Posting in comments at “Alas, A Blog”, Rev. Ian Brumberger suggests:

Rev. Brumberger’s full comment; 365.com’s story

Evidently, some anti-abortion groups are working to curb sales of birth control pills. Lisa Boyd, of Planned Parenthood, summarizes the situation in Wisconsin:

For more, read this BBC news report.

I’ve been disappointed. I visit the Chicago Tribune every morning, search on “Alan Keyes” just to find new outrageous remarks. Sadly, for the past several days, I haven’t read any new ones. I was afraid he is growing tired.

Now, I read this drought of outrageous comments shall surely end! Rick Pierson at The Chicago Tribune. reports that during a closed door meeting with top GOP fundraisers and donors, Keyes revealed:

(Pierson reports his sources request anonymity; Keyes campaign manager says the speech was private and should remain so.)

Evidently, Keyes considers himself engaged in some sort of war (and I don’t think he means the one with Iraq). He advises:

I think that was General Sherman’s philosophy. Despite the similarity to Sherman, Keyes seems to see himself as similar to Ulysses S. Grant:

How?

I guess by seeing whether or not the child a exhibits a reverence for life and a hatred of terror. To wit:

Yow!

Obama, the other candidate, is still thought to be ahead in the race for US Senate. Will the “meat grinder” image turn the tide for Keyes? We shall see.

While I feel failed marriages are always sad, equal treatment requires extension of divorce to same sex couples. So, with mixed feelings, I bring you this story, via Iafrica: Canada grants world’s first gay divorce.

When the article calls this the world’s first divorce, I’m assuming the author is making distinctions between legal dissolutions of domestic partnerships, civil unions and marriages. I’m under the impression some domestic partnerships or civil unions have been dissolved. (Gay.com calls this North America’s first same sex divorce.)

Evidently, despite various Canadian Courts’ previous rulings extending marriage to same sex couples, the legislature has not yet modified the divorce code. So:

In her ruling, Judge Ruth Mesbur of the Ontario Supreme Court found:

The Judge then granted the divorce to the couple.

On Wednesday, Judge Loren E. McMaster of the California Superior court in Sacramento upheld a new California law that grants nearly all the duties and privileges of marriage to domestic parthers. The Argus reports:

In his ruling, McMaster ruled that domestic partnership and marriage share many functional attributes, but they are distinct legal entities. Since domestic partnership is not marriage, the California DOMA forbidding state recognition of same sex marriages does not prohibit them. It also does not prohibit extension of marital benefits to domestic partnerships.

The judge expressed no opinion on the constitutionality of California’s DOMA. That issue of whether or not marriage itself can be restricted to the one-man one-woman will be decided in other cases which are progressing through California’s court system.

Unsurprisingly, while gay rights activists hope to gain more in time, they are pleased by the ruling. Domestic partnership with extensive benefits is different from marriage. The partnerships aren’t portable to other states, and they have no federal recognition, but making them more similar to marriage is a big step forward.

Opponents plan to continue in their quest to persuade the type of activist judge they like to overrule this particular law which was enacted by the legislature and will appeal. If this ruling is upheld on appeal, the law will go into effect on January 1, 2005. For more see:
The Sacramento Bee and The Mercury News

At MarriageDebate.com, David Moloney wonders:

I should think there would be no problem finding a definition that’s big enough. The world has accommodated arranged marriages and marriages where people pick their own partners for centuries. Arranged marriages are rare in western countries, but our customs can exist side by side with those in other parts of the world. Moreover, western cultures permit arranged marriage. Few American parents attempt to select their children’s spouses. When they do, our laws and customs permit prospective brides and grooms the freedom to decline their parent’s choices. (This is the often the case in nonWestern countries as well.)

Likely, homosexuals would vehemently decline parental choices of opposite sex mates. Likely heterosexuals would decline homosexual partners should their parents select one as their spouse. However, children declining parents choices has nothing to do with same sex marriage vs. arranged marriage. As far as definitions go, the question is this: Do we recognize marriages where the choice of spouse, whether same or opposite sex, is compulsory?

Westerners decided the answer is “no” long ago. Last night, husband and I attended a play which illustrates, in part, the western attitude toward arranged marriages. The young Anne Page elopes with Lord Fenton, the man she loves, thereby avoiding an arranged marriage to a man she doesn’t love. Presenting her new groom to her husband, she is asked why she refused to marry Dr. Cauis, her mother’s choice, or Slender, her father’s choice, Anne’s new husband Fenton answers:

From The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare, who seems to suggest a loveless arranged marriage to Anne’s parents choices would have ended badly.

Considering the acceptance of arranged marriage in other cultures, Daniel Moloney reflects:

Considering the current lack of enthusiasm for arranged marriage in the western world, I would be surprised if large numbers of heterosexual American men or women would willingly allow their partners be chosen for them. Westerners rejected the idea that children should submit their parents choices for life partners, particularly when they cannot love the partner. Like Shakespeare, many of us consider the custom of marriage without pre-existing love shameful.

All in all, I think the definition of marriage can be easily include same sex marriage, arranged marriage and marriages where individuals choose their own partners. If we wish to bring back the tradition of arranged marriage, simply extend marriage to include same sex partners. Then, kindly parents, interested in promoting their child’s best interest, would be free to suggest candidates who their child could happily wed.

I commented recently on the erosion of the poll bounce for Bush. Rasmussen provides tracking polls; I always prefer graphs to columns of data, so I plotted the data.

Click to see larger image for the popular vote:

The Rasmussen data shows the in-convention bounce and subsequent erosion in the popular vote. As of this morning, Rasmussen’s poll shows Kerry and Bush neck and neck in the popular race.

Click to see larger image for the electoral college estimate:

The spread in the electoral college predictions tend to amplify the current spread in the popular vote. Although, as we all know, the electoral college results can oppose the nation wide popular vote. Rasmussen has not yet released individual results for all 50 states; some states are considered too close to call. Consequently, his tally indicates neither candidate has the 270 votes required to seal the election.

For more detail on the polls, visit Rasmussen Reports.

The Seattle Times reports:

In his 38 page ruling setting aside Washington State’s DOMA, Hicks also recognized homosexuals are a suspect class, which entitles them to equal protection under the law. King County Superior Court Judge William Downing had previously ruled for same sex marriage, but did not classify homosexuals as protected. Both ruled marriage is a fundamental right.

As is often the case, the judge found procreation based arguments for limiting marriage to the one-man one-woman model unpersuasive. The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports:

Attorneys expect Hicks will delay implementing his ruling, so same sex couples probably won’t get marriage licenses soon. Both cases are headed for the Washington Supreme Court, which will likely join the two cases. Meanwhile, opponents of marriage equality will work to amend the Washington State Constitution.

Matt Yglesias’s noticed quick turn around polls showed big bounces for both Kerry and Bush during their respective parties’ conventions. However, later polls showed significant erosions. He highlights the most recent eroding bounce:

Matt wonders about people’s psychology, but the phenomenon may have nothing to do with psychology. I suspect the quick turn around bounce may be due to slightly greater numbers of Democrats staying home during the DNC convention and answering the phone, resulting in a pro-Kerry sampling bias. Later on, Republicans stay home to watch the RNC convention resulting in a pro-Bush bias. On the weekend, phone answering rates go back to normal, resulting in the ordinary “people who answer the phone” bias. This erases the effect of the sampling bias that would occur during a convention.

All three would be examples of the type of sampling bias that is not accounted for in the sampling error reported for polls in news reports.

The issue is also discussed at Pandagon.

Following Alan Keyes campaign is addictive. You get to read so many odd things, some only tangentially related to Alan Keyes.

Today, while reading the Chicago Tribune story Keyes, state GOP gearing up blame campaign, I read this:

The conservative GOP republican state Senator has a tattoo on his molar? I guess I’m out of the loop because I didn’t even know molar tattoos existed.

I immediately googled, and discovered a photo of a molar tattoo here. According to sugarray.com, the tooth owner “Iron” Mike said:

I guess molar tattoos say pro-family like nothing else!

I recently posted “It’s the economy”, a rather lengthy article showing the association between Dutch unemployment and the rising non-marital birthrate in the Netherlands. I also showed the non-marital birthrates in numerous European countries rose as quickly and even more quickly than those in the Netherlands. This indicates the rate of change in the Netherlands does not stand out from changes in Europe as a whole.

In a response, Dr. Stanley Kurtz fixated on my discussion of Bulgaria. Previously, he claimed Bulgaria doesn’t count because Bulgarians have the lowest access to birth control in the Europe. I showed they have the highest rate of birth control use in the world. Kurtz now claims the fact Bulgarians use birth control at the highest rate in the world is irrelevant. Why? Because, poor teen Gypsy girls (those of the Roma minority) do not have access to contraception. Their behavior has caused a nationwide explosion in the Bulgarian nonmarital birth rate. In contrast, he says, the rise in the Netherlands is due to women choosing cohabitation over marriage (as a result of legalized same sex marriage.)

Can’t you just hear Cher singing “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” in the background?

I do not wish to give the impression that my argument hinges on Bulgaria; it does not. Even without considering Bulgaria, there are plenty of European countries whose non-marital birth rate rose as rapidly, or much more rapidly, than in the Netherlands. The rise in all those countries can be explained by factors other than legalized same sex marriage. In fact, Dr. Kurtz suggested economic distress contributed to the rise in many of these other countries, including Bulgaria. Yet, he ignores economic distress in the Netherlands. Logically, economic distress would be expected to have similar effects in any two countries. If it explains rising nonmarital births in European countries, including Bulgaria, then the greater severity of distress in Bulgaria explains why the Bulgarian out of wedlock birth rate rose more quickly than in other European countries, including the Netherlands. My argument is thus entirely consistent.

Still, it’s kind of fun to address the notions, and evidence, in Dr. Kurtz’s response.

Dr. Kurtz provided two hyperlink references to support his teen Gypsy girl theory. One is an anectdote posted on a geocities web page describing the wretched conditions of poor married and unmarried mothers in Bulgaria. The article provides absolutely no statistics explaining why the nonmarital birthrate has exploded.

Dr. Kurtz also refers to a report by Jaklina Tzvetkova Anguelova written in 2000. That report mentions that some of its contents are based on preliminary analysis of available data; some information is based on contents of earlier reports. The specific items Dr. Kurtz picks out are not based on Anguelova’s analysis or data, but are speculations cited from reports written well before Anguelova performed her analysis.

More recently, Anguelova wrote a report containing conclusions based on the final analysis of data collected by the Bulgarian government. It is available here: Anguelova 2001.

On page 11 you will find that Anguelova, after examining the data and reviewing the literature, attributes the growing non-marital birthrate to “consensus marriage”, i.e. cohabitation. In a 2004 study, The South Eastern European Legal Initiative (SEELINE) also attributes the rise in non-marital births to rising Bulgarian cohabitation. How much cohabitation do we find in Bulgaria relative to the Netherlands? Batalova and Cohen reported that a larger number of adults cohabit in Bulgaria than in the Netherlands. Of adults surveyed in 1994, 18.1% of Bulgarians reported they had cohabited; in contrast, 15.1% of Dutch respondents reported they had cohabited. Yet, despite the greater prevalence of cohabitation in Bulgaria, Dr. Kurtz attributes the rising Dutch non marital birth rates to cohabitation, yet insists it has a negligible effect in Bulgaria!

Reading further in Anguelova, you will find she laments that no special statistics are available to describe the demographics of unmarried mothers. So the characteristics of unmarried mothers cannot be described. The fact that Anguelova specifically states she cannot describe the characteristics of unmarried mothers because no data are available suggest the older speculations taken from dated reports by others were not based on reliable data. (Many others have reported strong prejudice against the tiny Roma population, noting that Bulgarians often unfairly blamed the tiny Roma population for nationwide problems. Published speculations have sometimes been based on nothing more than prejudice.)

In any case, members of the Roma minority account for 2.6% of the Bulgarian population. Can anyone really believe the nationwide explosion in the nonmarital birth rate is dominated by their behavior? Could the 18.1% of adults who had cohabited all be members of the tiny Roma minority? Could nonmarital birthrates possibly rise to 42.9% because of the behavior of 2.6% of the population?

As in “Dutch Debate,” Dr. Kurtz suggests that women in Bulgaria cannot avoid giving birth. He does this by substituting the term “contraception” for “birth control” and then providing some statistics on contraception to explain lack of birth control. As I showed in “It’s the economy”, he used this same verbal trick in “Dutch Debate”. The communist government did indeed limit contraception. In Bulgaria, abortion has always been, and unfortunately still is, a widely used method of birth control. (The abortion rate is falling as contraception becomes available.) Abortion is available to all Bulgarian women, married, unmarried, young, old and even members of the tiny Roma population. (Interestingly, the anecdote Dr. Kurtz cited describes conditions in a major hospital that acts as a combined maternity ware and abortion facility; this highlights abortion’s widespread availability in Bulgaria.)

Even when trying to side step the issue of birth control by substituting contraception statistics, Dr. Kurtz makes unsupported claims. He now claims that unmarried women have more limited access to contraception than married women. Yet, Klijzing, who Kurtz cited in “Dutch Debate”, indicated that married women in Bulgaria have much greater “unmet contraceptive needs” than unmarried women! (Klijzing noted that all Bulgarian women have access to birth control — in the form of abortion. Citing Klijzing to suggest Bulgarian women have limited access to birth control is another example of Dr. Kurtz substituting the term “contraception” for “birth control” in attempt to create the illusion that his thesis is supported by data. )

I think I have disproven Dr. Kurtz’s claims that Bulgaria is fundamentally different from the Netherlands because a) Bulgaria is filled with teen Gypsy girls and b) Bulgarians do not cohabit. Having done so, I need to emphasize that Bulgaria is not central to my argument. To draw away attention from other points, Dr. Kurtz tries to make it seem my argument hinges on Bulgaria. Next, Dr. Kurtz tries to say Bulgaria doesn’t count, because eliminating Bulgaria is necessary to support his thesis. In his attempt to find a reason to eliminate Bulgaria, Dr. Kurtz must repeatedly mislead readers by substituting statistics for contraception to describe access to birth control, which includes access to abortion. He further “buttresses” his argument by claiming the explosive rise in the Bulgarian nonmarital birth rate– to 42.9% –is due to the behavior of the tiny Roman minority, which makes up 2.6% of the Bulgarian population. To blame the problem on the Roma population he must ignore revised information in more recent reports by the very expert he cited.

Dr. Kurtz’s verbal, logical and statistical sleight of hand, accomplished by substituting terminology and omitting numbers may trick some. That he must rely on these sorts of tricks testifies to the weakness of his argument.

In his most most recent article “Dutch Debate” Dr. Kurtz does three things:

1. Reiterates his theory that the campaign for same sex marriage has caused marriage rates to decline and out of wedlock births to rise in Scandinavia and in the Netherlands
2. Claims there are data to support his theory.
3. Tries to refute Dr. Lee Badgett’s statistics which clearly contradict his theory.

It would take more than one article to illustrate the huge volume of distortions and outright errors in “Dutch Debate”. I will not attempt to do so in one. Instead I will focus on those errors associated with Dr. Kurtz’s interpretation of the data describing the rise in the out of wedlock birthrate in the Netherlands. Dr. Kurtz described these data in “Going Dutch”.

Read the rest of this entry »

The long and the short of it comes to the same thing, in the end: I’ve enjoyed blogging at Alas, but I don’t enjoy it anymore and so will be stopping.

When Ampersand first asked me to be a guest blogger (and later, a co-blogger) here at Alas, I was flattered and proud. I was writing lengthy comments on dozens of posts on dozens of blogs, and it was nice to know that someone had noticed. I leapt at the opportunity. I’d been thinking about starting a blog of my own but hadn’t made the plunge, yet. Blogging at Alas seemed like the next best thing or one thing better, I couldn’t decide.

Some time between then and now, my enthusiasm for blogs and blogging waned, plummeted, and finally died. You probably noticed; I never post anymore. Of the dozens of blogs that I read back then I now read eight. Only three of those blogs are political, and I’ll admit that they’re likely to be discarded in the near future. All of these blogs, both personal and political, are exhausting—there are only four that ever make me smile, sigh, or laugh: frogblog, One Good Thing, Waiting for Nat, and Back to Iraq. I can’t say why, but the reason is a tangent and is ultimately irrelevant to what I’m saying here.

As I said, I enjoyed posting here when I did. My heart isn’t in it anymore, though, so this is the end. I’ll likely still comment from time to time, but this will be my last post.

Thanks for everything.

From Reuters, some good news.

As far as I am aware, Prof. Eugene Volokh did not participate in Alas A Blog’s “Poll: Cause and Effect”. If he did not, his opinion would not have been reflected in our results.

As I am indulgent, I will accept his late vote. It is clear he does not believe correlation equals causation.¹ This means my position that Same Sex Marriage can cause changes in the the non-marital birth ratio and these can easily be seen in the data. now has only 1 vote out of 9 cast. (It previously had 1 vote out of 8 cast.)

My only consolation is that this outcome suggests people also don’t believe Dr. Kurtz.
Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, in an NRO article carried at MarriageDebate.com, Senator Sam Brownback (Kansas) explained why the US constitution needs to be amended to prohibit Same Sex Marriage. Belittling the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that enacting Same Sex Marriage would save the tax payers nearly a billion dollars a year, Brownback regurgitates misleading information from articles by NRO columnist Stanley Kurtz. Brownback also seems to suggest that legalized same sex marriage in Scandinavia caused out of wedlock births to increase, marriage rates to fall, and may aggravate the collapse of the entire social welfare system in all of Europe.

Possibly I exaggerate (but I don’t think so). So, let us examine his argument. It seems to consist of:

1. Marriage is good for society because “diminishes public expenditure on welfare, raises government revenues, and produces a more engaged, responsible citizenry.”
2. Europeans think marriage is about love and affection, whereas Americans think it’s about procreation. Moreover, believing marriage is about procreation prevents explosive growth in out of wedlock births.
3. In countries where same sex marriage and registered partnerships have been enacted, marriage has declined and family dissolution is endemic.
4. Same Sex Marriage may aggravate the European birth dearth or at least it won’t improve it. This will cause irreparable harm to their social welfare system.

I will address these ideas and show that Senator Brownback is incorrect on all but point 1. However, if point 1 is true, then we should enact SSM and realize the cost savings and other societal benefits of extending marriage. Moreover, when points 2-4 are corrected to reflect the actual effects of same sex marriage on marriage and society, we will find, if our goal is to benefit heterosexual marriage, same sex marriage should be enacted.

Let me address each idea in turn.

In a comment that ignored the main point of my recent article, Dr. Stanley Kurtz criticized people for ignoring some of his points. My main point was that the drop in the marriage rate in the Netherlands seems to be well explained by the fact that the Netherlands is in Europe. The marriage rate in the Netherlands tracked that in Europe throughout the nineties. It seems very odd to attribute this average variation in the marriage rate to the recent legalization of SSM in the Netherlands.

Overlooking this point, Dr. Kurtz chose to comment on a minor point I made. He objected to this observation:

If I understand Dr. Kurtz’s brief comments correctly, he considers it entirely implausible that a decline in the number of young people entering the marriage pool might have affected the Dutch marriage rate in the 90’s. He suggests the decline is due solely to the increase in cohabitation which is, evidently, caused by legalized SSM. As Dr. Kurtz does not elaborate further, I do not know whether he is denying the fact that there are fewer available couples, or whether he is denying the marriage rate would drop if there were fewer couples.

I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is aware that, all other social factors being equal, fewer available marriageable couples would mean fewer marriages. Consequently, I will address this question: Are there fewer couples of marriageable age in the Netherlands?

The answer is “yes”.

As most people have noticed, people tend to marry when they are young adults; so young adults might be thought to make up the “marriage pool” in any country. Examining Statitstics Netherland we see that in 1990, the young adult age group, consisting of those between 20-45 years old, made up 41% of the Dutch population. This fraction dropped to 36% by 2003. This 11% decrease in the marriage pool represents roughly two thirds of the 17% decrease in the Dutch marriage rate observed between 1991 and 2002. Consequently, based on this data, one might correctly observe the shift in demographics explains the drop in part. Possibly, it explains more than half the drop in the marriage rate.

It is also useful to note that examining the pool of 20-45 year olds, as I just did, may
underestimate the drop in available couples. On average, Dutch women tend to marry near the age of 27, or nearer the younger end of the 20-45 year old age range. I thought it might be useful to examine the age group between 25-30. Unfortunately, these were availabl at Statistics Netherlands. So, instead, I examined the birth rate statistics to get a rough estimate of the supply of “typical brides” during the 1990s and first few years in the 2000’s, the period Mr. Livestro and Dr. Kurtz are discussing.

I decided to make a rough estimate , reasoning as follows: One might expect the the supply of brides in 1990 to be strongly influenced by the birth rate in 27 years earlier, that is 1963; the supply of brides in 2002 would be affected by the birth rate in 1975. Between these years, Dutch birth rate dropped from 20.9/1000 persons to 13/1000 persons. This represents a 35% drop in potential 27 year old brides during the 90s. This number is twice the 17% drop observed in the marriage rate.¹

Taking the two estimates together, it seems plausible that the drop in the available brides might have a very significant effect on the drop in the marriage rate during the 90s!

Of course, other factors affect the decrease in the marriage rate. These include: the tendency to delay marriage, the tendency to remain single altogether, and the tendency to cohabit rather than marry. I failed to mention these in my previous article, and Dr. Kurtz seems perturbed by my omission. However, it is generally considered a relatively minor sin to name the major cause while omitting minor contributing causes. In contrast, Dr. Kurtz’s insistence on waving away the impact of demographics, which appears to have the major effect on the marriage rate, in favor of his pet theory that the decrease in the marriage rate is due to legalized same sex marriage suggests an obstinate refusal to look at existing data.

Yes, this blogger still believes that to suggest the Dutch decrease in the marriage rate is due to the Dutch legalization of SSM “boggles the mind”.

===== End notes:
[1] Clearly, more complicated analyses are necessary to determine a precise number of eligible couples. My intention is to only to show the drop in available couples is likely substantial. Birth data are available at OECD Fertility Data Baby Boom.

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
Read the rest of this entry »

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]
Read the rest of this entry »