Robertson began by saying the wife should focus on the good about her cheating husband: "Does he provide a home for you to live in? Does he provide food for you to eat? Does he provide clothes for you to wear? Is he nice to the children? ... Is he handsome?"

"Give him honor instead of trying to worry about it," he continued. "But recognize also, like it or not, males have a tendency to wander a little bit and what you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn’t want to wander.”

Watch, via Right Wing Watch:

Continue Reading...

Christopher and I had hiked four miles through the mossy Point Reyes forest to a dramatic cliff overlooking the ocean. We sat in the dirt, which was pockmarked with mouse holes and accented with ice plant in electric-pink bloom. Turquoise waves churned below and a seagull took stomach-turning dives as we read each other letters we had written moments before alongside a shady creek. These notes -- our individual expressions of why we wanted to make this commitment -- said the same things with different words. We cried, hugged and then took turns asking, "Will you marry me?" We both said yes and, hands shaking, slipped engagement rings on each other's fingers.

Continue Reading...

I've followed you for what feels like 10 years, as I've traversed the quarter-life crisis and crises of creativity that speak powerfully to the blood that has always run through my veins.

So now I come to you with a more commonplace problem in some ways, but still so connected to the vein of creativity that you speak so well to.

There is a man. Isn't there always? An older man, and one I work with. So banal, I know. But we've been as you might call it, "good," or as good as one can be as two married people. We've admitted our attraction to each other, but agreed it would be reckless, careless and selfish to take it any further. I am not under any illusion that I love him, but I do enjoy his company. And that's my dilemma.  After traveling with him for work this week, staying up just talking until the sun came up, I suddenly feel a wave of creativity rushing my every sense. It's like being a teenager again, but one who's actually read ee cummings, Whitman and Milton. I find myself scooping up old poetry books, reading Shakespeare and even writing down the colors of this strange, yet I imagine so universal, blend of emotions. It's addicting in the way that any other vice might be, but I'm still young (so they tell me, at 28), so still learning the ways of this strange and wonderful world.

Continue Reading...

The lyrics echoed in the background as he shouted about STDs and unplanned pregnancy from the pulpit. Cause I am waiting for you, praying for you darling, wait for me too, wait for me as I wait for you. One by one we each placed a ring on our fourth finger and made vows to an apparently bi-curious Jesus who took teenage husbands and wives by the dozen that night.

Continue Reading...

You are an amazing voice of reason out there, so I am writing to you. In a nutshell, I am miserable. I am 39 going on 40. Anyone looking at my life from the outside would think (and they are correct) I have nothing to complain about. I have three great kids, wife of many years, am a successful professional who makes enough money to perhaps not be a 1-percenter, but certainly a 5-percenter. Heck, I was a college athlete and am still in good shape. So why do I feel so worthless?

I am OCD and depressive. I used to drink, and stopped cold-turkey several years ago because I figured out I was drinking myself into a stupor to turn off the feelings of hopelessness, and the next day, when I would be sick, was the lowest. And as my kids got older I did not want them to see me out of control like that. I was not "addicted" to alcohol, i.e., I was able to stop. It was simply my therapy of choice for these feelings of wanting to be dead.

Continue Reading...

The bill would offer civil unions to gay and straight couples, getting the state government out of the marriage business altogether and making "certain that every Minnesotan couple gets a civil union in the state of Minnesota," Norton told ABC's KAALTV. The measure would leave marriage "to the churches that are offering them," she added. Norton did not address how the measure, which was introduced on Thursday, would secure federal benefits for Minnesota couples or out-of-state recognition of civil partnerships.

Norton had previously supported the Republican-backed measure for gay civil unions, but withdrew her support after calling the bill unfair and unequal. This, she says, is a better compromise.

Continue Reading...

In this month's Elle Magazine, Gordon opens up about what happened:

Some years ago, a woman Gordon declines to name became a part of the Sonic Youth world, first as the girlfriend of an erstwhile band member and later as a partner on a literary project with Moore. Eventually, Gordon discovered a text message and confronted him about having an affair. They went to counseling, but he kept seeing the other woman. "We never got to the point where we could just get rid of her so I could decide what I wanted to do," Gordon says. "Thurston was carrying on this whole double life with her. He was really like a lost soul." Moore moved out. Gordon stayed home and listened to a lot of hip-hop. "Rap music is really good when you’re traumatized," she says.

Continue Reading...

Regarding my last two columns, this one and this one, I seem to have made an error that was offensive to many people who identify as bisexual, and I apologize. I do. I really do. I can really fall in love with my own nonsense sometimes. And to those who have written agreeing with me, I appreciate it, but I think I was wrong.

Here is the flaw in my thinking, courtesy of a kindly scholar of argument:

"Logically, your position relies on a fallacy of amphiboly that confuses two different uses of the term 'two.'  Being attracted to 'two' sexes is not the same thing as wanting 'two' partners. Could a bisexual person be polyamorous?  Sure. But so could a heterosexual person. You say that being lesbian means one wants to be partners with women (etc).  Does that mean that being a lesbian means that one wants to be partners with ALL women?  More than one woman? By extension, does being heterosexual (man wants to be partners with women) mean that a man wants to be partners with ALL women? More than one? Besides, being bisexual doesn't mean that one has 'two' attractions.  It means that one’s preferences don’t necessarily depend on sex.  It’s not that you want to have sex with 'both' men and women.  It’s just as easily that you want to have sex with either a man or a woman."

Continue Reading...

In response to a recent column about a bisexual woman who was wondering if she should marry, some people wrote angrily to say that one does not have to want to be in a plural marriage to be bisexual. That makes sense. They said that they were bisexual but happy in a committed monogamous relationship. That too sounds reasonable. Some claimed to have been hurt or insulted by my recent words about bisexuality. So I reexamined what I wrote.

I want to be kind and I want to be fair and want to admit that I can make mistakes. I hurt some people and I am sorry. I erred in not speaking to enough bisexual people to understand the sensitivity of the issue. I got swept away in the pure logic of it. For that I am sorry.

But let me state affirmatively what underlies my thinking. People need to make choices based on who they really are. In order to do that they must have legal choices that suit who they are.

Continue Reading...

For the last year and a half I have been drinking and taking drugs. I was in a very dark place and was an asshole to the people I love most, my family. However, I am happy to say that I am now 44 days sober.

Just to set the record straight, Sharon and I are not divorcing. I’m just trying to be a better person.

Continue Reading...

When the waiter brought us our bottle of wine we filled our glasses to the brim, mused about the end of an era, and raised a toast: “To divorce!”

After a Mediterranean feast we headed over to her apartment nearby so I could finish up some work emails, and over some more wine flipped through our old wedding album, giggling at some of the cheesy photos from the reception. Conspicuously absent from our little album, which a federal bureaucrat had paged through some years back while scrutinizing us closely, were pictures from our honeymoon, a wild Saturday night spent at the Cubbyhole, a popular lesbian bar in the West Village where, incidentally, we also first decided to get married.

Continue Reading...

I'm a 21-year-old woman, and I've been engaged since 18. (We're not really religious or anything, so that's not a factor.) When we decided to get married, for me it was kind of on a whim. I was young and didn't really get what it means to make a lifetime commitment. So now we live together and plan to get married later this year. I love him more than anything. He's my best friend and knows me better than anyone else. We get along great and rarely fight. He would make an incredible husband. But at the same time, I don't feel ready to make a lifetime commitment.

I feel I haven't had enough time to experience life independently and develop myself. I know that he doesn't feel the same way. He's very serious about getting married and seems to have no second thoughts. We're the same age. To make things more complicated, he recently lost a parent and lost his job, and he's going through a hard time, and I love him and want to support him, not make things worse. I don't know what to do.

Continue Reading...

"I had this bizarre reaction," Clara told ABC. "I had burning and swelling and redness, which was very unusual. I thought I had contracted an STD."

After a series of visits to the gynecologist, Clara discovered the hard truth: She was allergic to her new husband's sperm.

"It was a real problem," Jeff said. "Because everything else was great. We were madly in love, but it was a real game-changer for a while. It pretty much dramatically reduced our libido. We really haven't had much sex at all for the last 10 months. The intimacy level drops dramatically -- all of a sudden, instead of living with your new wife or husband, you are more like roommates."

Continue Reading...

I’d proposed to Ellie in 2009 in the town where Sappho was born. At sunset, we climbed a hill overlooking the ocean and in a very ineloquent fashion, I asked her to spend the rest of her life with me. Despite the grand romantic gesture of a proposal, when we got home from Greece, we hardly told a soul about our engagement. Partially it was because we were in a new city and nobody knew us. Partially it was because gay marriage isn’t legal in California, so announcing our engagement felt a little like playing pretend. We wanted legitimacy, and not in the form of Facebook comments. But we couldn’t have it, so we accepted our new life as betrotheds without fuss or fanfare.

Continue Reading...

The title of Moore's book, "How to Create the Perfect Wife," explains what Day was up to. From an early age -- sniffing at the revelry in that 18th-century party school, Oxford -- Day knew exactly how he intended to live. He planned to commit himself to "the unremitting practice of the severest virtue." He would adopt an austere existence in the country, thinking, reading, writing and doing good works, while receiving few visitors. The one thing he required to achieve this nirvana was a mate, and for that, too, he had something very particular in mind.

Continue Reading...

As reported by USA Today, for almost half of the nearly 13,000 women researchers interviewed, their "first union" was living with an unmarried partner -- not marriage. The survey also found that marriage was the "first union" for less than 25 percent of women, down from 39 percent in 1995.

Other findings include:

Continue Reading...

Given this, and the Supreme Court hearings this week on the Defense of Marriage Act, I started thinking about what the future of marriage might look like. I wondered -- out of liberal glee, rather than conservative terror, mind you -- whether same-sex unions could open up the institution to even bigger changes. Might we someday extend marriage's 1,000-plus legal benefits and protections to people regardless of relationship status? Would we ever institutionally separate monogamy from marriage? What about allowing for polygamy or group parenthood?

I called up Barbara Risman, a senior scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families and sociology professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, to get her predictions. We talked about everything from monogamy to polygamy, utilitarian marriages to romance. One thing became clear: Marriage isn't going anywhere.

Continue Reading...

The new requirements, according to the bill introduced on Thursday (emphasis Allran's):

 50‑6.  Divorce after separation of one yeartwo‑year waiting period on application of either party.

(a)        Marriages may be dissolved and the parties thereto divorced from the bonds of matrimony on the application of either party, if and when the party upon satisfying the following requirements before filing for divorce under this section:

(1)        The husband and wife have lived separate and apart for one year,and themet a two‑year waiting period. The spouse seeking the divorce shall give a written notice of intent to file for divorce to the other spouse at the beginning of the two‑year waiting period. The notice of intent shall be properly acknowledged in accordance with Chapter 10B of the General Statutes. During the two‑year waiting period, there is no requirement that the husband and wife live separate and apart.

(2)        During the two‑year waiting period, the husband and wife have each completed courses on (i) improving communication skills and (ii) conflict resolution. Courses required by this subdivision do not have to be completed together as a couple.

(3)        If a couple has a child, the husband and wife have each completed a course of at least four hours on the impact of divorce on children.

 

 

 

 

Continue Reading...

"Gays are weird and/or gross," though, is not a great legal argument, and right now the Supreme Court is deciding whether or not there is a good reason for the state to ban same-sex marriages while allowing opposite-sex marriages. So far the best that opponents of equality could come up with was "opposite marriage is just the way marriage has always been." That falls apart when you compare the modern American institution of marriage to marriages as they've been practiced throughout human history, as anyone who has read a book called "the Bible" could tell you. So the opponents moved on to their current argument -- the last, best argument for banning gay marriage -- which is, basically, "for the children."

Continue Reading...

As discredited as "separate but equal" is, however, the Republican Party is now latching onto it when it comes to the rights of LGBT Americans. Indeed, with polls showing the GOP's staunch anti-gay-marriage position now at odds with American public opinion, Republican voices have resorted to arguing that keeping same-sex marriage illegal somehow doesn't mean that LGBT people are being treated as less equal than everyone else. They are additionally arguing that their opposition to legalizing same sex marriage doesn't mean they are bigots against LGBT people.

Continue Reading...