The first Celebration of Marriage exclusively for Southern Utah featured workshops throughout the day and a gala at night, complete with speeches and musical performances. The conference has, in the past, been held in Salt Lake City, but this year the Governor's Initiative on Families Today board decided to hold separate conferences for Northern and Southern Utah.

"On the day of the wedding I told him 'the marriage is for you, party's for me'," she told the Daily Mirror. The couple, who have an adopted toddler son, Roan, split when Stone went back to work after a three-year break.

I do not argue in any way that we should now sanction gay marriage. Reasonable people can have disagreements about it. That people of goodwill would disagree was something our Founders fully understood when they created our federal system. They saw that contentious social issues would best be handled in the legislatures of the states, where debates could be held closest to home. That's why we should let the states decide how best to define and recognize any legally sanctioned unions -- marriage or otherwise.

Not long ago the daughter of an old family friend of mine came home for a Thanksgiving dinner with her lesbian partner -- and my friend is one of those "old cowboy" dads, too! He and his wife gently took their daughter's hand, and her partner's hand, and said grace together just as millions of American families do every year. To reach the best understanding, the debate over gay men and women in America should focus not on what drives us apart but on how to make all of our children -- straight or gay -- feel welcome in this land, their own American home.

Two dozen clergy from southern Wood County and northern Adams County will sign an agreement Friday intended to reduce the local divorce rate by preventing ill-fated marriages. The group, representing nine denominations, will become the 177th in the country and the ninth in Wisconsin to form a Community Marriage Policy. The signing will take place at 1:30 p.m. at the Wood County Courthouse in Wisconsin Rapids.

So, it is frequently impossible to create strong ties of fatherhood outside of an exclusive erotic bond with the children's mother. Ms. Bolton should have thought of that before she ended her marriage. She divorced 15 years ago, so perhaps she can be forgiven, having not watched a divorce culture has decimated paternity. In truth, she and millions of women who sought divorces in this time period were the victims of one of the greatest public swindles in history. They should launch an international media war against the social science and psychological establishment/snake oil salesmen who told them that divorce isn't so bad for children.

The Yorkshire-based company, called The Honey Trap, offers wages of �30 to �50 per hour to people willing to meet a "target" and then report back ... The advert asks for smart and confident people to "detect infidelity in personal relationships and report back to clients".

As girls increase their exam lead over boys for yet another year, a collective character emerges. Girls have higher professional expectations, more intellectual self-confidence and are generally more self-possessed. How are boys responding? By becoming vainer and more anxious ... I was struck by a recent newspaper picture of Pierce Brosnan's son, Sean, leaving a party. He had whipped off his shirt for the cameras, displaying the sort of six-pack stomach that might interest Ms Greer. It is not merely that boys can choose to be eye candy. It is that we are denying them any other option. If women are the masters now, do men have to behave like mistresses?

My children were three and seven when I ended my marriage. Their father kept contact with them for a year or so, but after less than three months, I knew it wouldn't last. Somehow, in that short time, his love for them just seemed to evaporate. I would watch helplessly as my little boy sat on top of his suitcase waiting for his daddy to arrive, legs kicking back and forth with anticipation, for a father who often did not keep his promise. And I remember, too, my son's first Father's Day without his father. Clutched in his little hand was a poem, composed at kindergarten; its words were never read.

The connection between desire and marriage has both a subjective meaning and a social role. Its subjective meaning lies in the exaltation and ennobling of our sexual urges, which are lifted from the realm of appetite and reconstituted as rational commitments. Its social role is to facilitate the sacrifices on which the next generation depends. Marriage is not merely a tie between man and woman; it is the principal forum in which social capital is passed on. By tying sexual fulfillment to the bearing of children, marriage offers a double guarantee of a stable home: the guarantee that comes from erotic love, and the guarantee that comes from the shared love of offspring. It offers children durable affection, a secure territory, moral examples, and moral discipline. The current debate is not really a controversy about the rights, freedoms, and life-chances of homosexuals. It is a controversy about the institution of marriage itself.

Chile, one of the few countries in the world where divorce is banned, is set to change the law in a move hailed as a major challenge to hypocrisy�Chilean couples separate and start new relationships with much the same frequency as anywhere else in South America but until now have either had to live "in sin" or undergo a torturous annulment process.

Our society should expect parents to continue to participate in the lives of their children after separation to the greatest extent possible. Parents should be obliged to accept that the constraints that having children imposes on their freedom of movement do not end when their marriage breaks down. Sharing of parenting responsibilities is the preferable approach to bringing up children, both within and beyond marital relationships.

A focus on relationships offers the prospect of common ground between conservative and progressive views on these issues. It would enable our society to promote long-term, stable and committed relationships without the authoritarian and discriminatory connotations associated with the conservative approach. A community divided by attitudes to marriage and family can unite around a commitment to stronger relationships.

Judith Flanders's examination of the Victorian house, room by room, reveals very clearly the society within: stratified, status-conscious, with its own rigorous codes and practices. Each room�the bedroom, nursery, kitchen, scullery and so on�is accorded a chapter. Drawing on contemporary diaries, novels and books of practical advice, she describes the furniture, decoration and accoutrements appropriate to each room, all of which lead on to an analysis of the behaviour and customs of the time.