Category Archives: Marriage

Church Admits Financial Support of Prop 8

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Update: See below.

When I heard rumours of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints financial involvement to pass Proposition 8, last November’s ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California, I assumed they were lies spread because of malice toward the institution. Though I felt repulsed by the Church’s aggressive position, I thought it acted within its rights to encourage members in voting to strip away the rights of same-sex couples.

I also thought that the church was wise enough to respect the separation of church and state and refrain from actively funding the campaign. It turns out, I was wrong.

In a campaign filing, amid an investigation by Fair Political Practices Commission—a California state campaign watchdog agency, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has revealed it spent nearly $190,000 since September to help pass Proposition 8.

While many church members had donated directly to the Yes on 8 campaign—some estimates of Mormon giving range as high as $20 million—the church itself had previously reported little direct campaign activity.

But in the filing made Friday [January 30, 2009], the Mormon church reported thousands in travel expenses, such as airline tickets, hotel rooms and car rentals for the campaign. The church also reported $96,849.31 worth of “compensated staff time”—hours that church employees spent working to pass the same-sex marriage ban.

For all the crying about how the church has been unjustifiably targeted it’s incredible that it would have opened itself up to such a huge legal blunder and a public relations nightmare. I don’t know what the implications for class action suits by the 18,000 people who had their marriages annulled by the passing of Proposition 8 might be, but I hope it is a wake up call to those that think the church is legitimate in the way it went about robbing the rights of same-sex couples.

Correction: It turns out I was just a little confused about the implications of this report. As pointed out by JKS the filing was posted on time and the church did not break any laws with its involvement in Prop 8.

To be clear, all same-sex marriage rights were stripped using legal means.

Update: According to a few sources, it looks like, the Church has been convicted of 13 counts of late campaign reporting.

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The cost of getting married

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I was reading an article in Unlimited, a new Canadian business magazine aimed at young people. The article was about a young, engaged businesswoman who was in the business of buying a wedding dress. She claims the average wedding in Canada costs $25,800.

That seemed a little high to me. But then our wedding cost hardly anything in comparison. I thought I’d post our experience here, so others out the might realize that they don’t have to go into debt to get married. After all, we had enough debt already coming into our marriage. The last thing we needed was to grow it exponentially.

* Mary’s wedding ring: free (from her aunt’s first marriage)
* My wedding ring: $50 at the pawn shop (Mary’s pocket)
* My tux: $120 (my pocket)
* Mary’s dress: $300 for material (paid by Mary’s uncle, sewn by Mary’s aunt)
* Location: free (at the church/temple)
* Officiator: free (provided by the temple)
* Food: uncatered (made by Mary and her mum; paid for by both sets of parents)
* Cake: free (made and donated by Mary’s aunt)
* Decorations: free (donated by a friend of Mary’s family)
* Music: free (donated by friend of Mary’s family)
* Invitations: printed by Mary’s dad on his computer
* Photography: free (donated by a friend)

Having 300 people show up helped make it a success. So did having part of the local band “Zero Avenue” play for us.

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My first birds-bees talk

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I gave my first birds and the bees talk tonight. I was worried about it. Well, actually, I wasn’t really worried about what I would say, or how I would say it, or even the fact I would have to say anything. I was worried that our 7.5-year-old daughter was never going to ask a question that would lead into the talk, and we’d have to sit her down one day and just tell her out of the blue. I really wanted it to be a result of a question she had. And that’s how it turned out.

We have been wanting to tell her for quite awhile, but wanted to wait until she asked more specific questions than “where do babies come from”. While we were having father’s interview tonight (we do them on Fast Sundays), I asked her to get me our How Are Babies Made book. I wanted to give her another chance to ask a question.

I decided I would go through the book?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùit was written for young children, and has a lot of pictures and language designed for children?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùand after each page would ask her if she had any questions.

The first page was pretty uneventful. It pretty much discussed how babies come in different sizes and colours. Her question was, “How big are babies when they are born”. “All different sizes, but usually between six and ten pounds.

The second page talked about the egg and the sperm and how some sperm create girls and some sperm create boys. One of the things it discusses is that the sperm is in the man’s body and the egg in the woman’s body. Her question was, “How does the sperm get from the man’s body to the woman’s body”. This was my chance! “The man puts his penis inside the woman’s vagina and the sperm travels from the penis, through the vagina and into the uterus where it meets the egg”.

Before we finished the rest of the book, we took advantage of the opportunity to also discuss chastity, including fidelity. We also discussed the importance of being born into a family with parents who are married.

Anyhow, I am glad that is over. I was beginning to think we were either going to have a ten-year-old girl who would never ask more specific questions or that we’d have to sit her down and bring it up out of the blue.

Glad that’s not the case.

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Divorce Immunity

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I was listening to a podcast this morning about a family who experienced so much happiness together, and for certain reasons that are irrelevant to this post, the parents eventually got divorced. The parents continued having a very amicable relationship, but I was still saddened by the divorce. I was saddened because of why they divorced, just that they did, and it made me think about how unbearable it would be for me right now if Mary approached me and wanted a divorce. A divorce is unfathomable to me giving the state of our marriage currently.

But I was left wondering something. Do couples who divorce after 25 or 30 or 50 years feel the same way at 11 years of marriage as I do now? When they had been married for 11 years, was their married life blissful and divorce unfathomable? Or has the reality of eventual divorce already entered into their marriage by that point? Can I be realistic that if my marriage is as strong as it is now at 11 years, that it will always be immune to divorce?

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Benefits of Gay Marriage

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I think it is obvious that homosexuality is not going away. I think it is equally obvious that homosexuals will not stop having sex; men having sex with men and women having sex with women. At the same time, I do not see any benefit to society coming from men and women having illicit sex with those of the same gender. In fact, I believe that illicit sex among homosexuals can only harm our society. Likewise, I believe that illicit sex among heterosexuals can only harm society.

Given those presumptions, I wonder if society can benefit at all from gay marriage.

For example, is it reasonable to assume that an increase in same-gender marriages can result in a decrease in sexually-transmitted disease among the homosexual population?

Is it reasonable to assume that an increase in same-gender marriages can result in a decrease of broken homes (via gay spouses leaving the heterosexual spouses they married despite knowing they were homosexual because they thought marriage would cure them or because they wanted children)?

Is it reasonable to assume that an increase in same-gender marriages can result in a decrease in illicit sex, thus improving the moral fibre of our society?

Certainly there must be other such positions one could make where same-gender marriages might improve our current society. Are they all reasonable? Are any reasonable? Is society better off if homosexuals are denied same-gender marriage?

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