Is marriage’s turkey cooked?

A new survey by the Pew Research Center and TIME called The Decline of Marriage And Rise of New Families is certain to ruffle a few feathers—especially as families gather around Thanksgiving Day tables this Thursday. In it, researchers find that 39 percent of Americans believe that marriage is obsolete, but before social engineers declare this turkey cooked, they ought to take a second look.

Buried in the 108 page study were encouraging morsels to those who still believe in the traditional family. 69 percent of Americans still believe that out of wedlock births are a bad thing; 61 percent say that a child needs both a mother and father to grow up happily; And 58 percent say that marriage is not obsolete. Please pass the gravy.

Yet the idea that marriage is obsolete is capturing the headlines and has marriage deconstructionists as giddy as children on Christmas morning. But before they stick a fork in it, they ought to ask their three compatriots who used to sit on the Iowa Supreme Court about the wisdom of legislating into obsolescence traditional marriage. Of course, Iowa voters unelected them on Nov. 2.

This isn’t the first time in our history that marriage was thought unnecessary. In the 1960’s, no-fault divorce laws swept through state legislatures and paved the way for the divorce boom of the 1970’s. Children, the biggest losers in this societal bargain that promised to eliminate acrimonious divorce proceedings, still suffer from the fallout and emotional trauma from divorce. Marriage wasn’t obsolete for them. Nor is it to the children growing up in single parent homes who yearn for a mother or father. As it is, 41 percent of all children today are born out of wedlock, up from 5 percent in 1960.

The question du jour? Is marriage the bulwark to society or is it just like another ornament that will adorn our Thanksgiving tables this Thursday? Marriages are not as durable as they once were, but just because many marriages aren’t surviving—thanks to easy divorce and a culture that scoffs at commitment, doesn’t mean the entire institution should be scuttled. When the two parts of humanity are joined together in a lifelong covenant it brings untold benefits to themselves, their offspring and society at large.

People who are married live longer, are healthier and happier than their unmarried peers. They earn more and are less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol and receive public assistance. According to marriage expert Mike McManus “the primary cause of poverty is not joblessness but marriage, or rather, marriage absence.” In September, The Heritage Foundation published the report “Marriage: America’s No. 1 Weapon Against Childhood Poverty,” and found that the probability of child poverty declines by 82 percent when they live with both parents who are married. According to 2008 statistics, only 6.4 percent of married, two-parent families are poor compared with 36.5 percent of families headed by a single mother. The proof is in the pudding: marriage is a key ingredient to family financial stability.

Indeed, marriage is more than just a tool to fight poverty or part of an economic calculation toward prosperity. It is an absolutely crucial social arrangement that civilization depends upon and it’s an institution that our children need to thrive, whether we admit it or not. We should no more give our children homes without marriage than we would give them a Thanksgiving without a turkey.

Fodder for discussion around the dinner table for sure. Let’s hope it doesn’t cause much heartburn.

The problem with out-of-wedlock pregnancy is a lack of marriage, not a lack of contraceptives

The inimitable Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation argues that the focus on teen pregnancy by liberals is a smokescreen hiding the fact that most out of wedlock pregnancies are among young adult women. It is a result, he says, of the breakdown of marriage and is the driving force behind the welfare state:

The steady growth of childbearing by single women and the general collapse of marriage, especially among the poor, lie at the heart of the mushrooming welfare state. This year, taxpayers will spend over $300 billion providing means-tested welfare aid to single parents. The average single mother receives nearly three dollars in government benefits for each dollar she pays in taxes. These subsidies are funded largely by the heavy taxes paid by higher-income married couples.

America is rapidly becoming a two-caste society, with marriage and education at the dividing line. Children born to married couples with a college education are mostly in the top half of the population; children born to single mothers with high-school degrees or less are mostly in the bottom half.

The disappearance of marriage in low-income communities is the predominant cause of child poverty in the U.S. today. If poor single mothers were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds of them would not be poor. The absence of a husband and father from the home also is a strong contributing factor to failure in school, crime, drug abuse, emotional disturbance, and a host of other social problems.

In other words, the decline of marriage doesn't really bother liberals. But why?

Despite the transparent linkages among poverty, social problems, and disintegration of the family, the liberal intelligentsia has watched the steady collapse of marriage in low-income communities with silent indifference.

The reason? Most liberal academics regard marriage as an outdated, socially backward institution; they have shed no tears over its demise. Even worse, liberal politicians and anonymous government bureaucrats have a vested interest in the growth of the welfare state, and nothing grows the welfare state like the disappearance of marriage.

Single mothers are inherently in far greater need of government support than married couples, so an increase in single parenthood leads almost inevitably to an increase in government benefits and services and a thriving welfare industry to supply them. Marital collapse creates a burgeoning new clientele dependent on government services and political patrons. When liberals refuse to talk about marriage and the poor in the same breath, they are guilty of willful neglect of the major source of poverty.

For the statist, the collapse of marriage is a gift that keeps on giving. It’s no accident that the modern welfare system rewards single parents and penalizes married couples.

The Left, with the complicity of the liberal media, hypes the issue of “teen pregnancy” -- partly because feminists think girls should attend college for a few years before becoming single mothers, partly in order to strengthen their agenda of promoting condom use and permissive sex ed in the schools. (In reality, condom proselytizing is a bogus answer to actual social problems. Contrary to conventional wisdom, lack of access to birth control isn’t a significant contributor to non-marital pregnancy among teens or non-teens.)

Liberal journalists and pundits deliberately remain silent on the far larger issue of out-of-wedlock childbearing among adults because they believe the collapse of marriage is irrelevant, if not benign. From their perspective, concern about marriage is a mere red-state superstition; the important task is to increase government subsidies as we build a post-marriage society.

Read the whole thing here.

Americans still strongly oppose same-sex "marriage"

Here is Robert Schlesinger in U. S. News on Gallup's latest poll:

According to the poll, a strong majority of Americans (57 percent) continue to oppose gay marriage (with 40 percent favoring it). The good news is that in digging deeper one can find some reasons for optimism.

First the bad news: Gallup notes that support for gay marriage has come a long way since it first asked the question in 1996 (when Americans opposed it by 68 percent to 27 percent), but the progress has essentially stalled in the last five years, with support in the low 40s and opposition in the upper 50s.

All you gotta do is replace 'bad' with 'good', and 'pessimism' with 'optimism'. Schlesinger is obviously impatient with Americans whose moral convictions are not directly indexed to constantly evolving convictions of the cultural elite.

In other words, if he doesn't like it, it's got to be good.

Dictionaries changing the definition of marriage

In gathering together their definitions of words , several major dictionaries are joining together politics and language in holy matrimony. Several dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster and Webster's New World College Dictionary, have changed the definition of marriage to include same-sex marriage.

If anyone feels these two should not be united in Holy Matrimony speak now or forever hold your peace.

Adulterers' Rights Act approved by legislative committee

For Immediate Release
February 18, 2009
Contact: Martin Cothran
Phone: 859-329-1919

LEXINGTON, KY—A bill that some are calling the "Adulterers' Rights Act" was approved by a State House committee yesterday after being rejected by the same committee earlier in the day. "There was obviously some kind of political pressure applied to legislators to pass a bill with which most of them were clearly uncomfortable," said Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst for The Family Foundation. The bill, House Bill 28, could be voted on by the full House as early as next Wednesday.

The bill would overturn a Kentucky Supreme Court case that involved a man who had an affair with a married woman who remained in a viable marriage. The court found that the biological father, which it termed "an interloper," had no right to further disrupt the marriage with a paternity claim, since the law deems the child to be the child of the marriage, and the husband had agreed to raise the child as his own.

"If we're going to give parental rights to someone solely on the basis that they're biologically related (and interrupt a marriage in the process), then what prevents a rapist from asserting parental rights?" asked Cothran.

Cothran also questioned how legislators could vote in good conscience to overturn a court decision which most of them clearly hadn't read. "If you're going to vote to overturn important court cases, you should at least have read them," Cothran said. "The only legislator on the committee who seems to be familiar with the actual case was Brent Yonts, and he's planning on voting against it on the floor."

"HB 28 seeks to give credence to a biological father's claim of paternity by allowing him to further disrupt a marriage he has already threatened by his previous irresponsible act. The Kentucky High Court ruled correctly in protecting the husband, the wife, and the child—and the legal status of marriage in general."

"We don't need to be overturning this important legal decision regarding the sovereignty of marriage," said Cothran. "We need to be applauding it."

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Gay rights groups target Lexington and Louisville for gay marriage protests

For Immediate Release
November 12, 2008
Contact: Martin Cothran
Phone: 859-329-1919

Pro-gay marriage groups plan protests at city halls in Lexington and Louisville this Sunday as part of a nationwide protest against the decision of California voters to do what 30 other states have done: retain the definition of marriage that has prevailed for millenia.

"Protesting against the normal democratic procedures of our system of government is nothing new for these groups," said Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst for The Family Foundation. "Historically, they can only win when they go behind the backs of voters and short-circuit the court system by convincing liberal judges to make political rulings in their favor. When they actually have to follow the legislative or voter referendum processes, they usually lose."

Cothran said the passage of California's Proposition 8 and similar measures in Arizona and Florida, which retain the definition of marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman, sends a message that voters simply don't want to be told by special interest political groups that they have to abandon their whole system of morality.

Cothran said The Family Foundation will be monitoring the language used at the demonstrations. "The rhetoric of some of these groups approaches hate speech," he said. "We'll be paying attention to whether they practice what they preach about tolerance."

"I think the success of these measures shows that, although people want to be respectful of the way other people lead their lives, they're tired of the hateful language and being called 'bigots' simply because they believe in marriage the same way everyone has believed in it for thousands of years."

The Family Foundation was at the forefront of the movement to pass the 2004 Kentucky Marriage Protection Amendment, which voters ratified by a record "yes" vote.

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