if nothing else, I've learned patience

she told me she knows I'm not her enemy

that night she told me to ask my friend about it all, and I told her I had.

I showed her my wedding ring I wear on the wrong hand:

"he told me to throw that away"

she got real quiet, then went to talk with him.

he says she's scared and confused

ns

he says to call her but if I wait she'll open up

we've done this before

you can't force trust

with family there is no backwards in a world that's upside down

bub needs some lessons in agape love

unconditional love

My best advice is to pursue better relations with your wife for the benefit of you and the kids, without putting to much hope in getting back together with your ex.

Bub needs lessons in humanity.

You can't read, can ya... all I suggested was that he concentrate his efforts on his kids.

You can't read, can ya... all I suggested was that he concentrate his efforts on his kids.

It's true, your advice was actually quite solid, overall. If I gave the impression that I didn't think you were genuinely trying to be helpful, I apologize.

It's true, your advice was actually quite solid, overall. If I gave the impression that I didn't think you were genuinely trying to be helpful, I apologize.

I'm always helpful...it just ain't always obvious.


No apology necessary.

Bub is "genuinely helpful"?




Sure buddy. FOAD.

the whole is greater than the sum of its members

Why, davey...does this mean we're not friends anymore?

When a Jewish boy turns 13, he heads to a temple for a deeply meaningful rite of passage, his bar mitzvah. When a Catholic girl reaches about the same age, she stands in front of the local bishop, who touches her forehead with holy oil as she is confirmed into a 2,000-year-old faith tradition. But missing in each of those cases — and in countless others of equal religious importance — is any role for government. There is no baptism certificate issued by the local courthouse and no federal tax benefit attached to the confessional booth, the into-the-water-and-out born-again ceremony or any of the other sacraments that believers hold sacred.

Only marriage gets that treatment, and it's a tradition that some legal scholars have been arguing should be abandoned. In a paper published March 2 in the San Francisco Chronicle, two law professors from Pepperdine University issued a call to re-examine the role the government plays in marriage. The authors — one of whom voted for and one against Proposition 8, which ended gay marriage in California — say the best way out of the intractable legal wars over gay marriage is to take marriage out of the hands of the government altogether.

Instead, give gay and straight couples alike the same license, a certificate confirming them as a family, and call it a civil union — anything, really, other than marriage. For people who feel the word marriage is important, the next stop after the courthouse could be the church, where they could bless their union with all the religious ceremony they wanted. Religions would lose nothing of their role in sanctioning the kinds of unions that they find in keeping with their tenets. And for nonbelievers and those who find the word marriage less important, the civil-union license issued by the state would be all they needed to unlock the benefits reserved in most states and in federal law for married couples.

Their idea got a big boost three days later, during the March 5 oral arguments before the California Supreme Court, which is expected to issue a ruling soon in the case brought by gay couples and others who argue the constitutional amendment passed by voters last fall should be invalidated. Justice Ming Chin asked attorneys for each side whether the idea would solve the legal issues connected to gay marriage — issues that at their core revolve around the question of whether allowing some couples to marry but not others violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law.

Both sets of lawyers agreed that the idea would resolve the equal-protection issue. Take the state out of the marriage business and then both kinds of couples — straight and gay — would be treated the same. Even Ken Starr, the Pepperdine law dean and former Whitewater independent counsel who argued in favor of Prop 8, agreed that the idea would solve the legal issues, though he said it was a solution that lies outside the legal authority of the court. An attorney for the other side, Michael Maroko, didn't expressly endorse the idea, but he told Chin, "If you're in the marriage business, do it equally. And if you're not going to do it equally, get out of the business."

But as Solomonic as the compromise seems, giving up the word marriage may be impossible. For many couples joined in matrimony, having the state no longer call them married may make them feel as if something important had been taken away — even if it's hard to define just what was lost. And for many others — the folks who feel most strongly about marriage and most passionately supported the expensive campaign to defeat gay marriage — the issue of nomenclature is only the beginning. They are against not just gay marriage but also gay couples — and especially against government sanctioning of those relationships, no matter what they are called.

When a Jewish boy turns 13, he heads to a temple for a deeply meaningful rite of passage, his bar mitzvah. When a Catholic girl reaches about the same age, she stands in front of the local bishop, who touches her forehead with holy oil as she is confirmed into a 2,000-year-old faith tradition. But missing in each of those cases — and in countless others of equal religious importance — is any role for government. There is no baptism certificate issued by the local courthouse and no federal tax benefit attached to the confessional booth, the into-the-water-and-out born-again ceremony or any of the other sacraments that believers hold sacred...

Maybe enlightened parents could take their homo kids to the local bath house ... and accompany it with a membership certificate from NAMBLA for those interested in more formal rites of passage.

That would still not involve the government.

Way to look at the finger, instead of in the direction that it is pointing.

Nor should it...

Why should the government sanction a dictionary definition of perversion...especially as it would demean an existing institution?

When a Jewish boy turns 13, he heads to a temple for a deeply meaningful rite of passage, his bar mitzvah. When a Catholic girl reaches about the same age, she stands in front of the local bishop, who touches her forehead with holy oil as she is confirmed into a 2,000-year-old faith tradition. But missing in each of those cases — and in countless others of equal religious importance — is any role for government. There is no baptism certificate issued by the local courthouse and no federal tax benefit attached to the confessional booth, the into-the-water-and-out born-again ceremony or any of the other sacraments that believers hold sacred...

You pulled the entire 'example' out of your ass, and you know it.



So, dumbass, that which you and others hold as sacred, i.e. marriage, can continue to be practiced and be held sacred, remain a sacrament, WITHOUT it involving any role for government.

LOGIC. Get in touch with it.

Well, we've been discussing and proposing that very same 'solution' for YEARS here. It's being presented as it were some fantastic new "discovery". This falls under the "no poop, really? You don't say! Wow, good thing we have these fancy learned people telling us what we had already figured out years ago"

"DOMA Laws have been passed with the support and lobbying of religious groups. Such laws point, unfortunately, to a deep tendency of religions to consolidate power through exclusion, as Miroslav Volf has so cogently shown; these laws have no rationale for their existence apart from that exclusion. People who wish to "defend" [against] corrosive influences on marriage – and I count myself as one – might actually find allies among gays and lesbians who desire public recognition for their pledges of fidelity and their commitments to share resources and responsibilities with one another. A true defense of marriage would not involve mean-spirited exclusions, but would embrace practical policies that strengthen deep trust and support families facing economic challenges," - Jon Pahl, Professor of the History of Christianity in North America at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.

Maybe enlightened parents could take their homo kids to the local bath house ... and accompany it with a membership certificate from NAMBLA for those interested in more formal rites of passage.

I believe the article called for no government agency provicding any paperwork...which begs the question of what entity provides the "license".

Under this idea the government would provide a Civil Union license for all couples who want one. This license confers all rights, responsibilities, and benefits of a Civil Union - formally called marriage - for all couples who wish one. If you choose to add a theological element to the union, the religioius organization you do so in will provide any non-legal documentation associated with the theological marriage. No rights or benefits associated with Civil Unions - previously called marriage - would be conferred by the non-legal documentation provided by the Church, Synagogue, Mosque, etc. Whatever documentation the Church provides would authenticate the Civil Union as a theological marriage within the structure of the religious organization. Of course since some religious organizations already marry gay people, some gay people will still have theological marriage in addition to Civil Unions.

I see...so whay you're saying is that the government sanctions a perversion after all.

And the religious entities will, as this is no longer marriage, rush to condone, if need be, the mating of lizards and cowboys.

I believe the article called for no government agency provicding any paperwork...which begs the question of what entity provides the "license".

Nambla seems as good a source as any.

Seriously? Just as you don't need a license to do a religious baptism but you can still be officially and legally "named" (by following a set of secular, legal procedures -- well, your parents and/or legal guardians do, originally), you will (under this plan) NOT need the State's license to get religiously married but you'll be able to be officially and legally "civil-united", aka civilly married, by following the STATE's set of secular, legal procedures.

is burning children with napalm not perversion?

SPRINGFIELD, Mass., March 19 (UPI) -- U.S. dictionary giant Merriam-Webster has sparked controversy by changing its definition of "marriage" to include same-sex unions.

The new definition defines marriage as "the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law," but adds the term also applies to "the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage," WorldNetDaily reported Thursday.

Webster declined comment when contacted by WorldNetDaily but Associate Editor Kory Stamper wrote in response to a reader's inquiry that the definition had no political motivations.

"We often hear from people who believe that we are promoting -- or perhaps failing to promote -- a particular social or political agenda when we make choices about what words to include in the dictionary and how those words should be defined," Stamper wrote. "In recent years, this new sense of 'marriage' has appeared frequently and consistently throughout a broad spectrum of carefully edited publications ... Its inclusion was a simple matter of providing our readers with accurate information about all of the word's current uses."

As I said...a government sanctioning of perversion.

Webster redefines marriage to include gays

There are plenty of religions the consider lending at interest to folks poorer than you a sin. And yet, our government sanctions such sins. What's up with that?

For the thousandth time, boundaries are indispensable, their precise location, what is on each side of the boundary, etc. can and DOES change. The more easily, readily and often a boundary is re-located or moved, the less useful is it as a boundary.

Immovable boundaries do not appear to exist in this world. Maybe they exist in another world.

Many of the perceptual boundaries that most of us think are 'essential' and 'natural' are nothing of the sort, as science has been increasingly demonstrating.