Military: Gay Pride Parades Are OK, VBS Is Not: Why Did ISIS Destroy the Tomb of Jonah?: Cohabitation, rather than marriage...more

Military: Gay Pride Parades Are OK, Vacation Bible School Is Not  ..."We had a lot of disappointed kiddos because of the National Guard being unwilling to allow a Humvee and a few soldiers to spend an hour at a Baptist Church," another Guardsman said. "It makes we wonder what I'm actually fighting for."

But I believe this soldier's observations and analysis truly sum up our nation's current state of affairs.

"I will never understand why it's OK for the military to march in a gay-pride parade but not be allowed to spend an hour talking to children who look up to them (soldiers)," the Guardsman said. "I honestly never thought I'd see the day that this would happen in my hometown."...

Why Did ISIS Destroy the Tomb of Jonah?
On Friday, the media reported that ISIS, the Islamist group that has established a “caliphate” in parts of Syria and Iraq, had destroyed the centuries-old Tomb of Jonah in Mosul, Iraq. Present-day Mosul encompasses the site of the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh, where, the Bible teaches, the Prophet Jonah preached. Although this is disputed, a tradition holds that Jonah was buried within the city, on Tell Nebi Yunus, or Hill of the Prophet Jonah.

An Assyrian church stood over the tomb for centuries. After the Muslim conquest, the church became a mosque; the structure that ISIS destroyed last week dated to the 14th century. In addition to the tomb, the mosque once held the supposed remains of the whale that had swallowed Jonah, including one of its teeth. At some point, the tooth disappeared. In 2008, the U.S. Army presented the mosque with a replica.

Last week, ISIS closed the mosque and prevented worshipers from entering. Then it wired the structure with explosives and reduced it to rubble. You can see a video of the explosion here, taken by a Mosul resident, who mutters, in Arabic, “No, no, no. Prophet Jonah is gone. God, these scoundrels.”...

Cohabitation, rather than marriage, is now the more common form of first union   ...Moving in together is becoming less and less likely to lead to having a future together. That’s not to say that all cohabiters are in the same boat regarding their destination. Those who are engaged (or have clear plans to marry) before moving in together are far more likely to eventually marry—but as Guzzo shows, even they are becoming less likely to do so. Related to this, my colleagues and I have shown, in numerous studies, that couples with clear plans to marry before cohabiting, along with those who marry without cohabiting, tend to have happier marriages and lower odds of divorce than those who move in together before having a clearly settled commitment to the future in marriage.v (We believe this is largely because, while cohabiting unions obviously break up often, they are harder to break off than dating relationships because it becomes harder to move out and move on. So some people get stuck in a relationship they would otherwise have not remained in.)...

Federal Court To Atheist Group: The Ground Zero Cross Stays

France ready to offer asylum to Iraqi Christians
France announced on Monday that it will offer asylum to those forced to flee Iraq as the Islamic State (IS) continues to tighten its grip across the country.

Referring to the thousands of Christians and other religious minorities persecuted by extremist Sunnis, the Foreign and Interior ministers, Laurent Fabius and Bernard Cazeneuve, said in a statement that France is "outraged by these abuses that it condemns with the utmost firmness."

"We are ready, if they so desire, to help facilitate asylum on our territory," the statement said...