Evangelicals in the south divorce often and have unmarried children.

As culture collapses people try to figure out how to hold together and sustain values in the midst of this collapse. (Black Christians are another example).

Nonetheless I fundamentally agree with you that if social conservatives coalesce around Gingrich, it’s a repudiation not only on the Left but on the Right that “family values” matter.

Gingrich’s collapse in Florida is (I think) a result of second thoughts among these groups.

Major religious right spokesman have endorsed Rick Santorum (including Dr. Dobson). Politically, given Gingrich’s lead in the polls at the time, this was counter-intuitive and exposed them to the charge of political impotence.

They did it, because there is a core of leaders who do think marriage matters.

An income boost, in other words, could create a wave of household formation that drives nationwide incomes even higher. That’s why I, at least, will be rooting for more marriages to fail in 2012.

Could be a joke… Or it could be that Newt Gingrich’s “Plan For A Prosperous America” has been leaked.
Hard to tell.

Consider the following hypotheticals:

Married people who don’t have sex.
Married people who don’t love each other.
Married people who cannot have children.
Married people who never had a state or religious ceremony. (not your own government or faith)
Married people who never promised to be married.

Which one feels most like the people involved are not really married?

Turn all of these into positive statements (people who have sex, children, love, ceremony,or promise) and ask which one ALONE would make you think the people involved are married?

Please feel free to expand the lists, I am always looking for features I may have missed.

Finally, I just wanted to note in passing that whatever their disagreements, all of the documents that you linked either explicitly mention contracts or implicitly use contractual language in describing marriage. Whatever legal and cultural meanings, preconditions, limitations, or regulations one attaches to that agreement…the agreement is there.

Yglesias observes statistics suggesting that divorce declined as the economy slowed, and that as the economy revives we should expect divorce to revive as well. This will likely result in increased household units, and the consumption that accompanies that, which should result in increased economic activity. Yeah divorce!

This result strikes us as anomalous: Doesn’t divorce lead to increased costs, reducing people’s discretionary income?

Sure. Yglesias is merely observing that as people get richer, they (try to) enhance their happiness by consuming more of all kinds of things that they previously could not afford before. An economist would say that people substitute superior goods and services for inferior ones. In some cases, that means substituting steak for hamburger. In some cases that means substituting an Audi for a Chevy. In some cases that means substituting the married life for the single life. And in some cases in means the opposite.

But funny thing: both marriage and divorce tends to create new households. And household formation stimulates a lot of economic activity.

Marquardt offers basically two objections. First, she argues that we should not expect new household formation will make people happier because the cost will leave people with less disposable income. Second, Marquardt argues that people are often wrong about what will make themselves happy – especially in the long run, and especially about their domestic relationships.

Is it a bad thing that divorced people will end up squandering more of their money on creating a new household? Perhaps. And perhaps it’s a bad thing that twenty-somethings squander so much of their money on creating a new household when they move out of their parents’ basement. And yet, people do it – presumably to claim new autonomy in their lives. The fact that they would incur this kind of expense suggests that they believe setting up the new household will make them happier.

I also object, but for different reasons. Sure, the people who can at long last afford a divorce may in fact be happier. But I expect wealthier people to be happier REGARDLESS of whether they choose to spend their wealth for a divorce. If a couple refrained from getting a divorce/new household and instead invested the money on a vacation, they might derive even greater happiness yet.

When we analyze divorce, we tend to compare people’s circumstances before and after, all else being equal. Yglesias’s article asks us to compare people before and after divorce when all else is NOT equal – because we’re acknowledging that people are getting richer. There’s nothing surprising about the idea that people grow happier as they grow richer. Divorce is beside the point.

It’s so politically incorrect that no one wants to argue for it.

A more likely reason no one wants to argue for it is because they don’t agree with it. Your purported “core of marriage” bears no relation to the marriages of most people in this country. It’s outdated, sexist, and silly.

Daughter of Eve:

Every other marriage paradigm severs those natural ties/rights of parent and child.

I’ve heard this claim before, but I keep asking: how? How does same-sex marriage “sever” the natural rights of parents and their children? By forcibly taking children out of their parents’ arms?

Of course not. In same-sex marriages with children (not all of them have children, by the way), the link between the child and their biological parents has likely already been severed. (Unless, of course, the child is the biological offspring of one marriage partner, and gets to see the other parent frequently).

Your argument would make more sense if you were arguing that parents should not be able to give up their children for adoption. But instead, you’re shifting the blame for the child’s adoption from the people who gave up the child onto the people who take the child in. That’s not logical, nor is it fair.

Since parents are able to give up their children for adoption, and there are plenty of same-sex couples out there willing to take in those children, to provide for them what their biological parents could not–and since there is no evidence that same-sex couples are incapable of raising children well–the compassionate and humane solution is to encourage same-sex marriage, so that the adopted children of same-sex couples will have all the legal protections that adopted children of straight couples do.

And with that said, I understand what you’re saying about stable married households being financially better off than divorced households…..but the comparison doesn’t hold for *unstable* married households (y’know, the kind that get divorced). My standard of living and savings both *soared* after my divorce, because I no longer had to support a partner who refused to work *or* his alcoholism and other expensive habits. So much so in fact, that a year-and-a-half later I purchased a *house* (no deadbeat and his booze=downpayment on house).

Which is why I really like the old Ann Landers question (“are you better off with him or without him?”) for cutting to the chase. People need to make decisions within *their* circumstances.

“The real function of marriage is to bind the stronger (male) to the weaker (female). Marriage is about protecting women. Everything else — children, love, commitment — is incidental….

It’s so politically incorrect that no one wants to argue for it.”

Um, no. It’s basically just plain old incorrect.

(I always find that approach to argumentation fascinating. Make an offensive statement, claim that it’s just the Truth, and then claim that anyone who disagrees or hasn’t said it yet is just being “politically correct.”)

Even in same-sex relationships, anon, one person is usually “stronger” and the other “weaker.” Take any two people in a relationship and they’re not likely to have the exact same strength.

Sure, men are on average physically stronger than women, but some women are undeniably stronger than some men. And that’s, of course, only talking about physical strength. Other measures of strength would include emotional strength, mental strength, and spiritual strength. Maybe marriage exists to bind the emotionally/mentally weak (men) to the emotionally/mentally strong (women). Since we’re being stereotypical here.

Your statement just isn’t seriously put forth by most prominent opponents of SSM, especially in legal proceedings.

Daughter of Eve,

“I’m just going to throw this out there that marriage between a man and a woman is the most child-friendly and universally child-safe public institution we have.”

Actually, I’d argue that that institution would be a lesbian two-parent household. See also, “child abuse rate at zero percent in lesbian households.”

Maybe it’s better for the kids when there are two members of the “weaker” sex and no members of the “stronger.” Maybe this isn’t put forth more often because it’s “politically incorrect.”

(I’m being somewhat tongue-in-cheek here, by the way. I’ve actually expressed skepticism in the past about the above-cited study. I know that lesbians can make great parents, but such an absolute claim of zero percent is hard to take at face value. I understand what you’re saying, DOE, about man-woman marriage establishing ties to children, but my point is that that’s not how many people view marriage in part because of the inconsistencies I referenced in my post.)