Archive for the 'divorce' Category

Nov 10 2009

Divorce fair

Published by Kevin Bussey under divorce

[ABC7]

The city of romance got a lesson in love’s hard knocks Sunday, as thousands flocked to the French capital’s first divorce fair.

The fair’s organizer, Brigitte Gaumet, said she had the idea for the event after President Nicolas Sarkozy divorced his second wife months after taking office in 2007.

“For me, that crystalized that divorce has lost its stigma and is really a commonplace thing,” Gaumet told The Associated Press.

“Lots of people going through divorces – and also people getting separated or who are widowed – are looking for information on how to bounce back and how to reconstruct.”

“We have long had the Marriage Fair,” a massive annual trade fair in Paris catering to brides-to-be, “and I thought, ‘why not a fair for people going through separations?,”‘ said Gaumet, adding that some 4,000 people visited the event over the weekend. “That’s a real success for a first-time exhibition.”

At the fair, held at a conference hall in northwestern Paris, the stands offering legal advice attracted the biggest crowds.

Read more here.

[From me]

Why not have non-divorce fair? People seem to be divorcing without the help of experts. Why not offer help for people who are struggling with their marriages?

What do you think?

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One response so far

Jul 03 2009

Is marriage obsolete?

Published by Kevin Bussey under adultery, divorce, marriage

[Today on NBC]

This is from an article by Sandra Tsing Loh

Sadly, and to my horror, I am divorcing. This was a 20-year partnership. My husband is a good man, though he did travel 20 weeks a year for work. I am a 47-year-old woman whose commitment to monogamy, at the very end, came unglued. This turn of events was a surprise. I don’t generally even enjoy men; I had an entirely manageable life and planned to go to my grave taking with me, as I do most nights to my bed, a glass of merlot and a good book. Cataclysmically changed, I disclosed everything. We cried, we bewailed the fate of our children.

Read the article here.

Watch the video below too:

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[From me]

First, I’ve been blessed to be married 21 years so my answer is no. But as I read the article by Sandra Tsing Loh, I was struck by a few things. First it is obvious that both she and her husband care about their careers more than their marriage. Two, she is saying marriage doesn’t work after she had an affair. Is that her husbands’ fault? She claims that we don’t need marriage because it was for women before they got equal rights. That sounds like a business decision.

I didn’t get married to have someone take care of my children and put food on the table. I got married because I wanted to spend my life with a person I love. I know people who have been through divorces for many reasons. Most of them get remarried because they do believe in marriage and they never wanted a divorce. Marriage is hard work and some people don’t want to work at being married. If one partner says I’m done there isn’t much the other can do. Is marriage obsolete? Only if you want it to be.

What do you think?

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One response so far

Jun 15 2009

is divorce worse than murder?

Published by Kevin Bussey under divorce, ministry, murder

[STL Today]

Police involved in the Coleman triple-murder case hit on a thorny theological question this week that goes back to the time of Jesus: Under what circumstances can Christians divorce?

It’s an important question in the case because divorce, or more specifically, an evangelical organization’s prohibition of divorce among its employees may be one reason behind the murders. That question, of course, leads to others: When, and why, do religious organizations forbid their employees to divorce?

Police have charged Christopher Coleman, a former employee of Joyce Meyer Ministries, with killing his wife and two children last month in their Columbia, Ill., home. A week after the murders, the Post-Dispatch disclosed that Coleman was having an affair. Soon after that, he resigned from his position working security with Joyce Meyer Ministries, a nonprofit evangelical organization based in Jefferson County. Coleman, 32, has pleaded not guilty.

Police disclosed Wednesday that on the day of the murders, Coleman told his girlfriend that his wife, Sheri Coleman, would be served with divorce papers. In sworn testimony Wednesday, Columbia Police Chief Joe Edwards said: “Joyce Meyer Ministry does not employ people who get divorced.” He said if the Colemans had divorced, Christopher Coleman “would end up losing his job.”

Calls to the ministry’s headquarters were not returned, and an attorney for the ministry refused to speak on the record about the ministry’s policy about divorce. Last month, however, a ministry spokesman said “a violation of moral conduct” led to Coleman’s resignation.

Three former employees of the ministry described the no-divorce policy for the Post-Dispatch, though they couldn’t say whether it was a written rule, or just an ingrained part of the Joyce Meyer Ministries culture. They said that people who have already gone through a divorce can be hired to work at the ministry, but that anyone divorced while working at the ministry is let go.

The ministry “hires people who have broken lives, who are divorced, who’ve been drug addicts,” said George Wise, who said he worked for Joyce Meyer Ministries from 2001 to 2003 as a video specialist.

The ministry uses testimonials from believers to attract others to the organization, including one from a woman whose relationship “ended in a painful divorce.”

“I started to watch Joyce Meyer every chance I got,” she writes. “God started to transform me and heal my broken heart.”

Wise said he’d been divorced twice by the time he was hired by Meyer and then married a colleague at the ministry. When that marriage didn’t work out, he said, he was fired three days after his divorce was finalized.

“Everyone I ever knew that worked there and got divorced … was fired,” Wise said.

Professor Bradford Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia who has written about religion and marriage, said a no-divorce policy is not unusual in Christian organizations whose employment guidelines are structured according to their faith.

“Some more traditional, typically evangelical Protestant or fundamentalist Protestant institutions … have a policy relating to an employee’s personal conduct,” Wilcox said. “For some of those institutions that conduct can encompass marital infidelity or divorce, and you could be sanctioned as a consequence.”

All of which is completely legal. “There is no law in Missouri that forbids discrimination on the basis of marital status,” said Mary Anne Sedey, an employment attorney at Sedey Harper.

Eric Sowers, an employment attorney at Sowers & Wolf, said he’d never heard of anyone at a secular organization fired over marital status. He said religious organizations are exempt from the Missouri Human Rights Act. Wilcox said the First Amendment gives religious institutions wide latitude “to shape their employment policies so they’re consistent with their religious teachings.”

Read more here.

[From me]

I don’t agree with all of Joyce Meyer’s theology, but to try to blame this murder on her ministry’s stance on divorce is a stretch. This man murdered his wife and children because he was living in sin. He should have been fired. Rational people don’t kill to keep a job rather than divorce. What a strange article.

What do you think?

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6 responses so far

Mar 27 2009

Wife of Ted Haggard Would Not Divorce Him after Homosexual Sex Scandal

 

[CNS]

Disgraced pastor Ted Haggard says he wanted his wife to divorce him after a sex scandal involving another man, but she refused. Haggard made the comments in a two-part episode of the syndicated television show “Divorce Court” to be broadcast April 1-2. The show released a partial transcript Tuesday.
 
Haggard resigned as pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and as president of the National Association of Evangelicals after a male prostitute from Denver alleged a cash-for-sex relationship with him in November 2006.
 
Haggard confessed to “sexual immorality.” Both Haggard and his wife Gayle appear on “Divorce Court,” but her comments about the possibility of a divorce weren’t released.
 
Ted Haggard said he wasn’t rejecting his wife but thought he had become so “toxic” that divorce was best for her and their children. He said she replied, “No way. I’m not going to do that.”

Read more here.

[From me]

Say what you want about Ted Haggard but his wife sounds like the real deal. I can’t imagine the humiliation she has endured.  I am more impressed with her every time I read about her and her faith in Christ.

What do you think?

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5 responses so far

Mar 18 2009

Wife divorcing ex-CEO: $43 million not enough

Published by Kevin Bussey under Hypocrisy, divorce, greed

 

[Courant]

Former United Technologies Corpchief executive George David and his wife are doing battle in Hartford in a divorce trial that shines light on the couple’s extravagant lifestyle.David and Swedish countess Marie Douglas-David married in 2002. They signed a post-nuptual agreement in 2005 that would give the 36-year-old Douglas-David $43 million when the couple divorces. The 67-year-old businessman wants the court to uphold the agreement.

Douglas-David, a former investment banker for Lazard Asset Management, has claimed intolerable cruelty against the multimillionaire, saying that she quit her job to travel and entertain with her very visible husband, whom she married in 2002. She is claiming that she is now a near-penniless victim, unable to meet her $53,000 a week expenses that include clothing, skin and hair care, travel and flowers. The marriage began to flounder in 2004 with the couple filing for divorce and reconciling several times, and finally separating last year.

Read more here.

[From me]

Give me a break! People are struggling to put meals on the table and she is worried about a facial and flowers! Sad.

What do you think?

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3 responses so far

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