A blog entry from my nearly-defunct MySpace & LiveJournal pages, dated March 11, 2007. It's all still just as valid today, though! Read on...
I saw a bumper sticker online at the Press For Progress website that I thought was pretty interesting. It was wordy for a bumper sticker, but it read, "If gay marriage is so destructive to straight marriage, why does Massachusetts have the lowest divorce rate?" I guess that some bumper sticker issues can't always be broken down to a couple words, can they? Anyway, I had not been aware of that fact and was wondering if it was just something some kind-hearted-but-poorly-misguided liberal came up with to help out our argument, so I went to work investigating on those wonderful tubes called the internets! While searching the Google, I actually found on the website of the U.S. Census info on divorce statistics. It seems the last year that is available for divorce statistics (for all the states who keep such records) for all the states is 2004, just coincidentally the year that marriage equality became the law in the Bay State, and guess what I found?!?! (DRUM ROLL, PLEASE) In 2004 (according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2006, the link to which is http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/06statab/vitstat.pdf), Massachusetts, in fact, did have the lowest divorce rate (per 1,000 population), with 2.2 (the District of Columbia did have a lower rate at 1.7, however. Also, to be fair, 6 states—California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana and Oklahoma--did not report divorce info, for one reason or another, so we are just talking about states that provide divorce stats). The state with the highest rate was Nevada (their rate was 6.4. I guess quickie marriages can sometimes lead to quickie divorces, too. Especially when you wake up the next morning wondering who the smelly drunk next to you is and why you have this hunk of metal adorning the ring finger on your left hand and a Marriage Certificate shoved under your mattress. Makes perfect sense to me why Nevada has such a high divorce rate, but I digress…)
I also remember a couple of the MANY quotes from the fear-peddling Henny Pennys on the Right who foretold the inevitable dangers of the falling sky and who swore that "the end of the world as we know it" was at hand. Just a refresher: "It's like a rolling ball of snow. It gets bigger and bigger. You allow it in Massachusetts, it'll spread to God knows where." - Massachusetts Democratic State Representative Emile J. Goguen, as quoted by the "Traditional Values Coalition" website and "We can look at those places where same-sex marriage has been legalized to see what the future looks like" - Ron Crews, President of The Massachusetts Family Institute, as quoted in the Washington Times, March 10, 2004.
Even more interesting with all this "end of all that is good and Godly" stuff that these people love to push is that the 2004 marriage rate for Massachusetts is the LOWEST rate of the three years they reported! In 1990, the rate for Massachusetts was 2.8 and in 2000, it was 3.0. Could it be things are actually IMPROVING in Massachusetts, where divorce rates are concerned?!?! I'm sure the too-perfectly coiffed ex-gov of the Bay State, Willard Mitt Romney, will do his best to take the credit for this fact, if he finds he needs it to bolster his standing amongst the far-right who owns his party.
In a similar vein, I thought it was oh-so-interesting that, taking a look at these state-by-state numbers, the so-called Red States (in this instance, those that voted for Bush in 2004—which represented 27 of the 44 states that reported divorce info in 2004) had an average divorce rate of 4.3 per 1,000 pop. vs. a rate for the so-called Blue States (the ones that voted for Kerry in 2004, 17 of the 44 states –plus DC--that reported divorce info in 2004) of 3.2. That's a nearly 35% higher average rate in those supposedly more conservative parts of America than in the supposedly "Godless" (one of Coultergeist's favorite words) liberal heathen holes! Wow! That's gotta hurt! ;-)
I realize that for those with a vested interest in pushing the same old "Rapture"-ous End Times ® theory of an angry God coming to kick @$$ & take names & toss the homosexules & their profligate enablers & cohorts in the burning ring of fire that these numbers and pesky annoying new-fangled "facts" and my blasphemous observations simply divert from their Constant Christian Crusade to push the illusion of actually doing something worthy for the Kingdom of God instead of what Christ ordained his people to do (ya know, the dirty, ugly work of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, healing the hurting--thankless work like that). What I say and what I write just don't really amount to much to them. As Stephen Colbert once said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." But, I gotta say, that, if what "God's people" say is true, and if this is a sign of those much-longed-for-by-some End Times ®, and Gabriel's getting ready to blow that horn, as R.E.M. so colorfully puts it, "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."
I saw a bumper sticker online at the Press For Progress website that I thought was pretty interesting. It was wordy for a bumper sticker, but it read, "If gay marriage is so destructive to straight marriage, why does Massachusetts have the lowest divorce rate?" I guess that some bumper sticker issues can't always be broken down to a couple words, can they? Anyway, I had not been aware of that fact and was wondering if it was just something some kind-hearted-but-poorly-misguided liberal came up with to help out our argument, so I went to work investigating on those wonderful tubes called the internets! While searching the Google, I actually found on the website of the U.S. Census info on divorce statistics. It seems the last year that is available for divorce statistics (for all the states who keep such records) for all the states is 2004, just coincidentally the year that marriage equality became the law in the Bay State, and guess what I found?!?! (DRUM ROLL, PLEASE) In 2004 (according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2006, the link to which is http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/06statab/vitstat.pdf), Massachusetts, in fact, did have the lowest divorce rate (per 1,000 population), with 2.2 (the District of Columbia did have a lower rate at 1.7, however. Also, to be fair, 6 states—California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana and Oklahoma--did not report divorce info, for one reason or another, so we are just talking about states that provide divorce stats). The state with the highest rate was Nevada (their rate was 6.4. I guess quickie marriages can sometimes lead to quickie divorces, too. Especially when you wake up the next morning wondering who the smelly drunk next to you is and why you have this hunk of metal adorning the ring finger on your left hand and a Marriage Certificate shoved under your mattress. Makes perfect sense to me why Nevada has such a high divorce rate, but I digress…)
I also remember a couple of the MANY quotes from the fear-peddling Henny Pennys on the Right who foretold the inevitable dangers of the falling sky and who swore that "the end of the world as we know it" was at hand. Just a refresher: "It's like a rolling ball of snow. It gets bigger and bigger. You allow it in Massachusetts, it'll spread to God knows where." - Massachusetts Democratic State Representative Emile J. Goguen, as quoted by the "Traditional Values Coalition" website and "We can look at those places where same-sex marriage has been legalized to see what the future looks like" - Ron Crews, President of The Massachusetts Family Institute, as quoted in the Washington Times, March 10, 2004.
Even more interesting with all this "end of all that is good and Godly" stuff that these people love to push is that the 2004 marriage rate for Massachusetts is the LOWEST rate of the three years they reported! In 1990, the rate for Massachusetts was 2.8 and in 2000, it was 3.0. Could it be things are actually IMPROVING in Massachusetts, where divorce rates are concerned?!?! I'm sure the too-perfectly coiffed ex-gov of the Bay State, Willard Mitt Romney, will do his best to take the credit for this fact, if he finds he needs it to bolster his standing amongst the far-right who owns his party.
In a similar vein, I thought it was oh-so-interesting that, taking a look at these state-by-state numbers, the so-called Red States (in this instance, those that voted for Bush in 2004—which represented 27 of the 44 states that reported divorce info in 2004) had an average divorce rate of 4.3 per 1,000 pop. vs. a rate for the so-called Blue States (the ones that voted for Kerry in 2004, 17 of the 44 states –plus DC--that reported divorce info in 2004) of 3.2. That's a nearly 35% higher average rate in those supposedly more conservative parts of America than in the supposedly "Godless" (one of Coultergeist's favorite words) liberal heathen holes! Wow! That's gotta hurt! ;-)
I realize that for those with a vested interest in pushing the same old "Rapture"-ous End Times ® theory of an angry God coming to kick @$$ & take names & toss the homosexules & their profligate enablers & cohorts in the burning ring of fire that these numbers and pesky annoying new-fangled "facts" and my blasphemous observations simply divert from their Constant Christian Crusade to push the illusion of actually doing something worthy for the Kingdom of God instead of what Christ ordained his people to do (ya know, the dirty, ugly work of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, healing the hurting--thankless work like that). What I say and what I write just don't really amount to much to them. As Stephen Colbert once said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." But, I gotta say, that, if what "God's people" say is true, and if this is a sign of those much-longed-for-by-some End Times ®, and Gabriel's getting ready to blow that horn, as R.E.M. so colorfully puts it, "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."
No comments:
Post a Comment