Posts Tagged ‘marriage’

San Francisco History — The Project

Monday, June 3rd, 2013

Sara in her pride shirt and mouse earsA few weeks ago, my daughter came home with a list of topics and an assignment to do some sort of project about something related to San Francisco history.  She had been instructed to pick one that her parents knew about so she could get help with it.  I scanned the list of possible subjects and spotted The Gay Rights Movement.  That was a no-brainer.  I grew up in San Francisco and remember the assassination of Harvey Milk as if it were yesterday.  I spent a lot of time — for a straight kid with straight parents — in the Castro because it was close to where I had rehearsals and not too far from the Opera House.  It was a neat place to hang out on the way home.  So, it seemed obvious which topic would be best.  After all, what do I know about cable cars?

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Marriage Equality Is Not Acceptable

Monday, June 3rd, 2013

Photo: Mensatic/Morguefile.comIn 2004, newly elected mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom threw away his political future when he directed the county clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to all couples, regardless of their genders.  This kicked the fight for marriage equality into high gear and here we are, almost ten years later, and we are well on our way to universal marriage equality in this country.  And that’s not acceptable.  Or, rather, it’s not enough.

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Who marries who at 3 years old?

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Marriage is an abstract concept that, frankly, most young children don’t fully understand.  For them, it’s usually good enough to know that when grown-ups love each other very much and want to be a family together, they get often get married.  There’s no need to discuss the tax implications or workplace benefits or hospital visitation rights with a three-year-old.  But is it necessary to limit the concept to the traditional one-man-one-woman definition just because you’re talking to a three-year-old?  Even if you, personally, are okay with the idea of same-sex marriage?  Even if you live in a country where same-sex marriage is legal?  Lisa van de Geyn, writing in Today’s Parent, seems to think so, because talking about same-sex marriage is hard.

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Your Marriage Is All About The Kids

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

According to Andrew Haines, writing in Ethika Politika, the blog of the Center for Morality in Public Life, without children, the whole point of marriage vanishes.  That is, you and your spouse don’t actually love each other; you’re just in it for the good genes.  While this is not a new theory (in fact, it is so old as to have been thoroughly debunked over and over again), Haines’ take on it is a novel one; he seems to be saying that if two people who cannot have children together are allowed to get married, everyone else’s marriage will fall apart.

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Divorce and Love and Kids

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

Someone I know is getting a divorce.  I suspect that most of us, these days, can make that claim most of the time.  The percentage of marriages that end in divorce within 10 years ranges from about 1 in 4 to almost half, depending on the age of the bride.  There are many reasons why couples split — abuse, dishonesty, and infidelity are common — but I’m not so interested in whether or not a particular reason is valid or sufficient.  I’m more interested in why those reasons exist in the first place, especially when there are kids involved.

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Adoption Not Final In North Carolina

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Imagine adopting a child and being that child’s parent for nearly a decade and then being told, oops, you’re not the parent after all.  Now imagine that the reason for this is that the child’s birth mother, with whom you were raising the child, didn’t give up her parental rights.  That’s the ruling handed down by the North Carolina Supreme Court on Monday.  Apparently, if an unmarried man wants to be a father to his partner’s child but isn’t the biological father, the mother has to give up her parental rights.

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