Willie Style

Perfectionist. Nonconformist. Atheist. Scientist. Pacifist. Realist. Progressiveist. Austinist.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Marriage Stats: High rates of divorce in the Bible Belt

(reprinted from Andrewsullivan.com) ...Bible Belt states have higher divorce rates...divorce statistic has no relationship to religious beliefs. The best statistical predictor of marriage "success" (non-divorce) is getting married the first time after age 25 - 28 (varies depending upon the study). In the South, people get married younger...the other predictors are socioeconomic status, level of education and Catholicity of the population. Again, religion (pro-Catholic) does influence the marriage success in a positive way...no provable connection between increased divorce and religion...
---Yet, they want to make sure it's engrained in their state constitutions that ONLY THEY can get married at 16, have 4 kids, and then get divorced, leaving a broken family. Much better, right?!
|| willjs, 1:47 PM

1 Comments:

I don't hold as high a view of marriage as a lot of people, certainly not as all the people who seem to think it's too good an institution to let homo couples take part in. Each of my parents has been married four times, only once to each other; based on my experience, marriage is a way to swindle the wealthier party out of some property and a way to guarantee child support for their offspring.

If a person needs a contract with the government to be able to trust the one s/he is with... chances are something is wrong with that relationship.

By the same token, though... it's not crazy to think of one spouse supporting the family while the other spouse raises the family. If the most failsafe way to do that is through a contract, be it civil union or marriage, so be it. But don't arbitrarily exclude couples who don't fit the happy male-female pattern.

--Scott
Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:02 AM  

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