Santorum blames gay marriage for bad economy

[RI]

Um, pretty good, considering 98% of Catholics take birth control, wear rubbers and eat meat on Fridays.

Oh come on. This is how polls work. You don't poll segments that are not relevant to the measurement; the women omitted either are too young or too old (and would most likely follow similar levels of usage when looking back at their earlier days) at the time it was taken. Are you going to make the argument that since only a few thousand women were actually polled, that only 0.000001% of Catholic women use it? Or maybe we should add Catholic men to the disenfranchised since you can't spell 'Catholic Women' without 'Catholic Men'?

I'm not sure that 60 year-old women have to worry about using contraception. 15-44 is the vast, vast majority of fertile women, therefore there is no statistical reason to poll pre-pubescent and post-menopausal women.

I'm also not sure that women who are not currently engaging in sexual intercourse would use birth control as a means of contraception (perhaps they may use it for hormonal balances or another reason), but again, not a relevant demographic for the question.

Also, the same study found that only 2% of all Catholic women (faithful adherents and looseys alike) use "natural family planning".

*facepalm*

It's not saying that because they used sampling the statistic is invalid. It's saying that the number that people have been flinging around is based upon an unrepresentative sample, and therefore is only valid for the subsample of Catholic women that they were studying and can't be extended to the distinct populations they didn't measure.

Realistic Idealist - you're a Catholic right?

Yes.

[Wisconsin+17]

Wow, 100 percent of posters on Atlas forum are Catholic.

Cool.

[Adam Griffin]

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LOL

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Fair enough.

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It could also be used by you to counter the situation, given the appropriate context, or could be used by you in a position of "offense" if you are facing discrimination.

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The initial statement was in regards to the posting and accessibility of the information and that's to what I was referring. Perhaps it's not nice to do such a thing, but I highly doubt these people were scaling the walls of the house. Protests in front of any house on public property - depending on needed permits and being in accordance with local regulations - is legal.

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Tell me, would you be interested in supporting my position? This is one of those issues where there's very little grey area between varying points. Do you genuinely believe that gays are discriminating against you due to their quest for recognition by their government? I feel that the levels of discrimination applied by each side are not even.

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More like embracing the changing fabric of the country. I cannot think of a permanently sustainable country or society that determines its course based on the opinions of a small or shrinking sect of individuals.  The only major issues that shape this country's destiny are the economic ones. I typically don't argue social issues like this because by and large, they sort themselves out and generally do so in my favor over time. The truth is that the two parties are not exact in their polarity, and the vision of the modern Democratic Party is very similar economically to the platform of the Republican Party in years past. We have one far-right party and one centrist party.

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It's a good question. I wish to further clarify my position by postulating, "Who decides how marriages/civil unions that are conducted by the state are defined?" I have no desire to force churches or religious institutions to recognize gay marriage. I want the license that the state issues to be issued to any two individuals who wish to engage in that civil contract.

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From two sources, depending on where you were located in the world:

1) From the desire for human clans and families to combine their resources in a fashion that would work in their favor
2) From the construct of religion, which in effect served as a primitive form of government that held people together by common belief before concepts of modern society and democracy arose.

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Because then it wouldn't be recognized by or affiliated with the state and therefore would not be an issue of debate in this discussion. Again, I'm not arguing against the church being able to perform a ceremony as it sees fit. There's absolutely no reason, however, for the government to hand over its form of an institution - that in the modern day has connotations and implications that are not related to religion - back to an entity that is supposed to be separate from this government.

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Which cannot be applied in a transient, temporary sense to complex human entities and the dynamic societies that they have created. We are objects in motion.

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Perhaps in your situation it would be labeled "regress", but the general sentiment that you outlined is correct. I think many conservatives have realized this. When you only stand to keep things the same, the tides of progress wash it away. The only way to counter it is to go backwards and drag the median rate of movement in the other direction. That's why the country is talking about contraception in 2012. Smart move on behalf of conservatives; even if it kills their poll numbers and chances of taking back the Senate and keeping the House, it does pull the national dialog back to a more conservative point.  

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That was four years ago, and as silly as it may sound to contrast between 2008 and 2012, public opinion is shifting faster on gay rights than on any other social issue. There will most likely be a ballot initiative this year and public polls show solid support.

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Based on my upbringing and exposure to an environment that is about as religious as it gets, I don't buy this. I realize that is the talking point and expected this response, but I don't believe the average religious individual separates the sin from the sinner. Although maybe you do, since I'm guessing you consider homosexuality to be a choice rather than a fact of life.

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Obviously it wouldn't be to my liking, but it would still be the reality.

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Mercedes built the first modern automobile engine, but it didn't give them say over the entire auto industry for the past 130 years. Government thanks religion for its contribution and inspiration, but does not require it to provide its own alternative.

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Are you referring to DOMA or another specific law, or are you simply referring to how law surrounding marriage developed over time in America?

[Lief 🗽]

Um, pretty good, considering 98% of Catholics take birth control, wear rubbers and eat meat on Fridays.

...this picture is stupid. Pre-pubescent girls and post-menopausal women don't use birth control, for obvious reasons. Women who don't have sex don't use birth control, again for obvious reasons. And finally, if you want to get pregnant, you're not going to use birth control, again for obvious reasons! This is like casting doubt on election polls because they don't include the opinions of non-citizens, felons, and children. People who have no need for birth control are completely irrelevant to a survey of the percentage of Catholic women who use birth control. 

[Adam Griffin]

*facepalm*

It's not saying that because they used sampling the statistic is invalid. It's saying that the number that people have been flinging around is based upon an unrepresentative sample, and therefore is only valid for the subsample of Catholic women that they were studying and can't be extended to the distinct populations they didn't measure.

I understand what you initially meant, I was just being facetious. I don't agree that it is an unrepresentative sample (at least in broad terms) as much as I think the phrasing of the results were altered through the media. Virtually all polls have variables in them that can be viewed in similar regards (polls that count unregistered voters, polls with a margin of error larger than the difference between candidates/opinions, oversampling, etc).

Contraception hasn't been controversial in a long time, even among Catholics at-large. It's something that perhaps 80+ year-old Catholic women might have found unacceptable, but other than that, it's something that's been used by virtually all women at one point or another who were sexually active for long periods of time. We're talking about the question "Have you ever used any form of contraception?". Even taking into account the variables that were mentioned, I doubt that less than 90% of Catholic women have used BC/contraception at one point or another.

[RI]

People who have no need for birth control are completely irrelevant to a survey of the percentage of Catholic women who use birth control. 

It's completely relevant when people on this forum and elsewhere bandy about the phrase "98% of Catholic women use birth control" as though it were a law of nature when the study shows anything but.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The point is that the vast majority of Catholic women ignore the rule, even if it's not 98%. Also the percentage obviously increases if you include people baptized Catholic but who no longer identify as such (no rational person would ever want to count such people as Catholic obviously, but many Catholics would argue they still do.)

[Wisconsin+17]

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Which is why the papal encyclicals then and now condemn it?

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That doesn't even necessarily mean that the women were Catholic when they used it.

Why didn't they simply ask: "Do you agree with Humanae Vitae in what it teaches about contraception?

Yes/No. Simple. Gets the job done and answers the question. We wouldn't accept PP's 'poll', if it were entered in the database, on the grounds of sample issues. You can't cherry pick your sample.

[Wisconsin+17]

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If the law is so poorly written as to permit this, it's a real concern, is it not?

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Yeah, and going to people's houses is ok when your side does it? I hardly think so. I would wager that had the attention gone the other way, you would have argued that privacy would protect them. Odd that. Privacy protects some but not others, eh?

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I have been in the past.

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Yes, I believe that. Given my experiences, gay people have a giant blind spot that permits them to run roughshod over everyone else in the pursuit of their goal.

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It is unlikely that a proponent of gay marriage would admit otherwise.

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Meanwhile, record deficits are piling up. Who's going to pay them? Is a society that rejects what America is based upon going to care about forcing a default on the people? Are they going to care about things like the constitution, if it means stripping away private people's property in order to prevent a default?

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Well, we're all you've got. So if society is determined to turn away from us, then they are going to bear the consequences...

 

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Hence my statement that they are completely blind to the devastation that's just down the road, I'm not even talking socially, I'm talking fiscally.

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Doesn't answer the question. Who does have the ability to re-define marriage, and how it works?

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Ok. Now fast forward. What is the legal source for laws in America? Where does America get their laws from?

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But why is this illegal, and who made this so?

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And I'm not even arguing that they ought to be responsible for it, I'm just asking the question - as to why this is illegal, and who was responsible for this change, since as you've said, it was the Church that used to be responsible for it.

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But who's argument is this? How far does this go back?

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Naturally, an object at rest will continue to be at rest. Ergo, the law that is settled should remain so. Stare Decesis. If you want to argue against Stare Decesis, go ahead. 

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It's all tied together. I think there is significant desire to return to things as they were - if you had asked me that Rick Santorum would be running for president in America and would be a serious candidate, oh in December of this year, I would have said you were crazy.

His poll numbers were what, 2 percent nationally or something like that? Less?

Santorum's caught fire because he's spoken for a great many of us and reflects our concerns and our issues with America today. People are really tired with the chaos of the past 4 years. They are concerned that the America that they know and love is going away.

When you speak of your desire to remake all of it, that's not exactly going to encourage people who are already concerned with things.

As for 'social things' always winning - there's a pendulum, and when it finally swings back you're going to be wondering what on earth is going on. People want stability. They want to be able to get up in the morning and not have to worry about what nutjob policy that Barack Obama has dreamed up. They want to get up and know that a 5 dollar bill will get them to work and back, they want to be able to set aside 100 dollars for their bills and have that cover it.

Then they see Barack Obama pushing money to his friends and what are they supposed to think, when their basics of life skyrocket up? When the money that they make doesn't quite stretch far enough? When the state defaults and gets downgraded?

Like I said, I'm one of the more reasonable folks. You might not like the other more unreasonable folks.

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You said that back in 08. Didn't happen.

BTW - no Canadian province voted on gay marriage either, just as none have voted on it in the US. Ballot initiatives are 0 for quite a long list, which is why gay marriage proponents don't do ballot initiatives.

You run it through the courts and the legislatures. Every time.

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Your argument is that the bible teaches x. I am saying that the bible does not teach X. Some Christians may think this, but they are incorrect if they do so. I am pointing out to you that the bible does make the distinction between the sinner and the sin. Even in the old testament and even in leviticus. It says that the sin is the abomination and not the sinner.

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Yes, I do. People choose to indulge in their impulses, and that's certainly not restricted to just one sin...

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Then I can only conclude that this is a passing fad.

And, no, DOMA is not what I'm referring to. Further back then this (considerably so), but not as far back as you went.

[Alcon]

Still really waiting for a reply on what I thought would be a simple empirical question (plus the other stuff.)

[Wisconsin+17]

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Mind restating them? We've been talking past each other...

[Alcon]

It's the one you tried to reply to with your last post.

Your argument, as far as I understand it, is that your hypothesis (the "broken window" effect, exacerbated by gay marriage) should be presumed valid because the evidence (continued deterioration in marriage statistics) supports it.  I asked whether you would be inclined to reject your hypothesis if, after trying to isolate the variable "presence of same-sex marriage" -- since heterosexual trends could naturally be expected to drown out any non-extreme effect of same-sex marriage -- no correlation was evident

(By the way, I'm surprised to see you making the "you argued that polls were changing in 2008 -- it didn't happen" argument.  Does failing short of 50% somehow nullify well-substantiated trends?  If not, this is a non sequitur reply.)

[TheGlobalizer]

Jesus actual f**king Christ I hate this guy.

[Wisconsin+17]

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All I said is that the evidence we have at present supports the thesis. I don't believe it's sufficient to prove the thesis.

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I would be inclined to reject the hypothesis if the evidence presented was precisely the opposite of what the thesis argued.

I hope that's clearer.

[Alcon]

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All I said is that the evidence we have at present supports the thesis. I don't believe it's sufficient to prove the thesis.

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I would be inclined to reject the hypothesis if the evidence presented was precisely the opposite of what the thesis argued.

I hope that's clearer.

OK.  So, just to clarify, if I run a comparison of divorce trends in jurisdictions that have legalized same-sex marriage versus those that have not, and it does not indicate a correlation suggesting that legalization of same-sex marriage is an explanatory variable (or that it's a mitigating variable), will you...

1. ...reject your hypothesis?

2. ...accept the counter-hypothesis I described as most accurately matching the evidence?

I mean, in your previous posts, you have put a lot of stock in this "broken window" hypothesis.  When I asked you why you bought into it, you basically said that this correlation (gay marriage's failure to reverse preexisting trends) was the only empirical evidence we have on the subject, and that it was the proper measuring-stick for evaluating our respective hypotheses.  You conceded that gay marriage may have a positive effect, or no effect, but that all we can see is that the overall trend has been toward more divorce as same-sex marriage has become an issue -- and, however secondary that correlation is, it's the most direct empirical evidence we have.

I am presenting a method that attempts to isolate the variable "presence of same-sex marriage," which is what we are trying to do here.  It is objectively better evidence: it establishes direct, instead of secondary or tertiary, correlation.  It may not be perfect, but if you put so much stock in secondary/tertiary correlations, consistency seems to demand you put a lot of import into evidence that isolates the variable you want to look at.  Right?

[Wisconsin+17]

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Statistically significant evidence - showing that the divorce rate has dropped, yes. Inconclusive evidence? No.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Fun fact, the state that has had gay marriage the longest, Massachusetts, also has the lowest divorce rate per capita. No other state has gay couples that have been married 5 years in that state and want to divorce. And they're still the lowest.

[Wisconsin+17]

They are also 3rd lowest in marriage rate.

Only CT and DC are lower.

GA has the same divorce rate but has a higher marriage rate.

[TJ in Oregon]

Fun fact, the state that has had gay marriage the longest, Massachusetts, also has the lowest divorce rate per capita. No other state has gay couples that have been married 5 years in that state and want to divorce. And they're still the lowest.

Massachusetts has had the lowest divorce rate long before gay marriage was legalized.

I doubt you will find much difference if any in the divorce rate from legalizing gay marriage.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Fun fact, the state that has had gay marriage the longest, Massachusetts, also has the lowest divorce rate per capita. No other state has gay couples that have been married 5 years in that state and want to divorce. And they're still the lowest.

Massachusetts has had the lowest divorce rate long before gay marriage was legalized.

I doubt you will find much difference if any in the divorce rate from legalizing gay marriage.

Well, what's more impressive is that they've kept it up when they were the only and then one of the few states with gay marriage.

[Alcon]

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Statistically significant evidence - showing that the divorce rate has dropped, yes. Inconclusive evidence? No.

Hold on.  You accepted the declining marriage rates as compelling evidence despite the fact that you can't run a statistical significance test on it!  You didn't testing any variable; you're just saying "thing A happened as thing B happened, so it's likelier that thing A explains thing B than that it doesn't."  You're accepting circumstantial evidence there.  Now I'm running an analysis that compares the relationship between thing A and thing B in places that have same-sex marriage versus those that don't.  Once I isolate the variable -- which removes the "noise" of irrelevant variables! -- you're now rejecting circumstantial evidence and requiring a statistical significance test.  Wtf?  You must know that makes no sense.

It's indefensible to accept Hypothesis A and reject Hypothesis B, when Hypothesis B has more evidence than Hypothesis A, just because Hypothesis B doesn't reach statistical significance...especially if Hypothesis A's evidence is so circumstantial (i.e., more indirect) that you can't even perform a statistical significance test on it!

[Alcon]

Fun fact, the state that has had gay marriage the longest, Massachusetts, also has the lowest divorce rate per capita. No other state has gay couples that have been married 5 years in that state and want to divorce. And they're still the lowest.

Massachusetts has had the lowest divorce rate long before gay marriage was legalized.

I doubt you will find much difference if any in the divorce rate from legalizing gay marriage.

I agree with you...unlike Ben, I doubt that gay marriage has an effect on the divorce or marriage rates either way.  However, in the first five years of legal gay marriage in Massachusetts, the divorce rate fell 21%, compared to 3% in states that disallowed same-sex marriage and reported statistics (n=43).  Highly statistically significant, as was the difference over the same period between states banning same-sex marriage and those who just don't have it.

Weak evidence?  Fairly.  Weaker than the evidence ("divorce rates haven't reversed after same-sex marriage started!") Ben used centrally to argue his hypothesis ("same-sex marriage causes a 'broken window' with negative externalities to heterosexual marriage")?  Nope -- that evidence is about as weak as you can get.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Not really. Fewer people actually choosing to get married supports the broken window argument. More people choosing to get married is a benefit for the state, as well as lower rates of children born out of wedlock.

It's now up to 41 percent nationwide as of 2009, if you can find me MA stats, I'd love to see them.

29 percent for white non hispanic, 53 for hispanic, 73 for black.

[Alcon]

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Not really. Fewer people actually choosing to get married supports the broken window argument. More people choosing to get married is a benefit for the state, as well as lower rates of children born out of wedlock.

It's now up to 41 percent nationwide as of 2009, if you can find me MA stats, I'd love to see them.

29 percent for white non hispanic, 53 for hispanic, 73 for black.

I was looking at it a few minutes ago, but Massachusetts's change in marriage rate for the same period was about national average.  Did you actually look these statistics up before reaching your position, or were you just hoping they'd match the conclusions you already came to?

Edit: Also, clarification on which variable(s) you want to test -- out-of-wedlock birth rate, marriage rate, divorce rate, whatever -- would help.  I'm not going to do the work testing your hypothesis just to find out you've changed your mind on variables

[Wisconsin+17]

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No, I did not. I said I accepted the declining marriage rates as evidence in favor of the broken window hypothesis, expecially when coupled with rising numbers of children born out of wedlock.

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Uh, 'can't' is a very different statement from saying that I haven't done so which is what I did say. Feel free.

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Yessir, I'm saying that the evidence that we do have supports the argument.

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I'm accepting evidence that supports the conclusion that we are looking at, yes.

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And you yourself have admitted that there's nothing to indicate your claim which is that gay marriage has actually increased marraige rates.

Again, I said, if I'm going to believe that gay marriage is a net benefit, then I want to see increases in the marriage rate. That's not happening. Inconclusive evidence isn't sufficient to prove the alternative.

You seem to believe that I should treat your evidence as compelling, even though you've said so yourself, that it is not.

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What circumstantial evidence is there for the marriage rate increasing?