Posted on 01/27/2004 1:05:48 PM PST by Polycarp IV
CULTURE & COSMOS
January 27, 2004 Volume 1, Number 25
New European Studies Show Homosexual Marriage Harms Marriage in General
Proponents of gay marriage frequently argue that allowing for it would have no affect whatsoever on the institution of marriage itself. Former Harvard anthropologist Stanley Kurtz, writing in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, reports on various European studies that challenge this argument. Kurtz reports that in those countries where full homosexual marriage rights have been granted, marriage and indeed concrete family structures have been considerably weakened.
These studies also show that the traditional function of marriage as the basis for stable family environments and parenthood is now no longer considered necessary. Rather, "same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood.instead of encouraging a society-wide return to marriage.gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable."
Kurtz sites studies from a number of countries. In Denmark, which has allowed legal homosexual marriage since 1989, sociologists Cecilie Wehner, Mia Kambskar and Peter Abrahamson write, "the concept of a nuclear family is.changing. Marriage is no longer a precondition for settling a family-neither legally nor normatively." This transition in the definition of a family is similar in other Scandinavian countries.
Kurtz says the statistical measure of eroding family structures need not be based solely on the numbers of new heterosexual marriages, but also on increases in out-of-wedlock births and divorce rates. These factors have become more important as issues such as gay marriage and co-habitation have eroded the concept of family and the institution of marriage. Indeed, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway-all of whom have incorporated full gay marriage rights over the past ten to fifteen years-have seen jumps in out-of-wedlock births since they legalized homosexual marriage. This deterioration of the traditional family structure has ushered in an era where the majority of children are born outside of marriage.
Additional data, such as that from the most recent Statistical Yearbook of the UN Economic Commission, demonstrates the growth of this trend. In the two decades leading up to 2001, marriage rates decreased, divorce rates increased, and out-of-wedlock births increased in many countries, and the countries with the largest percentage fluctuations in these issues are also those most lenient with homosexual marriage rights.
While the data was specific to Europe, the same could be said for all developed Western nations, including the United States. Demographer Kathleen Kiernan classifies all Western countries into a three-tier system signifying incidence of cohabitation, out of wedlock births, and marriage. Kurtz notes that Kiernan's "three groupings closely track the movement for gay marriage." Only in the lowest incidence tier where societies are "most resistant to cohabitation, family dissolution, and out-of-wedlock births.has the gay marriage movement achieved relatively little success."
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I'm not black, but I oppose racial discrimination. I'm not a drug user, but I oppose the war on drugs.
See a pattern here?
If you removed the sex abuse problems committed by homosexuals, what problems would the Catholic Church be left with?
The Spedale report of a 10% increase in marriage (from 1990 to 1996) was not true, since the 2001 numbers (for Denmark and Sweden) showed a *decline* since 1990. Meanwhile, whatever is happening with the divorce rate, many are no longer holding off until the children are grown.
But it is interesting that gay marriage has made its greatest strides precisely where the institution is in direst straits. In essence the fight, such as it is, is over a corpse.
When the link between marriage and procreation is severed or even weakened, both suffer.
Secondly, I have answered the question, numerous times, when others just as acerbic as you asked previously. Alternatively, you can read my profile.
Yes, homosexuals covering for homosexuals. Do you see why I want them out of my church?
They'vs infiltrated so deep now that some seminaries are known as "Pink Palaces" where the applicant interviewers screen out applicants who don't swing their way.
This infiltration cast a horrible shadow over every good priest and every Catholic.
I want them out of my Church!
Noteworthy, too, is the lack of a movement toward marriage and monogamy among gays. Take-up rates on gay marriage are exceedingly small. Yale's William Eskridge acknowledged this when he reported in 2000 that 2,372 couples had registered after nine years of the Danish law, 674 after four years of the Norwegian law, and 749 after four years of the Swedish law.
Granted that these countries have much smaller populations - but even so these are miniscule numbers, especially if we accept the compositional percentage of the gross population by gays of 10%. To take the case of Sweden it's less than 1% of 1% of the population.
But then why should Scandinavian gays take the institution seriously? Straights obviously no longer do either.
How could you expect it any other way? The homosexual agenda is contrary to Conservative values. Take a look at who your friends are. Are they Conservative?
Speaking of Conservative, what would you know about that? You're a Libertarian, and I didn't have to learn that from your home page. It's gotten so that I can spot one after just two posts. That's how incongruent Libertarianism is with Conservatism.
As far as answering my questions, why not just answer them?
Considering the damage he allowed homosexuals to inflict in his diocese, it would not surprise me if he was.
Yes.
Or it is more accurate to say: many key bishops were. These problems are handled at the diocesan level.
The real question is why so many men with arrested sexual development - nearly all of homosexual orientation, given that something like 94% of reported molestation cases are of adolescent boys - got into the priesthood in the first place. And how they were formed in the seminaries.
There are of course many perfectly chaste, fine same-sex oriented priests serving in the Church. But clearly this orientation poses a greater obstacle for priestly formation than does heterosexuality per se.
But then of course the Church has always held that homosexuality is "gravely disordered."
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