Both scholars and politicians now agree that married two-parent families are good for children, and that poverty could be greatly reduced if marriage could be increased.

The press has no problem writing about [lurid details of the Clinton scandals], but they get oddly uptight at the thought of unconventional marriage.

That's because their readers -- mainstream America -- do not believe it's possible to be in a deeply loving, committed relationship and still have sex with other people.

But many gay people do. And that's a fundamental difference between gay and straight perceptions of the Clinton scandals.

That's not to say that gay men aspire to relationships as porous as cheesecloth, but a good portion of them have been in relationships that allowed them, with certain rules, to wander. Many know it's possible to be emotionally committed and sexually unfaithful.

Let�s start with the bad guy in Alvear�s story: �Society.�

Society has been wrong on almost everything when it comes to sex and love. Much of what society has said is fake, dangerous and sick (homosexuality, interracial love come to mind) I experience as genuine, safe and healthy.

Society says monogamy is a moral imperative, but my own experiences leave me questioning it.
�
Society refuses to see�the possibility that human beings are capable of experiencing two contradictory feelings [having true love but wanting casual sex] at the same time and that one does not negate the other.

To promote these stable homes, is society�s best bet to leave individual moms and dads to their own devices, desires, and choices? Well, as Alvear notes, women and (especially) men aren�t naturally attracted to only one person. Alvear says society doesn�t want to face this reality. And that�s where he errs. �Society� does see the possibility that human beings can feel both monogamous love and polyamorous lust at the same time. Love and lust may not negate each other, but they make things complicated. As Alvear describes open relationships, �a more anguished drama, you could not create.� Especially when babies result.

And that�s why we have marriage. Through marriage, those natural lustings of women and (especially) men are frowned upon. Marriage ties men to their children. Marriage tries to limit the number of children exposed to the anguished drama that results from free love.

Alvear acknowledges these concerns about children, but dismisses them out of hand.

Is monogamy a core moral value we violate at our own peril? Or simply a cultural imperative, designed to keep families from breaking up and allowing parents to distinguish their children from their neighbors'?

And that takes us back to gay marriage. Unlike sex between men and women, sex between men and men doesn�t make babies. So the social costs of sexual infidelity among gays are much less than they are for straights. That�s partly why gays are more permissive of infidelity (the other major reason being that gay men are men, and men are horndogs). A potential problem with gay marriage could arise if�again, if�gay men wed but bring to marriage a lax attitude toward monogamy. The shared social ideal of monogamy is central to the institution of marriage. Take monogamy out of marriage, and marriage becomes meaningless.

And that�s essentially where the arguments about gay marriage currently lie. Opponents of gay marriage believe that gays would change marriage for the worse by weakening the ideal of monogamy. Proponents all argue that gay marriage is a civil right, but they�re also split between those that believe marriage would change gay relationships for the better, by promoting monogamy, and those that believe gays would change marriage for the better by making it a less restrictive (read: monogamous), gendered institution. And some people argue that gay marriage would have no significant impact on marriage overall.

The kids who are running wild and frequently killing one another have, in almost every instance, been abandoned in some way. They�ve been left to their own devices by adults for reasons that in some cases are unforgivable, and in others, unavoidable. I don�t offer that as an excuse for bad behavior. It�s just a statement of fact. Gang members who are willing to talk will tell you about neglectful or physically abusive parents, fathers or mothers (or both) who have taken off or died, parents who are alcoholics or drug addicts, single parents who spend most of their waking hours working, and on and on.

The welcoming arms of street gangs are an almost irresistible lure for such youngsters. If no one else intervenes, some of those kids inevitably become predators. And many more become victims themselves.

Yesterday, Ontario Attorney-General Norm Sterling said his government will comply with the court ruling and register same-sex marriages. Gay couples have already begun marrying in the province, expecting the legality of their union to be recognized. But the federal government has not yet declared whether it will appeal the Ontario ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Blue Car, the Miramax film, runs just 86 minutes but has some parents on the edge of their seats the entire time. Agnes Bruckner, 16, portrays Meg Denning, the older daughter in a divorced family. She's a gifted poet whose yearning for her absent dad surfaces in spare, exquisite verse that catches the eye of Mr. Auster, her high school English teacher. He mentors Meg and sparks improvement in her writing, and he seems to give her the fatherly attention she craves. But Auster is not her dad; he finds it impossible to resist the girl's budding sexuality and ends up taking advantage of her.

The Brookings [Institution] released its happiness report at a gathering of American and British economists who are attempting to determine the mystery of happiness, to see if it affects irrational economic behaviour and spending in other countries as well. "As expected, married people are, on average, happier than non-married people," it said. "Divorce made people significantly less happy, although unhappier people were not more likely to get divorced," it found. The study was authored by the Brookings' Carol Graham, Andrew Eggers and Sandip Sukhtankar. Its conclusions were largely drawn from an annual survey of some 13,000 Russians between 1992 and 2001.

Girls are kinder and more caring than boys. Or at least they are more likely than boys to see themselves that way. A survey of 940 young people aged 19 and 20 has found girls to be more empathetic, more responsible and generally more socially competent. "A lot of feminists may not agree, but we are still rearing our boys and girls differently," said Diana Smart, the survey's co- author. The research, for the Australian Institute of Family Studies, is the latest update from the long-running Australian Temperament Project, which has followed 2400 infants over 20 years. The project aims to evaluate the role of temperament - the characteristics children are born with - in their subsequent development.

Ms. Haque [a high school student], who will attend the University of California at Berkeley in the fall, is one of a growing number of young Muslim women who have adopted the covering their mothers rejected. Islamic dress, worn after puberty, often accompanies a commitment not to date or to engage in activities where genders intermingle.

Her parents immigrated from Pakistan, and her mother, Shazia, who has a master's degree in economics, does not wear the hijab.

Ms. Haque's decision to cover herself, which she made in her freshman year, was nuanced and thoughtful.

"I noticed a big difference in the way guys talked," she said. "They were afraid. I guess they had more respect. You walked down the street and you didn't feel guys staring at you. You felt a lot more confident." Her parents were surprised but said it was her decision.

Family type matters. Married relationships, in particular, develop public accountability, personal commitment and a unity that provides emotional security for children. Not always, of course, but generally so. Documented evidence as well as observation supports these claims. According to "Why Marriage Matters", a report co-authored by 13 leading American social science researchers, children in intact, two-parent families earn more, learn more and get into trouble less. They also tend to lead longer, healthier, happier lives, avoid alcohol and drug abuse and endure much less physical and psychological abuse. Because of this, they generally require fewer government-paid social services, such as remedial learning, criminal justice, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, depression counselling, and medical, income and housing-aid programmes. Findings in Australia and Britain are similar, as is preliminary research here.

The absence of fathers in early life appears to be a more significant risk factor for girls' early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy than previously believed, researchers at Duke, Indiana and Auburn universities and in New Zealand have found. "We knew that a number of studies had identified the link between absent fathers and risk for daughters' early sexual activity, but the risk had been ascribed to more generalized family problems, such as poverty and stress," said Kenneth A. Dodge, director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Dodge was one of the co-principal investigators of the study. "Our research shows clearly that father absence itself during the first five years of life is a unique risk factor."

Even when the researchers took into account other factors that could have contributed to early sexual activity and pregnancy, such as behavioral problems and life adversity, early father-absent girls were still about five times more likely in the United States and three times more likely in New Zealand to experience an adolescent pregnancy than were father-present girls ... The researchers suggested several reasons to explain the results. One is that a longer duration of father absence results in the daughters having greater exposure to their mothers' dating and future relationship behaviors, and this exposure may encourage earlier onset of sexual behavior in daughters. Another possibility is that girls who experience father absence may undergo early personality changes that orient them toward early and unstable bonds with men.

"When Dads Clean House, It Pays Off Big Time: UC Riverside Sociologists Say Men Likely to Have Better Behaved Children and Wives Who Find Them More Sexually Attractive"

Mark McDonald, writing in the Dallas Observer, notes that children of low-income parents are "five times as likely to live in poverty if raised in mother-only households. "Whereas marriage promotion was once associated with the Religious Right, McDonald notes that today "research suggests that marriage confers undeniable benefits on children, couples, and country. It has also drawn together an odd confluence of conservatives, sociologists, marriage educators, fathers' rights activists, and divorce-law reformers who have found enough common ground to consider themselves a movement ... touted as a palliative for poverty, a way for unwed mothers to wean themselves off welfare, and for distant dads to reconnect with their kids."

It took a lot of hurt, anguish, broken homes and broken spirits before America realized the truth: There must be fathers - involved, loving fathers - to make a family complete, a child whole and society strong.

Call to young artists! Submit artwork related to fathers and father-figures for permanent digital exhibition on PapaInk. The Father's Day Art Collection will recognize and honor the bond between fathers/father-figures and children. Each submitted piece will be included in the collection and displayed to audiences worldwide.

[P]olls show that Americans increasingly believe that it's only fair to give same-sex partners the legal tools to care for one another. That's true in no small part because, for all the apocalyptic rhetoric employed agaimst same-sex unions, lesbian and gay couples fit easily into the contemporary Western philosophy of marriage that has evolved over the last century.
...
When full marriage rights for same-sex couples arrive here in the United States, it will be just another incremental step in the ongoing transformation of marriage into an egalitarian institution based on love. Or to put it another way, same-sex couples are following, not leading, changes in our marriage law.

You have the right to make your own choices, and to have people respect them.

I wanted to send a response in the "talk back" section. They had a menu of different categories for comments, and I clicked on "Morality." A window popped up to inform me:

Sorry, but we're not really here to debate Morality, we're here to distribute information.

The Federal Government is reportedly considering introducing a flat $5000 allowance as an alternative to paid maternity leave to help low-paid and part-time working women. The Australian says a proposal before Prime Minister John Howard would provide all women having babies with the minimum wage, of about $500 a week, for three months.

It seemed that every couple due to wed in the Auckland region flocked to the ninth annual New Zealand Bride and Groom Show at the Ellerslie Convention Centre yesterday. There were gooey, cooey, wooey couples. There were fractious, fussing, fighting couples. And, of course, there were older, second-time-round couples.

The way a mother cares for her baby can determine how stressed out the child will be as an adult because her nurturing can permanently change the way the infant's genes operate, new studies on rats suggest.The studies, presented Sunday at a conference on the fetal and infant origins of adult disease, found that baby rats who were licked by their mothers a lot turned out to be less anxious and fearful as adults and produced lower levels of stress hormones than those who were groomed less. The scientists found that the mothers' licking caused the baby's brain to crank up a gene involved in soothing the body in stressful situations. Several human studies have found an association between a mother's nurturing and the future mental health of her children. The rat research, led by Michael Meaney, a professor of medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, for the first time rigorously tested whether it really is the mother's behavior that makes the difference and showed what happens in the brain of the offspring to produce the adult characteristics.

But how, precisely, did we get here � to a point where the midsection has supplanted all other parts of the female anatomy as the one most eroticized in the culture's image bank? To a large degree the answer lies in the symbolic nature of the region beneath a woman's rib cage, which represents her potential for procreation. "A flat belly is a modern-day virginity symbol," said Stephen Beckerman, an associate professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, who has studied marriage and mating rituals. "What it suggests is a woman who has never borne children and thus has all of her years of fertility in front of her."