One of the barriers to communication between those who favor marriage equality and those who don’t is the whole issue of sterile heterosexual couples. Opponents of same-sex marriage (SSM) explain over and over that there is one and only one legitimate justification for marriage, and that’s providing the best possible environment for rearing children. Which is to say, a woman and a man.

Just to show I’m not making this up, here’s a couple of representative quotes. First, one from a liberal, Susan “gay marriage is like a funeral for the living” Shell:

Or as conservative columnist Eve “gays can’t marry because in the books I like men are men and women are women” Tushnet puts it:

Okay, I think I get it. So what we have is the Platonic Ideal environment for kids, which look something like this:

To decide which infertile couples are allowed to get married, what we have to do is see which of them more resembles the Ideal you see above. So consider these two couples.

and

Now, most folks who favor same-sex marriage tend to be suspicious of this whole approach to deciding marriage rights. But when they go along with it for the sake of argument, they generally think “well, two gay parents and a child is more like two bio-parents and a child than it is like a childless couple.” In visual terms, people who want marriage equality see this:

This shows just how immature and selfish pro-SSM people are. They’re clearly thinking only of themselves and are utterly ignoring the children. This is the COUPLE-CENTERED VIEW.

In contrast, people who are against same-sex marriage look at it this way:

See how focused on children this view is? Totally unlike those selfish, “pleasure for adults is the only thing that matters” people who favor same-sex-marriage, this view focuses on what really matters. That’s why this is called the CHILD-CENTERED VIEW.

Gosh, I’m glad that’s been all cleared up.

In a recent article in the NRO and carried at MD.com, Joshua Livestro give us his spin on the effect of SSM on marriage in the Netherlands. Suggesting we re-read two articles by Dr. Stanley Kurtz, Mr. Livestro provides a tiny new snippet of data. He tells us the marriage rate in the Netherlands has dropped, and suggests this is due to SSM.

It is worth examining this tiny nugget of data, and seeing whether or not it seems to support Mr. Livestro’s claim. I must warn the reader: It does not.

Let us begin with Mr. Livestro’s claim:

Yes. The marriage rate declined in the Netherlands over the last decade. However, it is very odd to suggest this is somehow caused by the campaign for same sex marriage. The figure below shows the marriage rate in the Netherlands, the European average^[1] and the average for Scandinavia.^[2]

Figure: Click to see slightly larger.

The marriage rate in the Netherlands closely matched the European average in 1991; it still does. Arguably, no country in Europe tracks the average more closely than the Netherlands. Many attribute the decrease in the European marriage rate, in part, to the aging population in Europe; it is plausible the aging Dutch population also has some effect. It boggles the mind that anyone would attribute the Dutch drop to legalized SSM.

However, Mr. Livestro prefers to suggest this:

On my graph, I noted two key events in the campaign for SSM in the Netherlands. At least to my eyes, the drop does not appear particularly connected to the legalization of either Registered Partnerships or Same Sex Marriage.^[3]

I guess Mr. Livestro can attribute this decrease to whatever he likes; I think it’s a coincidence. The campaign for same sex marriage in the Netherlands occurred just as the marriage rate was dropping all over Europe. The mailman delivered my mail just as the garbage man picked up my garbage. Unless I see evidence to connect the two things, one doesn’t seem to have much to do with the other.

Nevertheless, let us examine an intriguing possibility that Mr. Livestro attributes to Andrew Sullivan.

As those who have been read Stanley Kurtz’s various articles know, SSM, and “de facto” same sex marriage exist in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Interestingly, if we examine the average for Scandinavia, we see a slight rise in the marriage rate in those countries. Since this rise is totally at variance with the erosion we seen in the rest of Europe, it supports Andrew Sullivan’s premise that the campaign for SSM could strengthen the institution under the threat of countercultural erosion.

It’s rather interesting to go further. Examining the balance of the evidence, we see mounting support for Andrew Sullivan’s view:

• In Europe, the non-marital birth rate has risen less in Scandinavian countries with legal or de-facto SSM than in countries that without SSM. This comparison includes the Netherlands where the rise in illegitimacy hardly breaks out of the European mold. See “Tired”
• In Europe, the marriage rate has risen slightly in Scandinavian countries with legal SSM or defacto SSM. See figure above.
• In the US, the rate of increase in the non-marital birth ratio decelerated soon after the campaign for SSM went national. See “Reemergence of Marriage”. At a minimum, the campaign for SSM didn’t cause unmarried American women to rush out and get pregnant; in fact, it would appear many refrained!
• In the Netherlands, notwithstanding Mr. Livestro’s laments, the marriage rate has declined at the average rate for the rest of Europe. See figure above. So, SSM seems to have caused no harm.

So, based on fuller examination of the data than provided by either Dr. Kurtz or Mr. Livestro, SSM tends to benefit the institution of marriage. Sure, maybe it’s just a coincidence that the same sex marriage movement in Scandinavia and the US coincides with the improvements in the institution of marriage. As Mr. Livestro might say ( if he liked the data), “Maybe– but it would be an awfully big coincidence.”

Or maybe, Andrew Sullivan is right. If we legalize SSM, we will see marriage strengthened!⁴
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Some feminists have been advocating for Bridget Marks, who recently lost custody of her 4-year-old twin daughters.

I don’t know if Parental Alienation Syndrome is abused nationwide - it might be, and that would be horrible. I certainly don’t think anyone should lose custody of their children merely for making a charge of sexual abuse they cannot prove (just because it can’t be proven doesn’t establish that it isn’t true).

However, in Bridget Marks’ case, two court-appointed experts concluded that Ms. Marks had coached her children to falsely accuse their father of child abuse. The judge accepted that evidence. (The judge’s order is here, in pdf form - skip to page five). Assuming the experts are correct, then Ms. Marks is a child abuser (coaching children to lie about being abused by a parent is child abuse, in my view). Child abusers should lose custody - even in cases where the other parent isn’t perfect.

(Link to judge’s order via Glenn Sacks.)

Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, you can’t pee standing up. This may work in a state of nature, but not in a state with urinals and toilets. It doesn’t take that much longer to sit down, so please stop trying to pee on your feet because you only end up doing just that.

Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled statistical analysis.

Thank you all for voting on “Cause and Effect”. Despite my valiant efforts, which paralleled Dr. Stanley Kurtz’s valiant efforts, it would seem that few “Alas” readers believe either one of us. Only 1 in 8 believe that SSM can cause changes in the non-marital birth ratio and these changes can be seen in the data. (Who’d have thought?)

Here are the final results:

Despite being trounced, I pledge this:

Despite this pledge, Alas readers may be spared the burden of reminding me that correlation does not mean cause and effect. Eve Tushnet, who is sick of hearing correlation doesn’t mean causation may also be spared. (See “Tired”)

Here’s why we may all be spared:

Dr. Kurtz seems to have ended his quest to waste all available ink penning articles in which he presents cherry picked data in an attempt to show that Same Sex Marriage has killed marriage in Scandinavia. Starting on Feb. 2, 2004, he published almost one a week at The NRO ; additional articles were published at The Weekly Standard. His last article on this topic appeared only a few days after I published mine showing “The American Data”.^[4]
Cause and Effect? Summer vacation? You decide!^[5]
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I didn’t have time this weekend to write the second part of A Portrait of My Father as an Old Man so you’ll have to wait awhile to read it. I’ll try to post it later this week, but most likely you’ll have to wait until next weekend.

Until then, happy swimming.

In a previous post, I criticized Tom’s comments about sociologist Scott Coltrane. Tom explains that his comment was tongue-in-cheek. So I misinterpreted Tom’s statement; sorry about that, Tom.

Tom also refered to an article by Scott Coltrane, which he said proved Coltrane’s foolishness. Having read Coltraine’s article, it may be true, as Tom said, that Coltrane misrepresents the culture of the National Fatherhood Initiative. Since Tom used to work for NFI, I’ll take his word on that. Nonetheless, Coltraine’s strongest critique of the fatherhood and marriage movements rings true to me:

Jason at Positive Liberty begs to differ with a group of linguists who have declared that the yiddish word shlimazl is the second-hardest word in the world to translate. (The hardest word is ilunga, from the Congo, meaning “a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.”)

Anyhow, Jason writes:

Say what? A ne’er-do-well is someone who’s lazy, not someone who’s chronically luckless. And a jinx is someone who spreads bad luck to those who work with him - not the same thing as being unlucky himself (or herself).

In short, neither word Jason suggests is an adequate translation of Shlimazl. Score one for the linguists, I guess.

There have been three relevant posts on Family Scholars Blog since my semi-critique of Brad Wilcox’s research. (I say “semi-critique” because I haven’t actually read Dr. Wilcox’s book, so I’ve been relying mainly on the press release and press reports). First, a comment by Tom Sylvester, directly responding to my post. Second, a link to an interesting interview with Dr. Wilcox. Finally, a comment from Dr. Wilcox himself (dammit, why I don’t I ever get comments from well-known scholars?).

I’m combining most of my responses to those three posts into a single post. (For those “Alas” readers who aren’t so interested in social science issues, save this post for later reading when you need a sleep-aid.)

Tom Sylvester writes:

I can see Tom’s point, and to a certain extent I agree. Since perfect data is never available, it makes pragmatic sense to tease out the best conclusions we can from the best imperfect data available.

However, in this case, there is much better data on intimate violence available. Before leaping to conclusions, I’d suggest advocating for a new study combining good methodology for measuring intimate violence with questions about religion.

Regarding underreporting, Dr. Wilcox writes that “I’m not convinced that abusive evangelical husbands would have been more manipulative than abusive non-evangelical husbands.” I’m not convinced of it either, but I think the possibility that evangelical wives may be more likely to underreport must be seriously considered. I see several possible reasons evangelicals may be less likely to report abuse:

1. Evangelical wives may be more ashamed of having a dysfunctional or imperfect marriage than other wives (given the evangelical emphasis on marriage as a sign of moral worth and failed marriages as moral failures, such a difference would not be surprising). If such a bias exists, it would be consistent with Dr. Wilcox’s finding that evangelical wives report a higher level of satisfaction with their marriage, since evangelical culture would also encourage reporting high satisfaction within marriage.

2. Abused evangelical wives may be more closely supervised by their husbands than non-evangelical wives, leaving them less free to answer a survey honestly (this would be consistent with evangelical “husband’s headship of the family” ideology).
3. Evangelicals may be more suspicious of academic research than other groups (due to frequent evangelical criticism of academic research as left-wing-biased and anti-family), making them less likely to report sensitive subjects like abuse.
4. Evangelical wives who are abused and therefore get divorced may be more likely to leave the evangelical community, due to negative attitidues towards divorcees in the evangelical community; and having left the community, won’t be included in samples of evangelicals.

Of course, I don’t know any of this for certain - but neither does Dr. Wilcox. Especially when using a survey instrument that will lead to underreporting, that evangelicals in particular could have stronger reasons to underreport is an important concern.

Furthermore, even if it is true that evangelical husbands who attend church every week are less likely to hit their wives, that still leaves the question of causation wide open. As I pointed out in my earlier post, Dr. Wilcox’s findings may simply reflect the fact that heavy drinkers are both less likely to attend church regularly (especially evangelical church) and more likely to beat their wives. (Dr. Wilcox’s study did attempt to control for alcohol abuse, but - from what I can tell, which may be mistaken, since I haven’t read his book - did so with an extremely dubious measure. See my previous post for a more detailed discussion of this issue.)

Another possibility, pointed out by Trish Wilson in comments, is that a lower rate of intimate violence may be caused by the wife’s frequent church attendance.

Supporting Trish’s theory, a study several years ago (I don’t have the reference offhand, but I can locate it if anyone needs me to) found that evangelical husbands who attend church every week were less likely to hit their wives than most men - except when their wives didn’t attend weekly. Trish’s interpretation accounts for that finding, but I don’t see how Dr. Wilcox’s interpretation could. (Of course, I haven’t read Dr. Wilcox’s book, so it’s possible he accounts for it fully, or refutes it statistically).

Trish’s theory is also supported by Dr. Wilcox’s finding that “the nominal evangelicals who don’t attend services with any regularity have the highest rates of domestic violence.”

And, of course, it’s also possible that Dr. Wilcox is completely right. Evangelicals who attend church every week are less likely to hit their wives, and the reason is that “active evangelical family men get lots of formal and informal messages about the family responsibilities that go with their ‘headship’; they are also encouraged to focus on the emotional sides of their marriages.”

My point is simply that - as far as I can tell, not having yet read Dr. Wilcox’s book - nothing in Dr. Wilcox’s research enables us to distinguish between these interpretations of his results. It’s possible that Dr. Wilcox’s findings on weekly evangelical church attendance and intimate violence are absolutely correct; but it’s also possible that they simply reflect some other cause, such as alcohol abuse or the protective effect of wives attending church regularly; or perhaps they simply reflect measurement error. Although Dr. Wilcox clearly prefers the “attending church regularly makes men less abusive” interpretation, that interpretation is no better supported by the data than the alternatives I’ve suggested.

(It’s also likely, by the way, that Dr. Wilcox is only measuring the relatively minor instances of intimate violence, in which case his research cannot be generalized into conclusions about the most severe cases. But to get into that would require a great deal more discussion of survey methodology than I think my readers have patience for. See my previous post on “battered husbands” for more discussion of methodology.)

* * *

It’s interesting (and agreeable to me, but that’s predictable!) that Dr. Wilcox gives some credit to feminism for improving the attitude of evangelical men: “I think it’s important to note that I think one of the reasons they do such a good job nowadays is that they take to heart the feminist concern that historically men have not done such a good job paying attention to the needs of their wives and children.”

* * *

In the interview, Dr. Wilcox says:

I think that’s quite likely true. Although I’m not evangelical, I’ve had many conservative evangelical friends (virtually all of whom attended church weekly), and my job at a church site brings me into regular contact with evangelical conservative church-goers. From my experience, the great majority of evangelical men are not patriarchal monsters, any more than the great majority of feminists are man-haters. On the contrary, I’ve met many evangelical men who struck me as exceptionally gentle and thoughtful.

However, I think the best we can hope for between feminists and evangelicals is some mutual respect; hoping for an end to the “culture war” is asking too much. There are many issues (abortion and homosexuality are just the two most obvious ones) in which even mutually respectful feminists and evangelicals will never be able to agree.

Furthermore, when looking at a particular culture (or sub-culture), the question isn’t just “how many men beat their wives.” From what I can tell, the large majority of men aren’t violent monsters, no matter what sub-culture or religious group one looks at. When it comes to looking at communities - at least for this feminist - we need to ask further questions. Questions like, “how easy does this community make it for a woman to say ‘he hit me and therefore I need a divorce’? Are such things considered shameful secrets that the victim should keep to herself? How quick will a community be to reject and scorn a man who does beat his wife? ”

Of course, I’m not saying that Dr. Wilcox’s research should or could have covered these questions; no study can cover everything. But when we discuss the general topic of domestic violence and the attititudes of the evangelical community - or any community - questions like that are on the feminist agenda.

(This was originally posted in November of 2002; this week’s post concerning methodology of collecting data on intimate violence reminded me of it.

It’s one of my better posts, in my opinion, but it probably hasn’t been read by many current “Alas” readers. So I thought it was worth reprinting.)

Anyone who watches the men’s rights movement has run across the claim that men are equal victims of domestic violence. I disagree, and as it happens I’ve done a little research on this over the years, so hopefully people won’t mind if I present some contrary evidence.

Forgive how long this post is (and it’s a monster!). Refuting untruths takes time, and I want to be thorough.
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At MarriageDebate.com, Eve Tushnet asks:

I am! I’m sick, sick and tired! Why can’t they just embrace the Scandinavian data?^[1]

(Click figure to see larger version.)

Page eight of Hereville is up. I’m running off to work. See ya later!

Now this is interesting. Evidently, same-sex marriage would result in only a small amount of savings for the federal government. But you know what they say, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money!”
From The Congressional Budget Office:

I can’t say this is the main advantage to legalizing SSM, and I’d still be for SSM if it cost us a bit. Still, it’s nice to see another perk.

• So I was reading a blog named Human Iterations, and it suddenly became clear that the author not only lives in the same city as me, he takes the exact same bus (14 going southeast). Which means that he and I have probably seen each other many times in real life.

  I know it’s not meaningful, I just find stuff like that weird.

• Quote: “Someone should make a movie about upper-middle-class women who, sick of being responsible for the house and the kids, decide to turn their husbands into robots who cheerfully do housework.”
• I’m way late linking to One Good Thing’s Alex, a Story in Three Parts. (That link goes to part one: ” Misdemeanor Drug Use”; once there, you can just scroll upwards for part two: “When Children Happen to Child Free People” and part three: “Old Skool Parenting, or, What the Hell Is Wrong With Your Child?”.)

  But if you haven’t read it, you really should. It’s just more proof that Flea is the best writer and storyteller in blogville; I’m positive her blog is going to be collected into a best-selling book someday.

• TAPPED reports on a new “white paper” from the National Association of Evangelicals. The white paper says that Evangelicals won’t go to hell if they vote for a Democrat, so I guess that’s good.
• “U.S. is Accused of Trying to Isolate U.N. Agency.” A New York Times article on how the Bush administration, not content with defunding the UN Population Fund because of disproven pro-life slander, is now trying to keep other NGOs from working with it. It’s this sort of thing that has convinced me to vote for Kerry rather than a third party candidate.
• This one project, alone, complete justifies the existence of the internet. The Oxford English Dictionary in Limerick Form. It does not get any cooler than this. I can’t wait until their project is completed - which, admittedly, may well several centuries from now. (They can freeze my head and then defrost it once the project is completed.)
• It’s not a final win, but the women suing Wal-Mart for sexual discrimination won an important judgment, allowing their suit (”the largest employee discrimination action ever”) to continue.
• Over on the Family Scholars Blog, Tom Sylvester replies to my post about evangelicals and intimate violence. I don’t have time to reply in detail now, but in general Tom seems to see the finding that evangelicals are good husbands as a black eye for feminism. I see the finding - if it’s true - as a possible sign that feminist criticism has been effective and improved the world. I’ll be responding in more detail later.

Atrios has posted a memo written by Republican pollster’and host of his own show on MSNBC’Frank Luntz detailing talking points for those wishing to convince Americans of the value of the War in Iraq. There are a few gems in there including, “No speech about homeland security or Iraq should begin without a reference to 9/11″ and:

But the following most caught my eye:

I may be misreading this, but it appears that Luntz is suggesting’and that Bush is actually saying’that the proof that the War in Iraq is connected to the “Wider War on Terror” lies in the fact that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are being attacked by persons using similar tactics to those deployed by terrorists.

Or, to put it another way: we’re being attacked by terrorists now that we’ve invaded Iraq, therefore the War in Iraq is part of the War on Terror.

This afternoon I finished reading Voltaire’s Candide, so when I read that little loop-de-loop of argumentation, I couldn’t help but be reminded of some of the things said by Voltaire’s rather optimistic hero.

After having killed a Jesuit priest’who happens to be the brother of his mistress, Cun’gonde’Candide flees into the forests of South America with his loyal companion, Cacambo. In order to facilitate their escape, Cacambo made Candide wear the robes of the slain Jesuit. In the forest, the pair are captured by a tribe of cannibals who want to kill and eat Candide because the believe him to be a Jesuit. Cacambo explains the true nature of the situation to the cannibals who see the light of reason and release Candide and Cacambo. After being freed and given gifts, “Candide could not weary of exclaiming over his preservation.”

Voltaire’s intent was to lampoon the more extreme applications of a school of thought known as philosophical optimism. This philosophy was proposed by Leibnitz and is, in brief, the idea that all things in the universe, being created by God, are ordered for the best, or that such things are ordered in such a way as to produce the best of all possible outcomes. Thus, this world is the best of all possible worlds, for how could it be otherwise?

At the end of Candide, after the eponymous hero has gone through a series of rather nasty events’events which were, almost invariably, avoidable had Candide not been a philosophical optimist’after which none of Candide’s goals or efforts at happiness are preserved, his philosopher companion, Pangloss, offers this bit of good cheer:

So you see, the War in Iraq is part of the War on Terror because we have encouraged terrorists to attack the U.S. in Iraq. This proves, quite conclusively I’d say, that the War in Iraq is the best of all possible wars.

Researcher Brad Wilcox’s new book, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands, has been getting some coverage (especially but not exclusively in right-wing and Christian news outlets), and I imagine will get a lot more in the weeks to come. (See, for example, Maggie Gallagher, David Warren, and USA Today). (Many links via the Family Scholars Blog, where Tom Sylvester wrote an impressively mean and unfair comment about Scott Coltrane).

One claim that I’ve seen over and over is that Wilcox’s work shows that “Evangelical Protestant wives whose husbands attend church regularly reported the lowest levels of domestic violence of any major religious or secular group studied.” In other words, attending evangelical church makes guys less likely to beat their wives.

Unfortunately, I can’t afford a copy of Wilcox’s book, nor does my library have a copy. So I could be entirely wrong about this. But from what I can tell, while Wilcox may be right to say that Evangelical dads spend more time with their kids and are terrific fathers, his study is worthless when it comes to measuring domestic violence.

According to the official press release, Dr. Wilcox’s book draws its data from “two well-regarded, national social surveys, the General Social Survey (1990-98), and the National Survey of Families and Households (1987-88 and 1992-94).”

The General Social Survey doesn’t include any data on respondents as victims or perpetrators of intimate violence, so we can ignore the GSS. The National Survey of Families and Households does ask about intimate violence, so Dr. Wilcox must have depended on the NSFH to draw his conclusions about intimate violence and church attendance. (This isn’t an original approach, by the way; Christopher Ellison, in particular, reached the same conclusion from the same data source years ago. See “Religious Involvement and Domestic Violence,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, June 2001).

The NSFH is an excellent research tool for many things, but it’s lousy for measuring domestic violence.

1. The NSFH doesn’t make it safe for victims to answer questions.

First of all, the NSFH is terrible when it comes to giving respondents a private, safe way to answer the survey - but respondent safety and privacy is paramount when you’re trying to measure intimate violence. To give you an idea of how bad it is, sometimes the NSFH researchers will interview a husband, but if the wife is unavailable they’ll just leave her survey behind, to be completed and picked up a few days later.

Okay, now imagine that the husband is an abuser. He’s taken the survey, so he knows it includes questions about violence between spouses. The surveyors leave a blank questionnaire for his wife, and ask him to pretty please make sure she fills it out in total privacy, so she’s free to answer honestly. What are the odds a woman in that situation will actually be free to answer survey questions about how often her husband abuses her honestly? I’d put them somewhere between zil and none.

2. The NSFH’s questions aren’t well written to accurately measure intimate violence.

It would take a lot of space to describe everything researchers have learned in the past two decades about how to design interviews about intimate violence; suffice it to say that the NSFH gets everything wrong.

For instance, the NSFH doesn’t even ask about rape and sexual abuse - meaning that a major area of intimate violence is ignored. The NSFH asks about violence exclusively in the context of arguments that turn violent, ignoring instances of violence not preceded by an argument. The NSFH asks very few questions, and the questions each cover multiple possible events; research has shown that respondents are more likely to report intimate violence if they’re asked a longer series of more specific questions.

3. The NSFH isn’t useful for measuring alcohol use and abuse.

According to a study similar to Dr. Wilcox’s, and using the exact same data source, “respondents in the NSFH were asked whether they experience problems with alcohol or drug usage.” (”Religious Involvement and Domestic Violence,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, June 2001.) As far as I can tell, that’s it. Asking the question so bluntly and crudely isn’t likely to bring about honest answers, and even when respondents answer honestly, the data given is too crude to be very useful.

Why does this matter? Because, statistically, the more alcohol people drink, the more likely they are to be involved with domestic violence; and, the more often people go to church, the less likely they are to drink. The least likely drinkers (aside from total abstainers) are evangelical protestants who go to church weekly. This means that the causation suggested by Dr. Wilcox may not be causation at all, but just a correlation caused by the fact that heavy drinkers don’t go to church much.

A 2002 study published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion also looked for a connection between religious affiliation and intimate violence; but unlike Dr. Wilcox’s data source, this study asked respondents detailed questions about “11 alcohol-dependence symptoms and 15 drinking-related social consequences,” which means that this study’s data on alcohol consumption was far more useful and accurate.

(Also, it didn’t make the mistake of conflating alcohol use with other drug use - for example, while alcohol increases the odds of intimate violence, pot-smoking may actually decrease those odds. That means that any study of intimate violence that conflates alcohol and pot usage is, frankly, hash.)

The results? On first glance, their data appeared to show a connection between going to church every week and low rates of intimate violence. Using a multivariate (that’s a mathematical means of measuring the importance of multiple variables) analysis, however, the results looked quite different. “For men, the results indicate that weekly religious attendance and importance of religion was not associated with increased or decreased risk of [intimate violence] perpetration. Instead, men who reported alcohol problems were at a fourfold increased risk of [intimate violence] perpetration compared to men who did not report alcohol problems.”

(”Religious affiliation, denominational homogeny, and intimate partner violence,” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Mar 2002, Vol. 41, Issue 1)

* * *

I don’t completely dismiss Dr. Wilcox’s study. In many cases - for instance, regarding his finding that evangelical men are particularly affectionate towards their children and spend a lot of time with their children - his data sources are probably useful and accurate. Furthermore, I haven’t read Dr. Wilcox’s book, so any critique I make of his work is indirect and must be taken with a grain of salt.

But the bottom line is, no study relying on the NHFS for information about intimate violence is going to produce meaningful results. Despite the press reports, anything Dr. Wilcox’s study finds about domestic violence can probably be dismissed.

He looks nervous the way a child would, or like an animal abducted for the pleasure of a schoolyard crowd. The collared shirt and slacks seem to be foreign objects; he wears them without the confidence of a person who understands why it is that the shirt should be tucked in, a belt worn, and his hair brushed in that certain way. His shoes are those casual tan slip-ons they sell in Payless. They’re strong enough to walk around in and look nice enough with his slacks, but I’m happy that the portrait will end at his middle or, at worst, his knees.
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Okay, so it looks like a special effect from a low budget sci-fi movie, what’s so cool about that? It’s real. See also this video. More here.

(via Making Light.)

Yesterday Amp posted about some of the wacky music he heard at a high school graduation party. In summary: hits from the late seventies and eighties. Amp wonders why kids are listening to this stuff that is so obviously anachronistic to the youth of today; I may have an answer.

I can’t speak for hip-hop, as I’m still desperately trying to find some aside from DJ Shadow and Prefuse 73 that doesn’t suck, but rock-and-roll is currently experiencing an obsession with the late seventies and the whole of the eighties. Consider the success of the Darkness, a pseudo-80’s band, or the “dancepunk” groups—the Rapture, !!!, Radio 5, Liars—that sound like the Gang of Four, or the “garage rock revival” of the White Stripes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs—not to mention the Strokes—or the post-punk obsession of groups like Interpol, or the electroclash influences of the Postal Service.

Admittedly, most of these bands are still in the province of the indie cool kids, but I think that there’s a resurgence of eighties culture across the white bread spectrum. Take a dip into Hot Topic these days and what’ll you see? The same thing you’ll see at Target: Transformers, Thundercats, Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony—the defining toys and paraphanalia of childhood in the eighties. I’m not surprised that this has trickled down into the musical tastes of the graduates at the party Amp went to.

I’m not sure what causes this except that it may, perhaps, be the same thing that’s made me seek out some music from the eighties. I’m only a couple years older than the graduates Amp visited—although I’ve been out of high school for much longer, so this analysis may mean less than nothing—and I’ve always been quietly fascinated with the eighties because I’m aware that the first six years of my life were spent in them but I can’t remember anything about them. I can vaguely remember the New Kids on the Block, the crimped hair, and the wretched music that powered the inspirational sections of movies, but little more than that. My memory doesn’t really begin until ‘92 and doesn’t start to crystalize until ‘93 or ‘94. I’ve always wondered if I missed anything important, any really great music or movies or fashions or whatever. So when I got to be seventeen or eighteen or so, I started looking.

I’m wondering if the “kids these days” aren’t doing much of the same thing. Were those things that they played with as kids—or, more likely, the things that their older siblings played with as kids—actually cool? Was the music terrible or good or what? Was The Neverending Story really all that good of a movie?

So that’s my explanation for things: a bit of vague nostalgia mixed with a hindsight curiousity and a culture that’s actively interested in recycling some bits from the eighties mixed with the simple fact that music these days is actually remarkably dull if you’re a white kid who can’t or won’t like hip-hop. In ten years or so, if popular music is as dead as it is today, I wouldn’t be surprised to see kids jumping around to a playlist that included Limp Bizkit and Britney Spears and Ricky Martin. At which point, I’ll probably be standing around, looking at kids at a high school graduation party, saying to myself, “The fuck are they doing listening to this stuff?”

Hmm, as a final note, I did remember one group, or individual at least, from the hip-hop half of the airways who has been digging into the eighties for inspiration for his music. Big Boi’s half of the latest Outkast album, Speakerboxx/The Love Below, was heavy with beats cut with old-school 808’s which hit the height of their popularity with musicians in the late eighties.

So tonight, at my workplace, a high-schooler’s graduation party. It was a fun crowd - lots of drama-nerds who aren’t afraid to have silly fun. But I’m struck - as I have been many times before - at the music these kids listen to. Here’s the last ten or so songs they’ve played:

1. Stayin’ Alive (Bee Gees)

2. Beat It (Michael Jackson)
3. Bohemian Rapsody (Queen)
4. Some hip-hop song I didn’t recognize
5. Thriller (Michael Jackson again)
6. Shout (you know, from Animal House)
7. Kung Fu Fighting
8. My Shirona (they all cheered and said “yeah!” at the opening chords)
9. Like A Prayer (Madonna)
10. You spin me right round, baby, right round (okay, that’s probably not the real title, but you know what I mean).

The dancers are having so much silly fun it’s really infectous - singing very loudly along to Bohemian Rhapsody, making werewolf dance moves for Thriller, and so on.

But what I can’t get over is, almost all the songs they’ve danced to are songs that were around when I was in high school (or earlier). I mean, I’m 35 years old. Most of the guests at the party tonight are half my age. Why aren’t they listening to music from their own time?

And this group isn’t unusual. Okay, maybe a little - I don’t hear Bohemian Rhapsody played at many of the wedding receptions I attend - but most of them feature a lot of songs from my kidhood. (The most popular wedding reception song - the one I hear at virtually every wedding reception that has a lot of young people dancing? The Village People’s “YMCA.”)

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I really like a lot of these songs. Plus, as I said, the dancers are hilarious (and intentionally so). But it just seems a little weird.

P.S. It may be relevant to mention: The group tonight is pretty much entirely white. (And that’s how it usually is here - this is Oregon, after all).

P.P.S. The party’s over now, they’re cleaning up. I just overheard one girl singing a verse from “Leaving On a Jet Plane” to herself.