The advocates tell us the skies have not fallen in Massachusetts; nothing has changed, they assure us. Romney points out that small things have already begun to change, foretelling the bigger, sadder changes to come. First, the marriage licenses change so they no longer read husband and wife but "Party A" and "Party B." The Department of Health insists that birth certificates also change. The line for mother and father becomes "Parent A" and "Parent B."
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The transformation of mother and father into "Parent A" and "Parent B" is the model of the paradigm shift now underway in Massachusetts. The distinctive features of the union of male and female are going to have to be removed from our notions of marriage and family. The experience of same-sex couples will become the new norm for family life, because the "unisex" idea that gender has no public significance is the only model that can be construed as "inclusive" of both opposite-sex and same-sex unions. The result is not neutrality but the active promotion of a new unisex ideal, in which the distinctive features of opposite-sex relations will be submerged, marginalized, cast to one side, and redefined as discrimination in order to protect the new court-ordered public moral standard of the equality of same-sex and opposite-sex couples.

There's good news and bad news for aspiring brides: Many young men still want to marry, but most prefer to put it off until they are good and ready.
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A report by the [National Marriage Project] released on Wednesday found 49 percent of single heterosexual men between 25 and 34 would tie the knot tomorrow if the right woman came along. But 53 percent said they are not interested in getting hitched any time soon.

In my book, I find that active evangelical family men (who attend church several times a month or more) had the lowest rates of domestic violence. I also find that nominal evangelical family men (who attend church monthly or
less) had the highest rates of domestic violence. I find similar patterns when it comes to reports of husbands' affection--the wives of active evangelical family men report the highest levels of happiness with the affection they receive from their husbands, whereas the wives of nominal evangelical family men report the (second) lowest level of happiness with their husbands' affection.

The fact that these findings parallel one another gives greater credence, in my view, to the book's findings. I would expect that affection and domestic violence are--on average--inversely related to one another. Knowing what I know about evangelicalism, the divergence in findings also makes sense. Active evangelical family men get lots of formal and informal messages about the family responsibilities that go with their "headship"; they are also encouraged to focus on the emotional sides of their marriages. Nominal, or "backslidden", evangelical family men have heard about their "headship" in the home but do not put themselves in a religious context where they are encouraged to put their families first. So they may use conservative Protestant gender ideology to legitimate their bad behavior. These nominal evangelical family men also tend to have poor and working class backgrounds, which may make them more prone to domestic violence.

The domestic violence question in the NSFH was as follows (and was asked independently of husband and wife): "Sometimes arguments between partners get physical. [asked of wife] During the past year, in how many of these arguments did your husband become physically violent with you? [asked of husband] During the past year, in how many of these arguments did you become physically violent with your wife?" Any marriage where one spouse indicated that there had been one or more incidents of violence by the husband was coded as violent. The questions were posed separately to both spouses, and in a majority of cases the wife was the primary respondent. But it is possible that abusive husbands who were the primary respondent would have limited NSFH's access to their wives. But I'm not convinced that abusive evangelical husbands would have been more manipulative than abusive non-evangelical husbands.

Q: Your book mentions a study in which evangelical Protestant wives whose husbands attend church regularly report the lowest levels of domestic violence of any group studied. However, Protestant men are often stereotyped as oppressing women. Why the discrepancy?
A: In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention released a statement basically affirming male headship in the home. That statement generated a lot of press attention and commentary. In particular, Steve and Cokie Roberts wrote something at the time claiming that this type of message would "clearly lead to abuse, both physical and emotional."
What people don't always realize is that these same [religious] institutions often talk a lot about the family responsibilities to which men should attend. Your typical Evangelical Joe pays a lot of attention to his responsibilities in the family and not just being the leader of his family. It's the message of responsibility and love.
Q: Which group has the highest rate of domestic violence?
A: Interestingly, the nominal evangelicals who don't attend services with any regularity have the highest rates of domestic violence.
Q: Why is that?
A: There could be a whole host of things going on here, but I'm speculating that the active evangelical men encounter a message that their headship is connected to loving their families, whereas the nominal evangelical men don't have any religious context. They aren't encountering people in the congregation who are encouraging them to channel their idea of headship in a positive direction.

Too many of them -- and especially the boys -- accept the idea that school is a white-oriented institution that doesn't offer anything they need or want. The boys' attitude is to idolize millionaire rappers and basketball stars, to believe that you can't be a real man and a student at the same time and that if you study you're a sellout. ...

Charles Barclay, an excellent student of mine who'll be going to Howard University in the fall, confirms this fear. ... Barclay says he has been called a sellout a couple of times, but because he has been able to "prove his manhood" by being a starter on T.C.'s basketball team, he says he doesn't "take as much heat" as other black guys who study hard.
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Senior Bryan Walton, who is American-born, has a Nigerian cousin living with his family. He thinks that "African guys are more focused and disciplined; they have goals. African parents are determined to make their kids work in school. African American guys are spoiled. They won't work their way up the totem pole the way people from other countries will."

Reka Barton, who will attend the University of Virginia in the fall, agrees. "The African guys come here wanting to get an education; they know it will pay off. A lot of African American guys don't understand that -- their thing is to act tough," she says.

My father only ever gave me one piece of advice but it could be universally applied. A good example of this is when my parents dropped me off for college. My mom had a million things to say to me, none of which I remember today.

My father just said: "Don't do anything stupid."

Then, he followed that up with, "If you don't know if it's stupid or not, it is."

Across the country, evangelical Christians are voicing frustration and puzzlement that there has not been more of a political outcry since May 17, when Massachusetts became the first state to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

Evangelical leaders had predicted that a chorus of righteous anger would rise up out of churches from coast to coast and overwhelm Congress with letters, e-mails and phone calls in support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

But that has not happened.