Common secular sentiment often encourages young people to ease into a marriage by living together first. According to a recent study by RAND sociologists Michael Pollard and Kathleen Mullan Harris, the strategy often fails.

Angela Merkel recently revealed that as a young woman she was once approached by the infamous and much-feared Stasi ,the state security service of East Germany, which tried to recruit her to work for them. She refused. When President Obama visited Berlin earlier this month, the Stasi was in the news again. Chancellor Merkel publicly scolded the American president in light of the NSA revelations.

This is an entertaining, at times thought-provoking, but deeply flawed book. For all of its underlying scholarship, it is reminiscent of those Christmas Specials on the History Channel where some learned scholar announces to the camera that the Bible never specified that there were three wise men.

The Supreme Court has now ruled on two monumental marriage cases, and the legal and cultural landscape has changed in this country. But what has changed for us, for our churches, and our witness to the gospel?

In March, TIME magazine featured a cover story with the headline, “Gay Marriage Already Won.” It was only last week when the Supreme Court struck down sections of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), declaring key components unconstitutional, and essentially lifting California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage by leaving it without legal defense. Yet TIME’s March cover wasn’t a chronological error; rather, it was picking up clear cultural signals.

The marriage rate is at its lowest point in more than a century, and the number of marriages across the USA fell more than 5% during the recession. Cultural changes about whether and when to marry, the fact that two-thirds of first marriages are preceded by cohabitation and the recession’s financial fallout — including unemployment and underemployment — fueled the wedding decline.

New research by the Pew Research Center has found that U.S. media largely focused on publishing stories with more supportive views of same-sex marriage than the opposing position, between the period of March 18 to May 12.

WASHINGTON — Houston lawyer Mitchell Katine came to the Supreme Court 10 years ago for the final chapter of Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark gay rights case in which the justices struck down state sodomy laws. Neither Katine nor the other lawyers working for John Lawrence and Tyron Garner in their battle against Texas’ sodomy…

“It wasn’t as good as the book.” It’s an inevitable phrase when a beloved book is made into a movie. In recent years, book fanatics have analyzed movie adaptations of favorites like Lord of the Rings, Twilight, Life of Pi, Harry Potter, the Chronicles of Narnia and The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Book adaptations are nothing new, of course. But it’s curious that they remain so popular in a time when “no one reads anymore.” It’s not uncommon to hear anecdotal evidence of “the death of books” or assumptions about the attention span of people in an Internet age. If Hollywood can still bank on the popularity of a book to drive movie sales, books must still hold their place in the American heart.

On May 18, France became the 12th nation to legalize same-sex marriage when President Francois Hollande signed into law a bill that allows same-sex couples to both marry and adopt children.
In the months leading up to a Parliamentary vote, demonstrations drew as many as a million to a million-and-a-half French demonstrators in Paris and at French embassies around the world. What passion is fueling these protests? And what is motivating those who oppose same-sex marriage to vow to continue the fight until the government heeds their voices?