Marriage

Man must pay $50k for breaking promise to marry

by  •  • 0 Comments

Can someone answer this question for me?

Lets say that a member of the management team of a major rock band asked me to play drums for a new tour over the phone. They asked if I would be interested but never actually asked me to go.

Plane tickets were purchased on my behalf, they told me over the phone where we would be going and even told me how much I would be paid and when…IF I were to go on the tour. They even go to the point where they send me videos of their last tour and invite me in to meet the band….but we are just hanging at a party.

They never officially ask me to go.

There was no itinerary or contract sent to me.

I later realize that they did the same thing to two of my friends who are drummers. These drummers however, have NO plans on going because they are playing long running Broadway shows in town and they have families.  I then choose to NOT go on the tour because I am pissed off that they were asking other drummers to do the gig I thought was promised to me.

If I sue the management for breech if contract, will I have a similar outcome as this woman?

JUDICIAL_AMNESIA_REVI_1608Copy

A Georgia man is learning the hard way that you need to keep your promises. A court has ruled that he must pay $50,000 for breaking his promise to marry his former fiancee.

According to CourtHouseNews.com, the state’s court of appeals has ruled that Christopher Ned Kelley must compensate his former fiancee, Melissa Cooper, after first promising to marry her, but then ruining the relationships by allegedly cheating on her twice.

According to court documents, Kelley had given Cooper an engagement ring worth approximately $10,000, lived with her for more than a decade and had a child together.

Cooper then quit her job to raise the couple’s children, thinking Kelley would support the new family.

But when Cooper found out that Kelley had cheated on her for at least the second time, she asked him to move out and sued him for fraud and a “breach of promise to marry.”

As part of his defense, Kelley tried to claim his promise to marry couldn’t be enforced partly because the nature of the couple’s relationship was based based on an illegal pact.

Kelley’s defense essentially claimed their relationship was a form of prostitution, where Kelley was simply paying Cooper for sexual relations.

He also claimed in court that he never really intended to marry her, “I never initiated the concept of marriage with her, outside of giving her that ring” and “I never said the words ‘will you marry me’ to her.”

A trial court ruled in Cooper’s favor, awarding damages and attorneys’ fees totaling $50,000. Kelley’s appeal of that ruling was rejected by the appeals court in November.

 

Read the entire case HERE

Society

Why Is Everyone Getting Naked? Rashida Jones on the Pornification of Everything

by  •  • 1 Comment

blurred-lines-nicki-minaj-kim-kardashian-rihanna-miley-pornification-w724

 If you have a daughter, love women and don’t like the nonsense we are seeing in pop culture, read this. I’m sick of the garbage and I am not afraid to slut shame. I have high standards for the women in my life. The same applies for the males in my life. I’m not going to allow my son to wear sagging pants, talk with a piss poor vocabulary and treat anyone with disrespect.  I’m not going to allow my daughter to look, dress or act like any of the women in the above image.

I feel we as a culture must raise expectations. I’ve had enough with people throwing out terms like “rape apologist,” “slut-shaming,” and the ultimate verbal grenade…”misogynist!” None of those terms apply to me and I won’t let the people who try to box me in, stop me from changing our culture. We need more balance, a set of higher expectations for our youth, and clear guidance from those who KNOW BETTER!

 

Here is an excerpt from this article: http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/2013/12/rashida-jones-major-dont-the-pornification-of-everything

So making your private parts public is now cool—and expected? Actress and writer Rashida Jones did not get that memo.

This fall I was hanging out with my sisters, catching up on pop-culture stuff. We watched some music videos, looked at a few Instagram accounts, and checked out blogs. And amid the usual duck-lipped selfies and staged paparazzi photos, a theme emerged: Stripper poles, G-strings, boobs, and a lot of tongue action were all now normal accessories for mainstream pop stars. Across the board the Instamessage seemed to be: “You know you want to have sex with me. Here, take a look at lots of parts of my body.”

That was at the end of October, a month that had already brought us the Miley Cyrus cross-continental twerk-a-thon and Nicki Minaj’s Halloween pasties. With the addition of Rihanna writhing on a pole in her “Pour It Up” video, and Lady Gaga’s butt-crack cover art for the song that goes “Do what you want with my body,” I was just done. I’d had enough.

I don’t know when the pornification of pop stars became so extreme, but as Robin Thicke‘s “Blurred Lines” video played in the background—naked fantasy women bouncing around and licking things—I realized that the lines were not really blurry at all. They were clear. A new era had arrived.

If 1994 was the Year of O.J.’s White Bronco, 2013 was the Year of the Very Visible Vagina.

Let me say up front: I am not a prude. I love sex; I am comfortable with my sexuality. Hell, I’ve even posed in my underwear. I also grew up on a healthy balance of sexuality in pop stars. Yes, we had Madonna testing the boundaries of appropriateness, but then we also had Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Cyndi Lauper, women who played with sexuality but didn’t make it their calling card. And for every 2 Live Crew “Me So Horny” video girl, there was Susanna Hoffs singing tenderly about her eternal flame.

Twenty years later, all the images seem homogenous. Every star interprets “sexy” the same way: lots of skin, lots of licking of teeth, lots of bending over. I find this oddly…boring. Can’t I just like a song without having to take an ultrasound tour of some pop star’s privates?

On that fall day I wanted to know if anyone else felt like me. So I took to Twitter. (Admittedly, not the best place to go while frustrated. Because, as my best friend puts it, Twitter is a bad neighborhood. If you go there to score, you will be surrounded by people looking to pick a fight. They may also rob you. And carjack you. And call you names. He was right.) Here’s what I tweeted:

This week’s celeb news takeaway: She who comes closest to showing the actual inside of her vagina is most popular. #stopactinglikewhores

And then: Let me clarify. I don’t shame ANYone for anything they choose to do with their lives or bodies…

And then: BUT I think we ALL need to take a look at what we are accepting as “the norm”…

And then: There is a whole generation of young women watching. Sure, be SEXY but leave something to the imagination.

And finally: Also, calling on all men to show me dat ass. (This tweet was purely selfish. If women are going to do all this exposing, why can’t we get a little something in return?)

I was shocked by the responses. Yes, I know, I used the word whore; more on that in a minute. But while some of the Twitterverse was supportive, most reacted like this:

Stop policing how women dress #slutshaming

I used to look up to you for being a highly educated actress but now I think you’re a bit of a misogynist.

And this nice one: RU a whore? (The answer to this would have been an overwhelming YES if you were referring to me from 2007 to mid-2011. Liberating sex run!)

I’m not gonna lie. The fact that I was accused of “slut-shaming,” being anti-woman, and judging women’s sex lives crushed me. I consider myself a feminist. I would never point a finger at a woman for her actual sexual behavior, and I think all women have the right to express their desires. But I will look at women with influence—millionaire women who use their “sexiness” to make money—and ask some questions. There is a difference, a key one, between “shaming” and “holding someone accountable.”

So back to the word whore. My hashtag was “stopactinglikewhores.” Key word,acting. Like I said, I’m not criticizing anyone’s real sex life; as George Michael tells us, “Sex is natural, sex is fun.” But the poles, the pasties, the gyrating: This isn’t showing female sexuality; this is showing what it looks like when women sell sex. (Also, let’s be real. Every woman’s sexuality is different. Can all of us really be into stripper moves? The truth is, for every woman who loves the pole, there’s another who likes her feet rubbed. But in pop culture there’s just one way to be. And so much of it feels staged for men, not for our own pleasure.)

I understand that owning and expressing our sexuality is a huge step forward for women. But, in my opinion, we are at a point of oversaturation. It’s like when TV network censors evaluate a show’s content. Instead of doing a detailed report of dirty jokes or offensive words, they will simply say, “It’s a tonnage issue.” One or two swear words might be fine; 10 is too many. Three sexual innuendos is OK; eight is overkill. When it comes to porn imagery and pop culture, we have a tonnage issue.

And then there’s this: What else ties these pop stars together besides, perhaps, their entangled G-strings? Their millions of teen-girl fans. Even if adult Miley and Nicki have ownership of their bodies, do the girls imitating them have the same agency? Where do we draw the line between teaching them freedom of sexual expression and pride in who they are on the inside? Are we even allowed to draw a line?

Some people think not. Sinéad O’Connor got blowback after writing an open letter to Miley Cyrus, warning her of the dangers of her constant sexual imagery: “The music business…will prostitute you for all you are worth…and when you wind up in rehab… ‘they’ will be sunning themselves on their yachts in Antigua, which they bought by selling your body, and you will find yourself very alone.” Miley responded by basically calling her crazy.

Read the rest HERE

Divorce

Divorce law firms’ specialty: to serve man

by  •  • 1 Comment

fl-men-only-law

Is this discrimination?

 

From this article: http://touch.sun-sentinel.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-78472583/

In a family court system that some say is tilted to favor women, attorney Kenny Leigh makes no apologies — he is in business to serve man.

Leigh, who has six offices with 13 lawyers from Boca Raton to Jacksonville, said he started gearing his practice to men about 10 years ago, when he realized that women often were given the benefit of the doubt, at men’s expense, when it came to divorce settlements, alimony and child custody arrangments.

“In family law, men are not treated fairly,” said Leigh, 43, who is based in Jacksonville (and is happily married with four children). He criticized the court system for reducing many fathers to being “a visitor and a paycheck.”

“Anyone who practices family law knows I’m right,” he asserted.

Leigh’s website and billboards are explicit about seeking an exclusively male clientele. And his firm is not alone.

While the specialty remains uncommon, a handful of firms throughout Florida have taken a similar approach. It’s a narrow market, lawyers say, but most major cities have at least one firm dedicated to men. There are also firms that focus on women, but their numbers are smaller, American Bar Association officials said.

Practitioners say they bring expertise to an arena they think favors women. Skeptics, however, worry that it fuels a gender war and undermines attempts to minimize conflict in cases loaded with emotional baggage.

Jeffrey Feulner’s legal practice, displayed on billboards throughout Central Florida, leaves little room for doubt: “Men’s Divorce Law Firm.” Feulner and his three colleagues — all women —occasionally will work for a woman, but the firm is built on the XY chromosome.

Feulner, 41, began focusing on men after going through a paternity dispute and, later, a divorce. He said he was treated fairly in court but discovered that other men thought the system was rigged.

Florida’s divorce and custody laws are gender-neutral, but Feulner, Leigh and others argue that women benefit from traditional beliefs that mothers should be primary caregivers, while fathers serve as breadwinners.

Neither the American Bar Association nor the Florida Bar has weighed in on the issue of male-oriented firms, but some lawyers are uncomfortable with the idea and reject the premise that men are routinely mistreated in family-law cases.

Nancy Dowd, a professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law, worries that firms touting themselves as defenders of “men’s rights” may feed in clients the notion that they’re going into battle rather than seeking reasonable solutions. Ideally, she said, family-law attorneys and clients should try to defuse confrontation.

“I don’t think it’s particularly productive if a firm presents itself as ‘If you want to beat up on your ex, we’ll be there for you,'” said Dowd, director of the school’s Center on Children & Families.

Feulner and Leigh dispute the notion that men-focused firms make difficult situations even harder, saying the level of conflict is established by the time a client calls. But Leigh acknowledged that most men he works for are bracing for battle.

“They know it’s going to be bad,” he said, “and you don’t want to bring a knife to a gunfight.”

Some of the advice men’s-rights attorneys offer is common sense: Keep a diary to document your parental involvement, for example. But not all the counseling is that benign.

At DadsDivorce.com, a site affiliated with a leading fathers’-rights firm, a note warns men that their wives’ goal is “to bleed you dry and beat you into submission.

Read more HERE

Society

Male victims of domestic violence still under reported

by  •  • 0 Comments

1297272220057_ORIGINAL

 

An excerpt from this article: http://www.portagedailygraphic.com/2013/11/25/awareness-of-men-and-domestic-violence-still-under-reported

While most people are aware of the abuse some women face in domestic violence situations, perhaps not as well known is that men also experience this form of abuse.

Since Portage la Prairie’s Real Men Live Abuse Free committee put up their banner at City Hall, the Portage Family Abuse Prevention Centre (PFAPC) has received a few calls from men asking where they can go in situations of partner abuse.

“It’s confirmed for us that in Portage there needs to be more services or more knowledge of what is in the community,” said Joyce Schrader, executive director of the PFAPC.

Although the PFAPC will offer resources and can facilitate aid to men facing domestic and family abuse, currently, there are no specialized centres for those men to go to in Portage. Schrader said the PFAPC will direct men to organizations in larger urban centres.

One of the organizations abused men can go to in Winnipeg is the Men’s Resource Centre (MRC).

“I think it’s very important to have abuse centres for men in rural and northern communities in Manitoba,” said Suhad Bisharat, executive director of MRC. “Currently, our program accepts men from all over Manitoba and we were able to work with them and provided them with emergency shelter services.”

Bisharat stressed that the mistreatment men face in the home are the same as those faced by women in domestic and family abuse situations, but reporting the abuse is disproportionate.

“Many times you’ll find it’s much harder for a man to come forward than a woman and the reason for this is that men look at themselves as being the providers or being protectors for the family, so for them it is really hard to accept the fact that they are a victim,” she said, noting most men will come for help only when they are in a severe crisis situation.

According to the 1999 Statistics Canada General Social Survey (GSS), almost equal proportions of men and women (seven per cent and eight per cent respectively) had been the victims of intimate partner physical and psychological abuse (18 per cent and 19 per cent respectively). The study also found that while men underreport the abuse they have sustained and inflicted, women underreport perpetrating abuse as their age and education increase.

In the survey, 11,607 men aged 15 years and older were surveyed and seven per cent reported that during the previous five-year period, they had experienced some type of spousal abuse on at least one occasion, compared with eight per cent of women.

It was also found that abuse was not an isolated event, with 54 per cent of male victims experiencing spousal violence more than once and 13 per cent experiencing it more than 10 times. The GSS also reported 35 per cent of male domestic violence victims are injured by their partners and 39 per cent end up needing medical attention.

“The amount of men coming to the shelter is growing by the day,” said Bisharat. “The reason for that is the public awareness of the issue and being a safe and open space for men to come forward.”

MRC sees men from their early 20s to their late 60s coming through their doors.

“Domestic violence and family violence does not recognize the age or ethnic group. It effects all people,” said Bisharat.

In 2012, MRC provided emergency shelter to 67 men and 21 children.

Bisharat stressed that not only does the public need to be aware of domestic violence against men, but so do police.

 

Read the rest HERE

Marriage

Black Folk Don’t: Get Married

by  •  • 0 Comments

It seems like now a days it’s hard to find black folk who are ready and willing to say I do, at least that’s what all the media coverage about single black women says. Is this a generational issue or are black folk allergic too long term commitment? Or are they just committing in different ways outside the mainstream?