May you now live in sin forevermore

[Lefty]

Here now, a hot factoid of curious news that will stupefy your parents and confound any extant grandparents and make many fundamentalists and most Mormons clutch their dogmas to their quivering breasts in mild but surefire panic.

The item goes like this: For the first time in US history, married couples are no longer the majority of domestic couplehoods in the United States, and have instead been replaced/outnumbered by... what shall we call them? The unsure? The pleasantly stoned? Freedom fighters? Those Who Still Have Somewhat Hot and Mostly Regular Sex?

No matter. For lo, the earth doth tremble and the heavens weep as we learn from the 2010 census that married households in America, once the dominant, inviolable, ironclad foundation of all that is good and righteous and often sort've vaguely unhappy and resentful after about seven years, a couple kids and not nearly enough couples therapy -- now make up a mere 48 percent of domestic partnerships, with 52 percent going to the sinful and the wimpy and the possibly more frequently naked.

What does it all mean? What to make of such strange, historic markers? Do we worry and fear in light of some of the uglier factors at play -- income inequality, education levels, economic instability, wildly conflicting beliefs about the value of home and family? Or do we allow and embrace, understanding it's all of a piece, that no social institution like marriage (or religion, or industrial empire, or gender) can possibly remain fixed for long and simply must evolve with the times, lest it collapse completely?

Or maybe you're under 22 and therefore can't relate to this news in the slightest, because, as part of Generation Facebook, you likely see marriage as a someday/maybe possibility scattered among a wide and biodynamic array of options, and anyway you can't be bothered right now because you're late for your giant chest tattoo appointment at the pagan yoga emporium/organic hemp oil juice bar in the back of Whole Foods? Right. God bless you. Run along now.

For the rest of us, it's easy to get snagged on one of the polarizing views. On one hand is the typical conservative recoil, claiming the very cornerstones of what once made this country great -- early marriage, traditional family structure, factory jobs, free guns at church, xenophobia, mommy's vodka and daddy's stash of gay porn -- are crumbling to dust, America is in a liberal-induced deathspin and the "Greatest Generation" now only refers to higher Medicare payments and sepia-toned WWII Spielberg movies on HBO.

On the other is the wonky liberal/progressive view, claiming that the fabric of society is merely in flux, is being constantly re-woven, was too stuck in an impossible nuclear family pattern anyway and is now ready to be ripped up and made into a nice summer scarf good for tying your lover to the bedpost and spanking her firmly with the Polyamorist's Guide to Anal Sex and Also Quiltmaking.

No matter how you parse it, this news is now officially One of Those Things, one of those profound tilt/shift moments in the culture that joins an ever-lengthening list of "what does it mean?" statistical firsts swarming all over this past decade alone.

Such as: Women have now officially surpassed men in getting advanced college degrees. The average teen sends more than 3,300 text messages per month. Despite your fluffycute Prius, global emissions set a new world record for 2011. And in the latest Gallup poll, the majority of Americans (finally) think gay marriage is no big deal and panicky fundies should pipe the hell down and embrace the inevitable.

Maybe it's time to start looking at marriage more like home ownership? Often hugely overrated, not nearly as much an essential part of the American dream as we've been led to believe, something that's beautifully right for some but not at all right for others, that renting can be far more liberating than buying unless you care about things like equity or painting the ceiling blue or having a place to put the inflatable pool. You know, so to speak.

Or maybe marriage is like eating sushi or meat? Something that should be a bit of an extravagance, an occasional luxury not meant for everyone every single day, something to be relished and consumed in small amounts, focusing only on trusted, healthy sources? As opposed to how it is now, inhaling massive amounts in toxic bulk due to voracious capitalism and industrialization, something so commodified and cheapened it's lost most of its power to nourish and sustain?

Me, I prefer the wider view. After all, there is plenty else to keep us on our toes. You want something to be concerned about? Be concerned about increasingly violent global weather patterns. Be concerned about massive ice loss in northern Canada. Be concerned about that mention up above, the thing about worldwide emissions.

But that our culturally constructed ideas of love and marriage are proving to be ever in flux and alight, that how we structure our relationships is changing in fits and hiccups, some painful, some amazing, much of it eternal and timeless because that's the nature of the beast? This is not cause for alarm. This is cause for ongoing, never-ending celebration, humble and awed and thrown for a dizzying loop each and every time.

Be married. Or don't. Wait longer. Or don't. Have beautiful children, buy a home, get a certain kind of job, settle down, follow some sort of path you think you're supposed to follow. Or don't. There are alternatives, variations on a theme, inversions and permutations and reinventions on a dime, and this is generally a very good thing indeed.

To think it's supposed to be some other way? To keep believing that if everyone would just follow a similar and harshly regulated path to the same narrowcast ideas of love and marriage, that we'd somehow have peace in our time and Jesus would finally return carrying a million pink roses and a billion $99 heart pendants from Zales? That we think we have the slightest clue how it's all supposed to unfold? This is, by a huge margin, the most dangerous illusion of all.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/06/01/notes060111.DTL&ao=2#ixzz1ODiJguHa

[DownLoLarry]

The days of June and Ward Cleaver are over. Actually Ward didn't seem like a fun guy and probably did it missionary style, not one to eat beaver.

Society evolves.

The 60's brought us free sex and as a young adult cohabitation was not at all unusual.

Organized religion is losing it's grip with spirituality becoming more important.