend to stay together longer and do a better job raising children. Indeed, marriage is so successful that many Americans pay a substantial tax penalty just for the privilege of legally using the marriage brand name. If you wanted to start a fast-food restaurant you would pay a fair amount for the right to call your restaurant McDonald's because of what this brand name signals. Similarly, many couples are willing to pay higher taxes for the signaling benefits of marriage. Should we expand the marriage brand name to cover committed homosexual unions? Although brand name analysis can't answer this question, it can objectively frame the issues.

In Slate.com, Michael Kinsley wrote that we should avoid the fight over gay marriage by privatizing marriage. Kinsley's plan, I suppose, would even allow a man to get married to his goldfish, regardless of his goldfish's gender. By allowing anyone to get married, however, Kinsley's privatization plan would destroy marriage's brand value. Perhaps McDonald's should leverage its brand name by opening some slightly different types of restaurants. What McDonald's should never do, however, is allow anyone to use the McDonald's name for then their brand would become meaningless as it would no longer convey any information. Brands only prosper when protected from unreasonable encroachment.

''There are these people who are anti-`the straightening of gay life','' says Skyler Hynes, 39, standing near the cash register in his novelty store in Provincetown. ''They don't want to live that ideal. There's a lot of straight people like that, too, who don't want to get married or who get married but don't play by the rules.''

The first core principle is the restructuring of work to bestow on children the gift of parental time. The second is to create a special window of protection around early childhood; a period of child development now universally recognised as profoundly important. The last aspect is state neutrality. This enshrines the emerging theme of maternal equity - allowances are broadly structured with no discrimination between working and non-working mothers. Likewise gender equity; either mothers or fathers, or some combination of both, can take advantage of any one of these reforms.

Research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies contradicts the prevailing wisdom that working long hours damages a person's health and relationships. The study found one in four dads who put in more than 60 hours a week are highly satisfied with their work regime. And it appears their happiness flows through to other areas of their life.

Any attempt to stray from its fundamental meaning will not only make marriage meaningless, but likely extinct. Marriage is the foundation of civilization and of the family. Weaken marriage, and families and societies become imperiled. You simply cannot build a strong society on the backs of weak families. FRC will continue to work to ensure that marriage is protected from those who see it as nothing but an avenue for political gain.

Because Gladden grew up in a single-parent family, he was determined not to repeat the pattern of his absent father. "I didn't want to be a parent like my father. I wanted to be a parent like my mother, to be supportive of my kids."
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He is pleased that his children are well adjusted and doing fairly well in school.

Still, Gladden emphasizes that solo child-rearing is not easy. "You have this vision of a two-parent household. When it doesn't happen, it's crushing. But you have a choice, either to lie down or get back up."
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"Getting divorced wasn't good for me, and it's not good for children ever," says Jay Portnow, a physician in Norwell, Mass., and the custodial father of two sons. "But having the boys with me has been a blessing."

After examining poor women and women who are not poor separately, we found that Black-White differences in marriage occur only among women who are not poor. We found no difference in marriage rates between Black, poor women and White, poor women. ...

Contrary to popular perceptions, our results also indicate that the receipt of welfare is unrelated to marriage transitions. Poor women who receive welfare have the same probability of marriage as poor women who do not. ...

Our results suggest that marriage is more strongly influenced by whether poor women hold jobs and have access to economically attractive men. Future policies to reform welfare may more fruitfully be directed toward promoting employment that pays wages above the poverty level for both men and women, encouraging job training and skills acquisition, and eliminating existing disincentives to employment within the welfare system.

You love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal -- it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.

It is not your love that sustains your marriage, but from now on, your marriage that sustains your love.

[Y]ou realize that in a greater sense no other person or officiant can truly marry you. Only you can marry yourselves. By your commitment to love each other, to work with all your hearts toward creating an atmosphere of care and respect, and by your willingness to face together the fears and uncertainty that underlie human life, you marry yourselves more surely than any document.

Freud described what he called the "family romance," in which a young child, dissatisfied with its ordinary home and parents, invents a fairy tale in which it is secretly of noble origin, and may even be marked out as a hero who is destined to save the world.

One hopes that Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jilani�s verdict declaring forced nikah invalid will serve as an authoritative precedent that outlaws all kinds of forced marriages. One day we might even want the state to declare marriage a matter of free and voluntary choice between two human beings irrespective of their religion, sect, race or caste as the relevant UN conventions prescribe.