Gut Check Time for Men Legally Married to Men

Many same-sex marriages legally started in June 2015 or in the few years before.

In states like California, the spouse who earns more get tagged with ongoing support payments when the legal marriage ends. For every two days married, it's another day of payments. But at ten years of being legally married, you can be compelled to make payments for the rest of your life.

As of this writing, it is January 2022. [Bumped this up.]

California started giving contracts to to same-sex couples, uninterrupted, in June 2013. Some of you are rapidly approaching that ten-year mark, and some of you still have over three years until you get there.

Either way, if you're not absolutely certain that both you and your spouse want to keep this legal contract intact for the rest of your lives, you need to figure out what you're going to do.

Don't end up like so many heterosexual men, who are making never-ending payments to someone who hates their guts.

Or, use your proven lobbying power to change marriage and family law for the better.

UPDATE: How many of you have already bailed out? Don't let family law screw you over even more! Get out if you need to.

Reviewing Deep Dive

Three episodes in, my predictions here about "Dr. Laura's Deep Dive" podcast are turning out to be correct.

The free weekly podcast is between 30 and 40 minutes, and supported by advertisements at the start, end, and with breaks inside of the episode, too.

Dr. Laura pontificates on a topic she often addresses on her "live" program that airs on SiriusXM and is available as a podcast through payments on her website. She supports her points with rereading letters and replaying calls that have been on her program.

Episode 1: What Dr. Laura considers bad parenting is the reason for most of what Dr. Laura considers today's problems. Specifically, parents paying or things, like cars and phones, for their older kids rather than making the kids earn those things themselves.

Episode 2: Dr. Laura has saved children and encouraged her callers and listeners to save children, ranging from saving them from being aborted to saving them from being in stepfamily homes.

Episode 3: Essentially the answer to "What about The Proper Care and Feeding of Wives?" It's a basic overview on how to be a good husband, according to Dr. Laura.

If your time is limited, here's the bottom line:

If you regularly listen to her "live" program, either on SiriusXM or via podcast, there's no need to listen to "Deep Dive." If you want Dr. Laura's point of view about life and you really don't care about "live" calls and/or don't want to pay for the podcast or SiriusXM, "Deep Dive" might be enough for you.

Dr. Laura Is Debuting a New Podcast

After dropping one "live" program a week (usually Fridays), Dr. Laura is debuting a new podcast, "Deep Dive."

As I write this, I haven't heard it as it is scheduled to debut tomorrow. When she announced this, I expected it to be new content, as opposed to her main podcast, which is her "live" program of that day (usually... sometimes it is a past program) posted with the breaks removed, and her popular "Call of the Day" podcast, which features one call from her program. However, upon thinking about it more, I would not be surprised if at least some of the episodes will be monologues she did during her program.

But even if it is all new, the question becomes "Why drop down from five to four live programs per week, only to end up doing a new podcast?"

There are many possible reasons.

The live program relies heavily on phone callers, and that is becoming a problem for many programs as fewer people are willing to make actual phone calls. A podcast doesn't need any callers. The live program, if done live for all three hours, requires at least three hours of work, whereas a podcast can be much shorter, even something like 15 or 20 minutes, and even if Dr. Laura does research for an episode, the total time can be much less than three hours. But she doesn't necessarily need to read or watch anything new. She can speak well on a topic for 20 minutes easily. By her own statements, she doesn't argue or debate. So with a podcast, she can speak her mind about a topic and her call screeners won't have to deal with anyone wanting to argue (although some might people might try to call the live program to argue after hearing the Deep Dive podcast).

My guess is the podcast will be much like the monologues she does on her her live programs, and whenever she says "I want to talk about the last call some more" and goes on for ten minutes. For example, she's almost certainly going to talk about why she advises against daycare, casual sex, living together without a state marriage license, and marrying when you have minor children with someone else. There will be lectures on how to have a good life after a bad childhood. Things like that.

We'll see.

Listeners should definitely expect advertisements, since the podcast is being offered for free. There will probably be ads/mentions of sponsors at the start and end of the podcast as well as in the middle of it.

The podcast will certainly be used to try to get people to listen to her main program, which they can do by paying for SiriusXM or the podcast of that program (through her website). The frustrating thing about that for many people will be their desire to argue about something said on Deep Dive, but not being able to do so because it won't be allowed on the live program. The best they can do is either blog (like me) or post their responses on social media, email Dr. Laura, or call up the live program with a request for "clarification" and then sneak in their argument as part of their question. But with that last method, Dr. Laura will hang up on them and talk about five minutes asserting that "all the research" supports her position.