ProWomanProLife

Interesting advice:

A priest offers advice on which men not to marry.

Good grief:

Thousands of women demonstrated outside parliament Sunday to oppose legislation banning the marriage of girls under 17. The protesters held up banners proclaiming “don’t ban what Allah made permissible,” or “stop violating Islamic sharia law in the name of rights and freedoms.” Proposed amendments to the civil status law stalled in parliament last August after severe opposition to a government proposal that would ban girls under 17 and males under 18 from marrying. Child marriages are common, especially in rural areas, where girls as young as eight have been married off.

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Véronique adds: Don’t move to Yemen. That being said, you’re safe Brigitte. Being already married. And just over 17.

A poll of Canadian values presented at the Manning Centre conference did surprise me, but here you go, these are the results:

On moral issues, Canadians are more socially conservative than most of us would be led to believe. 89% of respondents strongly agreed with the statement “nothing is more important than family.” 67% strongly agreed that, by definition, “marriage is between a man and a woman.” And 60% strongly agree that abortion is morally wrong.

At the same time, only 31% feel government should play a major role regulating individual behaviour and morality, and there is a pretty even split (46%:50%) on the role of government in preserving the moral fabric of society.

After everything was over at the conference, I went out with a family friend. I told him about the poll. He scoffed and immediately, and much to my embarrassment, took a poll of one by asking the waiter if he agreed that marriage should be between one man and one woman. To which the waiter replied, “No (pause) and if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”

But perhaps he would tell a pollster anonymously? Anyway, interesting results.

Ha:

Historically, marriage was the surest route to financial security for women. Nowadays it’s men who are increasingly getting the biggest economic boost from tying the knot, according to a new analysis of census data.

[...]

In 1970, according to the report, 28 percent of wives in this age range had husbands who were better educated than they were, outnumbering the 20 percent whose husbands had less education. By 2007, these patterns had reversed — 19 percent of wives had husbands with more education, compared with 28 percent whose husbands had less education.In the remaining couples — about half in 1970 and 2007 — spouses had similar education levels.

Only 4 percent of husbands had wives who earned more than they did in 1970, compared with 22 percent in 2007.

You know the affair John Edwards denied having that led to a child he denied fathering? Now he says: “I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves,” and, “it was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter”.

And if you believe him, I’ve got some land in Florida to sell you. Once you’ve read this account, you’ll understand why. Pity the poor child.

Or so it seems. Claudia Schiffer, 39 and still working as a professional model, is pregnant with her third child. Good for her (and hubby, of course). Here’s the part of the story I like best:

The 39-year-old catwalk star – who is one of the world’s most successful models – has previously spoken about how motherhood changed her entire attitude to her career.

Claudia – who married Michael, 38, in May 2002 – said: “I used to work every single day and travel round the world. I worked weekends, I never took one second off. When I met my husband I said, ‘You know what, this is important. I’m not going to work weekends any more.’

“And when I had kids, I became even more careful. Modelling work is fine because you can do one day here, two days there, you’re never long gone.”

Interesting story, is it not, about how women who come out as lesbians later in life seem to find more acceptance? Interesting for several reasons.

First of all, more acceptance as compared to what? Presumably each gay person only has to come out once, so nobody really knows what kind of acceptance they would have received had they come out at 23. And comparing yourself to someone else is silly, since gays are about as different from one another as straights are.

Second of all, it may also just be that society is more accepting (or less condeming, you choose) of homosexuality. It may have nothing to do with age.

But more importantly, here’s why I think the women in the article found widespread acceptance when they came out: They waited until their children were raised, they didn’t suddenly up and leave at the worst possible moment – i.e. they weren’t selfish. Maybe they were unhappy all those years, I don’t know (I hope not). But I’m sure not upsetting little children with a major change in Mom’s life (which little kids are ill-equipped to deal with) would help people in their entourage feel better about the whole thing. Funny nobody in the article mentions that.

There’s a bad idea:

Verbal abuse isn’t pleasant. Nobody likes to be called a fat cow, or crazy or stupid, but when life’s a bitch because your partner is crude, mean-spirited or cruel, who ya’ gonna call? Traditionally you call your mom to vent, or a friend, or a therapist – or nobody, you just deal with it – but if a new bill backed by the government is passed by France’s parliament, the French will indeed soon be able to call the police when their partner bad-mouths them and he will be charged with “psychological violence.”

I assume it is always going to be “he” that gets charged, since in the longish BBC news article about this proposed innovation, including interviews with women psychologists and lawyers, I saw no mention of men being victims, only perpetrators. That tells me the bill is ideologically inspired by feminists, who seem to think that women are too fragile to fend off an insult from their boyfriend, too timid to give as good as they get, or too stupid to know where the front door is and use it.

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If a woman, or a man, believes his partner is deliberately inflicting psychological cruelty on him, it is his responsibility to insist it stop, or insist they get help, or walk out. Allowing the state to decide and punish the offending party (and how would you do that? Fines? A jail term for calling your girlfriend ugly?) basically says people have no moral agency to set the rules of engagement in their most intimate relationships, essentially an idea so totalitarian that even Communist countries have never tried to implement it (Communists bugged people’s homes to ferret out politically incorrect thoughts, not to monitor domestic intimacy).

Now there are of course cases where verbal abuse leads to actual physical abuse. And there is also such a thing as verbal cruelty that is bad enough to be considered abuse. Certainly in some cases police intervention is warranted. But a bill that would allow anyone to call the cops any time their partner loses it and calls them something unpleasant? That’s just crazy.

A French psychologist says your husband’s infidelity is actually good for your marriage.

Maryse Vaillant claims French men should stop being castigated for being serial womanisers and that keeping a mistress can actually improve their marriage.

In a controversial new book on the effects of infidelity on married life, Men, Love, Fidelity, Miss Vaillant says her aim is to “re-habilitate infidelity”.

According to figures cited in the book, an estimated 39 per cent of French men cheat on their wives at some stage in their life.

“[Most] don’t do it because they no longer love them, on the contrary,” she said. “They simply need breathing space. For such men, who are in fact profoundly monogamous, infidelity is almost unavoidable”.

Well, then, if they can’t stop themselves from cheating, they’re not exactly monogamous, are they?