MARRIAGE IN THE NETHERLANDS AND SCANDINAVIA: Jari Koskisuu replies to Stanley Kurtz

Mr. Kurtz fails again to prove any correlation or causation between gay marriages and parental cohabitation. Because there is none. Not in Netherlands nor in Scandinavia. This is not social science unless you count reading tea leaves social science.

Couple of points: Mr. Kurtz claims that gay marriage and civil unions (registred partnerships) have contributed to the idea that parenting does not require marriage. How on earth could this be the case in Scandinavia where gays and lesbians are not allowed to adopt at all? So gay civil unions have absolutely nothing to do with parenting or being a parent. Also I would like to point out that Finland, where the trends have been similar, legalized registered partnerships as late as 2002.
How on earth did gay marriage affect to straight people's willingness to marry when they didn't even exist? Is it even fathomable to political pundits like Mr. Kurtz that straight couples may not model their lives based on gay people's choices? Actually in Finland the amount of divorce is declining, over two-thirds of children live in two-parent families, teen pregnancies are practically nonexistent, the abortion rate is one of the lowest in EU and the latest polls show that after 2002 the attitudes among teenagers have developed to be more favorable towards marriage. For some reason Mr. Kurtz does not count these phenomena to have anything to do with SSM.

Mr. Kurtz's failed study has been actively used in the area of political and religious debate and I would find it rather refreshing if Mr. Kurtz would admit truthfully that the sole purpose of his "study" was to influence opinion agaist same-sex marriage.

If and when FMA is going to introduced, I think that these right-wing traditionalists and religious pundits should be consistent in their demands. If divorce is bad and children always need two parents, FMA should read that "marriage is unbreakable covenant," outlaw divorce, and should demand the government take custody of all chilren with only one parent and place them in foster homes with a man and a woman as parents. But it is unlikely to happen: we are not talking about marriage as such, we are talking about gay rights. And as usual in every discussion about minority rights the majority is more than willing to restrict minorities' rights and at the same time keep theirs intact.
posted by Eve at 1:18 PM | link

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