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Readers click into around 5 to 10 percent of articles to read the full story on the publishers’ page, Peters told me, and Upday has sent more than 3 million visits to publishers based on metrics from the four initial countries Upday launched in. Peters also said that most of the “quality media” from the app’s main countries are starting to see between 3 to 5 percent of their total mobile traffic coming from Upday, with the occasional publisher getting up to 20 percent of its mobile traffic from Upday. Peters wouldn’t specify which publishers were getting the highest referrals, but said generally that it was the well known brands “who have their base in the digital world.” He did mention HuffPost and Business Insider (which is owned by Axel Springer) as publishers that were getting good traffic from Upday.
Upday itself is not yet a profitable venture but clearly has quite a bit of runway is planning to generate revenue entirely through advertising. Ads will appear within the Upday stream, and Upday will take 100 percent of the revenue. “We have to prove this works, but we are optimistic,” Peters said.
I wondered aloud whether, in the long run, this bet on Samsung phones would lead to a cap on Upday’s growth — Samsung phone sales were weaker in Western Europe at the end of last year, according to Gartner, and analysts predict this fall’s iPhones to be blockbusters.
POSTED April 28, 2017, 9:59 a.m.
Wang, Shan. "News aggregator Upday, a sort of Apple News counterpart for Android, expands into 16 countries." Nieman Journalism Lab. Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, 28 Apr. 2017. Web. 24 Apr. 2019.
Wang, Shan. "News aggregator Upday, a sort of Apple News counterpart for Android, expands into 16 countries." Nieman Journalism Lab. Last modified April 28, 2017. Accessed April 24, 2019. https://www.niemanlab.org/2017/04/news-aggregator-upday-a-sort-of-apple-news-counterpart-for-android-expands-into-16-countries/.
NEW YORK CITY (CNN) — With the end of the year approaching, it's not uncommon to start thinking about health goals for the new year, like losing weight, eating healthier, exercising and quitting smoking. But though we may have good intentions, choosing January 1 to make promises to get on a healthier track year-round doesn't always work. In fact, according to a 2017 Marist poll, about a third of people who make a New Year's resolution fail to stick with it.
Q: What type of business do you operate ” what do you sell, or what service do you provide?
A: Our main office in based in Chaffee County, but we have been working in Summit County for over eight years providing renewable energy and sustainable building options. Due to its abundant sunshine, Summit County is a great area for renewable energy for both commercial and residential applications.
Q: What experience do you have in this field?
A: We have been living with solar energy since 1988 and have been installing systems since the late 90s. We built the first straw bale, passive and active solar home in Blue River in the 90s and have been on the cutting edge of sustainable construction techniques for over 12 years. We have installed solar electric systems for over 15 years as Eco Builders and we are Xcel and COSEIA preferred installers.
Q: What sets your business apart from other similar businesses?
A: As a company, we believe in education and providing people with the right knowledge to make wise decisions. We have extensive knowledge with both new construction and retrofitting homes with renewable energy systems. As dealers, we offer the most competitive pricing; as teachers we can provide an array of education and knowledge to share; and as consumers, we have direct experience living and using renewable energy to offset our consumption. We can also carry or finance most utility company rebates.
A: We hope to reach everyone that is tired of escalating utility bills and propane prices. Our customer base includes individuals and businesses that believe solar energy and wind energy is the right choice for the future. The majority of our customers are educated and aware of their environmental impact. They want to provide energy security for themselves and support a future generation that is fossil-fuel independent. We also wish to work to with communities on community wind and solar projects, where feasible, and with local school districts to help reduce their utility bills.
Q: Why did you choose to open where you did?
A: We are enthusiastic outdoor orientated folks and the Arkansas river valley was a natural fit. We work within a 200 mile radius of Salida. This demographic includes Summit, Chaffee, Saguache, Park, Lake and Eagle counties.
A: Our goal is to make Eco Depot USA the mountain region’s largest renewable energy company. Currently we teach renewable energy classes locally but plan to branch out state wide. We are also currently setting up to “franchise” Eco Depot USA and provide installers with a supportive network and co-op pricing.
Back in 1996, Terry Johnson, the human-resources director for Ada County, Idaho, was excited about his new health-care coverage. He had just helped the county become the first in the United States to offer employees a medical savings account (MSA) as an alternative to traditional indemnity health insurance, and he was eager to try it. The accounts would be exempt from state taxes up to $2,000.
Under the program, Johnson would contribute $900 to this account and his employer, the county, would contribute the remaining $1,100. Johnson could use that money for medical expenses, and if he remained healthy and didn't use it up that year, it would carry over to the next year. He could even withdraw the money for any other use, although he would pay taxes on it (and if he was not yet 59, he would also pay a 10-percent penalty). Along with this he would have an insurance plan. The one catch: He would be responsible for the first $2,000 in costs should he become sick. But the idea was that the MSA would be there to cover this high deductible.
But Johnson made a bad gamble. That year, he decided to go hang gliding. “I broke my ankle,” he notes ruefully. “And that pretty much ate up the funds because I had to have two operations.” Because the county paid into the savings account in installments, and had only put in $400 when Johnson sought medical care, not only did he have to pay the $900 deductible employees were responsible for, he also had to front the full $2,000 deductible “right off the bat.” If he had stayed in his traditional insurance plan, he would have had a $100 deductible and 20-percent co-payments for doctor services, up to an $800 limit. While both plans may have cost him about the same amount in the end (it is unclear what the co-payments would have amounted to under the traditional plan), the MSA was definitely not the boon he had hoped for.
Things did not go much better for the county. It did save $39,000 in insurance premiums for its employees, but that was only about half what it had expected, as fewer people than anticipated enrolled in the catastrophic insurance. Worse, Ada officials were shocked that, as a result of the MSA, premiums for the employees who remained in the traditional insurance plan were going to skyrocket. “There was cherry-picking,” Johnson told me, “because the MSAs drew all the healthy folks that would otherwise subsidize those that stayed in the rich traditional plan.” With the traditional plan serving only the sicker employees, its costs mounted. In fact, the insurance company Regence Blue Shield of Idaho told the county that if it continued with the MSAs, it could expect premiums to jump an astronomical 15 percent -- at a time when health-insurance-premium increases were the lowest in 30 years. (Nationally, employer premiums increased 2.1 percent in 1997 and 0.5 percent in 1996, according to a KPMG Peat Marwick survey.) At the end of 1997, the county dropped the MSA option.
Despite skepticism of MSAs by many employers, unions, and workers, promotion of such tax-free savings accounts and high-deductible insurance plans has lived on thanks to a band of ideologically minded conservative Republicans who have pressed for legislation and regulations to make them more attractive. With the arrival of George W. Bush in the White House, their efforts succeeded. Now, with health-care costs rising at double-digit rates and the latest data available showing more than 43 million Americans uninsured in 2002, health care is again a major campaign issue. And at the core of Bush's health-care campaign platform is expansion of these schemes.
Tax-free MSAs, along with high-deductible plans, are simply a way to make individuals pay a larger share of their health-care costs. Conservatives put a pretty face on the system, calling it “consumer-directed health care,” a term designed to play off the public backlash against the tight restrictions that were imposed in the past by HMOs. They argue that consumers, not insurers, should determine what care they need. And they should pay for it themselves, with money that employers and employees put aside in various tax-free accounts. People will become wise shoppers, they argue, look for bargains, and purchase only the care they need. Conservatives predict that this will drive down costs. And for major medical problems, they argue, people will have catastrophic insurance.
Nixon administration economist Jesse Hixson is often credited with developing the concept of health banks to fund health care. But it was Patrick Rooney, former head of Golden Rule Insurance Company, who spearheaded the political organizing that ultimately got state and then federal action. Rooney has poured more than a million dollars into Republican coffers since 1989. Golden Rule, now part of UnitedHealthcare and run by Rooney's daughter, was a pioneer in health savings account (HSA) schemes. Rooney's zeal for MSAs dates to a 1990 meeting with John Goodman, founder of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), who in turn had been converted to the cause by Hixson. Rooney joined the center's board and helped fund it. The NCPA, along with a bevy of conservative think tanks -- including the Galen Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, and The Heritage Foundation -- are the champions of consumer-directed care. Rooney also pulled together a group of small insurers, which founded the Council for Affordable Health Insurance in 1992, to promote it.
Despite those efforts, the brave new world of consumer health care didn't really begin on the national level until 1996. (A number of states like Idaho had already allowed accounts exempt from state taxes to be used for health expenses.) After a fierce partisan battle, Republicans enacted legislation to allow tax-free accounts, called MSAs, but only for small businesses and self-insured people. Consumers were also required to buy high deductible insurance, which also required consumer co-payments. Democratic opposition, led by Senator Ted Kennedy, limited the number of people in such plans to 750,000. The Government Accounting Office reported that after two years, only 50,172 people were enrolled.
Then Bush, pressured by conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill and pro-tax-cut and small-business groups, came into office, determined to dramatically speed up the adoption of these tax breaks and insurance schemes. First the Treasury Department, in 2002, approved Health Reimbursement Accounts, another form of tax-free fund. Paid by employers, employees can use them to pay health-care costs. But these were limited in appeal because they were not portable from job to job and workers could not contribute to them.
Then, last November, with strong help from the White House, Republican congressional leaders succeeded in attaching to the Medicare prescription-drug bill a tax-free account that corrects these problems and threatens to dramatically alter health insurance as we know it. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a strong opponent of a government-run Medicare program and of comprehensive employer insurance programs, was instrumental in persuading reluctant Republicans to vote for the Medicare bill because it allows these tax-free funds, dubbed HSAs. Gingrich lauds them as “the single most important change in health-care policy in 60 years.” The new law now allows funds to be contributed by both employers and employees, rolled over if not used, and taken from job to job. It's also available to everyone. But it requires people with the savings accounts to have only a catastrophic insurance plan with a high deductible.
Experts believe that, thanks to the new law, consumer-directed health care is about to take off. Strapped with 14-percent premium increases in 2003, employers are desperate for a strategy to cut costs, and HSAs are a more subtle way to shift costs on to workers than merely raising premiums. Many employers appear ready to offer the HSA–catastrophic plans as an option alongside traditional insurance, but others will offer employees various savings-account–high-deductible insurance options only.
President Bush and administration officials are on a crusade to get the word out to employers. Almost immediately after Bush signed the Medicare law in December, the Treasury Department issued guidelines to jumpstart the plans and, in all, eight have been issued in the eight months since the law passed. On May 19, Treasury Secretary John Snow told a Senate Aging Committee hearing that HSAs are “one of the single best ideas” to deal with rising health-care costs.
Republicans also see HSAs as a way to slash budgets for federal and state employees, both by shifting health costs on to workers and by reducing overall utilization. They would like to use them in Medicaid and Medicare, too. In April, the Office of Personnel Management asked insurance carriers for proposals to offer HSAs to federal employees next year. Gingrich, now at his own think tank, has launched a project to promote these accounts to states. It's aimed at having all state-employee health plans and Medicaid programs offer HSAs within three years. Gingrich is also lobbying Congress to open Medicare to HSAs. And Lumenos Inc., which administers consumer-directed plans for employers who directly pay employee health expenses, has already been talking with top officials in three states about setting up such a plan for disabled Medicaid enrollees.
On a state level, no one has been a more ardent supporter of HSAs than the president's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush. After signing legislation June 14 requiring all insurers in Florida to offer HSAs to small businesses, he started a two-month road show, hosting town-hall meetings throughout the state to promote them. Press reports indicate that Bush wants to provide HSA–type accounts for Florida's Medicaid recipients as well.
The problem is, these accounts may be “one of the single best ideas,” as Snow put it, to deal with rising health-care costs for employers, but they are one of the worst for individual employees. While Terry Johnson was lucky to have an insurance package that limited his liability to $900, most employers will not be so generous, leaving anyone foolish enough to sign up for an HSA with the possibility of enormous health-care debts. First, the new Medicare law calls on families to pay at least the first $2,000 in costs; individuals must pay, at a minimum, the first $1,000, but the deductible is up to the employer, and many plans will likely require much higher ones. The current average deductible in insurance plans is $300 for an individual and $600 for families.
Supporters argue that employers can offset these costs by contributing to the savings account. But the whole premise of this approach is that people must feel some pain in paying for health care or they won't be wise consumers, so no employer is going to totally cover the deductible. In fact, a survey of almost 1,000 companies, most with more than 500 employees, conducted by Mercer Human Resource Consulting and released in April, found that 39 percent did not anticipate putting any money into savings accounts.
Besides the huge deductibles, consumers will have co-payments as well. While the law does set limits for total out-of-pocket spending, deductibles, and co-payments for in- network care, these are set at a high $5,000 for individuals and a whopping $10,000 for families. In fact, consumers can get stuck with even higher medical bills. First, the liability limits only apply if people use doctors and hospitals in the insurer's approved network. If a person decides, for whatever reason, to go to a provider outside the network, there is no ceiling on what he or she pays out of his or her own pocket. What's more, the insurance and spending caps only apply to “covered” care. Republicans are already trying to reduce the scope of care that insurers are required to cover. In that regard, House Speaker Dennis Hastert has endorsed legislation to allow people to buy insurance in other states if their own imposes too many mandates on insurers.
Chris Jennings, deputy assistant to President Clinton on health policy and now an informal adviser to the John Kerry campaign, says that concern about workers losing employer insurance coverage is one of Kerry's problems with HSAs. Jennings points to a recent study by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, which warned that HSAs could increase the number of uninsured as employers use HSAs as an excuse not to provide coverage.
Some smaller employers have started to use HSAs in the six months the law has been in effect, although the law passed too late in the benefit enrollment cycle for most large employers to make the shift. But it looks like they'll catch up next year. The Mercer survey found that nearly 75 percent are “very or somewhat likely” to offer an HSA by 2006. Another survey, by the National Business Group on Health, of 159 of the nation's largest companies found one-third expecting to offer a consumer-directed plan next year. The Mercer study also found that nearly half of large employers surveyed hope that HSAs will let them back away from retiree benefits, as workers will now be able to accumulate tax-free cash to pay for retirement health costs.
Forcing workers to shoulder a much larger part of their medical expenses to cut health-care costs for employers is likely to harm consumers in other ways, too. To begin with, Jennings warns that these plans, to the extent that they reduce overall costs, do so by “reduc[ing] the use of desirable as well as undesirable care.” In other words, people will stop getting the care they need in addition to the care they don't need.
Initial results at firms with tax-free accounts show that these accounts cut use of services. People go to the doctor less often, have fewer surgeries, make fewer hospital visits, and use fewer medicines. Textron Inc., which manufactures aircraft and other products, has shifted all its employees into consumer-directed plans. The company started in 2002 with the 1,500 employees in its corporate office center and at Textron Financial. An analysis of two years of claims data for the pilot program enrollees, compared with when they had traditional ppo insurance, found overall medical usage down 7 percent, inpatient hospital admissions down 22 percent, outpatient hospital visits down 6 percent, emergency-room visits for less severe conditions down 9 percent, total surgeries down 11 percent, physician office visits up 3 percent, diagnostic tests down 5 percent, and total prescriptions down 1 percent. Aetna found a similar pattern for 13,500 people who enrolled since January 2003 in its health reimbursement arrangement.
Conservative Republicans would applaud these numbers. But what happens if the upshot is many more people not getting the treatment they need? “It leads to a reduction in care, period, including care that's needed,” warns Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that sponsors health-policy research. Not only will more people end up waiting until illnesses are urgent before they go for care, she says, but public health could be affected as people avoid going to the doctor for what they think are coughs and colds but turn out to be more serious infectious diseases.
Even conservative champions of consumer-directed health plans may find them unsatisfactory in the long term, says Republican Liz Fowler, chief health counsel of the Senate Aging Committee. Fowler stood up at a Hill forum on consumer-directed health care, sponsored by the bipartisan Alliance for Health Reform, to tell the panelists who back the concept to try it before they tout it. Fowler said she is enrolled in a health reimbursement account that includes a $1,000 savings account contributed by her employer, the government. She is responsible for another $600 before insurance -- which includes a 20 percent co-payment for in-network care (40 percent for out of network) -- kicks in. How well has it worked?
Conservatives, however, are hoping that most consumers won't oppose these changes, especially if employers gradually transition to consumer-directed plans and much greater employee costs. “If you put a frog in hot water, it will jump out,” says Dr. David Himmelstein, a founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. “But if you put it in cold water and slowly boil it, you can cook it.” Hopefully consumers will tell employers exactly what they think of these plans before the entire health-care system has been cooked.
Barbara T. Dreyfuss is a freelance writer. She was a Wall Street health-policy analyst for many years.
In a pipeline of syndicatable broadcast comedy series that has dried up in the past few years, Chuck Lorre’s Mom is the biggest title available. The series, from Warner Bros., has sold off-network rights to Tribune Broadcasting in a cash-plus-barter deal.
The series will debut in fall 2017 on Tribune stations in 16 markets including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Washington, D.C. and Houston. Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution also has sold the comedy to stations from other stations groups including CBS, Hearst, Media General, Raycom and TEGNA, clearing Mom in 71% of the country, including in 27 of the top 30 markets.
Lorre also is behind two of the biggest comedy hits in broadcast and cable syndication in the past two decades: The Big Bang Theory and Two And A Half Men. WBDTD will now focus on finding a cable off-network home for Mom, which will launch simultaneously in broadcast and cable syndication.
Anna Faris and Emmy-winner Allison Janney star in Mom, created by Lorre, Gemma Baker and Eddie Gorodetsky. Lorre, Gorodetsky and Nick Bakay serve as executive producers for the series, which is from Chuck Lorre Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television. Baker is co-executive producer.
The bible has been used to justify indulgences, racism, genocide, and torture. You so called Christians need to have an open mind. A few centuries ago Christians all over America swore that slavery was completely OK in the eyes of God, today the church vehemently denies it.
True Christians shouldn't assume they understand God's will perfectly. You are instructed to spread God's love, not hate. Even if God truly does find Gays shameful, it is not the place of humans to take on God's role in condemning them.
If you truly disagree with this writer's logic, actually post a legit counterargument instead of "PFFFFT!!! SHUT UP CRAZY LEFT WING LIBERALS!!!!111"
thank you, hee.... right on.
Amen, let God judge, not man.
Galatians 1:12 "For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." That is why I opposed same-gender marriage.
2 Timothy 2:24-26 "And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will." This is why we teach what we believe. Obviously there are those who do so in a less-than-Christian manner. I believe in being respectful of others who disagree with me, but the Spirit of God inspires me to defend his first commandment, that a man and woman shall be one flesh, and be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth.
WHO the heck wrote these bibles anyway? Just because it's in print doesn't mean it's true.
If you haven't cut off your right hand,or plucked out one of your eyes.You're not a true christian.
Who cares = make up your own mind. You are just as smart as a dead Jew.
Look at all the so called "believer" postings and just look at the hypocracy.
Maybe CNN and Daniel should mention he is gay.
And somehow that is to justify what comes from the mouths of the 'Non-Believers'.
Another instance of one being justified because Bubba down the street does it.
We need to have a burn the bible day as a holiday. I can't think of a more evil book. why other books are banned and this one which has done nothing but cause HUGE problems all through out history is still permitted is beyond me.
People will twist the bible to mean whatever they want. You want to invade and occupy forever a country with the resources you want – killing hundreds of thousands of innocents in the process – you betcha – go right ahead – You want to hate gays – go right ahead – OR NOT – it is all in the good book.
I love how you have a piece written buy a guy who knows more about what the bible says in and out and in different translations than any poster here, someone who has studied it for years and years, knows its history, and the history of the time it was written, but people still don't believe what he is saying because of what they hear from a preacher on Sunday mornings. Somehow I'm sure that if Jesus was here he would not be supporting condemning a whole section of the population because they would rather have a boyfriend than a girlfriend, and he would definitely not tell them that they were undeserving to worship God. Why do super religious people put such blind faith in other humans to tell them the truth, why can’t they read the bible and its history and make up their own minds instead of having the same thoughts their parents or preachers do? I’m all for blind faith in God, but please don’t take other people’s opinions as true unless you have actually done your research.
I love how some take the words of one supposed "theologian" to another and then tells everyone not to listen to their pastor who has probably had as much experience (if not more) with biblical interpretation than this author.
You are right, though. We should all seek guidance of the Lord ourselves. He has made it clear to me, by the power of His Spirit, that marriage is between a man and a woman. Fortunately, my pastor preaches what the Spirit has witnessed to him as well.
By the way, I've read the Bible from cover to cover, study it regularly, and believe a lot of others do as well. So suggesting that this guy knows more than "any poster" here is a bit conceited.
What I meant is that he has actually studied the material, where most Christians haven’t even read it once. What I also said was that people should read the bible and make up their own minds, and that people have no place to judge, that is God and Jesus' right, not yours or your pastors. When I say blindly it is because I know many, many, many religious people that believe what they believe because someone told them to, not because they have studied the material and come to their own conclusions as you have.
sorry, there I go saying most again, how about a lot.
I hope you realize there will not be an athiest in Hell. I guess the writer of this article has never read Romans Worthy of Death. Maybe you think God has changed his mind about who should procreate. I guarentee it is not 2 men or 2 women. But I guess if you want to spend eternity in Hell have at it. I hope everyone of you get your just dues along with the supportive politicians.
Let's hear it for SB 1070 and Sheriff Joe Arpaio! Fine examples of the product of your worldview!! Woot Woot!
Being married isn't about procreation.
That is not a very godly statement there buddy. What happened to turn the other cheek? Somehow I don't think Jesus would want you condeming people to hell in his name and judging for yourself what kind of retribution they desearve.
I hope that you get YOUR due. You have just borne false witness against another, lied, spoken for God, cast the first stone, judged instead of waiting for God's judgment.
You're the one who'll be in Hell.
Jesus was a really nice guy. Be like Jesus instead of how you are now. That's what Jesus actually said to do.
Helminiak even looks like a deranged nut. He's basically a son of the devil; an exceedingly wicked man. If I were king, he and his ilk would be in jail never to see the light of day again and the country would be far better off. You have to remove the cancer to save the patient.
I do hope others will read what you have said and see what true intolerance and hatred looks like when it is robed in "religious righteousness." I was taught that there were only 2 sins the Spirit could not forgive despair and presumption: presuming to know the mind of God and presuming to judge for him surely is a sin against the Spirit, your sin, and you should perhaps ponder your own salvation, not someone else's.
Jesus is king Homie, don't pretend to have the wisdom to judge others. Who are you to say someone is the son of the devil, or wicked? Leave the Judging to your lord and be an obedient servant for the good of man.
Anyone want to bet whether this guy is gay or just a liberal or both?
Does it really matter? He's evil and causing tremendous damage whichever way you slice it.
He's causing "damage" because now you have to explain to your kids what the Bible REALLY teaches about ho mose xu ality and that ga y marriage is bad?
Why don't you try teaching your kids to come to an honest faith in Christ first, and leave the rest of the world the f vck alone!!
The Bible is a book of fairy tales and stories intended to make people feel better about what they fear and cannot understand because of ignorance. Who cares what the Bible says, it is not a valid reference book.
You just try telling God that when he's telling you, "depart from me you wicked, into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels." It WILL be the last thing you ever say. Don't believe it you say? It's a high price to pay if you are wrong.
Robert- the high price you are paying for possibly being wrong is the life you are living. You'd better HOPE there's an afterlife that's worth the sum of the lost opportunities you've had in this life. Good luck to you.
WOW – fairy tales. Catch up on archeology. There are many things in that bible that is proven true and just not scientifically. Ancient peoples were smarter and wiser than most secular people give them credit for.
While the more educated may smirk about such articles, there is a lot of value in helping people analyze and understand the book upon which they place their beliefs, especially when it becomes legislation and policy that affects people outside the religious bubble.
"We now face religious jingoism, the imposition of personal beliefs on the whole pluralistic society." Thank you for proving that with the rest of your ridiculous article, which obviously is an imposition of your own personal beliefs and interpretations of scripture.
I guess this is why religion can't be based on the Bible. It needs what created the Bible. Revelation from God. To Catholics, that revelatory power is believed to be held by the Pope (who has clearly opposed same-gender marriage). To Mormons, that revelatory power is believed to be held by the Prophet (who has also clearly opposed same-gender marriage). You know, we clearly need modern-day guidance, so when I rest my belief that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, I don't need to bother using the Bible. I follow the spirit of God myself.
Maybe this once-a-priest-now-a-professor might want to think about searching for spiritual guidance himself rather than arguing over some scholarly interpretation of the Bible.
God tells people to do all kinds of crazy things, I don't think we can trust him.
Gays deserve all of the civil rights as every other citizen but marriage is not a civil right. It is a social contract between the government and its citizens. Marriage is between a man and a woman. If we allow other permutations we must allow all permutations between consenting adults. Polygamy? Group marriage? Where does it stop? Obviously if people are allowed to vote we know the result. Wherever gay marriage has been voted on, it has been voted down.
I am ok with group, polygamy. Everything stops.
Why we must we allow it? If you are allowed to make it arbitrarily between just a man and a woman you can make it arbitrarily between two consenting adults. Unless a 3rd gender arises you are pulling a straw-man.
He was an Ordained Priest. "WAS" struck the whole article as being typical CNN commentary with an agenda.
Exactly 24 years ago, in a field beside the A303 in Wiltshire, the might of Margaret Thatcher's militarised police descended on a convoy of new age travellers, green activists, anti-nuclear protestors and free festival-goers, who were en route to Stonehenge in an attempt to establish the 12th annual Stonehenge free festival in fields across the road from Britain's most famous ancient monument. That event has become known as the Battle of the Beanfield.
In many ways the epitome of the free festival movement of the 1970s, the Stonehenge free festival – an annual anarchic jamboree that, in 1984, had attracted tens of thousands of visitors – had been an embarrassment to the authorities for many years, but its violent suppression, when police from six counties and the Ministry of Defence cornered the convoy of vehicles in a field and, after an uneasy stand-off, invaded the field on foot and in vehicles, subjecting men, women and children to a distressing show of physical force, was, like the Miners' strike the year before, and the suppression of the printers at Wapping the year after, a brutal display of state violence that signaled a major curtailment of civil liberties.
In the context of political dissent at the time, the Stonehenge festival was a mere sideshow, but the government knew that its suppression would not cause offence to the general public, especially as most media outlets were prevailed upon to refrain from reporting on it (valiant exceptions were the Observer's Nick Davies and Kim Sabido for ITN). As a result, the government knew that it could disguise its other motives: the curtailment in general of the British public's right to gather freely without prior permission, and the suppression of a grassroots movement opposed to the installation of US cruise missiles on UK soil.
The most celebrated opponents of nuclear weapons in the UK were the women of Greenham Common, but as it would have been a PR disaster to have had police truncheoning a group of women, the new age travellers, who had set up a peace camp at RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire (the proposed second base for cruise missiles) were a more obvious target, and the Battle of the Beanfield took place just four months after 1,500 soldiers and police – in the largest peacetime mobilisation of its kind – were used to evict the camp.
Above all, though, the major fallout from the Battle of the Beanfield was the government's manipulation of the manufactured hysteria about the travellers and protestors to introduce the 1986 Public Order Act, which enabled the police to evict two or more people for trespass, providing that "reasonable steps have been taken by or on behalf of the occupier to ask them to leave." The act also stipulated that six days' written notice had to be given to the police before most public processions, and allowed the police to impose unspecified "conditions" if they feared that a procession "may result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community."

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