Ahhh, xtian charity.
This little smidget was the latest release:
The consequences of marriage are reflected in the fact that children in average, intact, married families are more likely to thrive(2) than children in average single and step-parent families, or families headed by cohabiting couples. In fact communities where “good-enough” marriages are common have better outcomes for children, women, and men than do communities marked by high rates of divorce(3), unmarried childbearing, cohabitation(4), and high-conflict or violent marriages. Moreover, these benefits derived from a strong marriage culture extend across lines of race, ethnicity, and class. Marriage, it seems, has important positive biosocial consequences for both adults and children(5).
Let us explore just one glaring idiocy, correlation and causality. Perhaps it may be easier to be married, have teh 'traditional' life, IF YOU"RE NOT SO DAMNABLY STRESSED TRYING TO SURVIVE EACH DAY. Education! Jobs! Nutrition! A safe bed at night!
Whoops, sorry, the paleosocialist leapt out there for a moment, let me cure him.
"I got mine fuck you. I got mine fuck you. I got mine fuck you. I got mine fuck you. I got mine fuck you. I got mine fuck you. I got mine fuck you. I got mine fuck you. I got mine fuck you."
Better now.
John Helmberger from Minnesotans United In Peeing Themselves followed shortly with a letter about the dreadful consequences of same-sex marriage in Canada.
Shorter:
Gay Canadians are getting married and being treated with basic human respect, and an archbishop had his fee-fees hurt.
If'n you want, take a look at the whole bloody stupid Cassandra thingy after the jump. Ya gots yer $16 words (inflation), quotes from unknown philosophers and such, and I'll be damned if I can find a single argument against gay marriage (not that I've been able to yet.) This is a giant pile of cherry-picked statistics, mixed correlation and causality, and the writer either needs to get on drugs, change drugs, or get off drugs. Pick one, Slappy, lemme know how it goes, as I'm sure you will.
Marriage is virtually a universal human institution. It is more than just a private emotional relationship (cohabitation is not the functional equivalent of marriage), it is also a social good(1).
This is not to claim that marriage is a panacea that will solve all of our social problems. Or even that every person can or should marry. But marriage matters. And the institutional strength of marriage in our society has clear consequences for children, adults, and the communities in which they live.
The consequences of marriage are reflected in the fact that children in average, intact, married families are more likely to thrive(2) than children in average single and step-parent families, or families headed by cohabiting couples. In fact communities where “good-enough” marriages are common have better outcomes for children, women, and men than do communities marked by high rates of divorce(3), unmarried childbearing, cohabitation(4), and high-conflict or violent marriages. Moreover, these benefits derived from a strong marriage culture extend across lines of race, ethnicity, and class. Marriage, it seems, has important positive biosocial consequences for both adults and children(5).
Despite the net positive results of marriage there is a growing marriage gap between Americans, which is both a cause and effect of the prosperity gap amongst us. Reality is that the better educated and more affluent are having more stable and high-quality marriages while the less-educated and less affluent are experiencing less marriage and lower-quality ones. Thus, those less prepared and committed to success are also growing more distant from marriage, which is an institution and practice that has historically provided purpose, meaning, incentive, responsibility, aid and a sense of solidarity to the lives of countless men, women and children.
The point then is that social policies concerned about issues as varied as poverty, crime, child well-being, rising economic inequality, and the fiscal concerns of the welfare state, would do well to recognize that our nation’s retreat from marriage is closely connected to the increase of in all the negative aspects of these matters. Enacting policies that would strengthen marriage would do much to strengthen family stability. That in turn would contribute to the development and maintenance of healthy free and open societies(6). This is particularly true in minority and low-income communities that have been particularly and negatively affected by the retreat from marriage.
“In practice the resolution will be long, difficult and uneven. Intellectually, the resolution requires nothing more than a shift in our habit of mind and discourse.”---Stephanie Quinn Katz
“To ignore the crisis, or to play the victim, will surely cast us into oblivion all the more swiftly.”---John Heath
1. Sociologist Paul Amato has done work to estimate the effects of the decline of marriage. To quantify the impact he chose to return marriage rates for households with children to the level they were in 1980. This is what he found: Increasing marital stability to the same level as in 1980 would result in a decline of nearly one-half million children suspended from school, in two hundred thousand fewer children engaging in delinquency or violence, in a quarter of a million fewer children receiving therapy, in a quarter of a million fewer smokers, in 80,000 fewer children thinking about suicide, and 28,000 fewer children attempting suicide.
2. Some of the benefits to children of marriage include increases in the likelihood that they have high-quality relationships with their fathers, mothers and other adults; in the likelihood to enjoy family stability (when they are born into a married family); that they are less likely to themselves experience divorce or become unwed parents; are less likely to experience poverty (cohabitation is less likely to alleviate poverty than is marriage); and if they live with their own married parents they will enjoy better physical health, have lower rates of psychological distress, mental illness, child abuse and have a lower risk of infant mortality.
3. Parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase children's risk of school failure, reduces the likelihood that they will graduate from college or achieve high-status jobs; in addition family breakdown appears to increase significantly the risk of suicide and boys raised in non-intact families are more likely to engage in delinquent and criminal behavior.
4. Cohabitation is associated with higher levels of psychological problems among children. Conversely, married women have lower rates of depression than do single or cohabiting mothers.
5. Marriage is associated with: couples building more wealth on average; reducing poverty and material hardship for women and their children; men earning more money (with similar education and job histories); reduced rates of alcohol and substance abuse for both adults and teens; people (especially men) having longer life expectancies, better health and lower rates of injury, illness, and disability; reduced risk that adults will be either perpetrators or victims of crime---women appear to have a lower risk of experiencing domestic violence than do cohabiting or dating women.
6. Fr James V. Schall points out that: “We cannot be forced to be free or virtuous.” And Monica Migliorino Miller clarifies that: “The law cannot create the moral responsibilities that come from human bonds, it can only call persons to live up to them.” But, as the New Oxford Review points out: “Law itself is a moral teacher (if it’s enforced), and law itself will change hearts…the historical record suggests that works.” So, as Mrs. Clinton said: “Progress comes from changes in laws… [and]Laws have teaching effect…It is often the case that laws must change before fears about change dissipate.
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