I don't know whether that's entirely reliable on marriage equality, since there was a thick (and IMO enormously distasteful) strain of "hell, you fags have marriage in all but name STFU already" — which is not?

Because if they were "the same", I shouldn't have to do that. The legislation governing them would?

That's a fair point, but the marriage equality vote in New York only passed because four GOP state senators with less than encouraging track records crossed?

And, handily Family First could continue to use their?

I'm not just saying that from some cynical divorcé's perspective (though there is that). Of course I support the right of people?

I think you?ve missed a crucial point here ? which is the change in attitudes to same-sex marriage since civil unions became law.

From the Herald, 2004:

The report included a Herald-DigiPoll survey of 750?

Do you remember that early in the CUB debate there was a group called Lesbians Who Don't Want a Bar of It?

And this is one?

And my response to such groups is the same as my response to bigots and others attempting to impose their particular values on everyone else: if you don't?

And I am, of course,?

Wait, that's the definition of Marriage? Damn there's a lot of people who need to be reading the fine print.

At the time I said that anyone who tried to pull a shotgun wedding on any dyke of my acquaintance would live to rue the day. Not long?

Personally I?m in favour of getting back to the truly traditional ?formally acknowledge people who want to profitably combine their assets and establish kinship bonds between their extended families, the?

Could we manage something where you can opt to explicitly NOT?

Have them live on different islands. It's a good start. I imagine different countries would work even better.

So really, the only way a party refusing to support same-sex marriage makes any sense is if their target voters are old.

I'm nitpicking, but to me it makes perfect sense for a party to oppose same-sex marriage if that's what its members (and donars) want.

Target voters?

It's been my solution for years. It's not as good as it seems – you end up forking out big time for airfares, and going nowhere else for holidays.

Which is what we need to start doing. Asking candidates for their position is the first step in this. But?

We really need to work out secret handshake for that club.

The law discriminates, it's?

Well, not quite – and honestly, I rather doubt that the GOP state senators who flipped their votes because thousands?

Can I call "why don't we focus on the real issues?" bingo on that? I didn't see how adoption law reform?

Move to the other side of the world, and be too poor to go back very often.

(But, yeah, I hear?

You also don't have regular baby-sitters. Much of my first 10 years of parenting I was known as the person who?

According to the December 2010 marriage stats, there had been 2214 civil unions in NZ since 2005, of which only 51 had ended in divorce.?

At least for my partner and I, the two driving factors for getting married were easier recognition overseas, and for the parents. Neither of us are at all religious, but the parents are, and both sides saw 'marriage'?

Personally, I'd have gone for a civil union, but the overseas recognition was the kicker: I wanted to come to the US?

Jackie might want to put her hands over her ears :), but every time I hear that from (presumably) straight folks I think there?s a wee bit of heterosexist privilege-denying up in the room. I?ll just post a?

Oh, good. I need a new toaster oven.

For one of the (heterosexual) couples I am marrying, they wanted a civil union, but are getting married because they didn't think their family would think a CU was as legitimate.

Despite the "in all but name" bollocks,?

Gee: I was being extremely sarcastic. Hypocritical marriage equality opponents like Newt Gingrich deserve all the mockery they get ? after all, he ?respects the institution of marriage? so much, he?s done it three times and his serial adultery (the third time when his now-wife?

I still get to perform it, right?

With you all the way on that one.

No way, it's relevant and there's no "no link whoring" policy here anyway. Welcome.

Heh, I've taken to inviting people over when I'm on babysitting detail. Has big advantages – no driving home at the end.

But?

Exactly. For all their ugliness, we know where blue-collar bigots stand, which makes it easy to poke fun at them. I find the scariest bigots to be the crypto ones?

I think I have won the day here by having my... interesting... mother-in-law 7000 miles away and my own sainted mother literally next door.

My own wedding was the?

I had a catholic wedding, so some of the things that were said were just silly (me being agnostic and all). It was expensive and OTT. But it was also one of the?

Sooner rather than later, if you go to a decile 9 school in Orewa.

Just to clarify: I?m not suggesting we set the clock back to 1857, but I?m rather surprised that the brave defenders of ?traditional marriage? don?t. I?d also be cynical enough to suggest that a good proportion of them don?t do so because 1) doing down the fags is a?

Not so sure about?

Haven't been following closely, but perhaps you could point me to an explanation about this angle.

Interesting. Any figures on how that has changed over the last few decades?

Its gone up, from 12.4 years in 1988. Check out the tables here.

Black or are they doing a special colour?

The adoption thing I think is more complex because the entire Adoption Act needs revamping, for a whole bunch?

It's also a case of Craig not really caring that much about marriage equality, as opposed to?

— Doesn't that demographic pretty accurately describe our parliamentarians? ... and any vote on this issue is a 'conscience vote' ... so isn't the result?

Quite – and I think it's a pertinent factoid that the first serious (if flawed) attempt at homosexual law reform was in the name of Venn Young – who was fifty five at the time. In the?

Yeah, there's a lot of space between "is against gay marriage on a survey" and "homophobic", which can be filled with some quite complex (and potentially?

Correct me if I am wrong but the whole ?till death us do?

But you don't have to say that, any more than I had to promise to obey.

Doesn?t that?

Cos you're Luverly.
;-)
Anyone up for Drinkies on Thursday evening @ Te Neigbouhood?.

How's the Mrs. ?
;-)

Hey, I grinned and bore it, even learned the Lord's Prayer (backwards!). In fact, I had to put up with more than most – the Church required us to take pre-marital counseling, which actually turned out to be a good idea. Nut out some of the?

You?re not getting any argument from me or anyone else on that, because this ain?t the line for Barbara Streisand tickets. Does it really have to be a zero-sum game here? (BTW, if I'm ever?

Your nothing like one. My non catholic sister is about to do the mandatory catholic pre-marital counseling and I was a little concerned about what she'd be subjected to, thanks for the info Ben.

Just been thinking about this and that's a really bad place to put an iPad...

you missed a

Besides, the coat was covering the body :-)

Did they teach the "count to 14" version of the rhythm method (which is truly laughable) or actual, proper Natural Family Planning (which is actually remarkably effective when done properly)?

Natural Family Planning?

Which?

If you buy a smaller size, they don't slip off so easily.

I'm told.

I lived with a partner for some years in a?

I've always wondered if the Love Capsule was less bothersome to circumcised men than to un-. Without getting unduly personal, I'd love to know if that's the case!

If the parties going in are actually trying to make it work, yes. Counselors can't help people who don't actually want to be helped. Well, not much, anyway.

But if I had known that his commitment was?

Me too, actually, I've often wondered about that.

You could always send me an email, Ben.

And yes of course nobody can predict what might happen in the future...but if one of you is expecting things to change, that expectation?

Theoretically, it does seem to make a certain amount of sense. I am also curious.

And... yeah. One thing you realise when doing a lot of reading about and mixing with BDSM and polyamorous people is that the?

Yeah, everything?

How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb?
.
.
.
.
One, but it has to want to change. ;-)

Totally. I guess that's my main reservation – mostly counseling is about helping yourself, something to bear in mind at all times. The Catholic marriage counseling was?

It's one of the most useful things about reading your?

Wow, thank you Ben. I dunno if people believe me when I say it, but what I want mostly is for people,?

Which frankly, still surprises me.

Yeah, sorry, I dunno where my head was at.

That's cool too, I don't disagree. I just think that you get some pretty interesting insights when?

Yeah, that's different because it's public. But I've certainly had conversations with male friends of mine about their encounters with prostitutes. And we've had conversations over at The Lady Garden (that's the one?

Probable, even. I think the fact that you go first helps a lot.

From what I've seen it's more that it presents a different set of difficulties.

Done?

Ain't that the truth.

I wonder what the stats are on people not doing it properly.

I don't think I've personally encountered anyone who would rather not bother but I seem to recall those without having more technical difficulties than those with. Obviously we need a larger?

roflnui

This is my favourite phrase on earth right now.

Yeah, the Pill can bite me. I maintain that it works by making you never want to have sex again. (Says the person who wrote her MA thesis on its significance. Heh.)

Sounds like a plan! ;-)

That's exactly how I feel about condoms. I'd actually rather have a wank, or more likely, just not bother at all. I feel I can say this now that there's very little chance of me ever?

So much for unstoppable urges, eh?

It is a good phrase, although when I hear it I can only think of this.

Last night, out drinking with a male friend, I may have unlocked one of the keys to this. It goes something like this:

Him: And I mean, okay, she's hot...
Me: Oh hell yeah. I'd?

Heh. Let's all just assume I made the obvious filthy joke, and not embarrass anyone.

I was prepared to make it the one and only firm veto power I'd ever use, if it came to that. It didn't, which is great?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxo81Ok9Urk

*um, except for the fact he died a couple of years back.

Brilliant clip, thanks.

A sketch of a rugby pass. Awesome!

teeshirt

* the only place of social intercourse (with a very faint hope that it might lead to the other?

?If Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, made directly by God, and they had Cain and Abel, and Cain slew Abel, who did Cain marry??

edit gods but my speeling is atrocious today

I dunno if anyone's run into Kiwi Camp, which is a school-holidays-and-school-camps place north of Wellington, but I really?

Actually, I think you'll find that even in Sunday school at least a third son is mentioned, Seth, but Adam had other?

That was pretty much my point in asking the priests the question, but they would always sling me out before I got to "So, the human race is based on incest, then?"

Oooh, oooh, I know this one: incest was totes OK back then, because Adam and Eve were created?

(The Presbytarian bible school that my mother sent two of us to (after my father died) politely asked her to remove us because 'they're questioning the teacher. All the time.' I suppose a couple of kids, 10 & 11, who'd had their?

Well, of course it is. And probably survived at various times in human history via various degrees of inbreeding. I fail to see the problem there.

I think it's a wonderfully poetic image, me. And the first time I was told that it was supposedly a mistranslation for getting a tow-rope through the eye of a needle, or that (worse) the eye of a needle?

I?ve mostly absorbed Bible apologetics of the Independent Baptist variety. They don?t hold with all that apocryphal stuff. It?s practically pagan.

But then apparently that?s not the case ? Jesus really said camel through the eye of a needle, updating an?

An anti-Christian polemic by Piergiorgio Odifreddi I read is full of examples?

Presbys didnt actually like the term 'Sunday school teachers' way back then...

There seems to be a few of us who can say 'Kicked Out Of Indoctrination Course" eh? Pity it's not a good acronym...?

get it off yer chest...
If Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, made directly by God
I thought that was?

Yeah, well I vetoed, and we're currently about two or three weeks away from a judge deciding for us. Which?

Man that sucks so much.. I had?

I think Lilith is only mentioned in one of the Apocrypha, as Adam's first wife, made from the earth along with him. As I recall, he divorced her for being too uppity, and replaced her with Eve, who was subservient by?

A mantle piece...
I guess the being made from earth thang?

Regarding the transition from Mesopotamian goddess to Hebrew demon: it?s amazing how old stories and images never seem to get thrown away, just reused for new purposes.

As I saw quoted on the intenets somewhere recently:

Religion is like a penis:
Its ok to have one,
Its ok to be proud of it,
But don't bring it out in public,
And don't try and shove it?

I'd like to thank the Academy, and my teachers, and my parents and the guy that does the lighting...

What a waste. So much talent.

Ya, my writing career is severely hampered by not having suffered enough as a child. With an?

I was still a good Anglican long after I ceased believing, which is probably one reason it took me so long to notice that it had happened. The choir I'm in sings?

ETA: Money quote:

Many of the newly married had already sought every legal protection and held any symbolic ceremony available to same-sex couples. But it was never sufficient, they said. They wanted to?

Srsly, same-sex wedding photos always make me cry, and I make no apology for that. For me, this is putting meaning and significance back into marriage.

The attached video was a complete sniffle-fest. I am especially touched by the older couples who have waited decades for this.

I started bawling at the photo at the *top of the page*. That's speedy even for me.

I agree totally, the impression I got from the article was of older people and long term couples that had just been waaaaiiting for so fucking long to get?

Quite – I keep saying to people who ask "why the hell do you care so much about marriage equality" that they should do the numbers. I'm turning forty?

I haven't been able to bring myself to look at the photos yet. I just _know_ I am going to cry.

One thing that apparently never occurred to me in this whole "becoming?

Only if we redefine problematic to mean awesomesauce. I doubt you'd start crying until after the vows, and to have a celebrant?