Unmarried America
an information service for unmarried and single Americans


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Family Diversity is the Norm

 

News Stories About Unmarried America


Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Recent Commentaries:

Single, Childless, and Downright Terrified
New York Times

I now pronounce you . . . friend and friend
Boston Globe

 

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Census Bureau Announcement:
Sept. 21-27 is Unmarried and Single Americans Week

 

Unmarried Women Voters Favor Obama by Wide Margin

 

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Poll:  Marriage gap in voting preferences for president

Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama lead Republican John McCain among unmarried voters, a U.S. poll indicates.

McCain, however, beats both Clinton and Obama among married voters, the Gallup Poll Daily tracking found.

 

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Commentary: Public policy should be marriage neutral

Excerpt from column by Froma Harrop:

"It's easy to understand why gay people would want to get in on the marriage gravy train. There's just no logic for there being one. A stable marriage is the ideal institution for raising children, but we already have tax benefits focused on parents. Given the growing percentage of unmarried adult Americans, the whole obsession with same-sex marriage has become rather dated.

Keep marriage as a romantic and religious ideal for those who choose to partake. Public policy, on the other hand, should be marriage-neutral.

This is the marriage issue that the leading candidates should be addressing. You just know that they won't touch it."


 

Monday, May 19, 2008

Public more accepting of intimate choices

A new Gallup Poll reveals that the American public has become more tolerant of divorce, unmarried sex, and gay relationships over the past seven years.

 

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Unmarried sisters lose inheritance tax fight

Two elderly sisters failed yesterday in their challenge to Britain's inheritance tax through the European court of human rights. They had argued that they were discriminated against because they did not qualify for the same tax protection as a married couple or civil partners.

"The absence of ... a legally binding agreement between the applicants renders their relationship of cohabitation, despite its long duration, fundamentally different to that of a married or civil partnership couple," said the written judgment.

The sisters expressed their disappointment at the decision yesterday. "We are still struggling to understand why two single sisters in their old age, whose only crime was to choose to stay single and look after their parents and two aunts to the end, should find themselves in such a position in the UK in the 21st century," they said in a statement.

"We are, of course, bitterly disappointed. This is a day we hoped, as British citizens, we would never see."

 

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Kaiser poll shows millions marry for health insurance

Seven percent of respondents said that they, or someone in their household, had decided to get married to obtain health insurance through their spouse. "It's a small number but a powerful result, because it shows how paying for health care is reflected not only in family budgets but in life decisions," Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said of the marriage finding (Los Angeles Times, 4/29).

 

Monday, February 18, 2008

“Marriage as a family form is not more important or valuable than other forms of family,” writes gay rights activist and American University law professor Nancy Polikoff, “so the law should not give it more value."

In Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, Polikoff criticizes the conservative “marriage movement” for blaming all social problems on the decline of life-long heterosexual marriage. She also takes issue with the gay rights "marriage-equality movement" for attributing the legal problems facing same-sex couples to the inability to marry, rather than to the “special rights” inappropriately granted married couples.

When marriage serves as the bright dividing line between those relationships that legally matter and those that do not, Polikoff notes, countless families suffer. Her valuing-all-families solution is true to the roots of the gay rights movement and consistent with decades-old legal changes that have made marriage matter less.

Click here for more information on this book.

 

What's New -- 2007