On that threat to marriage
6 Responses to “On that threat to marriage”
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January 13th, 2010 at 10:50 am
I don’t support any bans on marriage, gay or otherwise, but I’m not sure I follow the importance of this data.
And why in the hell did the author make the graph an image?
January 13th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Is the marriage rate in general higher in such states?
That might be the explanation.
January 13th, 2010 at 11:59 am
karrde – marriage rates were taken into account because the numbers are a percentage of total married people in a state (not total people).
That being said, kudos to the author for identifying that correlation doesn’t equal causation. However, I don’t think the data shows correlation. First, clue Iowa had one of the lowest divorce rates in 2003 (1.21%) in 2008 they had an even lower divorce rate (1.08%) then they allowed gay marriage in 2009. And they are included in the same category as Massachusetts who had gay marriage in 2004? Sorry, that doesn’t compute. 7 of the 18 Green boxes are 2009 or 2010, yet the divorce data being compared is 2008 and 2003.
Based on this you could make the conclusion that states that lower their divorce rate expand marriage to include homosexuals. The statement is just as correct and correlative at the authors. And completely meaningless.
January 13th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
> karrde – marriage rates were taken into account
> because the numbers are a percentage of total married
> people in a state (not total people).
I think you’ve missed his point a bit, or at least how I took it. I’ll take the liberty of making this purely hypothetical because it’s just a possible objection and I don’t know the actual facts, but the possibility should be considered.
Imagine states where marriage is not the norm, it being considered antiquated. In those states, there may be many seriously committed people, with children even, who have a great investment and responsibility in the relationship, but who are not married (marriage being antiquated). When these people separate, that does not effect the divorce rate. In these (again, hypothetical) states, only the most committed would get married, as it is not an expectation and there is no social pressure to do so. So the group of actually married have a low divorce rate, being self selected as the most committed, while the break up of the bulk of the serious relationships does has no effect on the divorce rate.
January 13th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
The rate of divorce among married people is not the same as the rate of people getting married.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:52 am
I agree with Steve H. All other things being equal (yeah, right), one should expect the lowest divorce rates (among married people) in the states with the lowest marriage rates (among the general population), as the decision to marry vs. live in sin is not made randomly. I’m also a bit hazy as to why the author thinks there is a significant difference between states whose laws simply don’t provide for gay marriage or civil unions vs. those that have constitutional or other initiatives expressly forbidding them. The only obvious difference between the two is that in one group, voters have been allowed to vote on the issue while in the other, they have not. Is that the author’s real point, i.e., that too much freedom of choice means more divorce?