A new study by the Family Research Council has found that only 46 percent of children in the United States will reach the age of 17 living in intact homes with married biological parents.

The teen birth rate reached a historic low in 2010, and while abstinence proponents say the drop is encouraging, they note another CDC report that shows climbing rates of sexually transmitted disease among young people.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee overwhelming approved a bill that would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law that defines marriage for federal purposes as only between a man and a woman. The 10-8 vote in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act, sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif., left), marks the first time a committee in either the Senate or the House has voted to repeal the 17-year-old law, and represents a major step toward federal approval of homosexual marriage.

A lawsuit filed by the state of Massachusetts seeking to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as only between a man and a woman, has received the support of a legal brief filed by scores of major corporations. According to LifeSite News, nearly 70 companies signed on to the friend-of-the-court brief filed in Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The companies include Microsoft, Starbucks, Google, NIKE, Levi Strauss and Co., CBS, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mass., Time Warner Cable, and Xerox. Also adding their influence to the brief, reported Keen News Service, a website focusing on homosexual issues, were nearly a dozen national law firms, seven trade and professional organizations, and the cities of New York and Boston.

Pro-life counselors on location at a Milwaukee area abortion clinic said they witnessed as a young girl was forced by a guardian and a clinic employee into the facility after the girl asked the counselors for help. As reported by LifeSite News, sidewalk counselor Tobey Neuberger “said the incident occurred just before 10 a.m. outside Affiliated Medical Services [located at 1428 N. Farwell Avenue, Milwaukee], where she and two other female pro-life counselors gave a ‘very young’ African-American girl literature as she entered the clinic, and told her that she could get more information at a pro-life center across the street.”

According to witnesses the girl appeared to be somewhere between 11 and 14 years of age.

In an apparent effort to raise ratings on his obscure nightly TBS talk show, displaced comedian Conan O’Brien officiated November 4 at a same-sex wedding ceremony between O’Brien’s costume designer, Scott Cronick, and Cronick’s homosexual partner David Gorshein. The “wedding,” which was televised live at the end of a week of shows taped in New York City, had family members of both men crowded onstage to witness the supposedly Jewish-style ceremony.

Demographic “experts” have said that the Earth now has 7 billion inhabitants, or soon will have, and population control groups are using the news as a pretext to warn of the need to check the population’s supposedly runaway growth. “Demographers at the United Nations Population Division set Oct. 31, 2011, as the ‘symbolic’ date for hitting 7 billion, while acknowledging that it’s impossible to know for sure the specific time or day,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “Using slightly different calculations, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the 7-billion threshold will not be reached until March.” The Times added that, whatever the differences in their methodology, “demographers agree that humanity remains on a steep growth curve, which is likely to keep climbing through the rest of this century.”

A candy wholesaler is targeting kids with a new product line: lollipops, gummy sours, and ring pops shaped like marijuana leaves. While the manufacturer says the candy, aptly named Potheads, is selling well so far, the trend has some community leaders upset.

Bobby Montoya, a seven-year-old boy living with his mother in Denver, wants to join the Girl Scouts, and the group’s Colorado headquarters says that’s okay. As reported by ABC News, a Girl Scout official originally told Felisha Archuleta that her son could not join a local Girl Scout troop, but, sensing a public relations nightmare, the group quickly changed its mind.

Joseph Maraachli, the baby whose parents fought doctors and a Canadian court in order to secure surgery to extend their son's life, has died. The 20-month-old infant, who suffered from a rare and deadly medical condition, passed away September 27, nearly eight months after Canadian doctors decided to remove him from life support rather than perform a surgery that would extend his life, calling it medically unnecessary. His parents fought the doctors’ decision, as well as a Canadian court, eventually taking Joseph to the U.S. for the procedure that would give him several more months with his family.