DOES SSM STRENGTHEN MARRIAGE IN EUROPE? Maggie Gallagher

To me, the most persuasive part of Stanley Kurtz's argument is this: If you go around telling people that marriage has nothing in particular to do with making and raising children, people just might believe you.

I know of no same-sex marriage advocate, not even Jonathan Rauch (who has the deepest and most profound attachment to mariage as a social institution) who is willing to say "Children need moms and dads and marriage is how you get them for kids."

The core idea of SSM, as many recent posts from its advocates suggest, is that no one family form is any better than another. What kids need is love and stability and commitment, not moms and dads (which BTW you cannot get for children through cohabitation in any reliable way--but that's another argument). SSM represent the institutionalizaiton of the "family diversity" ideal, not the beginning of a marriage renaissance.

To me the most questionable assertion of Prof. Badgett is that "heterosexual" marriage in Europe is doing well (and the corrollary assertion that for Kurtz to pick out-of-wedlock births as a key indicator is tendentious and unreasonable).

Marriage is not in great shape in Europe. Most European countries are experiencing the same problems as America: rapidly accelerating family fragmentation expressed as high out-of-wedlock births and high and/or increasing rates of divorce.

To which can be added a related problem the U.S. does not experience at the same levels: a crisis resulting from low rates of fertility. U.N. demographers define "lowest low fertility" as a birthrate below 1.5 children Europe's total fertility rate in 1995-2000 was 1.42 children per woman.

In 2000, in the developed countries of the world, for the first time in human history there are more old people than children (19 percent versus 18 percent). By 2050 (assuming optimistic rises in fertility levels in Europe back to replacement levels), there will be twice as many elderly people as children (32 percent versus 16 percent). Under the U.N's "medium" projection (which predict birth rates will rise back to replacement levels), the median aged person in Europe will be almost 48 years old.

In Europe marriage is failing to do either of its key tasks: prevent fragmented families or encouraging the creation of the next generation.

Marriage is being separated from childbearing (or family-making) at both ends in Europe. THe fact that Dutch culture could change so dramatically in such a short period of time is indeed a distressing fact that should set off warning bells: The commitment to marriage as a child-making and child-raising institution can disappear quickly if it is not support by law, culture, religion, and society.

The relationship between SSM and the decline of marriage is no doubt complex, because the latter has many causes.

But where is the evidence that SSM strengthens marriage?

If we really cared about strengthening marriages, would we launch this vast, untested social experiment on kids and our society?

If we judge many other things (adult rights, sexual needs and desires to affirmation) so much more important than the health of marriage, how can we expect a stronger marriage culture to arise?

If the idea that "children need moms and dads" is a form of bigotry or discrimination, how can we raise a generation of men to be good family men, or women to think it is important to marry before having children (as opposed to being stable and loving, whatever that means)?
posted by Eve at 4:23 PM VOTE

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