Saturday, January 23, 2010

“Film examines Mormon role in Prop 8 drama - MSNBC” plus 4 more

“Film examines Mormon role in Prop 8 drama - MSNBC” plus 4 more

Film examines Mormon role in Prop 8 drama - MSNBC

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 08:23 PM PST

PARK CITY, Utah - The Utah-based Mormon church plays a starring role in a new Sundance Film Festival documentary about the 2008 ballot initiative that successfully banned gay marriage in California.

Miami-area filmmaker Reed Cowan's "8: The Mormon Proposition," premieres Sunday at the Park City festival.

The film contends that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built on decades of anti-gay teachings to justify its political activism and tried to hide its role as the driving force behind the coalition of conservatives that helped pass Proposition 8. The proposition reversed an earlier court ruling legalizing gay marriage.

The film debuts just as a California federal trial over the constitutionality of the ban enters its third week.

"Karma," said Cowan of the timing and the film's inaugural screening in a theater roughly 25 miles from the Mormon church's headquarters.

"There was no other place on the planet where this could premiere," he said. "This is where the lies came from, this is where the money came from. The sharpest karma that could be leveled on the Mormon church ... it has to be leveled in their own backyard."

Church officials have not seen the film but have reviewed a trailer and other materials posted online, a spokeswoman for the faith said.

"It appears that accuracy and truth are rare commodities in this film," Kim Farah said. "Clearly, anyone looking for balance and thoughtful discussion of a serious topic will need to look elsewhere."

Narrated by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black — who like Cowan is gay and was raised Mormon — the 81-minutes film opens with footage of gay couples saying, "I do," in San Francisco's City Hall on June 17, 2008, the first day gays could legally marry and then chronicles what some say was the most expensive initiative campaign in California's history through election day and angry postelection protest marches outside Mormon church temples nationwide.

Contributions, allegations
The film makes its case for Mormon dominance by relying on the investigative work of California political activist Fred Karger, who claims Mormons turned out some 25,000 members weekly as campaign volunteers and made up 71 percent of individual campaign contributions.

The church also disputes allegations in the film by Karger of inaccurate or deceptive campaign finance reporting practices and has posted its contributions on its Web site.

Shot over 19 months for less than $250,000, the film uses statements of past church leaders and personal accounts of gay Mormons and their families in an attempt to explain what Cowan contends is a culture of obedience and an entrenched anti-gay sentiment that permeates Mormonism. Those attitudes, he says, contribute to a myriad of social problems including a suicide and homelessness among young gay Mormons.

Mormon church officials do appear in the film, but only in footage obtained through other filmmakers, media outlets or in church-produced videos that appeared on the Web.

Church officials declined requests for interviews, Cowan said. In one of the film's audio clips, Farah is heard saying the church does not want to be "front and center in a battle with the gay community."

'A war on gays'
Like many faiths, Mormonism teaches that traditional marriage is an institution ordained by God that is central to a healthy society. However, church has said it does not oppose civil unions or other limited rights, such as those related to hospitalization, employment or housing, as long as they don't infringe on the constitutional rights of churches.

Steven Greenstreet, the film's editor and a co-producer, said he hopes the movie will "pull back the curtain" on the power and influence the Mormon church has amassed in the gay marriage debate.

"Voters did not go to the ballot box knowing all the information," said Greenstreet, himself a former Mormon. "I hope for non-Mormons this film pulls back the curtain on a decades long strategic implementation of a war on gays so that they are able to see who was behind the curtain. We owe to the generations of people who have suffered."


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Foreign correspondence: Go see-cruising through Portugal's wine ports - Chicago Tribune

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 08:37 PM PST

What's it like to live in a far-off place most of us see only on a vacation? Foreign Correspondence is an interview with someone who lives in a spot you may want to visit.

Alberto Aliberti, 47, moved from Miami to Portugal almost five years ago. He lives in Porto and works for DourAzul, a Portuguese firm that specializes in river cruises on the Douro River.

Q. Say "European river cruise," and sailing the Rhine comes to mind. Is there much demand for river cruising in Portugal?

A. It's big and growing because of the proliferation in river cruises in general. What we have is a destination for people who've discovered they love river cruising and are looking for new destinations. Last month in a National Geographic list of the 133 great places to visit in the world, the Douro Valley was tied for No. 7.

We run four hotel-style riverboats and five day-tour boats. I work with the overnight riverboats, which are all based in Porto and run on the Douro. They're primarily seven-night itineraries from Porto, on the Atlantic coast, east to the Spanish border and back. This covers the entire width of Portugal. Our seven-night cruises offered through Uniworld (www.uniworld.com) start at $2,099, cruise-only.

Q. What's the lay of the land?

A. The Portuguese part of the Douro is about 130 miles from the coast to the Spanish border. The way to look at it is like three rivers. The lower Douro is from Porto to about 30 or 40 miles inland. You're coming out of a medieval city, and the population dwindles to almost nothing. You pass under a lot of older bridges. The earliest that are still usable are from the 19th century and include two designed by Gustave Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame. He apparently really liked this area.

Then you pass through the middle Douro, the port wine region. From there to the Spanish border there's very little flatland along the river. This is the oldest delineated wine region in the world, established in 1756, and the vineyards are on hilly terraces. The view is just gorgeous and surrounds you as far as you can see, from the town of Regua -- where the port-wine region starts -- for another 40 miles. With all the terraces, it's unlike anything you see in northern California's wine region, and the view changes every month when the weather does.

The upper Douro is analogous to the Scandinavian fjords. You sail through incredibly tight stretches; the river passes between granite walls ... From granite wall to granite wall, the river is sometimes 30 meters (about 98.5 feet) across. Just like the fjords, the water is deep -- well over 100 feet.

One of Portugal's biggest exports is granite. The area is so mineral-rich you can see iron and sulphur leaking through the granite.

This is still a wine-producing area, but it's not within the official port region. One of the best-kept secrets about Portugal are its incredible table wines. They're so good -- and inexpensive. Wine that you'd buy here in a grocery store for 3 euros (about $4.28) would be $15 to $19 back in the States.

Q. Are most of the Douro cruises wine-oriented?

A. Yes, but that's changing. While wine is still a big part of the experience, now people are also coming for scenery, history, culture and food.

Q. What's to be seen on the shore?

A. Many towns along the river are medieval, focused as far back as fortifications from the 12th century. A popular walled medieval village is Costello Rodrigo. Then you have 17th-century communities, which are usually focused around a church. The most popular is Lamego. It has the Our Lady of Remedies sanctuary, which is famous throughout the country. It's a point of pilgrimage for Portuguese and has more than 700 steps leading up to the sanctuary.

The real history is in the city of Porto, which goes back thousands of years.

Q. What are the must-see places in Porto?

A. So much of the city centers on the water. The waterfront -- the Ribeira -- is really popular with tourists. There are restaurants where you can get typically Portuguese food. That's seafood, of course.

The center of the town has Aliados Square, which is like London's Trafalgar Square. It has luxury stores and hotels. There's a street in the area called Santa Caterina that's a well-known shopping street; it also has some nice cafes. The chic one is the Majestic Cafe, which dates to 1921. It still has gilded ceilings, crystal chandeliers, mirrored walls and a marble bar.

Across the Douro River from Porto is a twin city called Vila Nova de Gaia -- "New World City." Porto is the city; originally, Gaia was the port wine processing port.

VNG is an independent and thriving city with a popular waterfront of cafes, restaurants, shops and bars. Both Porto and VNG are growing from tourism and outside investments.

Gaia is on a hillside and has natural and man-made caves where port wine is stored. The caves were used that way 200 years ago and still are. The entrance of each wine-storage warehouse has a large sign indicating the recognizable brand name. I can read the signs from my office window across the river in Porto. The only thing that has changed is that wine now arrives by tank truck, not boats.

But the wine is still stored in casks: Some are the size of a room, some the size of small barrels. Seeing the caves is a real highlight for visitors.

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Know someone who lives in an interesting city or country who would like to give us the inside line on visiting there? E-mail, in English, jbordsen@charlotteobserver.com.

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(c) 2010, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

Visit The Charlotte Observer on the World Wide Web at http://www.charlotte.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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Marriage not the big deal it once was; area counties see decline in ... - Zanesville Times Recorder

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 07:40 PM PST

In Muskingum County in 2009, 629 couples tied the knot -- far fewer than in the 1990s. In 1990, 759 couples received marriage licenses.

The county's numbers follow a national trend. In the 1990s, the rate of marriages was nine per 1,000 residents. In recent years, it has been around seven, according to data from the Ohio Department of Health.

Muskingum County's population was 85,087 in 2008, an increase of 3,019 since 1990.

Perry and Morgan counties have seen similar trends. In 2009, 204 couples got married in Perry County, compared to 249 in 1990.

In Morgan County, 86 couples got married in 2009, compared to 118 in 1990.

Decades-long cultural and societal trends are factors in the decline of marriages, experts say, and more recently the recession could be having an impact.

But that's not to say marriage has become an outmoded institution, said W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

"What we're seeing in general is that marriage is actually doing fine for those Americans who are privileged enough to enter into it nowadays," he said. "The problem is ... fewer and fewer Americans are entering in.

"We're beginning to see the rise of a marriage gap ... in American life."

The gap is defined largely by education level, he said. Americans who are college educated are more likely to get married and stay married. The same is true for people who are religiously committed.

Meanwhile, working class or poor people and those who are non-religious are less likely to marry -- or if they do, they're less likely to remain married.

A report issued in December by the National Marriage Project noted that in recent decades the U.S. marriage rate has been in continuous decline.

From 1970 to 2007, the annual number of marriages per 1,000 unmarried women age 15 and older has dropped by nearly 50 percent -- from 76.5 to 39.2 -- said the report, "The State of Our Unions, Marriage in America 2009."

Reasons for the decline, the report said, include people delaying their first marriage until they are older; the growth of unmarried cohabitation; a small decrease in the tendency of divorced people to remarry; and an increase in lifelong singles, although the actual amount won't be known until the lives of young and middle-aged adults run their course.

Since 1960, the number of cohabiting couples has increased more than 15-fold, from 439,000 to 6.8 million, the report said. For many such couples, views on marriage have been shaped by the experiences of family and friends.

The Rev. Robert Willmann, of St. James Episcopal Church in Zanesville, said he agrees there are many factors for why couples live together and don't get married.

"But when people belong to a church, they usually get married in the church," he said.

He said many people remain "unchurched," and those who do marry don't for faith reasons but for convenience, such as economic reasons.

"There's also the legality of it, and what happens if they leave the marriage," Willmann said.

But he admits "it's a different day" and where once early marriages were common place in our society, "they are now delaying marriage into their 20s and even 30s" and co-habitation and other arrangements seems to be the societal norm for some.

"And they are not going to be celibate all of that time," he said. "It's just part of what is happening in the world today."

Wilcox said about 20 percent of American children are born to cohabiting couples.

"The problem with that is that cohabiting couples are about three times more likely to break up than married couples. So they're a lot less stable, and kids, of course, tend to thrive on stability," he said.

Besides offering a stable environment in which to raise children, marriage has many other well-documented benefits, the report said. In general, married people are wealthier than singles or cohabiting couples, they're healthier and they live longer.

The recession, though, might be affecting some people's wedding plans.

"Both marriage and divorce rates tend to fall when the economy heads south and then rise when good times return," Alex Roberts, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, wrote in the marriage report.

That's because marriage -- and divorce -- can be expensive.

"When people have less money it's hard for them to afford the nice wedding, the house together and all that," Wilcox said.

Staff Writers Jessica Alaimo and Brian Gadd contributed to this report.

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Spotlight turns to Apple's 'latest creation' - Big Hollywood

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 08:16 PM PST

The technology rumor mill is busy grinding speculation regarding an Apple event Wednesday at which the culture-changing firm will unveil its "latest creation."

Expectation that the maker of iPhones and iPods is set to wow the world with a tablet computer is so rampant that the California company's stock could suffer if it fails to deliver.

"This proposed Apple tablet will take the App Store and iPhone operating system and deliver it in a larger form factor instead of starting from scratch," said Canada-based independent technology analyst Carmi Levy.

"Apple can take years worth of iPhone momentum and drive it right into what is essentially an iPhone on steroids," he continued.

Apple's tablet is believed to be a notepad-shaped device with a 10-inch color screen that lets people browse the Web, listen to music, watch movies or television shows and also read electronic books and newspapers.

A tablet would be Apple's first major product release since it came out with its winning iPhone three years ago.

Online retail powerhouse Amazon.com beefed up its market-leading Kindle electronic reader devices just days ago in apparent preparation for an Apple onslaught.

Amazon pumped up royalties it pays to authors or publishers who offer digitized books for sale to Kindle users and invited software savants to craft fun or functional programs for the e-readers.

"Amazon may have won the e-book reader battle, but the war is about far bigger things," Levy said. "It is about a device that can do many things as you bring your digital content with you."

While the spotlight at the Apple event may be on a tablet, the success of such a device depends more on the "ecosystem" of applications and services than it does on how "sexy" the hardware may be, according to the analyst.

"The irony is that it is no longer about hardware, it is about services that connect to the hardware," Levy said.

"The iPod was just a media player but what made it special was iTunes and the online App Store."

An Apple tablet would likely synch with iTunes and the more than 100,000 applications at the App Store.

Despite Apple's wizardry with creations embraced by mainstream culture as well as technophiles, it could be tilting against windmills by releasing a tablet computer.

"The real question is what will people do with an Apple tablet that they can't do pretty well on some other device?" said NPD Group analyst Stephen Baker. "Anyone that has tried this has failed."

The success of iPhones was "a no-brainer" because the innovative devices put telephone and rich Internet capabilities in people's pockets, according to Baker.

Tablets, on the other hand, are awkwardly large to be carried as mobile devices and too small to compete with desktop computers and screens, especially for tasks such as movie viewing.

"What do I do, strap it to my dog's back?" Baker said facetiously.

"I can't sneak a peak at it when my kids are in a play or at a baseball game... I'm a hardware guy and this isn't going to be a game changer."

A Retrevo report release last week concluded that an Apple tablet priced at more than 700 dollars (US) would stop 70 percent of potential buyers from reaching for their wallets.

Apple could launch a tablet at a steep price but quickly discount it through subsidy deals with carriers or digital content sellers.

"Initially it will seem like a high price, but over time Ma and Pa will be able to buy it as well as rabid Apple fans," Levy said.

Google could prove to be a formidable rival, with the Internet giant's Android operating system built into a host of tablets shown off at a major Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this month.

An Android Market featuring more than 20,000 applications tailored for devices running on the operating system is a growing competitor to Apple's market-leading App Store.

"In many ways, Apple is running away with the prize and Google is establishing itself as a strong second," Levy said.

Microsoft is also staking out territory in the tablet market, with chief executive Steve Ballmer using CES as a stage to tout a Hewlett-Packard Slate tablet built with the firm's software.

"There really isn't another compelling device out there," Levy said. "As it did with the iPhone, Apple is competing in a category of one at this point."

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In Brash Coach, Jets Knew They Had a Winner - New York Times

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 06:43 PM PST

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — The Jets' improbable run to the verge of their first Super Bowl appearance in 41 years started last January in a hotel conference room near the Baltimore-Washington airport.

The sixth of seven candidates to interview for the team's vacant head-coaching position, Rex Ryan, was 45 minutes late. He arrived sweaty, almost panting, in a pinstripe suit with a white dress shirt. He carried a binder filled with 60 pages of detailed plans.

For more than four hours, Ryan's precision and oversize presence captivated the team's owner, Woody Johnson, and three senior executives. When he left, the four men shot glances around the table. No one spoke at first.

"It became apparent that Rex was our guy," Johnson said.

In Ryan's first season as coach, he changed the Jets' second-class existence through the sheer force of his bold and brash personality. He spoke loudly and often about the talent that surrounded him, until the players believed every word he said. At his first news conference, he predicted they would meet President Obama as Super Bowl champions in his tenure, a prospect that seemed outrageous after the Jets fell to 4-6.

Still, it took the Jets' reaching Sunday's American Football Conference championship game against the Indianapolis Colts for the N.F.L. to realize what the four men in that conference room knew on Jan. 11, 2009 — that Ryan could transform their team.

They arrived that morning on Johnson's private plane: Johnson; General Manager Mike Tannenbaum; Scott Cohen, the assistant general manager; and Joey Clinkscales, vice president for college scouting. Ryan, then the Baltimore Ravens' defensive coordinator, was still meeting with the St. Louis Rams.

While they waited, Tannenbaum leafed through the overflowing binder labeled "Coaching Search." He believed that candidates revealed character in the way they treated waiters, drivers, service staffers. To that end, he had everyone including the trainer and the groundskeeper call his Ravens counterpart.

Their reports ran for several pages, small font, single-spaced. Ravens employees described Ryan as "the nicest guy in the world" and said that players would follow him anywhere. One employee said he wanted to lie so that Ryan would not leave.

"What was unbelievable was the passion in which people believed in this guy and how much they rooted for him," Tannenbaum said. "It was shocking."

The Jets, with their tortured history of disappointment and bad bounces, had fired Eric Mangini, who was cut from the secretive, hooded-sweatshirt cloth of Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots. In Ryan, they found Mangini's opposite.

Ryan turned one of the N.F.L.'s most clandestine operations in into an open book. The Jets collapsed at the end of 2008 in part because of the tense atmosphere. Ryan changed that, changed a culture, changed the way people felt about coming to work. He never called his predecessor.

"This wasn't about Eric," Ryan, 47, said. "This was about me. I was going to be true to myself."

So Ryan entered the conference room in a way that only Ryan can, Johnson said, balancing confidence with self-deprecating humor and sincerity. The Jets' brass struggled to explain why Ryan had interviewed with four other teams and not landed a head-coaching job.

He had the pedigree. Ryan's father, Buddy, was an assistant coach for the Jets when they won Super Bowl III in 1969 and won another championship with the Chicago Bears. Ryan had inherited his father's defensive brilliance but not his cantankerous approach to public relations.

More than anything, Ryan's engaging personality hooked the four Jets executives early. Clinkscales said that after five minutes, he felt he had known Ryan for 15 years.

But the Jets also needed to search beyond Ryan's bluster, the jolly-fat-man routine. He described his philosophy in the interview, his plan to run the football and play harassing defense, ground and pound.

At the beginning of the interview, Ryan emphasized team building, insisting on taking the Jets away for training camp.

Ryan passed his binder around the table. He had planned the entire season.

The more he talked, the more layers he revealed. Ryan as motivation master, the king of pregame speeches. Ryan as guru of the N.F.L.'s best defenses in the past decade. Ryan as the meticulous coach whose system was tailored for the current players.

Most everything Ryan proposed that day proved effective. He held training camp in Cortland, N.Y. He built unity on accountability, made football fun again, grounded and pounded into the playoffs.

Ryan showed uncommon football acumen and a soft touch. The Jets responded one year ahead of schedule, winning seven of their last eight games.

Midseason, when the rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez threatened the Jets' playoff chances with an avalanche of interceptions, Ryan took on greater offensive responsibilities. He made Sanchez his pet project, even devising a color-coded system to aid Sanchez's decision-making. Predictably, he turned the Jets' defense into the league's top-ranked unit.

Ryan preached discipline. The Jets respected what Ryan stood for as much as what he said.

"You see Rex, and you see John Candy," Tannenbaum said. "Like sometimes people get the impression of Rex that it's just recess. But it's not. The guy is coaching in the A.F.C. title game two years in a row. You don't stumble into that."

The rest of what makes up Ryan has been on display this season, but more quietly, behind the scenes. Instead of operating from a tower like a dictator, Ryan walks the hallways, massaging egos, cooking up defensive plans.

Mike Pettine, who followed Ryan from Baltimore and became defensive coordinator, likes to call him the country bumpkin from Oklahoma, the unshaven everyman dressed in sweats, pizza grease stains on his shirt.

"Beneath it all, he's super, super intelligent," Pettine said. "Like the guy in the movie 'A Beautiful Mind.' The things that come out of his mouth are not being shot from the hip. There's a plan behind all of it."

Shortly after Ryan's hiring, a four-man Jets contingent was in Manhattan, Kan., working out a college quarterback and tooling around in a two-door pickup. Tannenbaum estimated that they consumed at least 40,000 calories of hamburgers and cheese fries at a fast-food restaurant. Ryan ordered the largest soda, and it punctured, spilling everywhere.

"Oh, no, not my dress sweats," he said.

At that moment, Tannenbaum knew his instincts had been correct last January. The Jets had found their coach.

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