The Progressives are aghast that 61% of North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment favoring traditional marriage. The common sneer from the so-called enlightened left is we hayseeds are un-evolved; we troglodytes are living in the past; and that we’re Jim Crow adherents stomping on the “rights” of gay people.
What is it about Progressives that give them a superior sense of being? And why do they denigrate traditional values? Is their utopian civilization built on the ashes of religious institutions?
One of the biggest proponents of traditional marriage is the church. This institution is the lynchpin of the family unit. Sweden exemplifies the simultaneous degradation of church and marriage. Here is an excerpt from a paper written by Professor Richard Tomasson at the University of New Mexico:
There are two forces that have sustained and enhanced the decline of marriage and the increase in nonmarital cohabitation in Sweden since the 1960s: secularization and the development of the comprehensive welfare state.
All major western religions have supported traditional marriage. When the authority of religious belief and its functionaries become diminished, traditional marriage loses one of its greatest institutional supports. In Sweden religious belief and practice and the role of organized religion in everyday life have declined to the lowest levels among modern societies. Weekly attendance at religious services has declined to the low single digits. Still, the large majority of the population continues membership in the Church of Sweden, a situation of "belonging but not believing." Most of the declining number of marriages are church weddings, a majority of children continue to be baptized and confirmed, and the great majority are buried by the Church.
The proponents of same sex marriage pooh-pooh the belief that their union would denigrate the institution itself. The Dutch experience would say otherwise, as reported by the National Review:
Since the start of the Dutch gay-marriage debate–in which gay-marriage activists successfully made the case for separating civil marriage from the legal rights and duties involved with the raising of children–the percentage of Dutch babies born out of wedlock has skyrocketed. As Stanley Kurtz has also pointed out (here and here), in the 15 years since the beginning of the long march toward gay marriage, the illegitimacy rate in the Netherlands has risen from 11 percent (1989) to over 31 percent (2003).
As it turns out, 1989–the year in which gay-marriage campaigners filed their first legal challenge to the existing marriage laws–is something of a tipping point in marriage statistics as well. Before that year, both the absolute number of marriages and the marriage rate (number of marriages per 1,000 people) were on an upward trend. Since 1989, however, that upward trend has turned into a downward slope, from more than 95,000 new marriages in the peak year 1990 to just over 82,000–including 1500 gay marriages–in 2003. This equals a decline in the marriage rate per 1,000 people from 6.4 at its peak in 1990 (out of a population of under 15 million) to just 5.1 in 2003.
What is it about Progressives that give them a superior sense of being? And why do they denigrate traditional values? Is their utopian civilization built on the ashes of religious institutions?
One of the biggest proponents of traditional marriage is the church. This institution is the lynchpin of the family unit. Sweden exemplifies the simultaneous degradation of church and marriage. Here is an excerpt from a paper written by Professor Richard Tomasson at the University of New Mexico:
There are two forces that have sustained and enhanced the decline of marriage and the increase in nonmarital cohabitation in Sweden since the 1960s: secularization and the development of the comprehensive welfare state.
All major western religions have supported traditional marriage. When the authority of religious belief and its functionaries become diminished, traditional marriage loses one of its greatest institutional supports. In Sweden religious belief and practice and the role of organized religion in everyday life have declined to the lowest levels among modern societies. Weekly attendance at religious services has declined to the low single digits. Still, the large majority of the population continues membership in the Church of Sweden, a situation of "belonging but not believing." Most of the declining number of marriages are church weddings, a majority of children continue to be baptized and confirmed, and the great majority are buried by the Church.
The proponents of same sex marriage pooh-pooh the belief that their union would denigrate the institution itself. The Dutch experience would say otherwise, as reported by the National Review:
Since the start of the Dutch gay-marriage debate–in which gay-marriage activists successfully made the case for separating civil marriage from the legal rights and duties involved with the raising of children–the percentage of Dutch babies born out of wedlock has skyrocketed. As Stanley Kurtz has also pointed out (here and here), in the 15 years since the beginning of the long march toward gay marriage, the illegitimacy rate in the Netherlands has risen from 11 percent (1989) to over 31 percent (2003).
As it turns out, 1989–the year in which gay-marriage campaigners filed their first legal challenge to the existing marriage laws–is something of a tipping point in marriage statistics as well. Before that year, both the absolute number of marriages and the marriage rate (number of marriages per 1,000 people) were on an upward trend. Since 1989, however, that upward trend has turned into a downward slope, from more than 95,000 new marriages in the peak year 1990 to just over 82,000–including 1500 gay marriages–in 2003. This equals a decline in the marriage rate per 1,000 people from 6.4 at its peak in 1990 (out of a population of under 15 million) to just 5.1 in 2003.
Proponents of same sex marriage crow they are making strides for their purported goal of “equal rights.” They point to polls that show the public is coming around to their side. But at what cost? Are we to become just like Sweden and the Netherlands? Will Americans become permissive and secularized? The Progressives and their ACLU bullies have answered that question for us.
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