Recently, current second-tier GOP candidate Rick Santorum made statements saying families should be strengthened and that comes with marriage.
“We shouldn’t have incentives for people not to be married,” the former Pennsylvania senator continued. Santorum, who remains at the bottom of most national polls, added that he also believes couples choose to cohabitate rather than marry, because it is cheaper.
But, as MSN Money reports: “The reality is that marriage has plenty of legal and financial benefits, including tax benefits. Even before Congress changed tax rules in 2001 to deal with the so-called marriage penalty, more married couples got a tax bonus from being married than paid a tax penalty.”
“We need to strengthen the family. We need to have a president who goes out and talks about the importance of marriage, the importance of fathers being committed to their children, the importance of moral values in this country,” Santorum, author of “It Takes a Family,” said.
He also said he believes increasing marriage will boost the economy. “You don’t talk about the family, you don’t talk about strong marriages and mothers and fathers helping to raise children, you can’t have a strong economy,” Santorum said.
The great irony of Mr. Santorum’s position is he stridently campaigns against gay and lesbian families having the same rights and protections a heterosexual family has. Thereby keeping those couples, many of whom have children, from being the “families” he says he wants to encourage.
Available today – the great, fabulous and singular Bette Midler. I saw this show twice in Vegas and she wears the mantle of “star” as only she can.
The New York Times exults, “Like all great showgirls, she [Midler] may wear sequins like a second skin, but the woman underneath is all flesh and blood, humor and heart.”
The $10 million extravaganza played over 300 performances in a nearly three-year run at the famed Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace. Taped before thousands in The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the 70-minute cavalcade feaures many of Ms. Midler’s colorful and classic stage and screen characters.
Joining her on the gargantuan stage is an energetic corps of talented performers, including the staggering Harlettes, twenty dazzling dancers she calls The Caesar Salad Girls and a 13-piece band. The production was nominated for a 2011 Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special.
If you love divas – great stars who deliver – stars who are singular in their artistry, you will want this DVD.
Governor Martin O’Malley is a Marylander for marriage equality.
The Democratic Governor on Monday released a video in which he called for balancing religious freedom with the freedom to marry.
“As a free and diverse people of many different faiths, we choose to be governed under the law by certain fundamental principles, among them, equal protection of the law for every individual and the free exercise of religion without government intervention,” O’Malley says in the video.
“The legislation we plan to introduce in the 2012 legislative session will protect religious freedom and equality of marital rights under the law,” he said.
O’Malley has said he wants marriage equality legislation approved in the Maryland legislature’s 2012 session, and that he would make it a priority of his administration.
The Governor told reporters in July that he would borrow elements of the strategy used by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and marriage equality supporters in the Empire State to sponsor and pass a marriage equality bill in the session that begins in January.
Last month, the U.S. military officially ended the policy known as “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” allowing gay military members to serve openly for the first time in history. However, there’s another part of that policy change that hasn’t been talked about.
Military chaplains will now be allowed to marry gay couples on and off military bases, in states where it is legal.
Military Chaplain Ted Wilson says it’s not a big deal.
“We said that the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell would probably be a non event for the military as a whole, and it really has,” he says. “Day to day mission continues, training pilots, crew, chiefs, the mission goes on.”
A chaplain is not required to marry a gay marriage.
“If your tenet of faith prohibits that, then you are not forced to do it, no harm no foul. if you are allowed to perform it, you perform it no big deal.”
The new rules say another chaplain may step in, or a minister from the community, to perform a same-sex marriage.
Hank Williams Jr., the voice famous asking millions of football fans whether they’re ready for some football, has been pulled from tonight’s broadcast of “Monday Night Football” over a comment he made on Fox News this morning.
Williams, who sings the lead-in song to the game each week, criticized the president for his golf summit with House Speaker John Boehner this summer.
“It would be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli leader) Benjamin Netanyahu,” Williams told “Fox & Friends.”
This afternoon, ESPN released this statement:
“While Hank Williams, Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize that he is closely linked to our company through the open to Monday Night Football. We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast.” (via politico)
From Playbill: One of the most common things in the world happened on Oct. 1 in Tappan, NY. “Sunrise, Sunset” was performed at a wedding.
Only this time it was a little different. The song — which has accompanied thousands of nuptials since its debut on Sept. 22, 1964, in Fiddler on the Roof — graced the wedding celebration of two men, entertainer Richard Skipper and landscape architect Daniel Sherman, and the melancholy-happy tune’s story of a “little girl I carried” and a “little boy at play,” now told of two boys.
“I’ve been doing same-sex weddings since New York law permitted it in July,” said Rev. Joshua Ellis, whose new career as a New York-based Interspiritual minister was preceded by many years as a theatrical press agent in New York City. “And something was missing. Nobody was singing ‘Sunrise, Sunset.’ It’s sung all the time in weddings of mixed couples. I guessed it was because they talk about a little boy and a little girl. So I contacted [lyricist] Sheldon Harnick.”
Ellis continued, “Within a few days, he wrote a note back. He’d contacted Richard Ticktin, who was best friend of Jerry Bock and his representative. Attached to that email were revised lyrics of the song.” Ellis then gently asked Harnick if he could also write a set of lyrics for a female couple. Those arrived soon after.
“As part of the ceremony, I explained the whole thing,” said Ellis. “I told the crowd this was the world premiere. This was it. Jana Robbins sang it. She did it magnificently. When it was over, the applause just went on and on and on. There were people who were applauding, people who were crying, people who were silent in awe.”
Here are the newly revised lyrics:
“SUNRISE, SUNSET”
NEW LYRICS BY SHELDON HARNICK, FOR SAME-SEX WEDDING COUPLES. ALL NEW LYRICS COPYRIGHT 2011, SHELDON HARNICK. ORIGINAL MUSIC AND LYRICS COPYRIGHT, 1964 JERRY BOCK AND SHELDON HARNICK
FOR MALE COUPLES:
Is this the little boy I carried? Is that the little boy at play? I don’t remember growing older. When did they?
When did they get to be so handsome? When did they grow to be so tall? Wasn’t it yesterday when they were small?
Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset, Swiftly flow the days. Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers, Blossoming even as we gaze.
Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset, Swiftly fly the years. One season following another Laden with happiness and tears.
What words of wisdom can I give them? How can I help to ease their way? Now they must learn from one another Day by day.
They look so natural together. Just like two newlyweds should be. Is there a canopy in store for me?
Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset, Swiftly fly the years. One season following another, Laden with happiness and tears.
FOR FEMALE COUPLES:
Is this the little girl I carried? Is that the little girl at play? I don’t remember growing older. When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty? [Alternative: When did she get to be so handsome?] When did they grow to be this tall? Wasn’t it yesterday when they were small?
TV pitchman Don Lapre was found dead of an apparent suicide in his jail cell in Florence, Ariz., just two days before his fraud trial was set to begin.
The 47-year-old infomercial huckster was accused of scamming at least 220,000 people by selling worthless vitamins, using get-rich-quick pyramid schemes and phony Internet businesses.
U.S. Marshals spokesman Matt Hershey told media that his death appears to be a suicide, but authorities were still investigating.
Hershey did not say how Lapre may have killed himself.
A grand jury indicted Lapre in June on 41 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and promotional money laundering though his company, “The Greatest Vitamin in the World.”
The company’s “customers” spent nearly $51.8 million to sell vitamins and recruit others to do the same.
But only 5,000 people received about $6.4 million in commission, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, Lapre reaped at least $2.2 million from between 2004 to 2007, the department said.
The fast-talking infomercial king had attempted suicide at least once before.
On June 23, U.S. Marshals with a warrant for his arrest found him at a Tempe, Ariz. gym with a deep gash in his groin area.
Marshals believe had had tried to kill himself by slicing his femoral artery.
On his website, donlapre.com, under the heading “Never Stop Dreaming…” Lapre insisted that he never scammed anyone and predicted that his legal fight would “destroy what energy I have left inside.”
“It did not work out for me with my vitamins but I believe that being willing to fail is part of having a chance at success,” the site says. (via nydailynews.com)
