Visit Toronto some time. Clean streets, low crime rate, friendly people, and homo marriage.

I believe that Toronto had clean streets, low crime rate, and friendly people prior to “homo marriage,” too. As to whether or not conservatives in the US would be comfortable with the rest of what’s going on in Canadian society – I think that’s another question entirely.

We’ll get some idea what effect gay marriage has had in Canada a few years down the line, at which point, if we see that it’s had unexpected negative consequences, it will be extremely difficult and painful, if not impossible, to undo. In the meantime, we have evidence from other countries that societal recognition of gay marriage as equivalent to traditional marriage has, contrary to what proponents want us to believe, had extremely deleterious effects on the latter – for instance, in the first country to regularize gay marriage:

Until the late 1980’s, marriage was a flourishing institution in The Netherlands. The number of marriages was high, the number of divorces was relatively low compared to other Western countries, the number of illegitimate births also low. It seems, however, that legal and social experiments in the 1990’s have had an adverse effect on the reputation of man’s most important institution.

Over the past fifteen years, the number of marriages has declined substantially, both in absolute and in relative terms. In 1990, 95,000 marriages were solemnized (6.4 marriages per 1,000 inhabitants); by 2003, this number had dropped to 82,000 (5.1 marriages per 1,000 inhabitants). This same period also witnessed a spectacular rise in the number of illegitimate births–in 1989 one in ten children were born out of wedlock (11 percent), by 2003 that number had risen to almost one in three (31 percent). The number of never-married people grew by more than 850,000, from 6.46 million in 1990 to 7.32 million in 2003. It seems the Dutch increasingly regard marriage as no longer relevant to
their own lives or that of their offspring. We fear that this will have serious consequences, especially for the children.

* * *

In our judgment, it is difficult to imagine that a lengthy, highly visible, and ultimately successful campaign to persuade Dutch citizens that marriage is not connected to parenthood and that marriage and cohabitation are equally valid ‘lifestyle choices’ has not had serious social consequences. There are undoubtedly other factors which have contributed to the decline of the institution of marriage in our country. Further scientific research is needed to establish the relative importance of all these factors. At the same time, we wish to note that enough evidence of marital decline already exists to raise serious concerns about the wisdom of the efforts to deconstruct marriage in its traditional form.

http://www.marriagedebate.com/mdblog/2004_07_04_mdblog_archive.htm#108930737260708240

Read the whole thing, as they say, then come back with facts rather than anecdotes and wishful thinking.

The major innovations in family policy during the 20th Century were “family planning” (i.e., abortion on demand and contraception) and “no fault divorce.” One of the main testing grounds for these and related policies was the black community, the privileged target of progressives in the US. The statistics on the decline of marriage and family, and on all of the effects of a decline in family, are there for anyone willing to look.

CK MacLeod on December 3, 2008 at 1:58 PM

Wait, so a country that has homosexual marriage legal has an illegitimate birth rate that is lower than ours?

Wait, so family and community are already under pressure in this country – let’s get busy making it even worse! In a few short years, we could all be living in liberal utopia where the individual stands powerless and defenseless against the state!

Only a culture that was gradually losing interest in its own perpetuation, or desperate to rush into a totalitarian Brave New World before the technology was even ready for it, could buy into the absurdity that a “gay marriage” and a “traditional marriage” could ever be viewed by a thinking person as equivalent – yet that’s exactly what the courts and the gay marriage advocates are trying to shame us into accepting.

I don’t want the state committed to any proposition that amounts to 2+2 = 5. I don’t think it leads to good results in general, much less when it bears on the fundamental institution of human survival.

CK MacLeod on December 3, 2008 at 2:23 PM