Correspondence
Correspondence DECLINE AND FALL STANLEY KURTZ'S "The End of Marriage in Scandinavia" (Feb. 2) eloquently warns of how the acceptance of gay marriage in Nordic countries further widened the...
...The result was disappointing...
...KERRY ON Andrew Ferguson's "Arms and the Man" (Feb...
...And what we've learned is that, in the sections of Scandinavia where de facto gay marriage is almost totally accepted, marriage itself has almost totally ceased to exist...
...Moxnes and Melby teach at a university that borders the county of Nord-Troendelag...
...He goes on to argue that, "This suggests that gay marriage is both an effect and a cause of the increasing separation between marriage and par-enthood...
...Scholars agree that, when it comes to the out-of-wedlock birthrate, ideas and values are key variables...
...MICHAEL SELLITTO New York, NY FINDING FEW ARTICLEs that address the issues surrounding gay marriage, I read with great interest "The End of Marriage in Scandinavia" by Stanley Kurtz...
...Tacked on to the end of the list is a rise in domestic gay partnerships throughout the period of heterosexual marriage's decline...
...Where gay marriage in Sweden was the last part of this system to be put in place, gay marriage had greater impact in Norway...
...But the point of my piece will have been missed if gay marriage is seen as just one end of a laundry list of causes...
...Sadly, Kurtz can't see that the acceptance of unmarried cohabitation, which separated marriage from sex, was the start of the slide...
...In the locally dominant and conservative church of my youth, the most divisive issue to date has perhaps been the ordination of women...
...Yet it's worth noting that Norway's Lutheran Church has ordained women for some time, without that leading to outright purges of conservative clergy...
...By increasing the frequency of sex among unmarried couples, the sexual revolution only increased the rates of unplanned pregnancy, abortion, children born out of wedlock, and divorce...
...The out-of-wedlock birthrate for first born children in Nord-Troendelag in 2002 was a startling 83.27 percent...
...The Nordic pattern is characterized by an extreme separation of marriage and parenthood, a separation reflected in high rates of parental cohabitation, strong legal equality between marriage and cohabitation, and (de facto) gay marriage...
...MARY KAERCHER Farmington Hills, MI AFTER READING STANLEY KURTZ'S "The End of Marriage in Scandinavia," I came away befuddled: The article does not even attempt to accomplish Kurtz's purported goal— that is, to show empirically that same-sex marriage causes irreparable damage to heterosexual marriage...
...In "The End of Marriage in Scandinavia," I spoke of the way in which secular social scientists, like Kari Moxnes and Kari Melby, had largely replaced the clergy as social arbiters for many Norwegians...
...That doesn't mean the choice is all or nothing...
...Senate, and his remarkably disturbing penchant for Clintonian political opportunism...
...Churches in Nordland fly the rainbow flag to signal their acceptance of registered partnerships...
...9) brings home an important point: Indeed, John Kerry is a hero...
...Severna Park, MD...
...The out-of-wedlock birthrate for first-born children in Nordland county in 2002 was a striking 82.27 percent— significantly higher than the already high out-of-wedlock birthrates in Norway as a whole...
...However, Kurtz's logic seems anchored in his previous logical fallacy...
...At best, Kurtz has established an association between these events and some possibility of its being an effect, but certainly not a cause...
...And as I showed in my article, the same clergy who oppose same-sex registered partnerships lead the opposition to unmarried parenthood...
...I would agree that it is possibly logical to say the gay marriage issue brought change to the Norwegian Lutheran church, and, if this church is dominant in Norway, such changes could have contributed to change in other social norms...
...The problem is the man in office years later...
...But he is also an infinitely more troubling candidate if he attempts to retrospectively recast his liberal record, of which he has said he is proud...
...All of these produce widespread social divisions and, occasionally, adverse social consequences...
...Let not a single Republican "operative" or the self-important Wesley Clark say differently...
...If it's legitimate for scholars to connect the influence of conservative clergy to low-out-of-wedlock birthrates in traditional districts of Norway, then we can make a parallel move in a socially liberal district like Nord-Troendelag...
...Any analysis of the role of Scandinavian same-sex "registered partnerships" (de facto gay marriage) in furthering this decline must begin with existing factors...
...We tried that in the 1990s...
...Secular social scientists preach to their classroom "congregations" and through the media, explaining that gay marriage legitimates unmarried parenthood...
...Michael Sellitto correctly points out that correlation does not equal causation...
...Now we know how to evaluate him...
...On John Wierenga's point, I don't doubt that a whole spectrum of religious divisions could help weaken traditional clergy...
...If conservative preachers in traditional counties help keep out-of-wedlock birthrates down, then a purge of traditional clergy elsewhere should act as a stimulus to that rate...
...Gay marriage's effect in the United States would be even greater...
...For example, traditionally religious districts in Norway have low out-of-wedlock birthrates...
...The rather sloppy molding of his career choices, like a third-grade ceramics project, into an image which he believes casts a more moderate, electable image is the very thing that makes one unfit for the presidency...
...Or, for that matter, the logic in an argument like Kurtz's...
...Since marriage and cohabitation are still legally distinguished in America, and since our parental cohabitation rate is only beginning to rise, gay marriage would be the leading edge of the Nordic system in America, not the tail end...
...Things do change over time...
...Perot's observation is equally appropriate in the case of John Kerry...
...Mary Kaercher is right that the strong separation of marriage and parenthood typical of Scandinavia has a precedent in premarital cohabitation...
...But when people are older, in office, and making bad decisions, such things should affect our perception of their credibility and fitness for leadership...
...Gay marriage is important because it is part of an emerging Nordic pattern—a pattern which goes well beyond the type of marital decline familiar to Americans...
...JOHN T. WIERENGA Grand Rapids, MI STANLEY KURTZ RESPONDS: Marriage has been in decline since the 1960s...
...That statement was meant to downplay Bill Clinton's Vietnam subterfuge, and refocus attention on George H.W...
...Mary Kaercher is correct to note that premarital cohabitation is one of the factors already encouraging marital decline...
...I suspect that few would see the logic in such an argument...
...Shall we, like Stanley Kurtz, conclude that those churches which have ordained women have led to a rise in out-of-wedlock births...
...But Kerry also cannot escape his liberal record as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and in the U.S...
...For all of marriage's problems, Americans still strongly associate it with parenthood, as the Scandinavian comparison immediately reveals...
...Nobody can muddle the man's sacrificial service for his country and for freedom while under enemy fire...
...when we find unusually high out-of-wedlock birthrates in a county where the gay marriage battle has resulted in a purge of traditional clergy, it is reasonable to conclude that Norway's system of de facto gay marriage has had an effect on the rise of unmarried parenthood...
...But a social scientist as talented and creden-tialed as Kurtz should know that correlation does not amount to causation...
...Yet this is what the gay marriage issue has done in Nordland...
...Since traditional clergy preach against unmarried parenthood, scholars reasonably conclude that traditional religion contributes to low out-of-wedlock birthrates...
...These churches forbid clergy to preach against homosexual activity...
...After describing Kathleen Kiernan's division of Europe into three zones based on varying levels of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births, Kurtz quickly concludes that the gay marriage movement "not coincidentally" follows upon increases in the out-of-wedlock birthrate...
...How, then, do scholars make the jump from correlation to causation...
...It would accustom us to a Scandinavian-style separation of marriage and parenthood, and that would mean more parental cohabitation, and eventual chipping away of legal distinctions between marriage and cohabitation...
...I say the same in my article...
...PETER BYRNES JR...
...Kurtz next argues that his contention is most clearly evident in Norway...
...If Kerry switched from war hero to reflexive liberal, so be it...
...As a research fellow at the Hoover Institute, Kurtz must know that even a certain association does not imply any certainty of cause and effect...
...So it is possible to isolate the causal mechanism in the case of gay marriage, even if the influence of other factors on the overall decline of marriage is real...
...They establish causal links by identifying correlations, then connecting those correlations to a cultural analysis...
...Unfortunately, Kurtz's article does not quite inform us about the issue...
...There are many factors active in even conservative churches today as humanistic perspectives defeat the dogma of the past...
...Take, for example, the socially liberal Norwegian county of Nordland...
...By helping to drive up Norway's still moderate rates of parental cohabitation, gay marriage helped solidify the legal equalization of marriage and cohabitation, which only hit Norway in the nineties...
...If we adopt gay marriage, the doorway to the Scandinavian system is open...
...2) eloquently warns of how the acceptance of gay marriage in Nordic countries further widened the separation of marriage and parenthood in that region, which is now trundling down the slippery slope of family decline...
...Instead, Kurtz shows that heterosexual marriage in Scandinavia has been on the decline for decades, and then proposes a laundry list of reasons why marriage there has declined...
...Ross Perot said, in one of his more lucid moments during the debates of 1992, that what a person does during his youth should not impact our thinking toward him as an adult...
...My causal analysis is of the same order...
...It's reasonable to connect this novel gospel to rising out-of-wedlock birthrates in districts where radical social scientists have influence...
...Bush's errors in judgment as president...
Vol. 9 • February 2004 • No. 23
