Tag Archives: divorce

Islamic Law is Shameful

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I think the sexism and idiocy speaks for itself here.

Beep Beep: You’ve Got a Message … and a Divorce

“KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysian Muslim men can divorce their wives through text messages on mobile telephones, the New Straits Times daily reported, quoting a religious adviser to the government.”

Brother-in-law’s happy couple photo spawns marriage of just minutes

“RIYADH (AFP) – In what must rank as one of the world’s shortest-lived marriages, a Saudi husband divorced his new wife immediately after the ceremony over a photo taken of the happy couple.”

Same-Sex Health Benefits

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There’s an ongoing controversy at the University of Pittsburgh regarding same-sex benefits. I’m going to send in the following as a letter to the editor of the Pitt News.

Same-sex benefits do not make sense financially. Such benefits will not make sense until homosexual civil unions are recognized by the state as legally binding contracts like their heterosexual counterparts.

Before offering health benefits to partners, insurance companies want assurance of a binding marriage contract. This ensures permanence in the relationship. Without that permanence, fraud and abuses abound (eg Benefits could be offered to partners who are little more than roommates.). One might be tempted to call marriage impermanent these days, given the ~50% divorce rate. However, when the marriage contract is willfully terminated, benefits need no longer be offered to the divorced partner. Marriage is permanent in the sense that it does not cease with a simple “good-bye” as unbound partnerships can.

If I were making decisions for an insurance company, I would make it prohibitively expensive for a company to offer benefits to partners of its employees. This would serve to offset the inherent liabilities. I suspect that this is already current practice. Thus it does not make sense for Pitt, or any other company or institution in PA, to offer benefits to any unbound partners, same-sex or otherwise. Instead of crying to the ACLU or picketing the university, advocates for same-sex benefits should focus on getting homosexual civil unions recognized by the state as marriage contracts.

Love and Marriage

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Good and Bad Marriage, Boon and Bane to Health
By SHARON LERNER

In the early 1970’s, demographers began to notice a strange pattern in life span data: married people tended to live longer than their single, divorced and widowed counterparts. The so-called marriage benefit persists today, with married people generally less likely to have surgery and to die from all causes, including stroke, pneumonia and accidents. At its widest, the gap is striking, with middle-aged men in most developed countries about twice as likely to die if they are unmarried.

Many have argued that the difference in life expectancy is actually because healthier people are more likely to marry. But an emerging group of marriage advocates has put a spotlight on the medical potential of the institution. “Marriage is sort of like a life preserver or a seat belt,” argues Dr. Linda Waite, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and an author of “The Case for Marriage,” published in 2000. “We can put it in exactly the same category as eating a good diet, getting exercise and not smoking.”

But even as marriage is being packaged as a boon to health, there is a new caveat. While people in good, stable partnerships do, on average, have less disease and later death, mounting evidence suggests that those in strained and unhappy relationships tend to fare worse medically. Women seem to bear the brunt of marriage’s negative health consequences.

More About Marriage

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U.S. Compiles Divorce Statistics
By LAURA MECKLER

"One in three marriages will end in divorce during their first 10 years, with certain couples more likely to split up than others, a government survey finds. People who marry young, have less money, are not religious and whose parents are divorced are more likely to divorce themselves.Overall, by age 30, three in four women have been married and about half have lived with a partner outside marriage."

"Those are among the findings of an extensive survey of nearly 11,000 women ages 15 to 44 exploring factors influencing cohabitation, marriage and divorce. The survey, conducted in 1995 by the National Center for Health Statistics, focuses on a wide range of family and fertility issues and included only women. A new round of interviews being done now includes both men and women."

Divorce and premarital cohabitation are bad ideas? Gee, the Catholic Church has always maintained that. Amazing, ain't it? 😉