Are Conservatives Sabotaging Marriage?

I heard an interesting discussion on NPR this morning. The bad economy is hurting both the institutions of marriage and divorce. The marriage rate is down 5% from last year, probably in large part because of bad economic times. Paradoxically, the divorce rate is also down. Researchers have found that as unemployment goes up, divorce rates go down. Opinions are divided: it may be because getting divorced is expensive (who wants to waste thousands of dollars on lawyers?), or it may be because troubled couples are coming closer together and sticking it out.

But one key statistic stands out: the divorce rate among the college-educated is only 11%, much lower than the approximately 50% national average. It's easy to see why: the biggest causes of divorce are money, sex and kids. And since well-educated couples have fewer kids, and kids = money, and more kids = less sex, it's really about the money.

Furthermore, out-of-wedlock childbirth, which used to be considered a "black problem," is becoming common among all low-income Americans. This suggests that poverty was always the reason that many black Americans had kids outside marriage, and now that white America is on the skids the same problems are hitting them.

How much of an effect are the massive disparities between upper- and lower-income Americans having on marriage? Conservatives like to say that income inequality is simply the fault of those people who are too lazy to work. But the fact is that millions of Americans have been losing well-paying jobs for 30 years as American industry has shipped production to other countries in a very successful attempt to destroy unions. That's had the effect of drastically lowering average incomes in the United States. And the recent downturn has hit millions of solid middle-class non-union white-collar workers who toiled hard every day till they lost their jobs because of Wall Street's malfeasance.

As I've noted before, divorce rates are higher in "red" states than "blue" states. Are Republican states less moral than Democratic states? I doubt it; it really has to do with money and education. Blue states have higher incomes and education levels, as a result of blue-state policies and priorities.

One of the reasons marriage rates are down, according to the story, is that many young people, especially men, are deferring marriage. They want to get a good job and build up a nest egg first. But the truth is, two people really can live more cheaply together than they can apart. Working together as a team, couples can do better for themselves than they can alone: they can get a house sooner, build up their savings more quickly, all because there's much less waste and overhead maintaining a single domicile. That's why so many couples cohabitate. How many of them don't get married because they're worried about divorce and all the pain and trouble it brings?

But the conservative sabotage of marriage started in earnest these last few years. To fight gay marriage, conservatives now insist that the only purpose of marriage is procreation. So if you're not having kids right away, you obviously shouldn't get married. The opposition to birth control and abortion by Catholics and many conservatives present further obstacles to getting married. Having kids presents a double whammy: you lose a wage earner and drastically ramp up expenses. Not to mention the stress and tension children cause with their incessant crying and whining...

These conditions force many young people to stay home for years longer than their parents and grandparents did. What effect does this extended childhood have on the quality of mates? Does Mom nagging a 30-year-old man to stop playing video games and make his bed irreparably damage his self-image? Getting married at a younger age has its problems, but it also means you aren't already set in your ways, which means you and your spouse live and grow together before your personalities are set in stone. Are people who get married at 30 less mutable for their mates, and more self-centered and self-absorbed than people who get married at 25?

And then there's the whole notion that gay marriage will destroy the institution of marriage. It's like saying that you can't support the New York Yankees because gays can wear Yankees caps. Or you can't have children because lesbians can have children. Or you can't believe in Christ because the socialist Poles and Germans who've been running the Catholic Church for the last 30 years believe in Christ.

How can gays getting married possibly affect anyone else's marriage? The only effect it can have is the effect you let it have on you. If your faith in your marriage is so weak that it can be destroyed by the fact that a gay person can get hitched, you never really had any faith to begin with.

One could much more convincingly argue that gays aren't destroying marriage, it's conservative opinion leaders like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, and David Vitter who are destroying marriage by constantly making a mockery of their vows, who then turn around and mouth platitudes about the sanctity of marriage. Their hypocritical examples do far more damage to the institution than the prospect of monogamous gays.

Monogamous marriage has been an economic, social and political union in most cultures regardless of religion: Judeo-Christianity, Hinduism, Shinto, ancient Roman and Greek paganism, Chinese Taoism, and most nativist religions in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Children were necessary to supply workers and heirs, for very functional non-religious reasons. Religion, love and romance had nothing to do with marriage. Parents and matchmakers and privy councilors arranged marriages and it was simply assumed that you would come to love your spouse in time.

If conservatives really want to improve the marriage rate and reduce the divorce rate, they should stop ranting about gays, birth control and abortion, stop encouraging large families in bad economic times, stop trying to legislate morality, and instead work to create new jobs, increase the quality of education, and reduce the huge income inequalities that are eating away at this country like a cancer.