Item 13, Few Homosexuals Choose to "Marry" (http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=CU06D06&f=PG03I03) by Tim Dailey at the Family Research Council shoots itself in its own foot. The numbers contradict the conclusion given.
The article says 6.3% of gays and lesbians had married in the first four years that such marriage was legal in the Netherlands, that is 1.6% per year. That marriage rate is not low. In a population that lives on average to 75 years old with 100% one-in-a-lifetime marriage, the average marriage rate would be 1.3%. And 100% of heterosexuals do not get married, so the rate is even lower. So my back-of-the-envelope calculation show that gays are marrying at roughly twice the rate of heterosexuals.
This rate is low only in one limited sense. I would have expected many gays to have been eagerly waiting for a chance to marry, so a lot of people previously denied marriage would have gotten married in one big spree in the first year. I guess this didn't happen. That is the only news.
Item 8, the book "The Scientist's Crusade," truly irks me. I hate it when self-appointed Christian activists draw dividing lines separating my friends into two groups supposedly opposed to each other. This dividing line, however, is drawn right through the middle of me, a Christian and a scientist. I will gripe more about this later, but I have to run off to teach Sunday School soon. I would have loved the irony if today were one of the days I do a science project as a Sunday School craft project, but we are only baking sugar cookies.
no subject
The article says 6.3% of gays and lesbians had married in the first four years that such marriage was legal in the Netherlands, that is 1.6% per year. That marriage rate is not low. In a population that lives on average to 75 years old with 100% one-in-a-lifetime marriage, the average marriage rate would be 1.3%. And 100% of heterosexuals do not get married, so the rate is even lower. So my back-of-the-envelope calculation show that gays are marrying at roughly twice the rate of heterosexuals.
This rate is low only in one limited sense. I would have expected many gays to have been eagerly waiting for a chance to marry, so a lot of people previously denied marriage would have gotten married in one big spree in the first year. I guess this didn't happen. That is the only news.
Item 8, the book "The Scientist's Crusade," truly irks me. I hate it when self-appointed Christian activists draw dividing lines separating my friends into two groups supposedly opposed to each other. This dividing line, however, is drawn right through the middle of me, a Christian and a scientist. I will gripe more about this later, but I have to run off to teach Sunday School soon. I would have loved the irony if today were one of the days I do a science project as a Sunday School craft project, but we are only baking sugar cookies.
Erin Schram