Free Republic

As he progressed from Methodist Youth Fellowship member to active layperson to ordained minister, Scott Medlock seemed destined for lifelong service in the United Methodist Church. But Medlock, an Orlando, Fla., native, has had a dual faith journey. The second journey started during his undergraduate years at the University of Notre Dame, intensified with his marriage to a "cradle Catholic" and eventually led to a desire for a more "eucharistically-centered" faith experience. On March 19, the 41-year-old former United Methodist pastor was ordained a Roman Catholic deacon. On July 26, in Anchorage, Alaska, he will be ordained a priest. Along...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/18/rep-mack-calls-geithner-resign-fired-aig-bonuses/

Stuart Bauer | The Flint JournalRebecca Witt (lower right) and Gary Johnson (standing) care for children Diesel (in Gary's arms), 2, JaeLyn (bottom), 4, and Gage, 5. Rebecca is upset because the state is trying to collect birthing costs from her fiance for their daughter. FLINT, Michigan -- Gary Johnson owes taxpayers nearly $3,800 for the birth of his daughter. The state will let him off the hook but there's a catch -- he has to marry the mom. But the mother doesn't believe her wedding should be any of the state's business. "I don't think anybody should tell me...

Royden Wood leaves the courthouse with his wife Linda yesterday after being charged with six new counts of sexual assault. (Mike Hensen, Sun Media) Already awaiting sentencing on 12 charges, a former London pastor was back in court yesterday -- charged with six counts of sexual assault.   Royden Wood, former pastor of London's Ambassador Baptist Church, was released after a bail hearing with conditions, a $10,000 deposit and his employer acting as a surety.  Wood declined comment as he left the court, holding his wife's hand and accompanied by his employer, Earl Dunn, owner of a Muskoka-area marina where...

Two years after a woman filed a damage suit alleging Bolivar Baptist Church pastor Dale “Dickie” Amyx molested her as a 14-year-old and impregnated her when she was 18, the suit has been settled out of court. Debbie Vasquez, now 47, sued Amyx and the church in June 2006, alleging that he began having sex with her when he was 28 years old, married and the youth pastor of a now-defunct Lewisville church, Calvary Baptist. According to the court documents, he continued having sex with her after he was pastor of the Bolivar church by threatening her with guns and...

Oscar Wilde is one of most famous homosexuals in history, so it sometimes surprises people when they learn that Wilde had a wife named Constance and two children. Divorced before Wilde reached the pinnacle of his fame, Constance is one of history’s forgotten women: a spirited, intelligent person in her own right, but one doomed to live in the shadow of Wilde’s legacy, as well as endure the humiliating consequences of his homosexual passions. Thomas Kilroy’s play, The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde, now playing on the Guthrie’s Proscenium Stage, is a moody, serious, artful exploration of the dark side...

....Four years in and here’s the report I promised to all of my still-single friends out there. My friends, the only way to describe married life post-newlywed stage is: controlled and comfortable chaos. Once you shed the ‘newlywed eyes’ and see your Mate for Life for the first time for who and what they really are – human! – you reach a make or break point in your relationship.....

We have a bit of controversy at my church and I thought I'd throw it out there for FReepers to discuss. We had a guest preacher who was trying to make the point that we should not exclude people based on appearance, background, past history, etc., and as an illustration stated that, after all, Joseph and Mary were only living together and were not actually married - would we have excluded them?

Getting married saps your testosterone 18 October 2007 NewScientist.com news service TESTOSTERONE gradually declines with age, right? Not for the Ariaal - subsistence pastoralists living in northern Kenya. They experience a decline in levels of the male hormone only when they get married. The finding provides a social and evolutionary explanation for the decrease in testosterone, rather than an age-related one. Ariaal men remain single "warriors" until they are around 30, at which time they marry one or more women. Peter Gray of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and colleagues measured testosterone in 205 Ariaal men and found that...

Parents Of Teen Who Married Teacher Sue Guilford SchoolsUPDATED: 9:41 pm EDT July 25, 2007 WILMINGTON, N.C. -- The parents of a 16-year-old student who married her former teacher in Brunswick County have sued the 40-year-old man's previous school district. The lawsuit accuses Guilford County schools of failing to alert authorities upon finding out Brenton Wuchae had inappropriate relationships with female students there. The suit says the school system was "negligent...in allowing Mr. Wuchae to supervise and coach female students when it knew...that he would abuse his position of authority." It also says "the negligent actions of defendant (Guilford County...

CAMP TAJI, Iraq, March 14, 2007 — More and more soldiers spend their deployments in Iraq serving alongside their spouses. Sgt. Erick McCormick, the warehouse non-commissioned officer in charge for Headquarters Company, 15th Brigade Troops Battalion, 15th Sustainment Brigade from Ketchikan, Alaska and Spc. t Michelle McCormick, a supply specialist also with the Sustainment Brigade, from Houston, Texas, are on their second deployment together, but first deployment as a married couple. Michelle joined the Army in 2004. Right after graduation from high school she packed her bags and headed to Fort Jackson, S.C. "My dad is a military policeman and...

Orville Peacock called the shots during his 65-year marriage to Violet. Over the years, relatives had grown accustomed to hearing Orville's gruff pronouncements when he tired of the family gatherings that Violet so loved. "Vi," he'd shout on his way out the door. "The bus is leaving. Are you coming or not?"

The chairman of Boston University's religion department offers this proposal: Public high schools should require one course in the Bible for all their students and another in world religions He cites surveys showing that most Americans can't even name one of the four biblical gospels and that many high school students think that Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple.

THE news that 51 percent of all women live without a spouse might be enough to make you invest in cat futures. But consider, too, the flip side: about half of all men find themselves in the same situation. As the number of people marrying has dropped off in the last 45 years, the marriage rate has declined equally for men and for women. The stereotype has been cemented in the popular culture: the hard-charging career girl who gets her comeuppance, either violently or dying a slow death by late-night memo and Chinese takeout... But when it comes to marriage,...

America has reached "the tipping point" on marriage, and The New York Times couldn't be happier. Its analysis of Census data shows 51 percent of women were living without a spouse in 2005, up from 35 percent in 1950. Through surrogates, the Times celebrated the news as liberating and empowering for women. One single 45-year-old gushed: "Considering all the weddings I attended in the '80s that have ended so very, very badly, I consider myself straight up lucky." Chimed in a 59-year-old divorcee: "A gentleman asked me to marry him and I said no. I told him, 'I'm just beginning...

The Times got their numbers from the Census Bureau's new American Community Survey, which surveyed "117 million women over the age of 15." Wait a minute. "Over the age of 15"?

October 17, 2006 Married and Single Parents Spending More Time With Children, Study Finds By ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — Despite the surge of women into the work force, mothers are spending at least as much time with their children today as they did 40 years ago, and the amount of child care and housework performed by fathers has sharply increased, researchers say in a new study, based on analysis of thousands of personal diaries. “We might have expected mothers to curtail the time spent caring for their children, but they do not seem to have done so,” said...

The biggest fiction behind James Bond is that the fantasy master spy and world-class heartbreaker lived past 40-something. It’s not just the death traps and vodka martinis, or even the three packs of cigarettes a day, that would have shortened his life. His naked ring finger would have too. Because real men need wives. Consider the data: Married men—regardless of age, sex, race, income or education—consistently have been found to be healthier than men who are single, divorced or widowed. This so-called “marriage benefit” begins to kick in right after the wedding, then builds. Husbands ages 18 to 44 are...

Prestonsburg, Ky. -- With a surgeon's care, James Blake Miller adjusted the two rows of ribbons on the coat of his Marine Corps dress blues. Then he adjusted them again. And again. He pulled on the coat, cinched the white belt that fit a bit more snugly than when he left the Marines in November, carefully adjusted the collar.

NEW YORK - Keanu Reeves says he's lonely and wants to get married and have children, in an upcoming issue of Parade magazine. The 41-year-old actor says he continues to mourn the loss of his stillborn daughter in 1999 and the death of the baby's mother, Jennifer Syme, in a car crash in 2001. Syme had a small part in the 1997 David Lynch film, "Lost Highway." She and Reeves had reportedly broken up in 2000. "When the people you love are gone, you're alone," he tells the magazine. "I miss being a part of their lives and them being...

A woman who fell in love with a snake has reportedly married the reptile at a traditional Hindu wedding celebrated by 2,000 guests in India's Orissa state. Bimbala Das wore a silk saree for the ceremony Wednesday at Atala village near the Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar. Priests chanted mantras to seal the union, but the snake failed to come out of a nearby ant hill where it lives, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said. A brass replica snake stood in for the hesitant groom. "Though snakes cannot speak nor understand, we communicate in a peculiar way," Das, 30, told...

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 24, 2006 – The key to escaping a tedious life is to maintain a positive attitude, the wife of a Navy physician and diver said. "Always view life as an adventure, and that's true whether you're in the military or not," Meredith Leyva said. Leyva and her husband, Lt. Fernando Leyva, live in Pensacola, Fla., where Fernando is finishing his residency while assigned to the Navy Experimental Diving Unit. It's the family's sixth duty station since they married six years ago. In 1998, Leyva used her experience as a military spouse to set up a Web site...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19, 2006 – Military life is full of ups and downs. But for it to be a more positive experience, military spouses have to know themselves, Amberlynde Graham said. Graham has been a married nearly six years to a Navy fire controlman - he operates, maintains and repairs weapons systems' control mechanisms. In that time, the couple and their four children -- the youngest is now 22 months old -- have had six changes of station in five states and gone through two deployments. They are currently stationed in San Diego. Through the moves and separations, her enthusiasm...

A bride and bridegroom were accepting congratulations from friends at their wedding feast. Someone ignited firecrackers, and delicacies of every kind were served. Online simulation marriage has been popular with a large number of Chinese youths with the widespread accesses into the Internet. There was no difference with a common wedding ceremony. But it took place in cyberspace, everything done with a mouse and keyboard. Getting married on the web has become a new game popular among Chinese youth. Twenty-seven-year-old girl Xiao Wu, unmarried in real world, received an invitation from the web site she often visits recently to join the...

At 105, Herbert Brown is impeccably dressed in a crisp blue shirt that brings out the color of his eyes but belies the strain of time on his frail frame. Given his time spent in a Nazi concentration camp and his run-in with the notorious Adolf Eichmann, it's a wonder Brown has survived. But here he is, in the one-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife of 74 years, the former Magda Fritz, who is 100. Together, on July 15, their ages totaled 205 years and 293 days, making them — according to the Guinness Book of World Records —...

Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples Family Research Council via Virtuosity Online ^ | April, 2004 | Timothy J. Dailey, Ph.D., http://www.virtuosityonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=650 Summary: Many times, homosexual relationships are touted as being no different than ordinary married couples. But research shows that in several key respects, the homosexual lifestyle differs radically from other types of relationships. by: Timothy J. Dailey, Ph. D. "Married and Gay Couples Not All that Different," proclaimed the headline of a news article portraying homosexual households as remarkably similar to married couples. "We're the couple next door," claimed one partnered homosexual. "We have...

LONDON (AP) - A British man who with his wife set the record two weeks ago for the world's longest marriage at 80 years died Wednesday at the age of 105, his bishop said. Percy Arrowsmith and his 100-year-old wife, Florence, celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records on June 1. Arrowsmith died at his home in Hereford, northwest of London, with his wife by his side. "Percy and Flo were very happy when I saw them on their anniversary," said the Rev. Anthony Priddis, the bishop of Hereford. "They were still...

World's longest-married couple clock up 80 years By Nick Britten (Filed: 01/06/2005) When Percy and Florence Arrowsmith walked down the aisle as husband and wife, the Queen had yet to be born and an obscure former German soldier called Hitler had set out his thoughts in Mein Kampf. Percy and Florence Arrowsmith at home in Hereford yesterday Today, as they celebrate their 80th wedding anniversary, they will write their own little piece of history by becoming the world's longest-married couple. The obvious question - how on earth they do it - is one Mr Arrowsmith, 105, and his 100-year-old wife...

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) - Seminole County Republican Party Chairman Jim Stelling believes five marriages is OK, but a sixth would be indecent. A judge will decide whether Stelling was defamed by a former county GOP executive committee member who sent a letter to party executives statewide that falsely accused him of having been married six times - once more than he actually has.

Within an hour, the entire village would learn that the 25-year-old married woman had been discovered in a darkened nearby hut with her lover. Within two days, Amina was dead -- killed by her fellow villagers April 20 after the men of the community ruled that she had violated Islamic law by having an affair with a neighbor....It was a beautiful spot, shaded by an enormous tree and offering a charming view of the village clinging to the mountainside. It was also an ideal place for a stoning.

NEW YORK (AP) Christina Applegate, star of the Broadway-bound revival of ``Sweet Charity,'' broke her foot during a performance in Chicago and will be out of the musical through its Boston tryout engagement. Applegate was injured during the opening moments of Friday's performance at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in downtown Chicago. She continued to play for about 20 minutes before the show was stopped. After a short delay, Applegate's understudy, Dylis Croman, took over the role, and the performance resumed. She is expected to return to the musical by the time it starts preview performances April 4 in New York,...

Prime Minister Paul Martin was forced to deal with the same-sex marriage issue in India Tuesday. Two days before Martin arrived in New Delhi, the Sikh religion's highest spiritual leader directed his followers around the world to reject the legalization of gay marriage. CTV's Joy Malbon explains that Joginder Singh Vedanti, who is equivalent to the Pope, urged Canada's six Sikh MPs (four Liberals and two Conservatives) to "rise above petty politics and take a stand against same-sex marriage." After meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Martin was asked by reporters about the controversy. "This is a question of...

WINTER HAVEN, Fla. - An Arizona church pastor accused of molesting a Florida boy eight years ago has been arrested, authorities said. Robert A. Enersen, 54, pastor of the First Assembly of God church in Douglas, Ariz., faces three counts of lewd assault on a child and is being held in an Arizona jail without bail after his Monday arrest, a Polk County (Fla.) sheriff's report said.The charges also include accusations from boys in Michigan and North Carolina.A representative with the Assemblies of God national headquarters said Tuesday the organization was not aware of Enersen's arrest. He does not have...

Is the gender gap gone? Well, no. While I've never bought into that whole Mars/Venus thing, it's pretty clear that there are still some striking differences between most men and most women. Like our salaries. And our representation in corporate boardrooms. But there is one area where the difference between men and women is rapidly disappearing. It's in how we vote. In the last several presidential elections, it's been reliably true that women have favored Democrats and men have tended to support Republicans. (This gender gap was the reason, by the way, that Bush-the-elder selected Dan Quayle as a running...

First Lady Laura Bush travels around the country talking to female small business owners. Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, calls herself a "security mom'' as she stumps for her dad. President Bush talks about a shortage of ob-gyns. John Edwards, the Democrat's vice presidential candidate, campaigns with "Military Moms on a Mission'' and on Monday talked about the methamphetamine epidemic affecting teens. The independent group SistersSpeakOut.com is running ads hitting Bush on the Iraq war. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry talks about stem-cell research. The candidates and their surrogates are making the stops on shows from...

If undecided voters are to determine the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, then the marital disposition of women could be a major factor, according to a report on the voting plans of American women released Friday by comScore Networks. The study found that so-called "security moms"--mothers who are concerned about terrorism and the security of the United States--are most likely to vote for President George W. Bush, while women who have never been married are most likely to vote for challenger Senator John Kerry. "The expected impact of younger women and particularly that of the 'security mom' segment on...

'MORE taxes because I'm married ... what were they thinking?" That's the voice of a woman dubbed "Thinking Mom" in a new Bush campaign ad, and it's a voice that John Kerry needs to heed if he has any chance of being elected president. After the first presidential debate, Kerry improved markedly with a core Democratic constituency: single women, whose numbers are disproportionately elderly and black. But married women, genuine swing voters, still don't seem to like John Kerry. Unless those women warm up to him, it's hard to see how the Democrat can win. Even as Kerry's debate performance...

Doyle defends benefits offer State-paid insurance for domestic partners touted By STEVEN WALTERS and AMY RINARD Madison - Gov. Jim Doyle defended his offer to negotiate state-paid health insurance for domestic partners Tuesday, calling it worthy of consideration and insisting there would be no extra cost to taxpayers if it is part of new union contracts. But Republicans who control the Legislature immediately asked Doyle to drop the idea, which would apply to unmarried couples of the same and opposite sex. "I would encourage the governor to make sure this does not come to the Legislature," said Senate Majority Leader...

Since our publication of her story, Amy quit her job and was hired as a columnist at the Long Island Press, where she has been employed for over a year. She created a successful online retail crafts business, which she is able to run from her home, so she can stay home and care for her son, now 3 years old. She has turned down hundreds of media offers for interviews and continues to keep a low profile. After her parole was complete this past January, she announced that she would be working on a cause she is too familiar...

An Egyptian Christian who married a Muslim convert to Christianity was pulled off an international flight this afternoon in Cairo, Egypt, and is being held by Egyptian secret police. Bolis Rezek-Allah had an immigrant visa to Canada, according to the U.S.- based monitor Voice of the Martyrs, or VOM. His wife, Enas Badawi, also is sought by police but has not been apprehended, VOM said. Egypt bars Christian men from marrying Muslim women. The government, refusing to recognize Badawi's conversion, still recognizes her as a Muslim. "It is interesting that the Egyptian government has no problem with Muslim men marrying...

Dismantling The Da Vinci Code By Sandra Miesel“The Grail,” Langdon said, “is symbolic of the lost goddess. When Christianity came along, the old pagan religions did not die easily. Legends of chivalric quests for the Holy Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests to find the lost sacred feminine. Knights who claimed to be “searching for the chalice” were speaking in code as a way to protect themselves from a Church that had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned non-believers, and forbidden the pagan reverence for the sacred feminine.” (The Da Vinci Code, pages 238-239)The Holy Grail is a...

Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, took conservatives to task for offering legislation to promote marriage, in his July 29, 2003 New York Times op-ed, "Wedded to Poverty." Tanner may well be correct in claiming that conservative do-gooders are going astray in promoting marriage through the "welfare reauthorization bill passed by the House and awaiting action by the Senate: a proposal to spend nearly $2 billion over the next six years to encourage people to marry." Countless governmental and nongovernmental undertakings have foundered on the fallacy bearing the Latin name post hoc, ergo...

Asking for oral sex, especially when it is not offered, doesn't exactly seem like a good way to represent a University, but that is exactly what junior Blake Overly said Iowa State men's basketball coach Larry Eustachy did at a late January party in Overly's apartment.'A girl asked if he wanted a beer, and he said, 'Yeah, I'll take a b***job.'The party was held after the bars closed in downtown Columbia, Missouri on the night of Jan. 21 after Iowa State had lost 64-59 to Missouri in the Hearnes Center.'Larry came up here and started partying and at first it...

<p>California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who will likely run for governor in 2006, plans to be married today to a former Santa Ana school board member active in Democratic politics who is pregnant with his child.</p> <p>The Northern California wedding between Lockyer, 61, and Nadia Maria Davis, 31, an Orange County attorney, has been a tightly kept secret in a Capitol buzzing with political gossip.</p>

It was a beautiful June evening in Madison, Connecticut, an upscale seaside town. An unseasonably cold wind coming off the Long Island Sound had stopped. So had the rain that fell earlier in the week. This was the kind of evening you go out in. Anne Bascom thought so. The two-year-old went for a walk, down a dead-end street and in between houses to the nearby beach. A family friend says she saw Anne leaving shortly before 8:00 but didn’t think anything of it. Anne never wanders off. Some of the other Bascom kids - there are seven of them...

GENEVA — She sold photos. He tracked inventory. She loved his merchandise-tallying eyes. He thought she was picture perfect at the counter. That was 10 weeks ago. Yesterday, among 93,000 square feet of goods, Garrett Covert and Kari Wright, both 23, pledged their love for life before a semi-circle of family, co-workers and customers. “We’re very happy,” the couple said, smiling and kissing afterward in an employee lounge. A pair of Wal-Mart workers once renewed wedding vows here. But yesterday marked the store’s first official marriage. It was a company event on many counts. Wright’s mother, Gail, works in clothing....

Oddly Enough - Reuters Sex 149 Times a Year Is UK Average? Mon Nov 25,11:02 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo! LONDON (Reuters) - Britons have sex more often than Americans and Spaniards, but are outdone between the sheets by the French, Dutch, Danes and Canadians, a survey by condom manufacturer Durex found Monday. The Durex Global Sex survey revealed that Britons make love an average of 149 times a year, pipped only by couples in France (167), the Netherlands (158), Denmark (152) and Canada (150). Those taking their love-making at a more relaxed pace included...

There's not a single bridal shop on Chicago's West Side. Indeed, as an institution, marriage has virtually disappeared from inner-city communities. In the 10 years since I wrote There Are No Children Here, which follows two young boys growing up in public housing on the West Side, I've been to half a dozen funerals in the neighborhood and only one wedding -- and that marriage has since ended in divorce. In some impoverished urban communities, as few as one out of 10 children are born to married parents. For the families I got to know in Chicago while writing that...

"Married Men Are Less Likely To Die Than Singles" Let me get this straight.... If you're married, you're less likely to die than if you're single? Is marriage the route to immortality or something? Did I miss a meeting? Actually, the story states, "Marriage is so good for men's health that married men are less likely to die in a given period that single guys." Oh, I think I'm beginning to get it.... "are less likely to die in a given period".... Huh? Does that mean men are more likely to die after their wives reach menopause? I'm really confused!...