Reported by Fields Moseley, KUTV Utah
Last Update: 4/06 11:02 pm
A Provo family received much needed lift from the community. The Jensen family came home to a house completely renovated that meets their needs.
Before they got there neighbors and the team from Heart2 Home added some final touches, sweeping, scrubbing and hosing off the driveway. They made two weeks of construction disappear in a few hours.
Outside the home at around 4:30, a crowd erupted into cheers.
"Oh my gosh," uttered Natalie Jensen as she exited a giant stretch SUV limosine and saw the fresh stucco and siding covering the old orange brick.
That was the shock. The awe came a few a minutes later as every room revealed a new surprise.
"Oh, it's absolutely perfect," Jensen squealed at the sight of her boys' room.
The older boys, Zach and Brady, will sleep in the shadow of Lavell Edwards stadium. A giant picture covers one wall and a scoreboard hangs on the opposite wall. It is appropriate, since BYU lineman, Jason Speredon helped get the project done.
"We had about ten or twelve guys come over and do some sheetrock and that went really fast because we were able to hold it up there on the ceiling," said Speredon.
But it wasn’t just that. Speredon knew someone with a connection to the organization Heart2Home. The group helps families like the Jensens remodel their homes when they can't do it themselves.
"I have a fairly good job, but the medical bills are overwhelming," said Nathan Jensen while sitting on the couch in their new family room. He suffers from a disease similar to Lupus called sarcoidosis. He started transforming this house last fall to accommodate their four children, two of whom have muscular dystrophy.
"So far Zack has not been able to ride his wheelchair in a house at all, and just being able to have him move around will be amazing," said Natalie fighting back tears.
The Heart2Home designers and contractors made the doors are larger, there is a bathroom that allows wheelchair access, and every child has a bed. The Jensens story brought strangers together and proves this is the house that love built.
"They are so inspiring to me," said Speredon knows the family through his LDS Ward. "Through their trials and adversity, they’ve kept a smile."
The war of words, slights and raised eyebrows between the family of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston, the father of Palin's daughter Bristol's 3-month-old son, has escalated.
The latest salvo comes from Johnston who in a TV interview talks about how he's being snubbed by Alaska's first family.
In an interview airing today on "The Tyra Banks Show," Johnston says while he's still able to see his son, he's getting the distinct impression that Bristol Palin no longer wants him around much.
"She says that I can come see the baby and that kind of thing but won't let me take him anywhere," Johnston told Banks.
The 19-year-old also told Banks that Sarah Palin -- whose family values was part of her platform when she was the GOP vice presidential candidate -- almost certainly knew the two teens were having sex before her daughter got pregnant.
"I'm pretty sure she probably knew," he told Banks.
"Were you practicing safe sex?" she asked.
"Every time," he said.
But when pressed, "every time" turned into "most of the time."
In response to the remarks, the Palin family released a harsh statement, saying, in part, "We're disappointed that Levi and his family & are engaging in flat-out lies, gross exaggeration and even distortion of their relationship."
Johnston was almost son-in-law of the governor. He began dating her eldest daughter while the two were in high school just days after Sarah Palin's bid for vice president was announced, so it was a bombshell when it was revealed that the conservative candidate's daughter was pregnant with Johnston's child.
Now, months after the birth of son Tripp Easton Mitchell and just weeks after the couple's breakup, the Palins and the Johnstons have made no secret of the trouble between the families, a far cry from the campaign days and the talk of wedding plans.
Now, with this latest round of interviews, civil may be out the window.
"It is unfortunate that Levi finds it more appealing to exploit his previous relationship with Bristol than to contribute to the well-being of the child," the statement also said.
Even after the teen couple ended their relationship, the two seemed cordial. In an ABC News interview outside his home last month, Johnston said he was still talking to Bristol Palin and seeing his son whenever he wanted. The two were civil "for the most part," he said then.
Johnston has had more troubles than his high-profile relationship with the daughter of a sitting governor.
His mother, Sherry Johnston, was arrested in December on drug charges.
Despite the hard times and more that may be to come, Johnston said Sarah Palin can count on his vote if she makes a run for the White House in the future even though, he said, it would not be easy on him.
"I'd be happy for her if she made it that far," he said, "but at the same time I think it would make things even harder than it is now."
The sagging economy is taking a toll on marital harmony, counselors say.
“We’re seeing the beginning of a wave of problems, emotional and relational, but I don’t think we’re at the crest of the wave just yet,” says Julie Lingler, a clinical social worker.
The strain on marriages is evident among people at all income levels, and in couples where one or both spouses earn a paycheck, counselors say.
The trend dovetails with an American Psychological Association survey, released in October, in which eight of 10 Americans said the economy is a significant cause of stress, up from 66 percent in April.
Many couples seeking counseling don’t initially associate their problems with the economy, says Chris Tuell, a licensed professional clinical counselor who works for Family Service of the Cincinnati Area.
Rather, couples complain about anxiety, depression and increased anger, “then you look at some of the stresses,” Tuell says, “and one of the first ones they mention is the economic issue.”
Money issues often drive a wedge between couples, even in good times. A recession makes things worse, says Tuell, who counsels people with a wide range of incomes.
Historically, a man’s core identity comes from being a good provider for his wife and family, says Karen Gail Lewis, a marriage and family therapist. When a husband’s role as provider is at risk, “it really grabs at his sense of who he is as a man, and that can cause all kinds of horrible problems in a marriage.”
Many husbands are concerned about financial security, but they are conditioned not to show it, Lewis says. “What most men have told me is, ‘I don’t want to worry [my wife],’ ” she says. “But what most women say is, ‘It affects me, too, so I want to know.’ ”
Lingler says she began seeing more couples with financial security concerns about nine months ago. The National Bureau of Economic Research says the United States has been in a recession since December 2007.
Now, against a backdrop of increasing job losses, threats of layoffs and dwindling retirement funds, breakdowns in communication are more common among couples, counselors say.
That leads couples to “either withdraw from one another or attack one another about things that don’t have anything to do with financial security,” Lingler says.
And there are more extramarital affairs, she says, which is how some spouses seek escape during tough economic times.
“When things are difficult and stressful at home and you’re feeling bad about yourself as a provider ... it’s easier to be attracted to someone else and be vulnerable to someone’s charms. You’re not going to talk to your affair partner about how you’re going to pay the bills, you’re going to talk about all the wonderful stuff that’s going on between the two of you.”
Yet many couples are motivated to make their marriages work, says social worker Deborah Eckert. One reason: “People are realizing that it’s more expensive to break up a family than it is to stay together.”
When a Jewish boy turns 13, he heads to a temple for a deeply meaningful rite of passage, his bar mitzvah. When a Catholic girl reaches about the same age, she stands in front of the local bishop, who touches her forehead with holy oil as she is confirmed into a 2,000-year-old faith tradition. But missing in each of those cases — and in countless others of equal religious importance — is any role for government. There is no baptism certificate issued by the local courthouse and no federal tax benefit attached to the confessional booth, the into-the-water-and-out born-again ceremony or any of the other sacraments that believers hold sacred.
Only marriage gets that treatment, and it's a tradition that some legal scholars have been arguing should be abandoned. In a paper published March 2 in the San Francisco Chronicle, two law professors from Pepperdine University issued a call to re-examine the role the government plays in marriage. The authors — one of whom voted for and one against Proposition 8, which ended gay marriage in California — say the best way out of the intractable legal wars over gay marriage is to take marriage out of the hands of the government altogether.
Instead, give gay and straight couples alike the same license, a certificate confirming them as a family, and call it a civil union — anything, really, other than marriage. For people who feel the word marriage is important, the next stop after the courthouse could be the church, where they could bless their union with all the religious ceremony they wanted. Religions would lose nothing of their role in sanctioning the kinds of unions that they find in keeping with their tenets. And for nonbelievers and those who find the word marriage less important, the civil-union license issued by the state would be all they needed to unlock the benefits reserved in most states and in federal law for married couples.
"While new terminology for all may at first seem awkward — mostly in greeting-card shops — [it] dovetails with the court's important responsibility to reaffirm the unfettered freedom of all faiths to extend the nomenclature of marriage as their traditions allow," wrote Douglas W. Kmiec and Shelley Ross Saxer. Kmiec voted for Prop 8 because of his belief in the teachings of the Catholic Church and his notion of religious liberty but has since said he thinks the courts should not allow one group of Californians to marry while denying the privilege to others.
Their idea got a big boost three days later, during the March 5 oral arguments before the California Supreme Court, which is expected to issue a ruling soon in the case brought by gay couples and others who argue the constitutional amendment passed by voters last fall should be invalidated. Justice Ming Chin asked attorneys for each side whether the idea would solve the legal issues connected to gay marriage — issues that at their core revolve around the question of whether allowing some couples to marry but not others violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law.
Both sets of lawyers agreed that the idea would resolve the equal-protection issue. Take the state out of the marriage business and then both kinds of couples — straight and gay — would be treated the same. Even Ken Starr, the Pepperdine law dean and former Whitewater independent counsel who argued in favor of Prop 8, agreed that the idea would solve the legal issues, though he said it was a solution that lies outside the legal authority of the court. An attorney for the other side, Michael Maroko, didn't expressly endorse the idea, but he told Chin, "If you're in the marriage business, do it equally. And if you're not going to do it equally, get out of the business."
The two Pepperdine professors are arguing that the court should use that line of thinking in crafting its decision in the case before it, short-circuiting the need for a new referendum. Their proposal is aimed at helping speed a resolution on the issue in other states — gay marriage is heating up in Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont and elsewhere — and at the federal level. All sides on the debate expect the issues bubbling up out of the state courts and legislatures to eventually gain traction in federal courts too, ultimately leading to a case before the Supreme Court or efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or both.
But as Solomonic as the compromise seems, giving up the word marriage may be impossible. For many couples joined in matrimony, having the state no longer call them married may make them feel as if something important had been taken away — even if it's hard to define just what was lost. And for many others — the folks who feel most strongly about marriage and most passionately supported the expensive campaign to defeat gay marriage — the issue of nomenclature is only the beginning. They are against not just gay marriage but also gay couples — and especially against government sanctioning of those relationships, no matter what they are called.
And as Chin considers whether he can craft a compromise with his fellow justices that would both uphold Prop 8 — and therefore the right of the people to amend the state constitution — and assert the right of gay people to be treated equally, he may find that the folks who cling hardest to marriage are gay couples. After all, what was the most sweeping part of the May 2008 decision Ming and his colleagues issued that granted gays the right to marry? It was the idea that the word marriage is so strong that denying it to gay couples violates the most sacred right enshrined in the state constitution: the right for all people to be treated with dignity and fairness. Just 10 months later, gay couples — whether or not they are among the 18,000 who married in the state before Prop 8 stopped the ceremonies — are loath to lose a word for which so many fought so hard and so long to have apply to themselves.
But the Pepperdine idea puts into a play a new way of thinking — and whether it's part of the court's decision in the Prop 8 case or whether it makes its way into a new referendum, the idea of getting governments out of the marriage business offers a creative way of thinking about a problem that is otherwise likely to be around for a long, long time.
Here's a conversation starter: Nearly half of the 200 Boston teenagers interviewed for an informal poll said pop star Rihanna was responsible for the beating she allegedly took at the hands of her boyfriend, fellow music star Chris Brown, in February.
Of those questioned, ages 12 to 19, 71 percent said that arguing was a normal part of a relationship; 44 percent said fighting was a routine occurrence.
The results of the survey, conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission across the city and equally among boys and girls, are startling for local health workers who see a generation of youths who seem to have grown accustomed, even insensitive, to domestic violence.
"I think you'd have to be pretty jaded if you weren't startled by it," said Casey Corcoran, director of the health commission's new Start Strong program.
The program began in the fall as part of a Start Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationships Initiative, a private foundation program that was offered in 11 cities across the country. Corcoran said the four-year, $1 million competitive grant program will allow the city to train mentors and outreach workers to speak to 11- to 14-year-olds about the dangers of domestic violence.
Corcoran said the Rihanna and Brown controversy, which is one of today's top entertainment news stories and a topic of conversation for young people, allows for teachers and parents to begin conversations about the dangers, and prevalence, of domestic violence.
"This is something tough for parents to bring up, but this is a very big case regarding domestic violence," said Corcoran, pointing out that Oprah Winfrey devoted her television show yesterday to teen dating violence and featured the Start Strong initiative.
"This is an opportunity to start those conversations; it shouldn't end with a survey," Corcoran said.
The Brown-Rihanna incident has created much controversy, mostly because of Rihanna's reported continuance of her relationship with Brown after alleged past assaults. The case has been pointed to by advocate groups for domestic violence victims as an example of the challenges victims face in confronting domestic violence.
Health counselors are specifically concerned with teenagers' views of the controversy. Of the teens questioned, more than half said both Brown, 19, and Rihanna, 21, were equally responsible for the assault. More than half said the media were treating Brown unfairly, and 46 percent said Rihanna was responsible for the incident.
Local teenagers from the Hyde Square Task Force in Boston said they found the case, and the survey, troubling, adding that the pop stars are supposed to serve as role models. But unfortunately, they are seeing such violence too often.
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