Same-sex marriage in New Zealand: 9am the perfect time to say I do

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San Diego mayor in sex harassment settlement talks

SAN DIEGO — Settlement talks in the sexual harassment lawsuit against Mayor Bob Filner are underway as petitions circulate to recall the former congressman who has been besieged by allegations from more than a dozen women.

Attorney Gloria Allred announced Monday evening that she and her client, Irene McCormack Jackson, spent the day in mediation at a downtown office building, where Filner was spotted by a TV crew entering earlier in the day.

Allred wouldn't say whether Filner's resignation was discussed nor whether the mayor was present. She said the mediator, former federal judge J. Lawrence Irving, asked that no one make comments while talks continued.

Filner is facing a recall effort prompted by the cascade of sexual harassment allegations that also led the entire City Council and many leading Democrats to call for him to step down, including U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Filner has vowed to remain the leader of the nation's eighth-largest city and said he would return to work Monday after completing an intensive two-week therapy program. His lawyers said he also spent one week in outpatient counseling.

Before going into therapy, Filner vowed when he returned that his "focus will be on making sure that I am doing right by the city in terms of being the best mayor I can be."

But he wasn't seen Monday at City Hall, where a few dozen Filner supporters rallied outside, engaging in heated arguments with opponents.

"The mayor coming back to City Hall is the wrong message," Councilman Kevin Faulconer said Monday. "There is no way that he is able to move any type of agenda forward."

Faulconer said the mayor needs to "quit dragging the city of San Diego through this. He needs to resign. He needs to go get the help that he clearly and desperately needs."

Faulconer was later seen entering the building where Filner was spotted by KFMB-TV in San Diego. The councilman referred questions to the city attorney's office, which declined to comment.

Allred said she and her client would not be returning Tuesday.

Steve Erie, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego, said Filner's resignation must be part of the settlement discussions. Filner would benefit from waiting it out, Erie said, since his pension would spike after serving a year, which would be in December. He also may be trying to shed financial responsibility for the lawsuit.

"As long as he doesn't resign, he has leverage," Erie said. "So stay tuned."

McCormack was the first to go public with harassment allegations. Since then, his accusers have included a university dean to a retired Navy rear admiral. Some contend he cornered, groped and forcibly kissed them.

Filner, 70, served 10 terms in Congress before being elected mayor in November. The feisty liberal has long had a reputation for berating employees and has been dogged by rumors of inappropriate behavior toward women. But nothing in his past approaches what has surfaced in the past six weeks.

Questions also have risen over his spending and a trip to Paris. At least four agencies are investigating Filner: the city attorney's office, the state attorney general's office, the Sheriff's Department and the U.S. attorney.

City Council President Todd Gloria said the city's daily operations have been running fine without Filner but the city needs a leader to set policy.

"Those of us who have called on the mayor to resign know he is not being effective at this time," Gloria said.

Filner's spokeswoman Lena Lewis and lawyer James Payne did not respond to calls.

If Filner should resign, Gloria would step in as acting mayor.

The recall petition drive started Sunday. Organizers must collect 101,597 signatures of registered San Diego voters by Sept. 26. If the petition has fewer than that, the recall campaign will have 30 more days to circulate a supplemental petition to gather additional valid signatures.

If enough signatures are validated by the city clerk, the petition will be presented to the City Council, which must schedule an election within 60 to 90 days.

Sex addiction? Sorry, chaps, it's just plain old lust

Although the New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is unlikely ever to trouble British voters, that is not to say Mr Weiner can be filed away, with complete confidence, under the category "US politicians who have incautiously disseminated images of their private parts, using the alter ego Carlos Danger". For one thing, given the reach of social media, and the man's irrepressible ambition, it must only be a matter of time – unless some sort of technology can be invented to block transmission – before a young British subject, switching on her telephone, suddenly finds that she is Carlos Danger's latest penis pen-pal.

In the more immediate future, it seems quite likely, should Boris Johnsonstand again, that Londoners could soon be asking related questions about sexual behaviour and fitness for office. Has Weiner really done enough, with his lame "sexting", to be considered a serious contender? In London, evidence of vigorous and sustained priapism has become so strongly associated with mayoral ambition as to be pretty much a prerequisite for office.

Long before Boris Johnson showed the world how to brazen out a vibrant history of extramarital impregnations and assignations, both short and long term, Jeffrey Archer, the perjurer and prostitute's john, was the Tories' favoured candidate, followed by a man actually nicknamed "Shagger". Shagger was beaten by Ken Livingstone, an unlikely but notably successful ladies' man, whose idea of drinks party chit-chat, awed Guardian staff once discovered, is the line, delivered with tremendous nasal authority: "When a woman opens her heart she opens her legs."

Until last week Mr Weiner appeared to be getting an equally tolerant hearing in New York. He had become a mayoral candidate having been forced to resign from the US Congress, in 2011, after sending photographs of his penis to, he finally admitted, "about six women". He said he would seek "professional treatment". Announcing his candidacy in May he asked for a second chance and let it be known, via an emotional, New York Times interview, that he had undergone therapy. And before he was exposed as Carlos Danger, his comeback suggested considerable acceptance of ostensibly resolved sexting issues. Weiner was ahead in the polls when news broke, last week, of another, illustrated, six-month, "cyber liaison" forged on a website called the Dirty, which seems to have coincided with his period of supposed penitence.

Within days, the Carlos conquests had multiplied to three; at least, Mr Weiner said, comfortingly: "I don't believe I had any more than three."

Even then, some reporters' questions suggested that, if Weiner's conduct could be defined as an illness, some further extenuation might be available. Was he in therapy? Was his difficulty, as many have speculated, sex addiction? Although Mr Weiner demurs – "I don't believe it is" – this could well be a reluctance to over-dramatise activities he has characterised as "background noise"?

For Weiner has been happy to exploit, as a token of his seriousness about rehabilitation, the language of addiction, therapy and recovery. "I worked through these things," he reminded a press conference.

He had professional help, he went on a journey to triumph over a problem that, if not actually that big a deal, was way more complicated a tale, you gathered, than some undignified urge to get pervy with strangers.

If his Carlos problem needed "work", as well as acknowledgement, then the public probably owes Weiner the same kind of support it has previously extended to alpha sex addicts such as David Duchovny, Tiger Woods and Michael Douglas, and our own premier sufferer, Russell Brand, former owner of "a harem of about 10 women, whom I would rotate in addition to one-night stands and random casual encounters".

"I think there is such a thing," Brand writes in My Booky Wook . "Addiction, by definition, is a compulsive behaviour that you cannot control or relinquish, in spite of its destructive consequences. And if my life proves nothing else, it demonstrates that this formula can be applied to sex just as easily as it can be to drugs and alcohol." Neuroscience, on the other hand, tends to take issue with Mr Brand's analysis of his harem-keeping. Recently, sex addiction was excluded from the DSM 5, the US manual of mental disorders, along with behavioural addictions to food, the internet and caffeine.

"We looked at sex addiction," said one of authors, "but there was no science at all. None."

Now a new study casts such doubt on previous assumptions about sex addiction that questions are even being asked about Boris Johnson's alleged satyriasis. Could he be, in fact, normal? Shouldn't NHS Choices take another look at its claim, on its sex addiction page (with hilarious, addict-face illustration) that: "This addiction is similar to substance abuse because it is caused by the powerful chemical substances released during sex."

Who wrote that – Tiger Woods?

Because researchers at UCLA tested brain activity in self-diagnosed hypersexual people and found no evidence to separate their participants' reactions from those of normal people with a high sex drive.

"One of the frequent critiques of sexual addictions is that it pathologises normative, socially unaccepted, sexual behaviours," say the authors. "These data appear consistent with that perspective."

For sufferers such as Duchovny, Sheen, Douglas et al, their feelings on discovering that their affliction is no more than a culturally constructed disorder designed to buttress sexual norms can only be compared to the female shock and fury each time that another cherished diagnosis, PMS, is discredited, as a convenient means of portraying women as hormonal nutters.

What will the sex addicts do now? If celebrities must quickly find an alternative to incarceration in a private clinic, as the immediate response to a sex scandal, the de-addicting of compulsive sexual behaviour also leaves civilian sufferers without an accessible, 12-step approach to their troubles, one that a US psychologist has disparaged as "the addiction made me do it".

Beyond that, it's hard to see the disappearance of sexual addiction from the lexicon of celebrity/political excuses as anything but an advance. Not only because of the lack of physical evidence for sex addiction, but because any definition of out-of-control sex must relate to social norms.

When harems were in, for example, Brand's outfit might have been quite appealing. Compared with Boris, or Clinton or Berlusconi, or even John Major, Weiner, phone sexing in his bedroom, is Saint Anthony of the Dirty; US politics' answer to Nicholson Baker.

Suppose Weiner had not had, at his disposal, the routine narrative of inexplicable compulsion followed by much work and hard-won redemption, the public might have had to consider the gravity of his online experiments, their implications for his politics and, given that she has volunteered for popular inspection, for his wife.If diagnoses of sexual addiction help promote repressive or unrealistic definitions of normal sexual behaviour, they also provide a watertight defence against allegations of betrayal: "God knows – I must have been mad."

After Rulings, Same-Sex Couples Grapple With Diverging State Laws

WASHINGTON — In the dining room of their town house here, David Huebner and John Barabino were the picture of prosperous domesticity this week. A housekeeper padded about, work on their outdoor patio continued and their 3-year-old son, Miles, napped upstairs.

But together, they put a human face on an uncomfortable truth: Mr. Huebner and Mr. Barabino’s union, although legal, is still not equal to that of their heterosexual friends, even after historic Supreme Court rulings to grant federal benefits to legally married gay couples and restore same-sex marriage in California.

While the plaintiff in the Defense of Marriage Act case, Edith Windsor, will get back $363,000 in federal estate taxes — “with interest,” her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said — the future is not so clear for Mr. Huebner and Mr. Barabino. They married in California (before the now-overturned ban) and adopted their son there. Their primary home is in Utah, which does not recognize their marriage. But they live part time in Washington, which does.

They are among thousands of legally married same-sex couples, wed in one state but living in another, caught in a confusing web of laws and regulations. It is a predicament the Obama administration is only beginning to grapple with: how to extend federal rights and benefits to same-sex couples when states, not the federal government, dictate who is married.

“The couples in those states also have skim-milk marriages,” said Ms. Kaplan, referring to a remark by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “It’s just the flip side, in the sense that they may have marriages that are recognized by federal law, but not state law.”

Taxes are a big concern. The Internal Revenue Service will determine whether Mr. Huebner, 40, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, and Mr. Barabino, 44, a former Google executive and stay-at-home father, may file jointly and claim the marriage deduction long offered to heterosexual couples. But no matter what the agency decides, they must still file separately in Utah.

Should one die in Washington, the other would receive Social Security benefits because of the court’s decision, legal experts said. But in Utah, the surviving spouse would get nothing since federal law dictates payments based on the “state of domicile,” not the “state of celebration.” Only Congress can change that.

“There are two standards,” Mr. Huebner said. Given their residence in two states, “for us, it’s even more complicated.”

Eliminating these cross-border inequities and making same-sex marriage the law of the land is the next frontier for gay rights advocates. A day after the ruling, Chad H. Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, appeared at a gay community center in Utah — where gay couples cannot adopt and even domestic partnerships are banned — to draw a pointed distinction with California, where gay men and lesbians will be able to begin marrying again soon.

“We cannot tolerate the persistence of two Americas when it comes to equality,” Mr. Griffin said.

If the prospect of “two Americas” is a problem for Mr. Griffin, it also troubles Brian S. Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative advocacy group. In an interview, he vowed to “roll back gay marriage” wherever it exists, adding, “Ultimately, as Lincoln said, we can’t have a country half slave and half free.”

There are an estimated 650,000 same-sex couples in the United States, and 114,000 of them are legally married, according to the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. It will be easy for the federal government to extend more than 1,000 benefits to those living in states where they wed. For the rest, the path is murkier.

After their daughter, Soleil, was born six years ago, Mindy Stokes and Katie Rathmell left Florida for a friendlier climate in Oregon, where they registered as domestic partners. Last year, same-sex marriage became legal in neighboring Washington State. Two weeks ago, they drove across the Columbia River from their home in Astoria, crossed the border and had a wedding.

Ms. Rathmell, a research associate for an oceanography group at Oregon Health and Science University, provides the family’s health insurance but has been paying taxes on the benefit for Ms. Stokes and their daughter. The couple is hoping that will change soon. Even if it does, they still expect to pay more for other coverage, like car insurance. Without an Oregon marriage certificate, they do not get a marriage discount.

“I have rights to visit Katie in the hospital, and we can leave property to each other, I think,” Ms. Stokes said. “But it’s so complicated and convoluted. It would be much easier and cheaper if it just passed nationwide.”

Angela Hughey and Sheri Owens, who married in California but live in Arizona, were so eager for the court’s decision that they contacted the I.R.S. in March and received instructions on how to file a request to amend past returns. But Ms. Hughey, whose business, One Community, caters to gay professionals, said that taxes were hardly her chief concern. Arizona is one of 29 states that still allow discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“You’re talking about a community that is treated with great disrespect and disregard,” she said.

Advocates are hoping that Wednesday’s rulings will create new momentum for other gay rights advances, like passing a federal law barring employment discrimination. As for marriage, their goal is to build “a critical mass of states and a critical mass of public support that together create a climate for the Supreme Court to finish the job,” said Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, an advocacy group.

In the meantime, the maze of laws has created a boon for lawyers who advise same-sex couples on matters like adoption and estate planning. Among them is Laura Milliken Gray of Salt Lake City, who said she goes through “all kinds of gyrations” for couples who “want to achieve family equality that their straight brothers and sisters have.”

Ms. Gray advised one client, Craig Crawford, who sells computer networks in Salt Lake City, that he would have to write all possible heirs — his parents, siblings and their children — out of his will to ensure that his property could be left to his husband, who is technically not next of kin under Utah law. Mr. Crawford was stunned.

“When you have to write your mother’s name down and disown her,” he said, “that is really harsh.”

Same-sex couples have long made decisions about where to live, work and raise children based on the legal climate. That is true of Mr. Huebner and Mr. Barabino, who met in San Francisco when Mr. Huebner was teaching there and Mr. Barabino was working for Google.

Through two moves — one to Washington, where Mr. Huebner taught briefly at the University of Maryland, and then to Salt Lake City — they kept their home in San Francisco. Once living in Utah, their California residency became important, Mr. Huebner said, because they needed access to the California courts to adopt a child.

When they moved to Utah, Mr. Huebner said, “it wasn’t important that the state doesn’t recognize our marriage,” because neither did the federal government. But with the court decision, he is beginning to wonder. “If by choosing to live in Utah we are choosing not to have federal rights,” he said, “it changes my decision matrix.”

When the rulings came down on Wednesday, the couple took Miles to the Supreme Court to watch history being made. There, they met up with friends who have a baby and a 3-year-old. While the toddlers romped on a lawn across the street from the court, the parents checked their cellphones for news. A cheer went up from the crowd when the Defense of Marriage decision was announced.

“We’re married!” Mr. Barabino said, cradling Miles in his arms. “It’s crazy. Because of the soil that we’re standing on now, because we stand in D.C., we’re married. When we stand in Utah, we are not.”

24 Sex Secrets to Avoid Tiger Woods-Level Disaster

Are people who marry their first sexual partners more likely to cheat?

Actually, they are less likely to cheat, but they are getting harder to find. According to Edward O. Laumann, author of The Sexual Organization of the City, as time goes by, "the more likely you're not going to have people who did not have multiple sexual experiences before they finally married." Laumann guesses that more sex partners before marriage is related to more and better cheating later on, and that those, how do you say, fidel couples, "tend to be married, somewhat more religious, and... have somewhat less likelihood of infidelity because of the normative beliefs that they have."

13 Sex Secrets Men Don't Know About Women

Women don't like explosions, in art or in life.

Women aren't as funny as men. We're often cleverer, frequently wittier, but to be really funny demands a certain clownishness that our grace just does not allow. It's fine, really it is.

We grow pathetic goatees and look awful in cargo shorts anyway.

Women are aware of about 10 percent of the things men actually think and say about us. Best to keep it under five.

Women love to be taken out to eat. It makes our day.

A clean apartment will get you more tail than you'd think.

Given the chance, women will smell and re-smell the scented-candle display at the store. We really can do this for ages.

Our clothes are complicated, our shoes unforgiving, and our constitutions delicate, so please, valet park.

Every living woman likes wedding crap. Even lesbians.

"Girls night out" is usually some other woman's idea.

Oftentimes, women simply want to lie back and get laid.

One orgasm is usually enough.

Women would rather be with you. We like you. Honestly, we talk about you all the time.

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