(DETROIT FREE PRESS) 22 June 2008:

Well, that’s the headline, although that’s not quite what they mean: the ratio of marriage ceremonies to married couples is still pretty much one to one for both lesbians and gays. What they mean is that women in a committed relationship are more likely to marry than gay men in committed relationships.

Which shouldn’t come as all that much of a surprise: we see in heterosexual relationhips that women are more eager to marry than men.

It’s compounded here by the way that lesbian couples are much more likely to have and raise children than gays are (there’s the comparable ease and difficulty of the basic mechanics to consider along with desires), so much so that in states where there is a mechanism to register same sex partnerships (marriages, civil partnerships, whatever) the ration is usually 2:1, lesbian to gay.

An old English euphemism for “gay” was “not the marrying kind”: interesting how that seems still to be true, long past the time that the eupehimism is still in use.

(THE MERCURY NEWS) 7 May 2008:

We’re all too aware of the way in which rich and famous men tend to marry women somewhat younger than themselves. We’re also aware that the apotheosis of feminine beauty is thought to arrive when the woman is in her twenties, while women are less worried about men’s looks and tend to go for successful men, rather than just good looking ones.

However, researchers have shown that this isn’t limited to rich and or successful men: it happens right across the income groups. The older a man is when he marries the larger the likely age gap between him and his wife. One possible explanation:

“The 12th Marquess of Huntly married a nurse 40 years his junior: “I still have my own teeth. Why should I marry some dried up old bag?”"

Maybe?

(CNN) 17 April 2008:

An 8-year-old girl in Yemen was able to get a divorce from her husband, who is four times her age. The girl has also been removed from her father, who forced the marriage. What makes the story so unusual is that the girl took the unusual action of seeking out a judge on her own and filing for divorce on her own.

The judge terminated the marriage on the basis that the girl has not even reached puberty.

Her parents testified that they did not help her after she told them she was being beaten by her husband.

(SCIENCE DAILY) 3 April 2008:

New research shows that when women get married, they  do–on average–an extra seven hours a week of housework more than they did when they were single, while men do one hour less.

However, this trend appears to be changing. If we look at married women in their 20s (and thus those raised in more enlightened times) while housework was still not equally shared, the hours spent went up for both men and women upon marriage.

So to a large extent it’s a problem that’s already solved, we just need to wait for the older generations to pass on.

(BUSINESSWEEK) 7 February 2008:

In what might not be the greatest surprise ever about marriage and money, researchers have found that 70% of women and 50% of men would marry for money. What makes this rather more complex is that the same researchers have shown that the process of dating is at least partly about showing how much you care about the other person by showering them with money and the things that can be bought with it.

Thus creating an interesting problem: how can you afford to impress a rich person with your generosity if you are not already rich yourself?

The problem thus becoming that some people are simply too poor to be able to marry money.

(NATION) 1 January 2008:

One of the great puzzles of epidemiology is that we know that marriage increases mens’ general good health and lifespan. However, only happy marriages (as opposed to all) do that for women. Now reseachers think they have found the mechanism.

By measuring cortisol levels (a stress hormone) they were able to show that married men bounce back from the pains and griefs of the working day better than single men do. But for women this was only true if they were in a happy marriage. And of course we already know that stress is an indicator of general good health.

Now all we have to do is work out why cortisol levels react this way to a happy or unhappy marriage….

(NY DAILY NEWS) 11 November 2007:

New Yorkers were asked about their favorite place to propose marriage. Or, if you prefer, where they liked to have marriage proposed to them. What both men and women agreed upon was that Central Park was a great place.

After that it became a little different: for the men, the Empire State Building, Times Square, or the Love Statue. For women, the Rockefeller ice rink, Bryant Park or a five star restaurant are great places to hear the question popped.

So a little tip for any men thinking about popping the question. Try Central Park. At least you might both be there at the same time.

(YAHOO.COM) 21 September 2007

German politician Gabriele Pauli has shocked German conservatives by suggesting that legal marriages last only seven years. Pauli, a fiery redhead motorcycle mama, is running on a platform that includes a law where marriage would automatically expire after seven years. At that time, couples could agree to renew their marriage or it would automatically dissolve.

For the record, she’s been divorced twice.

(NEWSOFTHEWEIRD.COM) 2 September 2007:

Ric and Sue are married and live in Phoenix, Arizona. Much to Sue’s consternation, Ric spends over 30 hours a week playing the online video game “Second Life.” In this game, Rick plays the character “Dutch Hoorenbeek,” a strapping ladies man who lives on a private island. To make Sue even more irritated, “Dutch” recently “married” another character in the game. Although Ric has never met the real-life person behind the Mrs. Hoorenbeek character, Dutch and his wife spend hours together, leaving Ric barely any time at all to spend with Sue.

(REUTERS) 17 July 2007:

A teenager whose teachers had stopped her wearing a “purity ring” at school to symbolize her commitment to virginity has lost a High Court fight against the ban.

Lydia Playfoot, 16, says her silver ring is an expression of her faith and had argued in court that it should be exempt from school regulations banning the wearing of jewelry.

“I am very disappointed by the decision this morning by the High Court not to allow me to wear my purity ring to school as an expression of my Christian faith not to have sex outside marriage,” Playfoot said in a statement Monday.