Can women have sex like men? NYT says so in an article everyone is talking about. Up next on radio: Dr. Wendy James. http://t.co/i1JqqysMbf
— Andrea Tantaros (@AndreaTantaros) July 18, 2013
And click through at the link. An interesting piece.
Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education - from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Can women have sex like men? NYT says so in an article everyone is talking about. Up next on radio: Dr. Wendy James. http://t.co/i1JqqysMbf
— Andrea Tantaros (@AndreaTantaros) July 18, 2013
SACRAMENTO — A child-custody dispute involving actor Jason Patric has evolved from Hollywood tabloid fodder into a policy battle in the state Legislature that could affect thousands of California parents.Frankly, I'm not that sympathetic here. If you're going to "donate" your sperm to create a child the best recipient would be a wife, no?
Patric, a star of films including "The Lost Boys," donated sperm in 2009 as part of a fertility treatment that resulted in pregnancy for a former girlfriend, Danielle Schreiber.
The actor decided he wanted to help raise the child, Gus, who is now 3, but has been stymied in his attempts to gain partial custody in court. A bill unanimously passed by the state Senate, now pending in the Assembly, would change the law to make such efforts easier.
Under state law, someone who donates sperm through a doctor or sperm bank and who is not married to the woman who conceives is not recognized as the child's natural father. The only exception is if the couple agreed in writing before conception that the donor was to be considered a parent.
Patric had donated the sperm in a doctor-supervised procedure, but he and Schreiber had no such agreement, and the two are no longer together, according to Fred D. Heather, Schreiber's attorney. As a result, a judge denied Patric's claim.
A bill by state Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) would allow courts to grant parental rights to sperm donors under broader conditions — for example, if a donor showed that he openly acknowledged the child as his own and received the child into his home.
"In circumstances where you have a sperm donor creating a parenting relationship with a child, someone should not be allowed to take that away from the child," said Hill, who has written other parental-rights laws.
Hill said it is appropriate that the bill is being considered in California, which has more fertility clinics than any state. Parental roles are shifting with family dynamics and technological advances, he noted.
Rarely has the Supreme Court ended its term with as much suspense about its final rulings as now. On Monday morning, the Justices sent a case that could have ended affirmative action back to a lower court; Tuesday, the next scheduled day for decisions, may bring a ruling that strikes down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. And the two most anticipated remaining cases, expected by the end of the week, are on the future of same-sex marriage. Whatever the Court decides, it will, in an instant, dramatically change the political and legal landscape for gay rights.I'm not going to be surprised if that's the eventual outcome.
What’s at stake? If you are part of a same-sex couple and are or want to be married, or are the child of gay or lesbian parents, your life and your choices will be directly affected. One of the cases, Hollingsworth v. Perry, a challenge to Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, should, at least, determine whether or not you can marry the person you love in that state. That could provide the template for how courts view other states’ bans. Depending on how the decision is written, it could bring marriage equality to seven states, or to fifty. (The New Yorker has put together a map with possible outcomes.) Most ambitiously, the plaintiffs are asking the justices to find that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
The other case, United States v. Edith Windsor, is a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages sanctioned by the states. This means that it affects same-sex marriage in any of the twelve states that currently allow it, as well as any future ones. If DOMA is overturned, couples will be entitled to the federal benefits of marriage (preferential estate-tax treatment, social-security benefits) as well as the responsibilities (listing a spouse’s assets on financial disclosure forms), not to mention the dignity that comes with full recognition.
Exactly how the Court will rule has been subject to a lot of speculation. The expert consensus, which I think is correct, is that DOMA will be ruled unconstitutional. Prop 8 will end up being nullified, but not on the merits; instead, the Court will rule that the Prop 8 case is not properly before it and thereby allow a lower court ruling striking it to stand...
Re "Why marriage matters," Opinion, June 9It's all me, me, me! with the freak narcissist progressives. They're destroying the country, the leftist ghouls.
Nathaniel Frank's piece revealed a compressed view of same-sex marriage. Nowhere did it mention children — conveniently dismissed, it seems, as if marriage is simply a celebration of individual rights and public recognition.
Through the centuries, in vastly different cultures all over the world, marriage has been a religious and social institution because it is the single greatest unifier of men, women and children. It is self-evident that marriage is much more than Frank's idea of "sharing in the symbolic space of first-class citizenship." This reduces marriage to something akin to membership in an exclusive country club. Marriage has historically enabled the entire concept of family and society to flourish. And that, of course, includes children.
So while Frank may believe same-sex marriage is about rights, benefits and recognition, those are secondary considerations. Perhaps he should consider marriage as something selfless, something based on giving, not just getting.
Gary P. Taylor
Santa Ysabel, Calif.
I support traditional marriage. #sorrynotsorry. RT if you do too! #values #tcot twitter.com/Gabby_Hoffman/…
— Gabriella Hoffman (@Gabby_Hoffman) March 27, 2013
Same-sex marriage is probably inevitable in America, whatever the Supreme Court decides. That’s because the public is clearly leaning that way. That the court is even being asked to impose a sweeping social change on the nation is illustrative of another lost battle — the idea that the Supreme Court is not a super-legislature and that nine robed lawyers ought to refrain from imposing their policy preferences on the whole nation.Continue reading. It's a thoughtful piece. And she hits it out of the park at the conclusion.
Even two liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, have from time to time expressed caution about the Court’s imposing its will on matters better left up to the people and their elected representatives. It will be interesting to see whether those prudential considerations come into play in their decisions in these cases or whether the desire for a particular outcome overwhelms concerns about the Court’s proper role. Too few Americans recognize this for what it is — a loss of sovereignty.
Champions of same-sex marriage are carrying the day for a number of reasons. (1) The advocacy embedded in popular entertainment such as Modern Family and Brokeback Mountain has been funny, touching, and disarming. (2) Proponents of same-sex marriage appear to be asking for simple justice. (3) Americans would rather stick pins in their eyes than willingly hurt anyone’s feelings. (4) Proponents seem to be embracing the conservative value of marriage.
Beyond all of those factors, though, the most potent argument in the SSM quiver is the race analogy. During oral argument at the Supreme Court, advocates argued (as they have elsewhere) that impairing the right of homosexuals to marry is analogous to proscribing interracial marriage. If that’s true, it’s game, set, and match. If SSM is like interracial marriage, then the only possible motive for opposing it is bigotry.
Liberals slip on this argument like a comfortable sweater. It’s easier to impugn the good faith of your opponents than seriously to grapple with their arguments. Oppose forcing Catholic institutions to distribute free contraceptives? You hate women. Oppose changing the definition of marriage? You hate gays.
Re " A gay marriage backlash? Not likely," Opinion, March 24Well, that's not politically correct to say that. You'll be attacked as homophobic!
It is incredible to suggest that the effect of legalizing same-sex marriage is only "abstract and long term." A normal response to someone who says "I grew up without a mother" or "I grew up without a father" is to say, "I'm so sorry." Legalizing same-sex marriage would celebrate motherlessness and fatherlessness.
If the Supreme Court redefines marriage, we will tell ourselves and every child that women are replaceable and men don't matter. There is nothing more fundamentally equal than marriage as it always has been: You must have a man, and you must have a woman.
Gwendolyn Wyne
Los Angeles
WASHINGTON—Two days of arguments on same-sex marriage revealed a Supreme Court uneasy about making sweeping moves on gay rights and holding doubts about whether the cases belonged before the justices at all.Continue reading.
The arguments also brought to life more familiar fissures between the court's liberal and conservative wings. On Wednesday, liberal justices suggested that a 1996 federal law denying benefits to lawfully married same-sex couples was motivated by animus against gays, while Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, challenged assertions that gays and lesbians need judicial protection from repressive majorities.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, seen as a pivotal vote, gave gay-marriage proponents some hope by suggesting the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act might infringe on states' rights to make their own marriage rules. That suggested at least five justices—Justice Kennedy plus the court's four liberals—might be ready to strike down the law.
But questions about whether the court could properly hear the case made it hard to predict any outcome.
Decisions are expected by late June on the Defense of Marriage Act case as well as the case the court heard Tuesday on California's 2008 voter initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage.
The arguments highlighted a point in common between the two cases. Normally, federal courts require two adverse parties before they can decide a case. Strikingly, however, both the federal and state governments agree with the plaintiffs that the challenged laws are unconstitutional, and have declined to defend them on appeal.
Other groups have stepped in to defend the laws banning gay marriage—the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives for the Defense of Marriage Act and the private citizens who officially sponsored Proposition 8.
But justices of different ideological stripes were wary of litigants without clear legal standing, even though advocates on both sides were eager for vindication in a roiling culture war.
"I can't think of another instance where that's happened," said Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, referring to the House's intervention in the federal marriage law case. "I'm afraid of opening that door."
With the issue of same-sex marriage argued before the Supreme Court and raging elsewhere in America, a question:What?
Is it possible to be a traditional Christian or Muslim or Orthodox Jew — and hold to one's faith on what constitutes marriage — and not be considered a bigot?
And is faith now a problem to be overcome, first marginalized by the state and then contained, so as not to get in the way of great changes to come?
The issue of same-sex unions is by nature contentious and divisive. It is not merely about equal protection under the law, but redefining the foundation of our culture, which is the family itself.
It's not my intention to add to the anger and the noise. If you've followed the news of the crowds outside the Supreme Court this week, and watched those vicious little boxes within boxes on cable TV, with angry people barking at each other, you'll get plenty of noise.
I'm not angry. Yet I am struggling. And I've been silent on the subject for some time, trying to figure it out.
I'm not opposed to same-sex unions. Americans have the right to equal protection under the law, and same-sex couples should be able to expect the same tax benefits and other considerations allowed to those of us who are now being called, in some quarters, "opposite-sex couples."
As far as I'm concerned, Americans have the right to do as they please as long as they don't infringe upon the rights of others. America is all about liberty and freedom.
But this all comes now during the season of Lent, a time of fasting and prayer, when Christians are compelled to confront the obligations of their faith.
And while I hear the new moral arguments, about equal rights and equal protection, I've read little about the religious freedom aspects and what the Supreme Court's ruling might mean for houses of traditional worship.
All I'm asking is that in the rush to establish new rights, that tolerance for religious freedom be considered as well.
Although Windsor and her allies often seek to minimize the issues at stake in challenging DOMA §3, the impact of the Second Circuit’s decision – and of any decision by this Court to affirm that decision – simply is not limited to Windsor’s tax liability or even a relatively few couples in New York and a few other states. The question of whom society allows to marry does not affect only the wedding couple.Be sure to RTWT. It's a very compelling argument.
Even without the direct force of law, federal employees with federally recognized, same-sex marriages from a few states will spread across the Nation when they are re-posted, transferred, or simply move. They will take with them not only their federal recognition, but also various property rights such as pensions, as well as child-custody issues. When they move to states that do not recognize same-sex marriages, they will raise countless substantive and procedural issues, as well as the sheer weight of practical problems that the differing legal regimes will present.
These issues posed by same-sex couples will arise when federally regulated persons such as federal employees and contractors either (a) move from one of the few same-sex marriage states to a state with a husband-wife definition of marriage, or (b) visit same-sex marriage jurisdictions (like Windsor here) while domiciled in states with a husband-wife definition of marriage. The latter category will require still further litigation to determine DOMA’s application to such “destination marriages” by non-domiciliaries. Whenever federal law recognizes a marriage that state law does not, the conflicts that the differing regimes pose will be magnified.
California’s Proposition 8 rewrote the state’s Constitution so that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, for purposes of any federal law, defined the word marriage to mean “only a legal union between one man and one woman.”Keep reading. The editors are making a radical call to stop the political process now moving toward greater acceptance of homosexual marriage across the land. A sweeping ruling like that endorsed by the Times will only radicalize and polarize the debate, and thus prevent the likely accommodation of all sides through the federal system. What a disaster.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on challenges to Proposition 8 on Tuesday and Defense of Marriage on Wednesday. In both cases, the court should rule that the Constitution prohibits the federal government and every state from defining the fundamental right of marriage so narrowly and fully protects the liberty of same-sex couples.
When Proposition 8 was on the California ballot in 2008, the official pamphlet explaining the initiative said that it did not “take away any rights or benefits of gay or lesbian domestic partnerships,” which have the “ ‘same rights, protections, and benefits’ as married spouses.”
As the California Supreme Court said about legal attacks on same-sex marriage, the point of denying gay marriages was to say officially that these relationships were not of “comparable stature or equal dignity” to opposite-sex marriages. The intent was to stigmatize them, enshrine discrimination in law and encourage discrimination against gay men, lesbians and same-sex couples. The federal Defense of Marriage Act does the same, with the same effects. And in depriving same-sex couples and their children of federal recognition and benefits, it fails to meet any test under the Constitution.
This week the Supreme Court takes up same-sex marriage, amid shifting American mores and a healthy debate about equality. Yet the two cases before the High Court are less about the institution of marriage than the sanctity of democratic institutions and the proper role of the courts.Also notice the discussion of upholding DOMA at the piece.
Over time, through popular consent, the law comes to reflect an evolving social consensus. On gay marriage, state by state, election by election, voters are extending to gay and lesbian couples the same rights and responsibilities that pertain to a union between a man and a woman. Those choices are the pith of self-government, even if fair-minded voters in other states preserve the traditional meaning.
If the Supreme Court now reads a right to gay marriage into the Constitution and imposes that definition on all states, it won't settle the debates Americans are conducting. It will inflame them and ensure they never end, prematurely aborting the give-and-take on contentious moral and social issues the Constitution is designed to encourage. Five Justices—or fewer, if they split into pluralities—could further polarize the body politic and make compromise more difficult.
#MarriageMarch is tomorrow myop.us/10HknTi retweet this meme to show your support! twitter.com/NOMupdate/stat…And until later, see Andrew Ferguson, at the Weekly Standard, "Politicized 'Science' of Gay Marriage."
— NOM (@NOMupdate) March 25, 2013
The beautiful wife of a millionaire Long Island real-estate mogul got a judge to rip up her prenup — a rare, precedent-setting decision that could influence countless marriages to wealthy people.
Elizabeth Petrakis, 39 — sometimes acting as her own lawyer — got a an appellate panel last month to toss the agreement she signed with Peter Petrakis, 41, four days before their lavish 1998 wedding.
The prenup stipulated that Peter, who parlayed a string of smoke shops into a $20 million commercial real-estate empire, would keep everything in his name if they split up.
But Elizabeth argued for seven years that Peter coerced her signature, threatening to call off the wedding even though her father had already paid $40,000 for the reception.
“He told me he would rip it up as soon as we had kids,” Elizabeth, who has since had twin sons and a daughter, told The Post at her Old Brookville mansion.
“But he never did. The reason this happened was I was an advocate for myself and I didn’t give up.’’
She called the document “a knife in my heart from Day One.’’
As she nibbled on strawberry shortcake, Jessica LaShawn, a flight attendant from Chicago, tried not to get ahead of herself and imagine this first date turning into another and another, and maybe, at some point, a glimmering diamond ring and happily ever after.Actually, Ms. LaShawn has some pretty great teeth --- and then some.
She simply couldn’t help it, though. After all, he was tall, from a religious family, raised by his grandparents just as she was, worked in finance and even had great teeth.
Her musings were suddenly interrupted when her date asked a decidedly unromantic question: “What’s your credit score?”
“It was as if the music stopped,” Ms. LaShawn, 31, said, recalling how the date this year went so wrong so quickly after she tried to answer his question honestly. “It was really awkward because he kept telling me that I was the perfect girl for him, but that a low credit score was his deal-breaker.”
The credit score, once a little-known metric derived from a complex formula that incorporates outstanding debt and payment histories, has become an increasingly important number used to bestow credit, determine housing and even distinguish between job candidates.
It’s so widely used that it has also become a bigger factor in dating decisions, sometimes eclipsing more traditional priorities like a good job, shared interests and physical chemistry. That’s according to interviews with more than 50 daters across the country, all under the age of 40.
“Credit scores are like the dating equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease test,” said Manisha Thakor, the founder and chief executive of MoneyZen Wealth Management, a financial advisory firm. “It’s a shorthand way to get a sense of someone’s financial past the same way an S.T.D. test gives some information about a person’s sexual past.”
Lauren Dollard, a 26-year-old assistant at a nonprofit in Houston, said her low credit score had helped to stall her romantic plans. Her boyfriend is wary of marrying her until she can significantly pay down the more than $150,000 she owes in student loans and bolster her credit score, she said.I personally wouldn't marry someone who ran up that much in college debt. The numbers I read about in student loan debt these days are literally obscene. No one should ever take out that much debt for any kind of degree, any kind, including an attorney, doctor, or whatever. You start out your professional life in financial bondage. Talk about a higher education bubble. Oh brother...
Heather Fredenberg, 22, said she and Dan [Fredenberg] were passionate about each other, but also bickered about child care, bills, fixing the car and other stresses amplified by having two infants and not enough time or money. The county attorney’s report said they were “mutually abusive with each other, both verbally and physically.” More than once they considered divorcing.Read it all at the link.
About three months before the shooting, Ms. Fredenberg started seeing Mr. [Brice] Harper. She has called it a flirtation and an “emotional affair” that was intimate but never sexual. She told her husband about the relationship, and the two men once clashed at Fatt Boys Bar & Grille in Kalispell.
Although Ms. Fredenberg said she and her husband were committed to each other despite everything, Mr. Fredenberg’s father said his son believed the marriage was breaking apart. The day before he died, he told his father, “I’m giving up on it. I just can’t put up with it anymore,” his father said.
On Sept. 22, Mr. Harper called Ms. Fredenberg and asked a favor: He was moving out of town the next day, and could she come over and help him clean the house? She took her 18-month-old twin boys and spent the afternoon at his home, a five-minute drive from hers. She swapped tense text messages with Mr. Fredenberg and talked on the phone around 8:30 p.m. He asked whether she was with Mr. Harper. She said she did not answer. He cursed and hung up.
As she was strapping her sons into their car seats and getting ready to leave, she said, she asked Mr. Harper to circle the block with her to diagnose a clunking sound in her car. As they drove, she saw headlights in her rearview mirror. Her husband had come looking for her, and he was behind them.
Ms. Fredenberg said she dropped Mr. Harper off at his house and told him to go inside and lock the doors. She said he told her that he had a gun and was not afraid of her husband. Mr. Fredenberg, close behind, parked his car and followed Mr. Harper into his garage, its light spilling onto the driveway.
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