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So I have been trying to rent an apartment in my home...and all I have answering the ads are boyfriends and girlfriends. No matter what social status, no matter what income level, I am seeing unmarried twenty, thirty and forty year old couples who want to live together. If I question them, they don't even understand why I am asking. These are Christians and Jews. I was so surprised to find that it would be so difficult to find a young married couple. Tell me Dear Freeper...am I totally out of the ballgame to expect to find a young married...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (AP) - The divorce rate in the United States is falling, and a new study offers an explanation: More people are shacking up instead of getting married. In a report released Tuesday, the co-directors of the National Marriage Project, a nonpartisan institute at Rutgers University that promotes marriage, said couples who get married are more committed to each other than those who are just live together. The study analyzed data gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau and other researchers. Nine of every 1,000 married women in the United States divorced in 1960, according to the study. The...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Some people see nothing wrong with it, while others say it's immoral. But the question in North Carolina is: Should shacking up be illegal? The ACLU is suing to overturn a North Carolina ban on cohabitation. In all, seven states have such laws. The case centers on a woman who says she was forced to quit her job as a sheriff's dispatcher for refusing to marry her live-in boyfriend. The ACLU points to a 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down an anti-sodomy law. The organization says that ruling protects consensual sex between adults. Supporters of the...

The number of men in Japan has begun to shrink for the first time since records began, heralding a fall in the overall population from next year. The decline in the number of men signals a historic shift in Japan's population, the ageing of which is likely to have a profound influence on the country's pension system, labour market and tax base.

A Family's Torment - Terri Schiavo The following items are among many very frustrating circumstances that Terri Schiavo’s parents, brother, and sister consider to be abuses of Terri on the part of Michael Schiavo. As a parent, can you imagine having to just be a bystander while these abuses are inflicted on your child? All of these have been condoned by Judge Greer and the Pinellas County officials. Denial of Therapy, Rehabilitation and Necessary Services FS 744.3215 Rights of persons determined incapacitated FS 837.021 Perjury by contradictory statements Records show that in 1992 Michael Schiavo, Terri Schiavo’s legal guardian, sued...

Marriage is becoming increasingly uncommon in Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden and Denmark, say observers. Unlike America, marriage is widely seen as an inconvenience across Scandinavia, providing very few benefits -- social or economic -- and imposing too large a commitment on families. Observers say advances in birth control, the rise of feminism, and the decline of religion have all contributed to the increase in cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births: In Norway, half of all children are now born to unmarried mothers. In Sweden, about 56 percent of all children are illegitimate. In Denmark, nearly 45 percent of all children...

The Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is being challenged by 12 homosexuals who have been separated from the military.     They planned to file a federal lawsuit today in Boston that would cite last year's landmark Supreme Court ruling that overturned state laws making sodomy a crime as grounds for reversing the policy.     Other courts have upheld the 11-year-old policy, but C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which is advising the plaintiffs, said those decisions came prior to the 2003 Supreme Court ruling. [snip]The so-called "don't ask, don't tell" policy allows homosexuals to serve in the...

PROVO, Utah (AP) -- The truth about cats and dogs in this city is that they aren't allowed to live in the same house. But that's about to change. Current city law allows residents to own up to two dogs or two cats at the same time - but not a dog and a cat together. After getting complaints, the City Council is expected to change the law next month. The problem was discovered when Susan Sewell and her family went to the Utah County Animal Shelter in Spanish Fork to adopt a kitten in August. The family already has...

A lesbian couple yesterday launched a high court challenge against the Irish government's refusal to recognise their marriage, in a case that could have implications for thousands of cohabiting couples in Ireland. Catherine Zapaonne and Louise Gilligan appeared in the high court in Dublin to seek a judicial review of the inspector of taxes' refusal to recognise them as a couple. Dr Zapaonne, a public policy consultant and member of the Human Rights Commission, and Dr Gilligan, an academic, have lived together for 23 years and own a house together in county Dublin. They are Irish citizens and married in...

Michael McManus hopes to bring the Marriage Savers to Wyoming By Cara Eastwood rep4@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle CHEYENNE - Marriage in the United States is in trouble, and Michael McManus thinks he knows how to fix it. The nationally-syndicated religion columnist has developed a program, called the Marriage Savers, that he says has helped drastically reduce divorce rates in more than 150 cities. If a September meeting with local religious leaders goes well, Cheyenne might be the next city to join in the effort to help build stronger marriages. The Rev. Kurt Borgaard of First Christian Church joined...

<p>New York Giants second-round draft pick Chris Snee and coach Tom Coughlin's daughter had a child last fall, the team disclosed hours after picking the Boston College guard.</p> <p>Snee and Katie Coughlin are not married, but together they are raising the boy, Dylan.</p>

An unmarried couple who are the parents of a 2-year-old child may be forced to separate because cohabitation is illegal in North Carolina and would violate the woman's probation. Melissa Sheridan said she has about two years of probation left for welfare fraud in New York state. She moved to North Carolina a few months ago with her boyfriend, John Finger. New York allowed her to leave with the assumption North Carolina would supervise her probation, but North Carolina has refused because she and Finger live together, she said. Terry Gootee of the 5th Judicial District's Division of Community Corrections...

<p>IN THE Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's dueling opinions on same-sex marriage, each side places the burden of proof on the other. The majority in the Goodridge decision insists there is "no rational reason" for defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The minority chides the majority for its "blind faith" that there are no potential dangers to so radical a change. Both sides lack evidence on the real-world effects of same-sex marriage. Yet evidence is in. Marriage is dying in Scandinavia, which has had marriage-like same-sex registered partnerships for over a decade.</p>

Oh, say it ain't so, Dave! When Britney got married-and-annulled in a Las Vegas minute, the headlines screamed. It was not just the standard anti-Hollywood moralizers. Pundits, talking heads and (judging from my mail) lots of regular people wanted to moralize that because Britney acted like, well, a 22-year-old pop tart, marriage should be redefined to include same-sex couples. The state of Gwyneth Paltrow's womb was a matter of intense public interest. Elizabeth Hurley's spontaneous pregnancy grabbed similar public space. But when a Midwestern icon (and at 56, a grown man) like David Letterman has a baby out of wedlock...

<p>According to a 1999 National Vital Statistics Report from the CDC, 7.4 per 1,000 Americans married in 1998. From 1990 to 1995, the marriage rate dropped from 9.8 to 7.6. Different sources render other statistics but the trend remains sharply downward.</p>

A new USA Today /CNN /Gallup Survey suggests there is a backlash of public opinion against homosexuality after the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Texas' sodomy law. It's not surprising. The decision was widely seen as a judicial push for the agenda of homosexual political activists eager to see their lifestyle not only accepted nationwide but promoted by government and major cultural institutions. Defenders of the Texas law had contended the ultimate goal of the case was not to end sodomy laws, but to advance the "ambitious agenda" of homosexual activists. Justice Antonin Scalia, in a scathing dissent, agreed. "The...

The North Goes South By David Frum Posted: Monday, June 30, 2003 ARTICLES National Review Publication Date: July 14, 2003 Here's what didn't happen when the Canadian government announced that it would comply with the orders of a high (but not supreme) court and write gay marriage into the law of the land. There were no protests from the country's religious leaders: only mild expressions of concern. There were no angry editorials in any of the country's major newspapers. The leader of the conservative Canadian Alliance party had no comment, and most of the country's other conservative leaders likewise kept...

A Marine killed his girlfriend and her infant son after an argument over how loud the television should be, police in Florida said. He then stuffed her body into a suitcase and put the baby's in the freezer. Sgt James Coleman III, 24, a native of Ohio with a history of domestic abuse, was arrested and charged with murdering 19-year-old Jessica Hine and 2-month-old Devonte Desean Coleman. Hine's body was found in a suitcase in the woods on Monday. Police believe Coleman strangled her and kept her body in his apartment for five days and reported to work each day...

Church people have a name for what happens when young believers get romantically involved with unbelievers. They call it "missionary dating," usually with one eyebrow raised in skepticism. Most of these relationships involve a good girl who is convinced that, with time, she can help a bad boy see the error of his ways and learn to walk the straight and narrow path. Times have changed. According to new research, a surprising number of females have graduated from "missionary dating" to "missionary cohabitating." "My theory is that women are willing to make sacrifices for their partners, once they have become...

Couples who live together are twice as likely as married couples to break up, while the probability that people will stay together is strongly affected by whether their parents did, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. In a wide-ranging study based on face-to-face interviews with almost 11,000 women, the CDC found that 20 percent of first marriages, and 49 percent of first living-together relationships, will end within five years. After 10 years, 33 percent of first marriages will end in separation or divorce, while 62 percent of living-together couples will have parted. The likelihood that a marriage...