Saturday, December 10, 2016

Cherokee Nation OKs same-sex marriage

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Story highlights

Brittany Nunley and Kelli King were surprised and pleased with the opinion
Cherokee Nation law enacted in 2004 has banned same-sex marriage

A ban on same-sex marriage involving members of the Cherokee Nation was overturned by the tribe's attorney general in an opinion issued Friday.

King called her girlfriend, Brittany Nunley, who is Cherokee and shared the good news.

"I think its awesome," Nunley told CNN. "I have been really proud of my Cherokee heritage and to be able to get a marriage license is just awesome."

King, who said the couple met at a church softball game about four and half years ago, said she was excited to hear about the ruling.

"This is just another way we can incorporate her heritage into our lives and are thankful for opportunity," King said.

Attorney General Todd Hembree's opinion specifically says two sections of the 2004 Cherokee Nation Marriage and Family Act are unconstitutional.

He said the tribe's constitution protects certain fundamental rights, among them the right to marry.

"The constitution affords these rights to all Cherokee citizens, regardless of sexual orientation and the Cherokee Nation, or any subdivision, must recognize validly issued civil unions, same-sex marriages, and same-sex domestic partnerships from other jurisdictions," the opinion says.

The US Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 vote in June 2015 that states cannot ban same-sex marriage.

Nunley said after it became legal in Oklahoma in 2014 and then nationwide through the landmark Supreme Court decision, she wondered whether the Cherokee Nation would also reverse itself.

"I was really excited and really proud to be a Cherokee. Like my nation is doing something for all its people," she said from her home in Locust Grove, about 20 minutes from the tribe's headquarters in Tahlequah.

Marriage is definitely in their future, King said. It's been discussed in the past but they wanted to wait for it to be legal.

"It's probably not too far off now," she said.

Nunley said she's just waiting for someone to pop the question.

The man who was chief in 2004 told the Tulsa World newspaper that he supported Hembree's opinion.

"It was adhering to past Cherokee law," Chad Smith said, explaining why he signed the law 12 years ago. "But our constitution incorporates the provisions of the US Constitution, and the Supreme Court (of the United States) has since made its ruling."

A member of the tribal council disagreed with the decision and told the newspaper that he expected the council would still support the 2004 law.

"We'll have to get together and talk about it," Don Garvin told the newspaper.

The Cherokee Nation website says that with more than 317,000 citizens, it is the largest sovereign tribal nation in the United States.

CNN's Mayra Cuevas contributed to this report.

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X Factor's Matt Terry uses same sex couples for dance routine - is he up to something?

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X Factor's Matt Terry made a lot of fans happy by using same sex dance couples this evening.

As he took to the stage to perform his take on Jess Glynne's Take Me Home, men were dancing with one another and so were women.

Those tuning in at home were delighted and quick to take to Twitter afterwards.

One wrote: "Love how they used same sex dancers on X factor."

X Factor's Matt Terry made a lot of fans happy by using same sex dance couples this evening (Photo: Splash)

Another then posted: "Same sex dancing couples. How delightful. #xfactor #mattterry.'

Moments later, a different viewer tweeted: "Big up to the same sex dance couples though #XFactor."

Shortly afterwards, another posted: "Living for these same sex dancers. #XFactor."

However, some viewers were suspicious as to why Matt decided to use same sex couples in his final perfomance.

Matt Terry's dancers on the X Factor (Photo: ITV)

One fan claimed: "NOPE! As if Matt just tried, so blatantly, to get the gay vote with same sex dancers! As if the gays won't all be voting for Saara #XFactor."

This year's X Factor king or queen will be crowned in tomorrow's live final.

Matt Terry's dancers on the X Factor (Photo: ITV)

Matt faces tough competition from Saara Alto and 5AM and one of the three remaining acts will be leaving the competition tonight.

*X factor returns to ITV tomorrow at 8pm

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Why Arkansas same-sex parents won't be listed on a child's birth certificate

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Arkansas same-sex parents will not be listed on their childrenâ€™s birth certificates, the stateâ€™s highest court ruled on Thursday. The decision has raised questions about equal protection, and the state may still change its approach.

The ruling by a four-member majority of the Arkansas Supreme Court determined that only biological parents can be listed on a childâ€™s birth certificate. It overturns last yearâ€™s decision by a lower court that married same-sex couples could automatically have both spouses listed as parents.Â

For the state Supreme Court, itâ€™s simply a question of biology. At the same time, marriage allows different-sex couples to be listed as parents, and the US Supreme Courtâ€™s ruling on gay marriage may mean that now applies to same-sex couples too. And the debate is complicated by state laws that require parentage to be tracked.

â€œIt is clear that including both married spousesâ€™ names â€" regardless of whether they are same-sex or opposite sex â€" on a childâ€™s birth certificate is exactly the kind of benefit of marriage that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled should be extended to same-sex couples,â€ Kate Oakley, senior legislative counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, said in a press release.

That was the approach taken by Little Rock Circuit Judge Tim Fox in December 2015. Three same-sex couples brought a case arguing that the legalization of same-sex marriage gave same-sex parents the same rights to be identified as parents on their childrenâ€™s birth certificates that different-sex parents already enjoyed.Â

For parents, being named on a childâ€™s birth certificate is important for all kinds of reasons, as LGBT news source The Advocate described. Without this legitimization, parents may struggle to put children on their health insurance or even pick them up from school.

When they won their suit, the three couples were granted the right to list the names of both partners on the birth certificates. But the state appealed the decision on the grounds that it was causing legal and logistical problems. Several days after the initial ruling, the Arkansas Supreme Court stayed the decision, preventing it from being extended to other couples.

One possible reason for the issues: birth certificates are woven into legislation and Health Board protocol in the state of Arkansas. Identifying biological parents is an â€œimportant governmental objective,â€ wrote Arkansas Supreme Court Associate Justice Josephine Linker Hart in the majority opinion, explaining that knowing who parents are allows the state to track public health trends and give children genetic information that they might need for medical reasons later on.

But different-sex Arkansas parents arenâ€™t required to prove that they are the biological parents of the child, perhaps limiting the value of state tracking â€" and raising questions about unequal treatment of same-sex parents.

"There's no requirement that DNA be given or that there be a biological relationship to a child to get on a birth certificate for a father, for the non-birth parent," said Cheryl Maples, who sued on behalf of the three couples, the Associated Press reported.

â€œThe inclusion of a parent's name on a child's birth certificate is a benefit associated with and flowing from marriage," wrote Arkansas Associate Justice Paul Danielson in the dissenting opinion.

The decision may have provided an impetus for the state to make some changes to the law.

â€œIt is time to heed the callâ€ to make changes heralded by decisions like Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the right to same-sex marriage, said Arkansas Chief Justice Howard Brill, according to NBC.

And though some state officials pronounced the state â€œgratifiedâ€ that the court had chosen to uphold state law, they suggested that lawmakers might be willing to consider changes. Arkansas has so far been reluctant to amend its laws.

â€œIf any changes are appropriate, it is the job of legislators to do so, not the circuit court,â€ said Judd Deere, a spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, AP reported.

As it stands, the ruling would require same-sex parents to obtain a court order if they want both spouses to be listed on a childâ€™s birth certificate. Ms. Maples told AP that she has not yet decided whether to appeal to the US Supreme Court.

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There Are No Child Sex Slaves at My Local Pizza Parlor

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U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ! https://t.co/O0bVJT3QDr

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Britain's 'first gay surrogate dads' want girl triplets via sex selection process illegal in UK

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Britainâ€™s first gay couple to father children through surrogacy have sparked heated debate over their plans to have have triplet daughters via a sex-selection process that is illegal in the UK.

Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow want three girls to add to their four sons and a daughter. They plan to conceive the triplets through embryo sex selection, and will do so in the US, where the practice is legal.

The coupleâ€™s youngest children, six-year-old twins Jasper and Dallas, were conceived thanks to a batch of embryos, of which there are still ten remaining in a Californian fertility clinic.

They first became fathers in 1999 Credit: rob bodman

The embryos were created using the coupleâ€™s sperm and the eggs of a Brazilian model. She was paid Â£50,000 by the couple for her eggs after they spotted her on a catwalk.

Barrie outlined the coupleâ€™s plan to pick the female embryos from those ten. They will then be implanted in the womb of a surrogate mother.

â€œThis is baby trafficking, a skewing of the natural order,â€ said a spokeswoman for Christian Concern. â€œChildren are a blessing and a gift, not objects that we select from a showroom.â€

Lisa Ann Magerman, an obstetrics blogger and nurse, raised safety concerns. â€œTriplet pregnancies are very high-risk to begin with,â€ she said â€œSex selection signals they care more about balanced numbers than four lives.â€

Triplet pregnancies are very high-risk to begin with. Sex selection signals they care more about balanced numbers than four livesLisa Ann Magerman, obstetrics blogger and nurse

But not all observers are against the practice of sex selection. In a report into the ethics of gender preference, Stephen Wilkinson, a professor of bioethics at Lancaster, said: â€œWe didn't find any ethical arguments sufficient to justify a blanket ban on these people seeking sex selection.â€

There is â€œtoo much testosteroneâ€ in the Drewitt-Barlow household, said Barrie, adding that he was not too old to be a father again. â€œI need to have another princess in my life â€" or two or three,â€ he told newspapers.

The Drewitt-Barlows, who live in Essex, Â first became fathers in 1999. Each of them fertilised an egg from the same woman, resulting in the birth, thanks to a surrogate mother, of Saffron and Aspen, half-siblings who are both now 17.

They were followed by Orlando, 13, and then Jasper and Dallas. Saffron told newspapers that her fathers are â€œway too oldâ€ for more children.

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Bad Sex in Fiction Awards ceremony celebrates 24th year

5:00 PM Bilal Muazin No comments

â€œItâ€™s terribly British, isnâ€™t it,â€ said the man next to me at last nightâ€™s Bad Sex in Fiction Awards ceremony at the (appropriately named) In and Out Club in St Jamesâ€™s. He was referring, of course, to the yearly bash â€" now in its 24th year â€" in which the Literary Review magazine nominates half a dozen passages from contemporary fiction seen to represent sex at its most cringeworthy, reads them out to champagne-infused guffaws, and then awards a prize to the author of the worst.

It is a terribly British event, but it also provides a snarky satisfaction that transcends nationality. Because for anyone with the sneaking suspicion that the sexual act is better done or seen than artistically described â€" that its complex idiosyncrasy is one of the few things that lie outside the remit of the otherwise resourceful English language â€" the Bad Sex Awards hits its mark.

Yet as the entrants this year make clear, writing about sex with flagrant abominableness is still cheerily far from going out of fashion. Hearty examples were a passage from Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellisâ€™s The Butcherâ€™s Hook:

When his hand goes to my breasts, my feet are envious. I slide my hands down his back, all along his spine, rutted with bone like mud ridges in a dry field, to the audacious swell below.

â€œAudacious swellâ€? Quite.

Then there was the American Gayle Formanâ€™s entry, from Leave Me:

They were in that room, Jason had slammed the door and devoured her with his mouth, his hands, which were everywhere. As if he were ravenous. And she remembered standing in front of him, her dress a puddle on the floor, and how sheâ€™d started to shake, her knees knocking together, like she was a virgin, like this was the first time.

Erri de Luca.
Claudio Onorati/EPA

But the gong went to the Italian poet and translator Erri De Luca for The Day Before Happiness (de Luca understandably wasnâ€™t present). â€œMy prick was a plank stuck to her stomach,â€ the Neapolitan was justly rebuked for writing:

With a swerve of her hips, she turned me over and I was on top of her â€¦ I was her plaything, which she moved around. Our sexes were ready, poised in expectation, barely touching each other: ballet dancers hovering en pointe.

Not everyone felt this deserved the award â€" as an American woman nearby remarked to me, this could clearly be read as satire, plain and simple. Perhaps, but satire doesnâ€™t necessarily get you home dry, especially when itâ€™s ambiguous. After all, the book, a coming of age story, is not particularly comic in the way that, for instance, the early sex-mad tomes of Philip Roth and Martin Amis were.

In fact, the awards were conceived not to discourage writing about sex, but to discourage writing about sex badly. The wording of the original mission statement in 1993 by Auberon Waugh, then editor of the Literary Review, is revealing: the bash was to â€œdraw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fictionâ€.

It would be helpful to have some guidance on what non-redundant, good sex writing looks like, since itâ€™s not entirely clear whether it can exist in a literary form at all. After all, the most sexually charged novels of the last 100 or so years use the rule of thumb that the act is unmentionable, boring, or best only suggested.

The novels of Dickens, Eliot and Trollope are full of sexual yearning, and their emotional and erotic pull are none the worse for the veiled references to kissing and love. Even in 20th century novels with subject matter devoted to romantic entanglements, the sexual act is not necessarily spelled out or even mentioned â€" Iris Murdoch doesnâ€™t go further than â€œmaking loveâ€ as an account of the nocturnal activities of her highly sexually charged couple Dora and Paul in The Bell (1958).

And while Margaret Drabbleâ€™s super-sexy characters Clara and Gabriel get pretty steamy in Jerusalem the Golden, nothing beyond the fact is spelled out. Itâ€™s a blessed relief which does nothing to diminish the profoundly saucy atmosphere of the book.

The awards are also a humorous reminder not just of the imaginative power but also of the literary value of discipline and restraint in matters of bonking. A recent book about prime minster Herbert Asquithâ€™s passionate attachment to Venetia Stanley tells of his thousands of letters to her, all passionately headed with variants of â€œmy own darlingâ€ and â€œdarlingestâ€.

Asquithâ€™s desperate fixation with Stanley pours out from every page, but had he indulged in anything more sexually explicit than the desire to â€œgo for a little drive, or will you come to Downing St & have a talkâ€, it would hardly have helped, and probably only hindered, the accumulated intensity of his fixation. Voluble lusters: take note.

Zoe Strimpel, PhD Candidate, University of Sussex

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Porn, Sex And Marriage: What's OK, And What Isn't? : NPR

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Warning: Today's post deals with sexual content and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer "radical empathy" and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety.

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Courtesy of WBUR

Today they're delving into the adult topics of pornography and masturbation. A man says he masturbates regularly while watching pornography but still maintains a healthy sexual relationship with his wife. But he is still "troubled" by the notion that the porn industry is exploitative of performers, and questions whether it is morally acceptable to fantasize about women other than his wife.

To help in their discussion of these topics, the Sugars are joined by Wendy Maltz, sex therapist and co-author of The Porn Trap.

Dear Sugars,

Is it bad to masturbate to online porn? I am a happily married man in my mid-50s, and have been married for 15 years to a wonderful woman. We have a satisfying sex life, having sex approximately once every week.

However, I go online to masturbate to porn about three times a week. I work from home and find that I become sexually turned on during the working day. I look at masturbation as a healthy release. Viewing online porn allows me to accomplish the "task" more quickly and get back to work.

That other purveyor of personal wisdom, Dr. Phil, advises that watching porn is an immoral betrayal of a marital partner and says the women in porn videos are likely to have been abused as children and are being exploited. I have a teenage daughter and avoid videos of young girls, preferring age-appropriate subjects in the so-called "mature" category. I also avoid watching porn up to 24 hours before I am likely to have a date with my wife in order to be able to enjoy and contribute to our sex together.

Can Men And Women Be Friends Without Benefits?

My wife knows that I look at porn. While we don't discuss it, she doesn't feel that it is a betrayal of her. I look at viewing porn as an extension of masturbation, which I believe is healthy and a necessary release, one that is as private as going to the bathroom. If not for porn, I would still masturbate. I doubt Dr. Phil believes that masturbation is immoral. Is masturbating while fantasizing about someone besides my wife immoral? Assuming that online porn is the problem, is it possible that you can make distinctions?

I know that many of the women on porn sites are probably psychologically damaged in some way, and that the pornography industry may be contributing to that damage. On the other hand, is it possible that accepting money for video sex is not always exploitative? Is it possible that some of the women who perform in online sex videos do it out of a healthy appreciation of sex?

Signed,

Troubled by Porn

Steve Almond: I could have written this letter, and I felt a great sense of sympathy for this guy who's trying to figure out the same questions I struggle with when I bother to even struggle with them: Am I complicit in something that is very clearly against my moral code? In what ways? And what are my other alternatives?

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Follow the Sugars on Twitter @dearsugarradio.

Jennie Baker Photography/Courtesy of WBUR

I think he is in a productive state of bewilderment, and I think most of the men of conscience who consume porn in one way or another are either suppressing this set of questions or are struggling with them. The porn industry is like football or like meat or like fossil fuels â€" it's essentially exploitative. But because I have a libido that operates differently than my wife's, I get horny and I want relief. I lament that I no longer sit there and do the imaginative work of masturbating without porn. There are a lot of people who aren't even grappling with the ways in which pornography is an ethical concern because, frankly, people don't want porn served with a side dish of ethics.

Wendy Maltz: I have a lot of respect for the man who wrote this letter. He's really thinking about his relationship to porn and trying to figure it out. He doesn't have the secrecy and shame element going on that a lot of people have with porn. But there's something happening â€" he's starting to question it. I can't say if his porn use in particular is a good thing or a bad thing. It's so personal. People have ask themselves, "What does porn mean to me? What is it doing to me? Where's it taking me?"

Cheryl Strayed: What do you mean when you say "Where's it taking me?" Do you mean to suggest that, in some ways, his porn use could be robbing his marriage of a sort of intimacy that it might have if he didn't use it?

Wendy: Porn is a very powerful product. It's like nothing we've ever seen before. There's a conditioning process associated with porn. It can become a stronger habit. Our sexual arousal response gets patterned to particular cues, and those cues can be the images in porn or they can be the smell of a lover's neck. Images are very powerful, so porn could be affecting the intimacy he has with his wife in ways he's not even aware of. He says porn is not an issue in his marriage, but he and his wife aren't really talking about its place in their relationship either.

Steve: There's a kind of "don't-ask-don't-tell" policy when it comes to porn in relationships. Pornography, predominantly for men, is a little secret cavern â€" it's a place we go, even if we're in happy, deeply communicative relationships, as it seems this guy is.

Cheryl: Part of my response to this letter is that there's nothing wrong. This guy wants to have an orgasm about four times a week. Presumably, if his wife wanted to have sex more, she would be making advances towards him. And he has a different sex drive than she does, and so he just takes care of himself. He doesn't need to tell his wife. There is such thing as privacy, even when you're married to somebody. Wendy, is this inherently a bad setup, or are you thinking, well clearly, because he's asking these questions, he's not entirely comfortable with it?

Wendy: From a clinical perspective, we're not talking about someone who is disassociated or who uses porn in lieu of sex, but there's something going on for him â€" he signed his letter "Troubled by Porn." One of the things that I wonder about is, why does he use porn a lot while he's working? Is sexual release a way of dealing with stress for him? Maybe he's not feeling as productive or as recognized in his field as he'd like to be? Has porn become a way that he self-soothes? And if so, is that at the expense of learning other ways to take care of himself â€" reaching out to a real person or going for a run?

The other thing is his age. Being a man in his mid-50s, it can take a little longer to get sexually aroused. The erections aren't as firm. Sex can become a little bit more laborious in terms of functioning, but under usual circumstances, that's offset by really good communication with a partner you've been with for years.

Cheryl: Or by a sense of humor â€" that sex doesn't have to be a performance. It doesn't always have to equal orgasm. It's a sensual exchange of pleasure and communication.

Wendy: And there's this wonderful growth that a couple can have. I've been married for nearly 40 years now, but I had a rough beginning as a sexual person. I've now experienced what it's like to be in a long-term relationship where you don't have a heavy influence of porn and where you can really work with your partner and learn with your partner and grow with your partner sexually. I think a lot of couples are missing out on that growth.

Steve: Troubled by Porn, you've reached a moment where you have to ask yourself, "What is the meaning of porn for me? And if I'm unsettled, do I need to start having the difficult, but necessary, discussion with my wife to say, 'I feel greater desire and I want it to be toward you. I want to find a better balance between my porn use and our sex life together.' "

You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on >Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear more about how porn can affect relationships.

Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail.com and it may be answered on a future episode.

You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on >iTunes, >Stitcher or your favorite podcast app.

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