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Fairy tale persists of marriage being a woman’s sole route to happiness.

In a hotel in Canada hangs this picture, someone’s mischievous take on Snow White a few years after happily ever after. She is posed in an anonymous suburban den. Behind her, Prince Charming slouches in a chair, slowly going to seed. Snow has a babe in arms and a few other rug rats scattered about the floor. She faces you with an expression that seems to ask, is this all there is?

It is less a comment on marriage than on the notion that marriage is the holy grail of a woman’s existence, the finish line of her life’s hopes, dreams and goals. That is a fable upon which the Disney company built an empire. But the fable is not confined to the multiplex. To the contrary, you can see it played out on a weekly basis in the headlines of any given publication in your local supermarket checkout line. Consider one of the most recent big stories from the Land of the Beautiful People.

It seems that one William Bradley Pitt and one Angelina Jolie Voight recently became engaged to be married. Already the celebrity gossip mills are buzzing with the critical question this raises: How will it affect Jen? How does Jen feel about it? Will Jen be OK?

That would be Jennifer Aniston, the wife Pitt famously dumped in 2005 when he and Jolie became a thing. If I were her, I think my response would be, please stop calling me “Jen,” as if we went to high school together.

But Aniston has become the poster child for this media-driven narrative of woman as love victim, tragically incomplete until her wedding day, if even then. She is joined on that poster by the likes of Sandra Bullock, Oprah Winfrey, Halle Berry, Eva Longoria, and Khloe and Kim Kardashian.

Sometimes, it seems as if every cover of every tabloid and magazine has a headline about some actress or reality show personality and her crusade to find — or keep — a man. Either she has been dumped or he has cheated, or she is thinking of taking him back, or she is lonely without him, or she is struggling to conceive, or the wedding is off, or the wedding is back on, or she has found new love after the divorce, yadda yadda and yadda. It is life as soap opera story arc or country music lyric. And here is the thing: you will almost never see a male celebrity as the object of one of those headlines.

No breathless updates on Jon Hamm’s search for love. No headline coverage of Ryan Gosling’s struggle to conceive. No suggestion that they are incomplete until or unless those milestones are achieved. You have to wonder what lessons this teaches little girls.

Maybe you don’t think it teaches any particular lesson. Maybe you’re inclined to dismiss the narrative precisely because it is media created. Maybe you believe it says nothing about the mindset of real women in the real world. Maybe you’re right.

One the other hand, the fact that the narrative endures, that it continues to sell movies and magazines, suggests it has more resonance for more women than one would like to think.

There is nothing wrong with love or with wanting or seeking a life partner. But we should question the idea, implicit in the narrative, that finding said partner is the singular goal of a woman’s life, her only route to happiness, and that until she has achieved it she is incomplete, even if she is as accomplished as an Oprah or as celebrated as a “Jen.”

Back when Snow White sang, “Someday my prince will come,” waiting on a prince — and raising his babies afterward — constituted pretty much a woman’s entire range of options. Seventy-five years later, women have options their grandmothers could scarcely have dreamt. So is it asking too much that we relegate this tired narrative to the junk heap where it belongs?

Snow White is a fairy tale, not a lifestyle.

Changing face of marriage.

Sharon and Jeff Taska married in June 1992, more than two decades after the Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, declared state laws banning interracial marriage unconstitutional. Most Americans still believed blacks and whites should not date, let alone tie the knot.

During the ceremony, which took place in a church in Gary, a black woman who had not been invited to the event stopped Sharon as she walked down the aisle and said, “It’s not too late.”

As Sharon, who is black, recalls, she thought about clobbering the woman.

“In my mind, I thought about snatching her out of the aisle and saying, ‘It’s too late for you right now! Bang!’” the retired schoolteacher said during a recent interview at her home in rural Elkhart County, where she and Jeff, who is white, have lived for the better part of two decades.

After the wedding, Sharon said, some of her co-workers stopped talking to her.

To this day, the couple, who now have a daughter, tend to attract attention in public, Sharon, 59, said, but, overall, people’s attitudes toward interracial couples have softened considerably.

“You still have people that act funny when Sharon and Jeff walk through the door,” Jeff Taska said. “And shame on them, we need to get beyond that. But it’s gotten better.”

The data seem to back that up.

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, marriage between people of a different race or ethnicity, known as “intermarriage,” is on the rise nationally.

In 2010, the survey states, 15.1 percent of new marriages and 8.4 percent of marriages overall were between people of a different race or ethnicity, more than double the share in 1980, in both cases.

Not only that, but 43 percent of Americans — and 61 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds — view more intermarriage as a good thing for society, compared with about 11 percent who hold the opposite opinion, the survey reports.

And the percentage of Americans who now agree that it is OK for blacks and whites to date is 83 percent, up from just 48 percent in 1987.

Also, according to the study:

- People who are younger, more educated or more liberal tend to be more positive about intermarriage than people who are older, less educated or more conservative.

- Blacks (51 percent) and Hispanics (48 percent) are more likely to say the increase in intermarriage has been a change for the better in society than whites (40 percent).

- Asians (27.7 percent) are more likely to “marry out” than Hispanics (25.7 percent), blacks (17.1 percent), or whites (9.4 percent).

Pew published the survey, based primarily on analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2008-2010 American Community Survey and three nationwide telephone surveys, in February.

‘We could have been arrested’

Among the growing number of mixed-race couples documented in the survey are University of Notre Dame graduates Matt and Cheron Merten, of South Bend.

The couple — Matt, 33, from Minnesota, is white, and Cheron, 26, a Chicago native, is black — married on June 12, 2010, 43 years to the day after the Supreme Court declared state laws banning marriage between people of a different race, known as anti-miscegenation laws, unconstitutional.

The couple, who attended the university at the same time but did not meet until after graduation, said they feel fortunate to live during a time of increased acceptance of interracial marriage.

“For the most part we feel blessed to live in the generation we live
in,” said Matt, who is an instructor and director in the Department of
Music at Notre Dame.

“Thirty years ago, this couldn’t even have happened,” said Cheron, the activities manager at the Kroc Center in South Bend. “We could have been arrested and put in jail for wanting to be man and wife.”

Not that it has not been difficult. Cheron, for example, said she lost a friend because of her decision to marry Matt.

“He made a comment, he said, ‘I don’t know why you can’t stick to your own kind,’ and that was pretty hurtful,” she said of the person, whom she no longer talks to.

Prior to Loving v. Virginia, a number of states, including all of the former slave states and Oklahoma, still outlawed marriage, and in some cases even cohabitation, between people of different races, labeling it a felony in most cases.

Interracial couples in Indiana could not legally marry until 1965.

The Loving case actually dates to the late 1950s.

In 1958, police in Virginia arrested husband and wife Richard and Mildred Loving for violating the state’s law banning marriage or cohabitation between people of different races.

The couple, both residents of the commonwealth, wed in nearby Washington, D.C., to avoid the law, but then returned to the state to live.

The judge in the case sentenced the couple to one year in prison but suspended the sentence on the condition that they leave the state and not return for 25 years.

The Lovings complied, but later filed a motion to have the judgment vacated on the grounds the anti-miscegenation law violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court eventually agreed, and in 1967 issued a judgment declaring state laws banning marriage or cohabitation between people of different races unconstitutional.

Despite that, such laws remained on the books in South Carolina and Alabama until 1997 and 2000, respectively.

‘It’s like … a stain’

Still, attitudes about intermarriage have been slow to change in some places.

According to the Pew survey, just 37 percent of people in the Midwest view more intermarriage as a good thing for society, compared with 39 percent in the South, 49 percent in the West, and 51 percent in the Northeast.

In addition, people in the Midwest intermarry at a much lower rate (11.1 percent), than people in the Northeast (12.6 percent), South (13.9 percent), and West (21.9 percent), the survey states.

In Indiana, just 10 percent of all new marriages between 2008-2010 were between people of a different race or ethnicity. Just 13 states had a lower percentage.

That said, people in the Midwest (62 percent) are somewhat more likely than people in the Northeast (61 percent) and South (60 percent) — but less likely, still, than people in the West (70 percent) — to be OK with a family member marrying someone of a different race or ethnicity.

The Taskas and Mertens both said their family members had no problem with them marrying a person of a different race — or at least none of them said so.

“I have one really country bumpkin aunt,” Matt Merten recalls, “who, when we started talking about getting married, said, ‘You know, chickens lay two kinds of eggs, brown and white, but when you crack them open they look the same.’”

Says Jeff of his family members: “Some of them had to go to the Bible to reconfirm for themselves that it (interracial marriage) was OK, and fortunately for them … they learned that it was.”

Still, regional differences regarding intermarriage do exist, Jeff said.

In 1997, he said, he and Sharon took a road trip across much of the United States, including the South, Southwest, West, Northwest and Great Plains, “and to me, the further out West you got, the more people didn’t care what color you were.”

Matt and Cheron Merten agree.

In public, Matt said, he and Cheron “get a lot of looks … (and) some comments” in and around the South Bend area.

“But we choose to ignore it,” Cheron said.

Unfortunately, that’s not likely to change anytime soon, Sharon Taska said.

“It’s like when you get a stain in your shirt,” she says. “It takes a long time to get it out. And I think this area has a stain, and it’s gonna take a long time to get it out.”

That police in Bahawalpur stepped in to prevent a forced marriage on April 19, is a faint ray of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape of human rights in the country. According to a news report, a 12-year-old girl was allegedly being married off to her cousin in order to settle a debt her father owed. The marriage was against her wishes and also against the laws governing the minimum age of marriage in Pakistan. The Muslim Family Law Ordinance of 1961 stipulates that a girl under the age of 16 is a child whose marriage is illegal.

However, the facts on the ground are that child marriages are distressingly common in Pakistan. Children are often betrothed at birth and marriages of pre-teen girls with men thrice their age barely raise an eyebrow. A few months ago in Sargodha, two other marriages — a watta satta — were prevented by the police: a 14-year-old girl was being married to a 30-year-old man, while a 12-year-old girl was being married to a 50-year-old. The Rahnuma-Family Planning Association of Pakistan (FPAP) estimates that about 30 per cent of marriages in Pakistan fall under the category of childhood marriages. It is not just girls who are married off young, but often both the bride and the groom are barely in their teens when they are forced into marriage by family.

One of the causes of such marriages is poverty, as illustrated in this particular instance. Children are looked upon by their parents as property and in the absence of money to settle debts, they can easily be traded instead. Not only do these marriages constitute a gross violation of human rights, they also contribute to Pakistan’s lamentably high fertility rate. Unfortunately, these practices have become deeply ingrained in our culture and it is the parallel justice system — the panchayats which are called upon to settle various disputes — that often decides that such marriages are the way to resolve conflicts.

Also culpable are the clerics who willingly solemnise the marriages of children, though it violates the conditions of a nikah and flies in the face of Islamic edicts. To uproot this malaise, it is these clerics and panchayats that need to be convinced and co-opted.

If I had married someone else, I would have sacrificed my career – Rev. (Mrs) Nwakaego Oyeniran.

Reverend (Mrs) Beatrice Nwakaego Oyeniran is the amiable wife of the General Overseer of the Glorious Liberty Assembly Inc., Bishop M.O. Oyeniran. A manager in one of the nation’s fastest growing banks, she lets KEHINDE OYETIMI into her world and that of her husband. Excerpts: WHAT kind of marriage did you anticipate and how was your interaction with your husband before you got married?
He was my senior in secondary school. He was an unbeliever then. It was not that we were both Christians. But we both got converted before we left secondary school. We were expected to be afraid of our seniors then but he had always been a big brother. We never had any reason to clash in school.

How was your growing up?
My father was an ex-policeman while my mother was a nurse. Father was always in Lagos while we were in Ibadan. My mother took real good care of us. My father would only come home at the weekend. As a policeman, he was harsh most times to us. We were eight as kids—four boys and four girls. My mother would write all our offences from Monday to Friday and report to my father the moment he returned from Lagos. My mother would not beat us since she knew who would deal with us on her behalf. Saturday mornings were not really palatable for us since it was the day we got the rewards for been naughty over the week. We had to submit our books for Daddy to review. Every exercise book that our Dad bought was numbered. Whoever loses a sheet was in trouble. If we did not do our corrections in school we were in trouble. If the corrections were done but were not marked, my father would assume that they were not submitted. That meant trouble. He was a disciplinarian. We were formally Catholics.

Didn’t you have criteria for whoever would fit in the slot of being your husband?
As part of the young ladies, we were never wanted to marry pastors. It is now that people want to marry pastors. Then they were seen as poor people and lazy. I could not imagine what a full time pastor’s wife meant. Until I  got married, I viewed pastor’s wives as lazy. We thank God today.

Did you give the bishop an easy task wooing you?
(Laughs) I told you that we had known each other from secondary school. When he became a real Christian, my elder brother became friends with him. He had been around. My houses were not far from each other. He had been a big brother. None of us thought we could get married. In fact when God told him to marry me, he was adamant and shocked. I am the flashy type. My husband belonged to the Christian setting of those days where jewelry was forbidden. He felt I was too flashy for his liking. We were far away in dress sense. He was the conservative type. I liked making up and looking good. Not that he never liked looking good but he was the ‘SU’ type.
You are a branch manager of the fastest growing banks in the country and you are the wife of a General Overseer of a mega church.

How have you been coping?
I thank God for my husband. If I had married somebody else, I would have had to sacrifice my career. I would not have been in the industry now. I married somebody that stood for me and strongly felt that I should be myself. When you marry pastors generally, they feel that you should live your life for them. They want you to become a pastor by force, forgetting that you might have a career. I started banking before we got married. He did not stop me for a day rather he encouraged me. When I got married, I only had OND but now I have my MBA. He has been very co-operative. Sometimes I remember at the office that there is no soup at home. By the time I get home, those things I feel are not there would surface. Despite being a bishop, he goes to the market for me. Saturdays when I don’t have lectures, he tells me not to worry that he would do the shopping. In fact most of the places where I buy things, he is the one who introduced me to them. He has been loving. He never forced to be in the ministry. Many women have been forced to sacrifice their career because of the ministry of their husbands.

What part of your husband’s life do you find most intriguing?
He loves cooking. When he is available, he goes shopping, returns home and does the cooking. He puts his whole energy into cooking. You would wonder what kind of bishop this is.

Thousands rally to back NC marriage amendment.

The widow of a lawmaker who was the driving force behind a gay marriage referendum on next month’s ballot in North Carolina told thousands of conservative Christians on Friday it’s now up to them to get people to the polls to change the state constitution.

Mary Frances Forrester and other conservative leaders asked participants at the Return America rally to work to protect the supremacy of traditional marriage from potential court challenges. Gay marriages are now granted in six states and the District of Columbia. Two more states — Maryland and Washington — have authorized them but licenses have not yet been issued.

Forrester, wife of the late Sen. Jim Forrester, asked women in the audience to recruit others to vote for the amendment leading up to the May 8 primary. The early voting period began Thursday.

“You are responsible for nine other women that you can make sure go to the polls and vote and better still vote early because this is the time and you are here ‘for such a time is this,’” said Forrester, making a reference to a verse in the Book of Esther.

State Capitol Police estimated the crowd in downtown Raleigh at about 3,000, as churches and Christian schools bused in members and students to the Halifax Mall.

The Rev. Ron Baity, president of Return America and pastor of a Winston-Salem church, recalled that the group had held three previous rallies on the mall pleading with lawmakers for a referendum.

“I am grateful that the people of North Carolina on May 8 now will have the opportunity, as it should be,” Baity said. “Most importantly, we are back here today to uphold the historical truth that … God said that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

Jim Forrester sought for years to persuade legislators to consider a statewide referendum, but the Legislature’s Democratic majority blocked the bills. Less than two months before the senator died, the new Republican majority at the General Assembly agreed last September to put the amendment on the ballot.

The proposed constitutional amendment would identify traditional marriage as the only domestic legal union recognized by the state. State law, which already limits marriage to a man and a woman, won’t change if the question fails, said Jeremy Kennedy, campaign manager of the anti-amendment Coalition to Protect North Carolina Families.

But if it passes, Kennedy says, families of all kinds — both married and unmarried — will lose health care benefits for partners and their children and domestic violence laws will be weakened. Some business leaders have said it would damage North Carolina’s reputation as a progressive place to expand their workforce.

“The other side continues to say that this is a vote on marriage,” Kennedy said in an interview. “That is absolutely not true.”

In a separate development this week, three Campbell University law school professors released a paper saying legal benefits and protections for all unmarried couples should remain in place as “long as those couples are not treated as having a legal status resembling marriage.” Other law school professors have written papers that disagree.

Friday’s rally resembled a combination evangelistic crusade and outdoor concert, as a singer’s renditions of “God Bless America” and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” were interspersed with preaching and explanations on the history of marriage. Rally-goers raised their hands in prayer, gave hearty “amens” and held placards supporting the amendment.

“I am very excited to get the chance to vote for the marriage amendment,” said Gail Garrison, 60, a pastor’s wife from Southern Pines. “We’re getting so far away from the word of God … we bring a lot of problems into our society by not sticking to those Christian values.”

Referendum proponents touted support for the amendment from Anne Graham Lotz of Raleigh, a Christian speaker and daughter of the Rev. Billy Graham.

“I have avoided speaking out on political issues,” Lotz wrote this week on her AnGeL Ministries web site. “But there are times when a political issue is also a moral and spiritual issue that I need to take a stand on.”

Dozens of pastors have also publicly opposed to the amendment, saying that it runs counter to Christian principles of justice and fairness and would harm children. Jay Bakker, the son of evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, is scheduled to headline a faith-centered rally in opposition to the amendment Sunday in Durham, which will include a march to cast early ballots.

South Africa’s polygamous President Jacob Zuma on Saturday celebrated his sixth wedding in a second day of weekend festivities filled with traditional Zulu culture.

The 70-year-old formalised his relationship with long-time fiancée Bongi Ngema on Friday with Zulu song and dance while dressed in leopard skins and carrying a shield surrounded by men in similar warrior attire.

The businesswoman became Zuma’s fourth wife in Nkandla, deep in the KwaZulu-Natal countryside, where on Saturday she handed presents to Zuma’s family at his homestead in a gift ceremony.

Glitzy reception
Friday afternoon’s tying of the knot was followed by a glitzy western-style evening reception with a tiered cake where the couple donned formal wear in a marquee erected on the grounds of a local school.

The couple have a seven-year-old son and Ngema joins Zuma’s three other wives to become one of four first ladies with all spouses attending the marriage.

The wedding is his third in just over four years and the second since coming to power in 2009 as the country’s first president with multiple wives.

In all, he has married six times and has 21 children. One of his wives has died, and another – home affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma – divorced him.

Travel and secretaries
The wives have no specific roles or responsibilities but their benefits include travel and secretaries and they are expected to support the president at state and official functions, with Ngema accompanying him to France last year.

With debate over his growing family after news of the nuptials broke last weekend, Zuma’s office has said he would foot the wedding bill and that Ngema was already part of the president’s spousal budget.

Spousal budget doubled
This comes after the state had to nearly double the spousal budget to more than two million dollars after he took office with his large family.

While legally recognised, polygamy is becoming less popular in South Africa where modernity and Western lifestyles have taken root.

A survey in 2010 found that nearly three-fourths of South Africans disapprove of polygamy. Among women, 83 percent disapproved.

Distance, hardly a barrier in marriage.

A popular saying goes, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, according to which the bond of intimacy is imagined to grow stronger with distance.

However, is it a realistic thought in the context of married couples who live away from each other in different cities, in some cases different countries, due to the nature of their jobs?

We live in an age where inflation is forever on the rise; standard of living is way higher than just making ends meet, and demands always manage to surpass the supply of monthly pay cheques. Situations such as these compel urban married couples to take up professions that guarantee a fulfilling monetary figure at the end of each month. So much so, that some jobs require travelling to far off places for prolonged periods. Therefore it wouldn’t be inappropriate to say that the primary motivation why several couples stay away from each other is their respective careers and financial responsibilities, the other secondary reason being advancement in education. Sumeet Singh, a communication specialist, was a little sceptical about taking up the training batch in UK because that meant he’d have to stay away from Pooja, his wife, for almost one and a half years. “We had recently got married and I wasn’t sure if it was the wisest decision. However, my wife was convinced that I should go and it was on her insistence that I signed up for the project. I stayed in London for about 18 months and her indefinite support was what kept me going,” he shares.

Having to live away from your spouse is not so uncommon in the present times and physical distance should not be a barrier in achieving common goals. Agrees Dr Sameer Malhotra, Senior Psychologist and Psychotherapist, “The approach with which one tackles the relationship matters the most in such cases. The kind of efforts each partner puts in to avoid misunderstandings of any kind is of paramount importance. Small gestures like occasional gifts, regular calls, and frequent visits (if possible) ensure in maintaining a healthy relationship.”

Circumstances might be similar for other such married couples but how they deal with them is surprisingly different. Rosy, a beautician and hair dresser lives in Delhi with her 5-year-old son, while her husband is posted in Asansol, thanks to a ’secure’ government job. She doesn’t mind the distance as long as he visits them twice every year. “A government job has many benefits and that is why it is important for him to continue working there,” she says. If given a chance, would she want to go and live with him? “No. Delhi has many renowned schools and I want my son to get first class education. Besides, I have a full time job here that pays well. We’ve spoken about it at length and agreed upon this set up mutually,” she adds.

A thoughtful and practical decision as it may seem, thirty years ago things were not as easy as they are today. For 52-year-old Mrs Joseph, a stenographer, the challenge to live with a house full of in-laws while her husband went off to Qatar to make a fortune, was rather difficult. When asked if she disliked the idea of him going away in the first place, she answers uncomfortably, “Those days, we women did not have much say. Husbands were the sole breadwinners and we were expected to accept their decisions, good or bad.” And was she able to bring about a change in the state of affairs in due course of time? “Not really. Things are still the same except that I have learned to live with it,” says a rather dejected Mrs Joseph who even after twenty eight years of marriage only has memories of her husband’s homecomings during Christmas every year.

It is during times like these that the role of an extended family is put to test. Marriage and relationship counsellor Gitanjali Sharma points out, “Discrepancies may arise if the in-laws are not supportive. They should be willing to bridge the communication gap between the partners instead of straining their relationship further.”

Marriage isn’t just love and commitment.

Is marriage only about encouraging loving and committed relationships — or is it more?
One of the arguments made by those who oppose the Marriage Protection Amendment is that marriage is only about encouraging loving and committed relationships.
Certainly marriage should only be entered by loving and committed couples, but marriage is not simply about recognizing the love and commitment of the adults involved in the relationship.
Marriage is primarily about channeling the sexual passion of men and women with its inherent potential for creating children into a stable family unit that provides the best opportunity for any child born of that union to be known by and cared for by his or her mother and father.The noted liberal British philosopher Bertrand Russell said, “But for children, there world be no need of any institution concerned with sex. … It is of children alone that sexual relations become of importance of society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.”
David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and a self-described liberal Democrat, said of marriage:
“Marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation.
“Marriage (and only marriage) unites three core dimensions of parenthood — biological, social and legal — into one pro-child form: the marriage couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and father, accountable to the child and to each other.”
Why is it so important for children to be loved and raised by their mom and dad?
A recent report by Child Trends, a nonpartisan research organization, summarized the scholarly consensus on marriage this way: “Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.”
Can a man teach a daughter how to be a woman? Can a woman teach her son how to be a man?
Fathering expert Dr. Kyle Pruett of Yale Medical School explains in “FatherNeed: Why Father Care is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child”: “Fathers do not mother.”
Psychology Today explains: “Fatherhood turns out to be a couples and unique phenomenon with huge consequences for the emotional and intellectual growth of children.”
A father, as a male parent, brings unique contributions to parenting. Likewise, a mother, as a female, uniquely impacts the life and development of her child, as Dr. Brenda Hunter explains in her book, “The Power of Mother Love: Transforming Both Mother and Child.”
Do we really believe, in our heart of hearts that a mother and a father don’t matter?
Men and women bring diversity to parenting; each makes unique contributions to the rearing of children that can’t be replicated by the other. Mothers and fathers simply are not interchangeable.”
Do we really want to shift the focus of our marriage laws away from the interests of children and society as a whole and onto the desires of the adults involved in the relationship? Clearly, social science proves what we know in our heart to be true: children need both a mother and a father.

Prevent child marriages on Akshaya Tritiya, States told.

The Central government has ordered the States to take all possible measures to combat a wave of child marriages which authorities fear will take place across the Hindu heartland on Tuesday, on the occasion of Akshaya Tritiya.

In a letter to the States, the Women and Child Welfare Ministry has warned governments that child marriage is illegal under the Prohibition of Child Marriages Act, 2006.

The Ministry has suggested that all district magistrates or Collectors, deputy inspectors-general or Superintendents of Police, sarpanches, State Women Commissions, civil society organisations and child marriage prevention officers in the States and Union Territories be alerted to take all possible preventive measures for breaking the tradition of holding child marriages.

Child marriage is a retrograde social practice whose elimination will not only require a change in the mindset of society but also a strict legal and other schematic intervention, the Ministry has said.

Akshaya Tritiya, which falls on April 24, is considered an auspicious day in the Hindu calendar and a large number of children are married off on this day in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, particularly in the rural belt.

Child marriages are often linked to a good crop preceded by a good monsoon. When farmers make money in a prosperous season, they marry off children irrespective of their age. On Akshaya Tritiya, also known as ‘Akha Teej’, thousands of marriages take place with a majority of these being of minors.

Efforts by the governments to crack down on child marriages have met with mixed success. In 2010, there were reports of mass child marriages from Rajasthan’s Gothera village, despite the State government’s instructions that such violations would mean reprimands for administrators. Police said they were unable to stop the marriages because the villagers secretly organised the ceremonies two days before Akha Teej.

Earlier this week, the CAG had criticised a Rajasthan government-run scheme to support the weddings of Dalit girls, saying the authorities had released funds though documents showed that the beneficiaries were underage.

Third marriage for Neil Diamond.

It’s third time’s a charm for Neil Diamond as he reportedly weds Katie McNeil, who is 30 years his junior.

The Daily Mail is reporting that the music legend who is 71, tied the knot yesterday to Katie, 41, who acts as one of his managers.

The couple met when blonde Miss McNeil was the executive producer of a 2009 documentary film about him called Neil Diamond: Hot August Night NYC.

Diamond used his official Twitter page to announce their engagement last September writing, “Good news coming from sunny LA/ and you’re the first I want to tell/Katie and I just got engaged/and I hope you wish us well.”

The pair, who share a £35 million mansion in LA, were set to wed at a private location in Beverly Hills.

The singer was previously married to his high school sweetheart, teacher Jayne Posner. They split in 1969 after six years of marriage, and he went on to wed Marcia Murphey later that year.

They divorced in 1995 and she walked away with £93 million – a settlement that ranks as the second largest in Hollywood history. Diamond has two children for each of his previous marriages.

Jay Bakker to lead anti-marriage amendment rally.

The son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker is leading a rally to encourage voters to cast ballots against next month’s gay marriage referendum in North Carolina.

When it comes to marriage, voters in this country aren’t all that kind to same-sex couples.
Since 1998, ballot measures were passed banning or erasing the right of gay and lesbian couples to legally wed in 31 states.
This year, voters in five states are likely to consider the subject including in Washington where a measure to repeal the state’s same-sex marriage law is expected to make the November ballot.
Backers of Washington’s law know they’re battling history as they try to make this the first state where gay marriage is embraced by the electorate.
“There is certainly a historical precedence against us,” said Zach Silk, campaign manager for Washington United for Marriage. “But there’s been a dramatic shift in how the electorate nationally and in Washington views marriage equality. We’re intending to ride that new wave and make new history.”

Not so say opponents.

“You asked if Washington will be the first to buck the trend. Our answer to that is clearly no,” said Christopher Plante, deputy campaign manager for Preserve Marriage Washington, which is gathering signatures for Referendum 74. “Every time people have had a chance to vote on marriage, they’ve stood for defining it as between a man and a woman.”
Veteran pollster Stuart Elway of Seattle said the tolerance of Washingtonians will get tested by this question.

“Attitudes (toward same-sex marriage) are changing,” he said. “The bright line seems to be the word marriage. People will support civil unions and all the rights up to when you call it marriage. For whatever reason that term tilts the scale the other way. That’ll be the crux of it.”

Voters’ cold feet

Anti-gay marriage forces recorded their first ballot successes in 1998 in Alaska and Hawaii where voters inserted language in their state’s constitutions to make only marriages between a man and woman recognized.
Two years later, citizen initiatives of a similar vein passed in California, Nebraska and Nevada. And in 2004, voters amended constitutions in 13 states with wording to prevent same-sex couples from marrying.
All told, this subject has been on a ballot 34 times and only once, in Arizona in 2006, did voters reject a proposal aimed at prohibiting same-sex nuptials. Two years later, however, Arizonans did approve rewriting their state’s constitution to ensure marriage is only permissible if between a man and a woman.
And once, in Maine in 2009, voters repealed a state law allowing same-sex marriages. However, the issue returns in November when Maine voters consider a measure to let gay and lesbian couples wed.
Maine will be one of five battlegrounds for gay marriage in 2012.
In North Carolina next month and Minnesota in November, voters are considering constitutional amendments intended to ban gay marriage.
In Washington and Maryland, where laws legalizing same-sex marriage passed this year, the fight centers on attempts to repeal them. Both laws are on hold pending what happens in November.

Shifting sands

Today, as a result of legislative or judicial action, gay and lesbian couples can marry legally in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont and the District of Columbia.
2012 could wind up a seminal year for gay marriage if voters endorse it in Washington, Maryland and Maine.
Evan Wolfson, founder and president of the Washington D.C.-based Freedom to Marry, said public opinion is shifting dramatically in favor of it as more people meet gay families and understand what marriage means to them.

Findings in several recent polls are giving the movement to allow gay marriage confidence to rack up victories this fall.

A March poll conducted by NBC and the Wall Street Journal found same-sex marriage supported by a margin of 49 percent to 40 percent. Pew Research Center last year reported it favored 46 percent to 45 percent, noting it was the first time in 15 years of its polling that the public was evenly divided on this issue.

And in a survey of 938 people last year, the Washington Poll found 55 percent willing to uphold a same-sex marriage law in the state versus 38 percent pledging to repeal it.

Plante countered with results of a poll conducted in January by the National Organization of Marriage of Washington, D.C., one of the leading anti-gay marriage forces in the country. Its survey of Washington voters found 57 percent believed the state did not need a law allowing same-sex marriages and 52 percent believed marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

“When you ask the question properly, people say enough is enough, don’t mess with marriage,” said Plante, who is a NOM employee on loan to Preserve Marriage Washington for the duration of the campaign.

Polling alone isn’t the only reason gay marriage supporters are quietly hopeful in Washington.

The political landscape in this state differs in other ways from nearly every other state in which voters weighed in on the matter of marriage.

First, Washington lawmakers chose to pursue an expansion of gay rights in small steps rather than go for the big prize of marriage right away. In the past six years, the Legislature enacted laws banning discrimination based on one’s sexual orientation, enabled same-sex couples to register with the state as domestic partners and expanded the rights and responsibilities for those relationships.

The success of this incremental approach came in 2009 following passage of the so-called “everything but marriage” law which treated domestic partnerships the same as married heterosexual couples under state law with one exception — they could not marry.

Opponents tried to repeal it with Referendum 71 but failed. This was the first time voters anywhere in the country upheld legal recognition for the relationships of same-sex couples.

“We’re in a different place than any other state in the country because we’ve been having that conversation for the better part of a decade,” Silk said. “Opponents have a very good playbook. We’re still the underdogs.”

Second, religious conservatives are dwindling in number and less influential than a few years ago. And Washington is home to a socially moderate strain of Republicans, especially in the vote-rich region of the Puget Sound; a handful of GOP lawmakers backed the new law.

Finally, the question voters might face in November is much different than what’s on the ballot in North Carolina and Minnesota. In those states, the issue is whether to write a ban on same-sex marriage into their state’s constitution.

In Washington, voters would be asked if they want to approve or reject a law passed by the Legislature and governor. This law is described so there’s no hiding the fact it legalizes gay marriage. It also spells out how religious leaders don’t have to condone or conduct marriages of same-sex couples.
The ballot language doesn’t specifically say the law changes the state’s definition of marriage though Plante said that’s what it does and that’s what voters need to be told.
Marriage goes from being a civil contract between a man and a woman to a civil contract between any two people, he said.
“We have our work cut out for us,” he said. “We’re confident people of Washington will understand by election time that R-74 is about the definition of marriage.”
Wolfson is quick to rebut that argument.
“This is not about defining marriage. This is about ending an exclusion from marriage for gay couples,” he said. “Marriage is still going to be marriage just more people are going to be able to do it.”

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