Fun_People Archive
24 Nov
Weirdness [506] - 17Oct97

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 97 13:05:37 -0800
To: Fun_People
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Subject: Weirdness [506] - 17Oct97

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.506 (News of the Weird, October 17, 1997)
		by Chuck Shepherd

* In May, at a National Organization for Women's gathering in Utah,
Elizabeth Joseph, an attorney, and Ellen George, secretary of the NOW Utah
office, praised multi-wife polygamy as an alternative for feminists, an idea
that was a few years ago denounced by NOW as slavery.  Joseph lives
informally in such an arrangement with her husband, six co-wives, and 20
children; some wives stay home, and others work.  Said George, "We fight
for lesbian families and single-parent families.  I don't know why we
wouldn't support this."

* In a study released in September and using United Nations statistics,
University of Pennsylvania professor Richard J. Estes concluded that the U.
S. enjoys only the 27th most favorable social conditions among 160 nations
of the world, ranking behind such paradises as Bulgaria.  According to
Estes, the social situation in Bulgaria is "miserable," but the country
responds to basic human needs (literacy, basic health care, housing,
retirement income) better than the U. S.

* In August, Scott and Sonya Rutherford filed a $40,000 lawsuit against a
Houston, Tex., school district because the baseball coaches at Cypress Falls
High School failed to use their son enough as a pitcher to give him a chance
at a college athletic scholarship.  The Rutherfords say, also, that they
have been humiliated around town by the coaches' failure to play their son.
According to the Rutherfords' lawyer, the coaches' decision violates the U.S.
constitution.

* In May, Kent, Wash., elementary school teacher Mary Kay LeTourneau, 35,
gave birth to a baby girl, the father of whom is one of her sixth-graders.
LeTourneau is the daughter of ex-U.S.  Rep. John Schmitz, an intense
right-wing Republican who was so notoriously opposed to sex education in
schools that he would move little Mary out of any school contemplating such
a program.  In August, she pleaded guilty to child rape.

	Copyright 1997 by Universal Press Syndicate.

© 1997 Peter Langston