As part of an interesting exchange with Deroy Murdock, who wonders why social conservatives fuss so much more about gay marriage than about websites that openly facilitate adultery, Maggie Gallagher sez:
...in the last five years, unmarried childearing has resumed its inexorable rise. 38 percent of all babies are born out of wedlock, which implies probably more than half of women who become mothers for the first time do so while not married. Is it mere coincidence that this resurgence in illegitimacy happened during the five years in which gay marriage has become (not thanks to me or my choice) the most prominent marriage issue in America - and the one marriage idea endorsed by the tastemakers to the young in particular?
From the National Marriage Project's latest (February 2009) "State of Our Unions" report, here's the trend in out-of-wedlock childbearing, 1960-2006.
Can you spot the effect of same-sex marriage?
Incidentally, "State of Our Unions" is an invaluable annual publication, which deserves more attention. If you look through the charts linked above, you'll find a mixed picture where the health of marriage is concerned. One trend, however, stands out as really dramatic since 2000, and that's the huge rise in heterosexual cohabitation.
As Figure 13 shows, the number of unmarried cohabiting opposite-sex couples living with one or more children has increased 60 percent since 2000 (!). Also up, though only mildly, is the percentage of high-school seniors saying that having a child without being married is "experimenting with a worthwhile lifestyle or not affecting anyone else" (Figure 17).
The two best ways I can think of to encourage cohabitation's emergence as the cultural equal of marriage are to (1) tarnish marriage as discriminatory in the minds of the young, which is what excluding gay couples from marriage is doing, and (2) turn same-sex couples who have kids into walking advertisements for out-of-wedlock parenthood, which is what excluding gay parents from marriage is doing.
More... A foretaste of what will happen if marriage is defined as that form of union which excludes gays: in California, two college students are launching an initiative effort to end marriage discrimination by ending civil marriage, replacing it with civil partnerships for all couples.
Corvino, John
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Giving people due credit is NOT making them a saint.
Oh, I gave them due credit, Rosendall; I gave them credit in full for supporting and endorsing a pedophile organization for well over a decade, only to ditch it, not because of any concern over pedophilia, but because it cost them UN consultative status.
Certainly you would support and endorse that; after all, you joined them knowing full well that NAMBLA was a member and that ILGA had already signed a resolution specifically condemning age-of-consent laws in 1985.
It’s disgusting that an honest disagreement over how to reach a shared goal results in such vilification of someone who (for all his faults) has done more than most on behalf of the cause.
Actually, it’s roughly akin to training your dog to viciously attack people, then screaming for sympathy when you get bitten.
Given that Barney Fag fully encouraged and funded the witch hunts against and harassment of gay Republicans that the Obama Party carried out via HRC, the Gill-funded LCR, Mike Rogers, John Aravosis, and other DC organizations, he deserves every bit of abuse he’s gotten. He built Frankenstein’s monster, and it’s his own fault that it’s attacking him .
ND30 wrote, “Certainly you would support and endorse that; after all, you joined them knowing full well that NAMBLA was a member and that ILGA had already signed a resolution specifically condemning age-of-consent laws in 1985.”
Actually, I knew nothing about that. Why are you such a presumptuous ass? (Rhetorical question.) Maybe I should have known it, but my education on that came in 1993 when I attended my first ILGA world conference, in Barcelona. And by that time, discussions on expelling the pedophile groups were already underway. I participated rather aggressively in the debate on expulsion at the 1994 world conference in NYC, and in the run-up to that conference. If I had not done so, and the record of my doing so were not out there (and which does not change on the basis of your sneering misrepresentations), then maybe your guilt-by-association would be more plausible.
“Given that Barney Fag fully encouraged and funded the witch hunts against and harassment of gay Republicans that the Obama Party carried out via HRC, the Gill-funded LCR, Mike Rogers, John Aravosis, and other DC organizations, he deserves every bit of abuse he’s gotten. He built Frankenstein’s monster, and it’s his own fault that it’s attacking him .”
Barney has certainly had an obsession over the years about Log Cabin, an opinion I did not share (considering I have worked quite amicably with them and even wrote several articles for their centrist think tank). But he has also been critical of HRC (maybe not as loudly, but I and they certainly heard it). Anyway, he can take care of himself, but the attacks against him over ENDA are misguided even if he deserves attacks because of his own partisanship.
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