George and Barbara Bush have had longest Presidential marriage in American history

George and Barbara Bush have had longest Presidential marriage in American history: pic.twitter.com/f4vSVjtQgM

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) February 5, 2017

Congratulations, Dinesh D'Souza

When we trust God through life's travails, then in the end he rewards us @Debber66 pic.twitter.com/t08nDOpSLB

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) September 5, 2015

Marriage Policy Is a Mess. Here’s How to Make Sense of It.

The LGBT community has felt the sting of being a politically powerless minority & shouldn't inflict it on others: http://t.co/P7QvhjmWFs

— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) July 16, 2015

...If the government ever got out of the marriage business, we might suddenly find it much more in all of our family lives.

Family is incredibly important to millennials, but they don't believe government should define what that looks like: http://t.co/NuupxW2Xka

— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) July 15, 2015

"It is considered legitimate for a girl to be married at age 9" - Islamic State guide to female jihadist's life

'Marry at Age 9': New Guide Details Female Life Under ISIS http://t.co/e44eJUp6zG pic.twitter.com/7qJVw02QAt

— slone (@slone) February 6, 2015

"It is considered legitimate for a girl to be married at age 9" - Islamic State guide to female jihadist's life: http://t.co/SlS9w7mN8w

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) February 5, 2015

China Needs Millions of Brides ASAP

◼ In January, the director of China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that China is home to 33.8 million more men than women out of a population exceeding 1.3 billion. - Bloomberg

China's vast population of unmarried men is sure to pose an array of challenges for China, and perhaps its neighbors, for decades to come. What's already clear is that fraudulent mail-order wives are only the start of a much larger problem.

The immediate cause of China’s gender imbalance is a long-standing cultural preference for boys. In China’s patrilineal culture, they’re expected to carry on the family name, as well as serve as a social security policy for aging parents. In the 1970s, China’s so-called One Child policy transformed this preference into an imperative that parents fulfilled via sex selective abortions (made possible by the widespread availability of ultrasounds). As a result, millions of girls never made it onto China’s population rolls. In 2013, for example, the government reported 117.6 boys were born for every 100 girls. (The natural rate is 103 to 106 boys to every 100 girls.) In the countryside, the ratio can run much higher -- Mara Hvistendahl, in her 2011 book, Unnatural Selection, reports on a town where ratios run as high as 150 to 100. Long-term, such imbalances can create an excess of males that might reach 20 percent of the overall male population by 2020, according to one estimate.

Of course, social expectations aren’t just confined to boys. In China, daughters are expected to marry up -- and in a country where men far outnumber women, the opportunities to do so are excellent, especially in the cities to which so many of China’s rural women move. The result is that bride prices -- essentially dowries paid to the families of daughters -- are rising, especially in the countryside....

THE SEXODUS, PART 1: THE MEN GIVING UP ON WOMEN AND CHECKING OUT OF SOCIETY

◼ "My generation of boys is f**ked," says Rupert, a young German video game enthusiast I've been getting to know over the past few months. "Marriage is dead. Divorce means you're screwed for life. - Breitbart London

"Marriage is dead. Divorce means you're screwed for life. Women have given up on monogamy, which makes them uninteresting to us for any serious relationship or raising a family. That's just the way it is. Even if we take the risk, chances are the kids won't be ours. In France, we even have to pay for the kids a wife has through adulterous affairs.

"In school, boys are screwed over time and again. Schools are engineered for women. In the US, they force-feed boys Ritalin like Skittles to shut them up. And while girls are favoured to fulfil quotas, men are slipping into distant second place.

"Nobody in my generation believes they're going to get a meaningful retirement. We have a third or a quarter of the wealth previous generations had, and everyone's fleeing to higher education to stave off unemployment and poverty because there are no jobs.

"All that wouldn't be so bad if we could at least dull the pain with girls. But we're treated like paedophiles and potential rapists just for showing interest. My generation are the beautiful ones," he sighs, referring to a 1960s experiment on mice that supposedly predicted a grim future for the human race....

Never before in history have relations between the sexes been so fraught with anxiety, animosity and misunderstanding. To radical feminists, who have been the driving force behind many tectonic societal shifts in recent decades, that's a sign of success: they want to tear down the institutions and power structures that underpin society, never mind the fall-out. Nihilistic destruction is part of their road map.

But, for the rest of us, the sight of society breaking down, and ordinary men and women being driven into separate but equal misery, thanks to a small but highly organised group of agitators, is distressing. Particularly because, as increasing numbers of social observers are noticing, an entire generation of young people—mostly men—are being left behind in the wreckage of this social engineering project.

Prominent Protestant Pastors Vow To No Longer Perform Government Marriages

◼ Two Protestant pastors, concerned about rapidly-changing government definitions of marriage, have started a movement encouraging priests and ministers to refuse to perform civil marriages. - Daily Caller

Christopher Seitz and Ephraim Radner, Episcopal and Anglican pastors respectively, launched “The Marriage Pledge” at the conservative religious journal First Things on Tuesday.

“As Christian ministers we must bear clear witness,” it reads. “This is a perilous time. Divorce and co-­habitation have weakened marriage. We have been too complacent in our responses to these trends. Now marriage is being fundamentally redefined, and we are ­being tested yet again. If we fail to take clear action, we risk falsifying God’s Word.”

What’s Bad for America Is Good for Democrats

◼ In the areas of marriage, race, victimhood: if it hurts America, it helps the Democratic party. - Dennis Prager/National Review Online

In almost every area of American life, the better things are, the worse it is for the Democratic party. And vice versa.

MARRIAGE

Even today, after decades of feminism, most Americans agree that it is better for women (and for men) — and better for society — when women (and men) marry. Yet, when women marry, it is bad for the Democratic party; and when women do not marry, even after — or shall we say, especially after — having children, it is quite wonderful for the Democratic party.

Married women vote Republican. Unmarried women lopsidedly vote Democrat. KEEP READING

— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His most recent book is Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

The Democrats Have a Marriage Problem

◼ Politics: This fall, Democrats will no doubt resurrect the "war on women" theme to try to hold the Senate. - Investor´s Business Daily EDITORIAL

But they don´t really care about all women, just the unmarried ones. The IBD/TIPP poll shows why. According to the Washington Post, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is building a huge computer database that will let it predict women´s marital status. That way they can "pinpoint unmarried women as the target of specific, poll-test messages," according to one source quoted in the story.

Advice for a Happy Life, by Charles Murray

◼ Consider marrying young. Be wary of grand passions. Watch 'Groundhog Day' (again). Advice on how to live to the fullest - Charles Murray

The transition from college to adult life is treacherous, and this is nowhere more visible than among new college graduates in their first real jobs. A few years ago, I took it upon myself to start writing tips for the young staff where I work about how to avoid doing things that would make their supervisors write them off. It began as a lark as I wrote tips with titles such as, "Excise the word 'like' from your spoken English."

But eventually, I found myself getting into the deeper waters of how to go about living a good life. At that point, I had to deal with a reality: When it comes to a life filled with deep and lasting satisfactions, most of the clichés are true. How could I make them sound fresh to a new generation?

Here's how I tried....

◼ I'll give you the five points, but you need to promise me to click through and read the whole thing... - CainTV

1. Consider marrying young.
2. Learn how to recognize your soul mate.
3. Eventually stop fretting about fame and fortune.
4. Take religion seriously.
5. Watch Groundhog Day repeatedly.

How to Fight Income Inequality: Get Married

◼ In families headed by married couples, the poverty level in 2012 was just 7.5%. Those with a single mother: 33.9%. - Ari Fleischer/Wall St. Journal

If President Obama wants to reduce income inequality, he should focus less on redistributing income and more on fighting a major cause of modern poverty: the breakdown of the family. A man mostly raised by a single mother and his grandparents who defied the odds to become president of the United States is just the person to take up the cause.

"Marriage inequality" should be at the center of any discussion of why some Americans prosper and others don't. According to Census Bureau information analyzed by the Beverly LaHaye Institute, among families headed by two married parents in 2012, just 7.5% lived in poverty. By contrast, when families are headed by a single mother the poverty level jumps to 33.9%.

And the number of children raised in female-headed families is growing throughout America. A 2012 study by the Heritage Foundation found that 28.6% of children born to a white mother were out of wedlock. For Hispanics, the figure was 52.5% and for African-Americans 72.3%. In 1964, when the war on poverty began, almost everyone was born in a family with two married parents: only 7% were not.

...Given how deep the problem of poverty is, taking even more money from one citizen and handing it to another will only diminish one while doing very little to help the other. A better and more compassionate policy to fight income inequality would be helping the poor realize that the most important decision they can make is to stay in school, get married and have children—in that order.

Married to the State

◼ link - Conn Carroll/TownHall

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) upset quite a few liberals last week, when she asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, “A single male, aged 32, does not need maternity coverage. To be the best of your knowledge, has a man ever delivered a baby?”

...Unfortunately, the decline of marriage as an institution, and the growing number of single households, signal that the Democrats are succeeding in replacing marriage with the state.

◼ OFA Truth Team praises Obamacare for ‘fixing’ maternity coverage gap - twitchy

@OFATruthTeam @obamacare How much of that 62% were policies covering males?

— Sarah Lise (@Saerise) November 7, 2013

@OFATruthTeam @obamacare Um, I am 56 and my wife is 54. We have two grown children. Tell me again how you are "fixing" maternity care 4 us?

— Bob Doty (@bobdoty) November 7, 2013

@OFATruthTeam @obamacare So my 52 year old sister who had her uterus removed must now get maternity care? You are truly Obama's brownshirts.

— AJ's Puffy Scamper (@TobytheBeagle1) November 7, 2013