Posted on 02/07/2005 7:20:34 PM PST by familyop
In a recent column, Barbara Kay extends the "broken window" theory of crime to a discussion of marriage. The concept, originally devised by social theorists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling -- and later popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 bestseller, The Tipping Point -- looks at the relationship between major crime and minor disorder. Breaking the window of a seemingly abandoned car turns it into a derelict, so that a vehicle no one touched for weeks is stripped clean within hours.
"Gay marriage is that broken window," writes Ms. Kay. "Continuing vandalism will see marriage abolished altogether."
Assuming that the Wilson-Kelling epidemic theory of crime can be usefully stretched to cover marriage, is gay marriage the broken window? I propose to argue it isn't. The "window" was smashed a long time ago, and the wreck has been vandalized ever since. The doors, the seats, the wheels and the engine were long gone before gay and lesbian couples started eyeing the hood ornament.
The Canadian state views marriage the way the Chinese state views the meditational exercise Falun Gong (except the Chinese state is more honest.) Marriage creates the family, and the family -- a quasi-autonomous institution, with its own ties, loyalties, and legal immunities -- competes with the state. Limited government can coexist with it, but the family is always at risk in societies of unlimited government. The 20th century brought unlimited -- or at least intrusive or interventionist -- government to many societies. As we entered an era of statism, the family became embattled.
Under crude forms of statism, such as Soviet-type systems, the institution was emasculated by edict. Church sacraments were discouraged. Spouses were pressured to divorce politically unsuitable mates. Children were conscripted to spy on their parents and denounce them to the authorities.
Under more sophisticated models, such as the welfare-statism of the West, the family was decreed anachronistic. The state supported trends that viewed marriage as stifling and confining, and particularly oppressive to women. Governments funded studies and lobby groups to undermine family values. Bureaucracies offered substitute services for functions traditionally performed by families. Statist theorists pitted Western virtues, such as individualism, along with universal vices, such as hedonism, against family obligations. Eventually the state all but declared men to be anti-social, and appointed itself as the protector of women and children. This had the effect of depriving the family of one of its main reasons for being.
The initial device used to destroy the family was probably divorce reform. It was the state's call for "civilized divorce" in the 1960s that served as the "broken window" leading to the vandalization of marriage.
My 1981 novel Final Decree tells the story of a "civilized" divorce, based on developments in family law during the previous 20 years, along with its consequences to the family. I won't try to summarize the book here (interested readers can find it in a library) but it seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that meaningful marriage isn't merely the union of one man and one woman, but the lifelong union of one man and one woman: "Till death do us part." There must be exceptions for hard cases, needless to say, but divorce reform sought to make exceptions the rule.
Societies can have civilized marriage or civilized divorce. Our society opted for civilized divorce, and we've been living with the consequences ever since. Forty-five per cent of marriages end in divorce within 15 years. In America, 20% of white and 50% of black children are born out of wedlock.
If divorce reform reduced marriage from something made in heaven to something made on Earth, it took the concept of "no-fault divorce" to remove all value from it. When the law declared that it couldn't judge matrimonial disputes and would henceforth treat spouses who kept their marriage vows the same as those who repudiated them, it put a once-sacramental institution on the legal footing of a gambling debt. Commercial contracts consider performance; a marriage contract considered only "need" and feminist ideology. The state that once protected the family against errant spouses was now protecting errant spouses against the family.
Or so it seemed. In reality, the state was protecting itself from competition. The coup-de-grace was delivered by giving common-law unions virtually the same legal standing as marriage. This, in effect, abolished the institution. Where all couples are "married," no couples are.
No sacrament or even contract anymore, marriage today continues as a private arrangement. For some couples, the union draws its strength from the natural instinct of pair-bonding. Others rely on religion, tradition, children, economic interest, companionship, comfort, even lassitude. Splitting up is too much trouble. But the family as a sovereign construct is a thing of the past. It has "evolved" out of existence.
It's interesting that people who raised few objections while the institution was being dismantled -- while the wheels and doors of the derelict car were being vandalized -- now rise to the defence of the hood ornament. Analysts who let no-fault divorce pass without a murmur, object to gay marriage. Half of Canada's population does, in fact. Perhaps what makes same-sex unions loom so large is that they seem to add insult to injury.
It's difficult to be delicate about this. One person's sexual orientation is often another person's nausea. Though some gay activists cry "homophobia" at the drop of a hat, homophobia does exist. It bypasses religion or social philosophy. While not pretty, a phobia doesn't deny "human" or "minority" rights. Being nauseated is a human right itself. And in any event, minority rights don't include a right to define social institutions for majorities.
But this is by the by. Same-sex marriage isn't going to be the death of an institution with a 45% failure rate. When nearly every second wedding ends in divorce, the institution is already buried. The state has seen to it. Same-sex marriage, when it comes, will only be a macabre dance on its grave.
60 years ago, the marriage rate per thousand was at a high of 10.1. In 2000, it was 8.5 per thousand. Statistics courtesy the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)
Social engineers are on an ideological par with social workers. Bottom feeders. Leave the oldest institution of human civilization alone.
There has been a long history of spouses cheating. What about the husband that goes to church every Sunday, then goes on a business trip during the week, and while he is out of town spends the night with a mistress or hires a prostitute? Sometimes, probably not as often, the wife spends time with a lover. This was happening long before the 1960's even.
Hear, hear!
But in fact, those of us who ARE married, don't look to the state to secure anything. They are not on our side -- anymore.
I had read one woman's story about a similar thing happening in the first year of her marriage -- and she and her husband didn't deal with it. The words just "hung in the air between us", she said, and eventually, they became reality. For us, that issue came up sometime in our first year. Just goofing off, one of us made some sort of joke about "getting a divorce". Right then, we looked at each other, and knew that that issue was something we had to face. "Ok, let's settle this now", I said to my wife. "Divorce is something that happens to other people", I told her. "I may kill you, but I'll never divorce you. You're stuck with me!" And while I occasionally tell divorce jokes, they never refer to us. The possibility of our doing such a thing is totally off the table.
I think she must not have minded it. She's still here.
(28th year, and counting.)
the writer is a ____________.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22by+George+Jonas%22+homosexual+gay&hl=en&lr=&start=0&sa=N
No fault divorce broke a lot of marriages--roughly half of them. It resulted in several generations of children who have grown up deprived of the basic stability of having two parents. Living through divorce is, for a child, like seeing the basic foundations of your universe fall apart. Even the most unhappy marriages are usually preferable to that.
So in that regard this author is perfectly correct. But he's wrong to say that gay marriage doesn't matter. Gay marriage would drive more nails into the coffin of traditional morality and family. More children would be deprived of their most basic need: parental love and stability.
We should have resisted when no fault divorce came through. Hopefully we have learned some lessons and won't let the perverts of progress drive us even further into the sewer.
It has not tipped enough to the purposes of the ABA. The ABA's most recent model divorce code is specifically directed to acceptance of homosexual marriage and removing children from marriage. The ABA model code seeks to make children as mere accessories to marriage. Marriage will be for only adult activity, it will incorporate the homsexual view of normal people as "breeders".
In case you think this is a mere model code, it is the ONLY model code used by legislators in writing and modifying divorce law. THERE IS NO COMPETION. The ABA model code is in each and every single state legislature.
Actually, the divorse (lawyer) industry has just about killed marriage, not homosexuality.
divorse = divorce
too bad you're so busy......the diff is plain to see
I agree with you in that the homosexual "marriage" agenda is something we should oppose. I personally lurked on feminist e-mail lists (including those lists used by some of their old leaders) during the 1990s and saw that the homosexual "marriage" effort is a follow-up from earlier pro-divorce efforts. They were planning it back then and before.
"Contrary to pop myth, divorce rates in the US have been steadily dropping for 20 years, possibly because people are waiting longer to marry."
Or just as possibly people are not marrying at all.
If you're not married you don't show up in divorce statistics.
I've looked through several and haven't found anything, yet. In the first few links, there are several mentions of a book written by him ("Politically Incorrect") and something about a column he wrote regarding the Ukraine.
There are some divorce statistics in the site behind the following address. ...quick search, and I don't know anything about the site.
http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html
And you are correct. The cohabitation rate has been going up, while the divorce rate has only declined about one per thousand population over the past twenty years or so. People who have children out of wedlock for the sake of their "independence" (selfishness) and "separating" are doing as much harm as those who marry and divorce.
When a man can lose his home, his children, and a substantial portion of his income for decades to come without one single instance of infidelity or domestic violence WHERE'S THE INCENTIVE TO MARRY !!!
That's what happened to me. Life was torn apart and the kids are the main beneficiaries of the financial and emotional scars.
Never again. Never.
BTTT
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