Bad Science on Marriage?

A Steven Yoder at Zmag has a critique of the "bad science" of gay marriage opponents. About me he says:

"She summarized it best in an article in the August 2003 Weekly Standard: "As a Child Trends research brief summed up, 'Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage. . . .'" She goes on to argue that because that parenting structure is best for kids, legalizing gay marriage means subjecting children to less-than-optimum outcomes: "[Gay marriage] would mean the law was neutral as to whether children had mothers and fathers. Motherless and fatherless families would be deemed just fine."

Child Trends, the organization that she cites, is a highly respected, nonpartisan research center. But Gallagher slyly misrepresents the conclusions of their research review, which does not discuss straight versus gay family structure, but various forms of straight family structure. Gallagher leaves out the key sentence that qualifies the statement she cites: "Children in single-parent families, children born to unmarried mothers, and children in stepfamilies or cohabiting relationships face higher risks of poor outcomes than do children in intact families raised by two biological parents." There is no evidence here about how children raised by gay couples fare."

I just sent him the following response:

Steve:

I saw your recent comments. I realize we disagree on much, but as to whether I am "slyly" misquoting Child Trends here is the policy brief where I lay out my view of the social science evidence in full (on our website):
http://www.marriagedebate.com/pdf/MothersFathersMatter.pdf

The Child Trends brief is quoted including the sentence you say is essential, plus a footnote noting that the family forms included in this review of the literature did not include children raised by same-sex couples from birth. (This is because there are no large nationally representative studies that look at how children fare raised by same-sex couples from birth to adulthood.)

It's quite possible to disagree, even about the social science evidence, without intending to be deceptive.

Best,

Maggie Gallagher, President
Institute for Marriage and Publicy

posted by maggie at 9:52 PM | Link |

Lessons from Alaska

The lawyers’ charges leveled at the proposed marriage amendments of Virginia and other states (i.e. that they would preclude employment benefits) mentioned earlier on this site are completely implausible (as I argue here). The repetition of these accusations in so many states, however, raises the question of why the amendments ever use language that goes beyond simply defining marriage. An ongoing controversy in Alaska helps answer this.

In February 1998, a trial court judge ruled that Alaska’s marriage law unconstitutionally interfered with a fundamental right to choose one’s life partner. The people of the state overwhelmingly mooted the decision by approving a state marriage amendment in November 1998. (Incidentally, the Alaska Supreme Court had removed the second sentence of the amendment drafted by the legislature before the vote.) The Alaska Civil Liberties Union subsequently brought suit asking that the state and the municipality of Anchorage be required to offer employment benefits to same-sex partners of public employees, on the theory that confining such benefits to spouses was discriminatory because only opposite-sex couples could marry under the state constitution. The Alaska Supreme Court agreed, ordering defendants to come up with a plan to extend the benefits. A trial court judge is overseeing that process. This week, the news is that the supervising judge believes the state’s plan for extending benefits is too stingy and must be reworked.

These kinds of court actions make clear to legislators and citizens that some courts will be unconstrained in using creative legal arguments to justify policy proscriptions not anchored in constitutional provisions. In the context of marriage, legislators and citizens’ groups worry (probably correctly) that if they merely define marriage in an amendment a court will be tempted to order marriage benefits to be extended to unmarried couples. If marriage amendment drafters try to prevent this by also prohibiting the creation of “civil unions,” courts or legislators will create a status called “domestic partnerships,” and so on. Thus, the drafters have felt it necessary to use language that prevents creation of any legal status “substantially equivalent” to marriage or some similar formulation, not knowing exactly what courts might hatch next.

Coming full circle: instead of motivating lawyers and judges to exercise some restraint on their imaginative faculties, however, the lawyers then seize on the broad language to accuse amendment supporters of overreaching. It would be more amusing if the stakes weren’t so high.
posted by William Duncan at 3:08 PM | Link |

Marriage and the Law: A Statement of Principles/Norval Glenn

An op ed in the Dallas Morning News by Prof. Norval Glenn, a distinguished family sociologist at University of Texas and one of the signatories to "Marriage and the Law: A Statement of Principles.":

"Most recent public discussion of the law and marriage has focused on whether there should be same-sex marriage, but the issue of how the law should treat marriage goes far beyond that narrowly focused debate. More fundamental is the question of whether the law should promote and support marriage (possibly including same-sex marriage) or whether it should favor "family diversity" – the view that no family form is superior to any other. To the family diversity advocates, what others consider family fragmentation – including divorce, out-of-wedlock childbearing and the consequent weak relationships of fathers with their children – is not a social problem but something to be celebrated. While the "celebration" of family diversity has largely disappeared among social scientists who study families – because research has failed to support it – it has increased among legal scholars. . ."

posted by maggie at 12:12 PM | Link |

Maggie and Marriage at Brown

Just back from a debate Tuesday afternoon at Brown University. The Brown Daily Herald reporter's version here. A local gay press account: Gay Marriage Debated at Brown University
posted by maggie at 2:03 AM | Link |

Is Illegitimacy a "Black Problem"?

Bishop Harry Jackson:

"'You people need to address the problems of your families. The lack of fathers is at the heart of the ills you face'," spoke the patronizing white-haired, Caucasian minister. His intentions were great but in a myopic way, he had just looked past the problems of his own community and zeroed in on mine. He, like many others, dismissed the true national urgency around the soaring out-of-wedlock birthrates and genocidal abortion rates in the black community. He had distanced himself from these statistics by making them "a black problem." As long as family breakdown is viewed as an ethnic or minority problem, the average American will not feel that he must address it. Black family breakdown is actually a foreboding signpost which points to the future of all American families, if left unchecked. My minister friend fails to see that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, along with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are redefining concepts of family, fatherhood, and relational fidelity for all America. . ."

posted by maggie at 10:19 AM | Link |

Best Gay Marriage T-Shirt

"My Stepmother's Boyfriend Says Marriage is a Holy Sacrament"
posted by maggie at 12:15 AM | Link |

Polygamy Slogans

On polygamy T-shirts, buy 'em here.
posted by maggie at 11:53 PM | Link |

Defending Marriage From Sharks/The Onion

The latest threat to marriage, courtesy of The Onion:

"New Bill Would Defend Marriage From Sharks
Senators 'Taking A Stand' Against Ancient Killer
September 19, 2006 | Issue 42•38

WASHINGTON DC—Senator Bill Frist (R–TN) introduced a controversial new bill Tuesday that would severely limit the ability of sharks to "mutilate the institution of marriage until it is completely unrecognizable."

"For too long, we've stood by as our most sacred institution has been thrashed, bit by bit, by these amoral predators," said Frist at a press conference, standing in front of a detailed diagram of a great white shark. "Marriage is a union between one man and one woman, and no shark should come between them with its powerful jaws and massive dorsal fin.". . .

(You know the Onion is satirical, right?) Maggie
posted by maggie at 11:23 PM | Link |

Colorado Update: New Poll

365gay.com reports a new Colorado poll:

"A new statewide poll shows that Colorado voters are likely to approve a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage but accept a move to create a domestic partner registry. . .

The poll released Tuesday shows that 58 percent of Colorado voters would vote in favor of the domestic partnership measure while 53 percent of voters in the state support the ban on gay marriage. . ."

posted by maggie at 11:16 PM | Link |

Weird Marriage News

Tuesday September 19, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk

"The publicity surrounding Chris Tarrant's marriage breakdown has led to a surge in sales for Nintendo's DS Lite console, for which the television presenter is advertising spots that include him forgetting his wedding anniversary. . ."
posted by maggie at 11:10 PM | Link |

Does Marriage Reduce Crime?

MarriageDebate Readers may recall our policy brief "Do Married Parents Reduce Crime?" But this new study "Does Marriage Reduce Crime?" byRobert J. Sampson and colleagues in the August 2006 Criminology 44(3), looks instead at whether getting married reduces the probability a man will commit crimes and concludes:

". . .being married is associated with an average reduction of approximately 35 percent in the odds of crime compared to nonmarried states for the same man. These results are robust, supporting the inference that states of marriage causally inhibit crime over the life course."

posted by maggie at 9:33 PM | Link |

Marriage versus Family Diversity/Weekly Standard

Claudia Anderson (nee Winkler)'s take on last week's IAV family law conference in NYC, in which "Marriage and the Law: A Statement of Principles" was released:

"'THE WORST THING about public life in the United States is the harsh, ugly, barking, bad-faith-assuming, accusatory tone' of most discussion of important matters on which people disagree. So says David Blankenhorn. . .whose annual symposium last week was devoted to the hotly contested matter of marriage and the law.

Should our laws treat marriage and cohabitation as if they were identical? Is the old conjugal view of marriage as a lifelong union of husband and wife obsolete, an impediment to our dealing with the new realities of cohabitation, late marriage, divorce, and non-marital childbearing? Or is that old view essential to the sound rearing of the next generation? Is a marriage culture something to be revived and strengthened in our laws, or should its remnants be jettisoned in favor of laws better adapted to a culture of "close relationships" and "family diversity"?

Bringing these questions into focus was the release Thursday of a "Call to the Nation" signed by over 60 leading scholars and practitioners of family law, many of them present at the symposium. Entitled "Marriage and the Law: A Statement of Principles," it is a careful and impassioned defense of the idea that the law must support this vital social institution.

The first panel brought together a leading signatory, Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard; a scholar who declined to sign the statement, June Carbone, of Santa Clara University School of Law; and a beleaguered voice from the front lines, Leah Sears, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

. . .In the 15 years Leah Sears has served on Georgia's high court, she has watched with alarm as its domestic-relations caseload has risen from 20 percent of all criminal and civil cases to 65 percent. And that doesn't include the fallout from family breakdown in juvenile court. Georgia's underfunded courts are swamped, she says--and, worse, they "are not the proper venue to solve our family problems."

. . .She attended last year's symposium, and came away, she said, "transformed, energized." By July 2006, her court had set up a Commission on Children, Marriage and Family Law to study "the legal issues associated with the fragmentation of our families." Its first white paper can already be read at www.gasupreme.us.

. . .It was another judge--Jean Toal, chief justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina--who further illuminated the danger of treating marriage and cohabitation the same in law. When a marriage is entered into, two people publicly state their mutual commitment. Even a common law marriage in South Carolina requires the "mutual intent to live together as husband and wife" and can be dissolved in the eyes of the state only by divorce.

But cohabitation is different. It is often entered into without any intention of permanence or clearly understood mutual obligations. Is it wise to heap onto these vaguer, weaker alliances the rights and obligations of marriage? On the contrary, Toal argued, it is marriage that needs to be revalued. "We need to empower this special relationship.". . .

posted by maggie at 7:16 PM | Link |

Baby Aversion Therapy

This is one version of the column Eve refers to, in which I critique Baby Think It Over. Maggie
posted by maggie at 7:12 PM | Link |

SSM: What's the Harm?

"Same-Sex Marriage: What's the Harm?" a conference at BYU law school September 15 and 16. Description of the conference and draft papers are here:
posted by maggie at 7:04 PM | Link |

FOR SHAME?: Amy Laura Hall at Christianity Today

...Yet the most blatant use of shame I have found in my work on the history of reproduction and domesticity in the U.S. does not come from the eugenicists of 60 years ago. It comes from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a 21st-century effort. Pictures posted in high schools and featured in teen magazines show a Latina girl with "CHEAP" emblazoned across her body. The African American girl is labeled "REJECT," the Asian girl "DIRTY," and the working-class white girl "NOBODY." The very fine print places these labels in a different context—recommending "cheap" condoms, for example. But the overwhelming effect of the design is bold-print humiliation, suggesting that teenage mothers are cheap, dirty nobodies, social rejects with no future and with little hope for their children. The stark photos are reminiscent of social-hygiene posters from the eugenic era, cultivating a potent combination of disdain and fear.

Possibly the most troubling of the posters features a white boy whose sexual activity resulted in an unexpected pregnancy. He is labeled "USELESS," and the fine print reads: "My scholarship is USELESS. Now I need a job to support my baby." Taken together, the posters convey a deeply problematic message. The college boy who leaves behind his scholarship to take care of the CHEAP REJECT's baby is USELESS. ...

One public service announcement produced by Candie's makes it clear that the consequence that can render sex devastating is, in fact, a human life. With a young couple about to "do this" in the back seat of a car, former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy arrives to deliver a crying baby into the girl's arms. The boy exits the car in a hurry. Jenny leaves, too, sneering at the girl with knowing disgust. "Welcome to reality," are her departing words. The girl is left holding the crying baby, alone, clearly frightened, in the back seat of the car.

more (that Jenny McCarthy ad reminds me of Maggie's National Catholic Register column, "Against Baby Aversion Therapy"... which I can't find online.)
posted by Eve at 4:33 PM | Link |

Why I Support Abstinence Education

Because while, I'm not too worried that government with its few hundred millions for abstinence education is about to rollback the sexual revolution, repress female sexuality or move to ban contraception, I do think that teenagers like Tia Whipple get too little support...
posted by maggie at 4:01 PM | Link |

Taxpayer Dowries?

Social engineering (or affirmative action?) southeast Asian style:

"THE Indian Government is offering 50,000 rupees (£580) to higher-caste people who marry spouses from the lowest castes in its latest controversial effort to dismantle the ancient Hindu social hierarchy". . .

posted by maggie at 2:08 PM | Link |

Marriage is Like Coal Mining

Tim Harford at Slate explains why.
posted by maggie at 7:57 AM | Link |