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Families and Parents

NEW BELGIAN STATISTICS

Belgian gay marriage statistics (French key)

For the first time more lesbians than gays are marrying in Belgium, according to very interesting and detailed gay marraige statistics released in Belgium today by the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and published in French in Le Soir.

So far more than 17,000 gays and lesbians have married since 2003, with numbers reasonably steady at about 2,000 per year. Not bad for a small country of 10 million.

But the really interesting figures are the regional and gender breakdowns.

As many same sex couples married in the Flemish city of Antwerp (population 450,000) in 2010, as in the whole of Wallonia, the French speaking part of Belgium (population 3.5 million). Even more than a highly international city like Brussels, the people of Flanders are addicted to same sex marriage. With only four times the population Flanders was responsible for eight times as many same sex marriages as the Brussels region. (768 to 92 in 2010!)

Regarding the rise of the women, it is suggested that this is to make parenting arrangements easier to complete (including adoption not just insemination). Indeed, it is a little known fact that lesbians flock to Belgium for IVF treatment and adoption options, especially catering to French women in some instances).

Divorce is also on the rise for both gay and lesbian couples, but the study’s author says it is too early to give a meaningful comparison between homosexual and heterosexual divorce rates in Belgium. Seven years after the start of equality, about 8% of same sex couples have divorced.

The prediction of the author, David Paternotte, who is also looking at gay marrriages of people in France and Spain is clear “there is without doubt a snowball effect both in terms of rights affirmed by government and by jurisprudence (the courts)”

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Court cases / Families and Parents / North America / South America — 1 Comment
19
May 11

‘We came very close to having our marriage destroyed’

Great insights here from Josh Vandiver and Henry Velandia, the couple a US judge ruled should be allowed to stay together, despite the immigration department using the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as a reason to separate them.

“I’m from Colorado and he’s from Venezuela. In both our cultures, marriage is the ceremony in which you commit to your spouse before family and friends. And that’s what we wanted, too.

Our marriage certificate is exactly the same as every other marriage certificate in the United States”

Thanks to CNN and Gay Marriage Watch for drawing attention to this.

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Celebrities / Families and Parents / Gay / Marriage / Rights / Role models — 2 Comments
23
Mar 11

LIZ TAYLOR FOR GAY MARRIAGE

Elizabeth Taylor (apparently she hated Liz), was a woman of depth on-screen and off. Here is her early and brilliant speech in favour of gay marriage at the 2000 GLAAD awards in California, with thanks to Rex Wockner for reminding us of this vision. Taylor fought for equality long before it was sexy, and we’ll remember her long after we finally achieve it.

“All of my life I’ve spent a lot of time with gay men — Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Dean, Rock Hudson — who are my colleagues, coworkers, confidantes, my closest friends, but I never thought of who they slept with! They were just the people I loved. I could never understand why they couldn’t be afforded the same rights and protections as all of the rest of us. There is no gay agenda, it’s a human agenda.

“All of us should be treated the same, and GLAAD knows that. Why shouldn’t gay people be allowed to marry? Those against gay marriages say marriage should only be between a man and a woman. God, I, of all people know that [the remainder of the sentence was inaudible due to an audience outburst]. I feel that any home where there is love constitutes a family and all families should have the same legal rights, including the right to marry and have or adopt children!

“Why shouldn’t gay people be able to live as open and freely as everybody else? What it comes down to, ultimately, is love. How can anything bad come out of love? The bad stuff comes out of mistrust, misunderstanding and, God knows, from hate and from ignorance … the bad things never came out of loving acts, loving gestures or loving relationships. That’s why I’m here tonight — to celebrate you and your families. And to tell you to hang in there and to say, once and for all of us, long live love.” Continue reading →

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Campaigns / Conservatives / Democrat / Families and Parents / North America — No Comments
14
Mar 11

BLACK CHURCH NEEDS TO DO SOME RESEARCH

The stories I found most destructive about this week’s “snatching defeat from the laws of victory” news on marriage equality in the US state of Maryland, were the ones from black Democrats nakedly doing the bidding of church interests. Here’s Del. Cheryl Glenn, an African-American Democrat from Baltimore: “The black churches have never asked us for anything, and they are asking us now, ‘Don’t do this.’” Honestly, the way they just traded their votes in after a few phones calls gives a bad name to even the worst ‘special interests’ and lobbyists.

If I was an African American legislator, or a legislator worried about families in particular, it is not same sex marriage I would be worried about. Try these other facts on for size about the disintegration of African American family structures … and notice how none of it is related to gays and lesbians.

The Pew Research Center’s November 2010 report on marriage and family found:
- In 1960, the black marriage rate was 61 percent. By 2008, only 32 percent of blacks married.
-72 percent of black women giving birth were unmarried
- 52 percent of black children were being raised in single-parent homes, 38 percent with two-parents/partners and fully 10 percent with no parents.

As Colbert King (the African American commentator) rightly points out in the Washington Post, you can also mention the “depressing data on the high rate of black teen pregnancies, the large number of black children ordered into foster care because of neglect and abuse, the absence of fathers or the disproportionate number of black men behind bars.”

I am not trying to pin the blame on family breakdown on anyone in particular – but I am sure not buying the line that our community is a threat to family. Sometimes it seems like we are the only people who want to build one!

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Europe / Families and Parents / Politicians — No Comments
26
Feb 11

BERLUSCONI DISTRACTS WITH GAY BLAH BLAH

I doubt whether gay marriage could have been the biggest dilemma facing a Christian conference hosting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But apparently the man caught up in court cases about under-age prostitution and a string of other delicate issues felt able to announce:
“As long as we rule the country, gay marriages will never be on a par with traditional families.”
He continued with news that:
“as long as we are in charge, there will never be a possibility for gay singles nor gay couples to adopt.”
With thanks to the AGI newswire for this alert.

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Celebrities / Families and Parents / North America / Parents / Parenting — 1 Comment
28
Jan 11

HARPING ON ABOUT NOTHING

Main image by Jennifer Huddleston

It’s like it is back to the 1980s in this piece …

Three cheers to Jennifer Huddleston the local shopper who was clever enough to take the photo above and get word out about the stupid ‘family friendly’ choices of this American store manager.

Basically, the mag – US Weekly – shows dads Elton John and David Furnish cuddling their surrogate baby Zachary, who was born on Christmas Day. But in grocery chain Harps, a plastic pornography cover called ‘Family Shield’ was used to cover up the gay couple.

No matter how normal gay people try to be, it’s just not good enough for some!

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Civil Union / Divorce / Families and Parents / Lesbian — No Comments
5
Dec 10

20 TIMES MORE WEDDINGS THAN DIVORCES IN UK

Caroline, Jack and Linzi Robertson

This is quite an interesting article from a Scottish newspaper. Shows that wedding rates are down, and divorce (dissolution) rates are up on the 5th anniversary of the UK’s civil partnership legislation.

The divorce is still much lower than for straight couples. There are 20 times more weddings than divorces each year.

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Families and Parents / Lesbian / North America / Parents / Parenting / Personal Stories — No Comments
4
Dec 10

“LOVE COMES FIRST” LESBIAN MARRIAGE DOCO

This is a lovely trailer / excerpt about an American family across four generations … from the loving great-aunts of one of the first lesbian couples to marry in Massachusetts to the little boys now living in the home the families has struggled to hold onto since the 1850s … their ups and downs definitely makes you want to watch more of “The Gay Marriage Thing” http://www.thegaymarriagething.com/

Learn more about this work from Stephanie Higgins here: http://www.thegaymarriagething.com/directors_statement.htm

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Asia / Conservatives / Families and Parents / Lesbian / Personal Stories — No Comments
29
Nov 10

MALAYSIA’S FIRST “IT GETS BETTER” VIDEO

This is so, so important and courageous. In a country where even a former Deputy Prime Minister has been jailed in the last decade for sodomy, there needs to be messages like this so there can be hope. So that one day there can be a possibility of a normal and happy life for all the gay and lesbian people in Malaysia now denied it.

Here is Gabrielle – outed in the media, attempting suicide, friends with people who are victims of ‘corrective rape’… but ultimately a story of a family who changed their mind and a brave women who struggled on to something better.

This story is exactly why need marriage equality; the lack of role models, the lack of people to talk to is devastating.

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Conservatives / Families and Parents / Miscellaneous / North America / Personal Stories / Video — No Comments
24
Nov 10

HOW TO TALK ABOUT MARRIAGE

Freedom to Marry deserve a lot of credit here for their clever effort to get suporters in the United States (or anywhere for that matter) to do the basic but hard thing of talking about marriage equality to their extended families.

I really believe this is one of the fundamental ingredients of making change happen. It’s also something I have struggled with myself. It’s hard for everyone!

CHECK OUT THE TIPS, THE VIDEOS AND MOST OF ALL: HAVE COURAGE!

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