The Selfish Social Experiment on SSM in Scandinavia
The results are in. The verdict: against "gay marriage"
Robert A. Jason
Welland Tribune
January 25, 2005
Here is my contribution to the important debate on the institution of marriage and family that is so vital, so foundational to all civilizations.
Stanley Kurtz, Ph.D, a Social Anthropologist from Harvard University and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution supplies us with a cogent argument and evidence. In his painstakingly thorough landmark study, “The End of Marriage in Scandinavia,” in the Weekly Standard (Feb 2/2004) Kurtz asks, “Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage?” His answer: “It already has.” How? By taking the gap that exists between marriage and parenthood and making it even wider.
“If marriage is only about a relationship between two people,” (as gay activists allege) writes Kurtz, “and is not intrinsically connected to parenthood, why shouldn’t same-sex couples be allowed to marry?” He goes on to say, “It follows that once marriage is redefined to accommodate same-sex couples, that change cannot help but lock in and reinforce the very cultural separation between marriage and parenthood that makes gay marriage conceivable to begin with.”
He offers Norway, the most conservative of the Nordic countries, as exhibit A. Prior to 1993 when same-sex “marriage” was imposed there by courts (just as in Canada by ultra-liberal judges), not by democratic vote—Norway had a low out-of-wedlock birth rate. The traditional link between marriage and parenthood was still very strong.
But once same-sex “marriage” was legalized, Norway’s out-of-wedlock birth rate shot up as the link was broken and cohabitation became normal. Gay “marriage” wasn’t the only factor, but it appears to have been the decisive one.
And as it turns out, that was the plan. Kurtz cites Kari Moxnes, a Norwegian feminist, sociologist, and vocal enemy of marriage. She says “that Norwegian gay marriage was a sign of marriage’s growing emptiness, not its strength.” And, according to Kurtz, Henning Beck, the gay Danish social theorist, “dismisses as an ‘implausible’ claim the idea that gay marriage promotes monogamy.” According to Beck and Norwegian sociologist Rune Halvorsen, “The goal of the gay marriage movements in both Norway and Denmark. . . was not marriage but social approval for homosexuality.” And let me add emphatically, the same is true in Canada.
“If, as in Norway,” writes Kurtz, “gay marriage were imposed here by a socially liberal cultural elite, it would likely speed us on the way toward the classic Nordic pattern of less frequent marriage, more frequent out-of-wedlock birth, and skyrocketing family dissolution.” This would be a disaster—more broken families, more crime.
Social science research solidifies the common-sense observation that children do best when raised by their married mother and father. Twelve family scholars surveyed thousands of studies and reached the conclusion that “Marriage [traditional marriage] is an important social good associated with an impressively broad array of positive outcomes for children and adults alike.” Children raised by their married parents are less likely to experience child poverty, commit suicide, commit crimes, suffer physical or sexual child abuse, or to divorce later in life.
Fatherlessness is a huge problem in modern western culture. Depriving children of fathers damages them and their future. Same-gender unions (it would be dishonest to call it marriage) will rob children of what they need most: the love and nurture of both a mother and a father. This cruel social experiment treats children as mere guinea pigs. Simply, it is child abuse. Our precious, innocent, defenceless children deserve better.
10 years of same-sex unions wrongly called "marriage", or its functional equivalent, civil unions, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden has led to far fewer marriages and rocketing illegitimacy. Kurtz reports that since legalization of so-called same-sex "marriage", 80 percent of firstborn children are born out of wedlock, and 60 percent of children born thereafter are born to unwed parents. That’s bad news for children since unmarried parents are much more likely to split up.
Stanley Kurtz concludes, “In effect, Scandinavia is a cultural disaster...Marriage in Scandinavia is in deep decline, with children shouldering the burden of rising rates of family dissolution....And the mainspring of the decline—an increasingly sharp separation between marriage and parenthood—can be linked to gay marriage.”
"In effect, Scandinavia has run our experiment for us. The results are in. The verdict: against gay “marriage.”