Tag Archives | Marriage

Men Jailed In China For Stealing Corpses For ‘Ghost Marriages’

By JacobSloan on March 9, 2013 in News 1

Just because you’re dead and rotting doesn’t mean you can’t be a hot ticket as a bride or groom. The Global Post reports:

Four men in northwest China have been sentenced for digging up the corpses of women and selling them for “ghost marriages” to families whose sons died as bachelors. The remains of ten “brides” were sold for a total of $38,000, according to court reports.

Ritual ghost marriages, which is believed to date back to the 17th century BC, is a custom in which parents find “spouses” for their unmarried, deceased children so that they can have a family in the afterlife. The tradition is rare in contemporary China, but still practiced in rural [areas].

Families often employ a matchmaker to help find a suitable spouse for their deceased loved ones. Chinese media have reported cases of brokers murdering women and selling their bodies. In 2006, a man from northern Hebei province murdered six women and sold them as “ghost brides.”

… Read the rest

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In A Few Years, Will A Love Drug Cure Divorce?

By JacobSloan on February 14, 2013 in News 22

Via the Guardian, Will Storr on chemically strengthening the bond between two people by huffing from an inhaler:

According to scientists at the University of Oxford, at some point in the life of my marriage (rough estimate of about 10 years), a new breed of “love drug” might become available – a medication that could heal wounded relationships. It will likely be delivered as an inhaler and prescribed by a relationship counsellor. You’d sniff up a dose in the presence of your loved one and, as the chemical entered your bloodstream, it would strengthen your bond.

Such a drug would likely contain doses of two structurally similar hormones: oxytocin and vasopressin. Of the two, oxytocin is the more famous–sometimes known as the “cuddle chemical”, its positive role in experiences such as orgasm and childbirth seems to have led some to imagine it as an inhalable happy drug. Vasopressin has been implicated in an animal defending its babies.

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Prominent Libertarian: Obama Is Gay, Was Secretly Married To Pakistani Man

By JacobSloan on August 10, 2012 in News 29

New York Times-bestselling author and Tea Party activist Jerome Corsi, whose political analysis is featured at 1776 Nation and WorldNetDaily, delivers the election year bombshell. Unearthed photos from young adulthood show Barack Obama sporting a wedding band-style ring, the final piece in a puzzle which points to one thing: a hush-hush marriage to his male Pakistani roommate, with whom Corsi says Obama was suspiciously “chummy”. Corsi also doubts that our president actually attended Columbia University, despite teachers’ and students’ recollections of his presence:

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After 115 Years Together, Tortoise Couple Splits Up

By bluemana on June 14, 2012 in News 5

Via CTV News:

More than a century’s worth of matrimony wasn’t enough to keep them together.

After 115 years as an item, two tortoises at an Austrian zoo have decided to call it quits.

Trouble began recently when Bibi and Poldi started to pester one another in the cage they’ve shared at the Klagenfurt Austrian Zoo, where they’ve resided for 36 years.

The two hulking creatures grew up together and, until now, have been inseparable. But now, the star-crossed tortoises refuse to share a cage with one another. “We get the feeling they can’t stand the sight of each other anymore,” Zoo Director Helga Happ told Austrian Times.

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When Gay Marriage Was A Christian Rite

By JacobSloan on May 17, 2012 in News 40

When the conservative-minded say they favor a return to the traditional Christian definition of marriage, they might want to further explore what they mean by that. Via Irish Times:

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’s monastery on Mt. Sinai. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman pronubus (best man) overseeing what in a standard Roman icon would be the wedding of a husband and wife. In the icon, Christ is the pronubus. Only one thing is unusual. The “husband and wife” are in fact two men.

The very idea of a Christian homosexual marriage seems incredible. Yet after a twelve year search of Catholic and Orthodox church archives Yale history professor John Boswell has discovered that a type of Christian homosexual “marriage” did exist as late as the 18th century. Contrary to myth, Christianity’s concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has evolved as a concept and as a ritual.

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The Myth About Marriage

By bluemana on May 11, 2012 in News 7

Very interesting perspective from Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books given the current media circus regarding President Obama’s personal support of same-sex marriage:

Why do some people who would recognize gay civil unions oppose gay marriage? Certain religious groups want to deny gays the sacredeness of what they take to be a sacrament. But marriage is no sacrament.

Some of my fellow Catholics even think that “true marriage” was instituted by Christ. It wasn’t. Marriage is prescribed in Eden by YHWH (Yahweh) at Genesis 2.24: man and wife shall “become one flesh.” When Jesus is asked about marriage, he simply quotes that passage from Genesis (Mark 10.8). He nowhere claims to be laying a new foundation for a “Christian marriage” to replace the Yahwist institution.

Some try to make the wedding at Cana (John 1.1–11) somehow sacramental because Jesus worked his first miracle there. But that was clearly a Jewish wedding, like any other Jesus might have attended, and the miracle, by its superabundance of wine, is meant to show the disciples that the Messianic time has come.

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Sweden’s Most Notorious Cannibal To Marry Vampire Murderess

By JacobSloan on February 3, 2012 in News 20

The world’s most evil matrimony? MSNBC writes:

Two infamous Swedish murderers, the “Skara Cannibal” and the “Vampire Woman,” hope to get married, according to Expressen, a Swedish newspaper. The couple met at their high-security psychiatric ward in eastern Sweden, the paper said, and flirted over Internet chat rooms.

Isakin Jonsson, known as the ”Skara Cannibal,” was convicted in March 2011 of killing of his girlfriend, Helle Christensen, a mother of five, Expressen said. After stabbing her to death and cutting off body parts, he ate some of them.

Gustafsson was convicted in 2010 of the stabbing death of a father of four in Stockholm, the paper said. She wrote chilling lyrics on her blog about killing people and posted pictures of herself dressed as a vampire with bloody lips.

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Is Temporary Marriage The Wave Of The Future?

By JacobSloan on October 19, 2011 in News 22

Is a lifetime of monogamy fast becoming an impossible dream, and an until-death marriage agreement nothing but an unfair trap, sprung by your past self onto your future self? Mexico City likely will test out a system in which matrimonial contracts run for two years, as a solution to the problems associated with messy divorces and drawn-out unhappy unions. In the future, lifelong marriage will likely be seen as an arcane and barbaric institution. Reuters reports:

Mexico City lawmakers want to help newlyweds avoid the hassle of divorce by giving them an easy exit strategy: temporary marriage licenses.

Leftists in the city’s assembly — who have already riled conservatives by legalizing gay marriage — proposed a reform to the civil code this week that would allow couples to decide on the length of their commitment, opting out of a lifetime.

The minimum marriage contract would be for two years and could be renewed if the couple stays happy.

… Read the rest

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