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With rents in many cities skyrocketing, men and women marrying later and a divorce rate for first-time marriages that hovers at about 45%, it's no wonder more American couples are deciding to shack up. There were an estimated 6,017,462 unmarried-partner households in the U.S. in 2006, according to the Census' latest research. This number includes 779,867 same-sex households. When the Census began measuring unmarried partners in 1996, there were only 2,858,000 opposite-sex couples. Though you likely know at least one cohabiting pair, unlike their married and single peers, unmarried couples are not an easy group to quantify. They cannot check...

BREMERTON, Wash. -- A 25-year-old woman was arrested for investigation of second-degree assault for getting into an argument with her boyfriend over whether his dog should be in the bathroom while the couple were taking a shower together. A police report said the 26-year-old man wanted his dog to join them in the bathroom, but the woman objected on Thursday night. She told him if the dog wouldn't stay out, she didn't want to be his girlfriend anymore. He replied that maybe his next girlfriend would appreciate the dog more, and called her a name. The police report said the...

October 9, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A. Patrick Schneider II, M.D., M.P.H., who holds boards in family and geriatric medicine and who received a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University, is in private practice in Lexington, Kentucky. "Cohabitation -- it's training for divorce." -- Chuck Colson (1995)1.  Cohabitation is growing: 35 to 40 years ago cohabitation was rare; it was socially taboo. Growth by decade was: 1960s (up 19 percent), 1970s (up 204 percent), 1980s (up 80 percent), 1990s (up 66 percent), but up only 7.7 percent between 2000 and 2004. All told, cohabitation is up eleven-fold (U.S. Census...

Ireland 1986-2006: 500% Increase in Divorce; 400% Increase in Cohabitation without Marriage Cities much worse off than rural areas By John-Henry Westen DUBLIN, September 17, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new report from The Iona Institute based on a detailed analysis of Census 2006 - the first analysis of its kind published to date - reveals the full extent of changing family structure and marriage breakdown in Ireland. The analysis shows marriage breakdown by age and region and includes colour-coded maps of major Irish cities illustrating this down to the electoral division level. According to the analysis, marriage breakdown has increased...

Major US Catholic University Caught Deceiving Diocese: Diocese Losing Patience Vice-chancellor of archdiocese states, "there's a Catholic ethos in this town that rightly smells a rat" By Meg Jalsevac OMAHA, September 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Just a few weeks ago, LifeSiteNews and several online blogs reported on Creighton University's shameful invitation, and then hasty 'disinvitation' of ardently pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia speaker, Ann Lamott.  According to several recent news reports, the hasty 'statement' published on the University website to announce the cancellation has not appeased the powers that be at the Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha. The official Creighton statement announcing the...

Wed Sep 12, 8:52 AM By Les Perreaux ADVERTISEMENT MONTREAL (CP) - Quebecers have long led Canada in the modern move away from wedding vows toward common-law coupling, but now the province has roared past Sweden and Finland to lead the world. New data from the 2006 census released Wednesday shows no couples on the planet are known to shack up more than those in la belle province. The dramatic move away from marriage is accelerating wildly in Quebec, with 35 per cent of couples choosing common-law arrangements compared to 30 per cent in 2001, the last time the data...

UK Bishop: Couples that Cohabit and Reject Responsibility of Marriage Should Not Receive its Legal Benefits By Elizabeth O'Brien LONDON, United Kingdom, August 2, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Bishop's Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) recently issued a statement that said that if cohabiting couples are unwilling to accept the responsibility and commitment of marriage, they should not receive the legal benefits of marriage. In light of newly proposed UK legislation, the president of the CBCEW's Committee on Marriage and the Family, Bishop John Hine, expressed his "special concern" for a law that "would make cohabitation equivalent to marriage,"...

Hypocrisy of Hating Homosexuality, While Ignoring Cohabitation and Adultery Contact: Phil Magnan, Director, Biblical Family Advocates, 011-36-1-246-2587, phil@bfamilyadvocates.com BUDAPEST, Hungary May 2/Christian Newswire/ -- Statistics show that 25% of unmarried "born again" Christians are living together. This reveals an apparent hypocrisy in condemning homosexuality, while not condemning heterosexual immorality. Sad to say, co-habitation is on the increase and its participants also include the Catholic and Christian community. BFA believes there is also a need to condemn not only adultery in its blatant form of cheating on a spouse, but its camouflaged form by easy divorce to pursue second and third...

Numbers Drop for the Married With ChildrenInstitution Becoming The Choice of the Educated, AffluentBy Blaine HardenWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, March 4, 2007; Page A03PORTLAND, Ore. -- Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census. As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor,...

BAGHDAD - Fatima Ali was a 24-year-old divorcee with no high school diploma and no job. Shawket al-Rubae was a 34-year-old Shiite sheik with a pregnant wife who, he said, could not have sex with him. Ali wanted someone to take care of her. Rubae wanted a companion. They met one afternoon in May at the house he shares with his wife, in the room where he accepts visitors seeking his religious counsel. He had a proposal. Would Ali be his temporary wife? He would pay her 5,000 Iraqi dinars upfront — about $4 — in addition to her monthly...

CHARLESTON — A former inmate is challenging the constitutionality of West Virginia’s anticohabitation law after his parole was delayed for more than four months because he wanted to live with his fiancee. snip West Virginia’s anti-cohabitation law makes it a misdemeanor for unmarried people to ‘‘lewdly and lasciviously associate and cohabit together.’’ ‘‘He had to follow all the laws of West Virginia to get paroled and this was a law that was still on the books, so the parole officer would not release him to his fiancee because that would be a violation of the law,’’ said Andrew Schneider, executive...

AP) The owners of a roller skating rink have fired an 18-year-old woman they called one of their "Top 10" employees because she moved in with her boyfriend, violating a company ethics policy that prohibits "live-in relationships of an intimate nature." "I loved my job and I didn't want to leave," Crystal Plotner told the Coeur d'Alene Press this week. She said she was fired after casually telling her bosses, Skate Plaza owners Marvin and Pat Miller, that she planned to move in with her boyfriend in mid-May. Before terminating her, Plotner said the Millers said she and her boyfriend...

The University of St. Thomas today said it will not let staff or faculty who travel officially with students share a room on those trips with an unmarried partner. The decision by St. Thomas President Rev. Dennis Dease, posted on the St. Thomas Web site this morning, puts into policy the university's position. But it's unlikely to end the controversy that's divided the campus the past few months. While the travel policy affects only a few professors, it became a flashpoint on campus after two professors who live together as unmarried, heterosexual partners were told in December they could travel...

You know the old saying about having a hammer and everything looking like nails? I was reading an article in the Journal of Law and Economics about why housing prices in Manhattan are so high, and I thought, "Omigosh! The answer to the demographic implosion." Since my hammer happens to be sex and marriage, even an economics article reminds me of sex. So bear with me. I’ll explain what the article had to say about housing prices. Then I’ll tell you what it has to do with sex...

In the United States, living together instead of marrying has become the norm for couples -- half of young adults aged 20-40 are cohabiting instead of getting married. Cohabitation has increased nearly 1,000% since 1980, and the marriage rate has dropped more than 40% since 1960. Some see substituting living together for marriage as an insignificant shift in family “structure.” Those who are better informed realize that the shift has disastrous ramifications for the individuals involved, as well as for society and public policy. The faulty reasoning leading young adults to make such a poor choice must be exposed. Here...

A Missouri couple say they were denied an occupancy permit for their new home because they're not married. Olivia Shelltrack and Fondray Loving have been together for 13 years and have three children, ages 8, 10 and 15, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The couple are appealing the occupancy permit denial from the Black Jack, Mo., board of adjustment, which requires people living together to have blood, marriage or adoption ties. Loving is not the father of Shelltrack's oldest child. I was basically told, you can have one child living in your house if you're not married, but more than...

In the 1978 movie "Same Time, Next Year," a man and a woman meet by chance at a romantic inn, end up in bed together and, though each is married, repeat the rendezvous each year. The film's promo line ran, "They couldn't have celebrated happier anniversaries if they were married to each other." But if palimony were at issue, neither of the trysters could have collected, at least not in New Jersey. On Feb. 6, a state appeals court ruled that without cohabitation, an extramarital romantic relationship -- even one that spanned 70 years -- cannot be a basis for...

Pope Benedict XVI waves in front of the Nativity scene at the end of "Te Deum" prayer in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2005. Pope Benedict XVI remembered his beloved predecessor and again stressed the importance that a family based on marriage has "in the life of the Church and of society." (AP Photo/Plinio Lepri)Pope Stresses Need for Marriage, Family By MARIA SANMINIATELLI Associated Press WriterVATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI remembered his predecessor Saturday and again stressed the importance of a family based on marriage "in the life of the church and of society."...

Scooop.net (www.scooop.net), a next-generation media site based on democratic voting principles and active participation of its members, released the results of its weekly “Hot Topics” survey held last week which asked whether the U.S. government has “gone too far” regarding the domestic war on terror. When asked whether the U.S. should authorize the National Security Agency or Central Intelligence Agency to provide surveillance of U.S. citizens concerning the war on terror, almost 50% of women said yes. Men who were surveyed were not so willing to allow the government the right to monitor U.S. citizens. Of those men surveyed, 56.2%...

A Catholic theologian who opposes Church teaching on divorce and supports creating a betrothal ceremony for cohabitating couples just led a colloquium to assist US bishops with writing a pastoral letter on marriage. The colloquium, which ended yesterday, was sponsored by the US Bishops' Committee on Marriage and Family and hosted by the Center for Marriage and Family at Creighton University in Omaha. It featured theologians and social scientist and had as its theme, "Promoting and Sustaining Marriage as a Community of Life and Love." According to a press release, the colloquium was a "major step" toward developing "a pastoral...