[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 130 (Monday, October 11, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1912-E1914]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     MARRIAGE PROTECTION AMENDMENT

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                        HON. MARILYN N. MUSGRAVE

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 30, 2004

  Mrs. MUSGRAVE. Mr. Speaker, I rise again today to submit into the 
Record additional material regarding the debate about whether marriage 
is in decline in the Netherlands. Some members suggest that the Stanley 
Kurtz material is not relevant or is not accurate. I submit into the 
Record the following article written by Mr. Kurtz that addresses his 
critics on this point.

                              Dutch Debate

       There's a new development in the story of Europe's marriage 
     meltdown. Recently, a

[[Page E1913]]

     group of five scholars in the Netherlands issued a letter 
     addressed to ``parliaments of the world debating the issue of 
     same-sex marriage.'' The Netherlands was the first country to 
     adopt full-fledged same-sex marriage, and this letter is the 
     first serious indication of Dutch concern about the 
     consequences of that decision. So it's worth quoting the 
     letter at some length. After citing a raft of statistics 
     documenting the decline of Dutch marriage, here is some of 
     what these scholars had to say: . . .there is as yet no 
     definitive scientific evidence to suggest the long campaign 
     for the legalization of same-sex marriage contributed to 
     these harmful trends. However, there are good reasons to 
     believe the decline in Dutch marriage may be connected to the 
     successful public campaign for the opening of marriage to 
     same-sex couples in the Netherlands. After all, supporters 
     of same-sex marriage argued forcefully in favor of the 
     (legal and social) separation of marriage from parenting. 
     In parliament, advocates and opponents alike agreed that 
     same-sex marriage would pave the way to greater acceptance 
     of alternative forms of cohabitation.
       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 that 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.''
       You can read an interview with two of the letter's signers 
     here, and a front-page news story about the letter in the 
     Dutch paper, Reformatorisch Dagblad, here.


                           UNDENIABLE DECLINE

       During last week's Federal Marriage Amendment debate, many 
     senators referred to the Dutch scholars' statement, and to 
     marital decline in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. Of 
     course, you probably haven't heard about that, because, for 
     the most part, the American press has refused to report the 
     story.
       Even so, gay-marriage advocates are worried. M. V. Lee 
     Badgett, research director for the Institute for Gay and 
     Lesbian Strategic Studies, has issued a new critique of my 
     work on Scandinavia and the Netherlands. In ``Unhealthy Half-
     Truths,'' I refuted Badgett's first attack. Now she's back. 
     Badgett's critique of my work is long on statistical tricks 
     and short on engagement with my actual argument.
       The bottom line is that neither Badgett nor anyone else has 
     been able to get around the fact that marriage in both 
     Scandinavia and the Netherlands is in deep decline. In 
     Scandinavia, that decline began before same-sex registered 
     partnerships were established, but has continued apace ever 
     since. In the Netherlands, marital decline accelerated 
     dramatically, in tandem with the growing campaign for gay 
     marriage.
       The strategies for evading these hard truths don't work. 
     Gay-marriage advocates regularly cite steady or improving 
     rates of marriage and divorce in Scandinavian countries to 
     prove that all is well. I've shown repeatedly that these 
     numbers are misleading. Scandinavian marriage numbers are 
     inflated by remarriages among the large number of divorced, 
     for example. Scandinavian divorce numbers omit legally 
     unrecorded breakups among the ever-increasing number of 
     cohabiting parents. Total family dissolution rates in 
     Scandinavia are actually up. I've made these points before, 
     but Badgett and others just keep citing the misleading 
     numbers.
       European demographers know perfectly well that marriage in 
     Scandinavia is in deep trouble. British demographer David 
     Coleman and senior Dutch demographer Joop Garssen have 
     written that ``marriage is becoming a minority status'' 
     in Scandinavia. In Denmark, a slight majority of all 
     children are still born within marriage. Yet citing the 60 
     percent out-of-wedlock birthrate for firstborn children, 
     Danish demographers Wehner, Kambskard, and Abrahamson 
     argue that marriage has ceased to be the normative setting 
     for Danish family life.


                          ALL ABOUT THE FAMILY

       Badgett uses several tricks to dodge the problem of out-of-
     wedlock birthrates in excess of 50 percent. Most cohabiting 
     parents eventually marry, Badgett emphasizes. Because of 
     that, if you look at the number of Norwegian children who are 
     actually living with their own married parents, it is 61 
     percent. Well, that is certainly more than half, but a number 
     that low hardly means that Norwegian marriage is strong. And 
     as I showed in ``Unhealthy Half-Truths,'' in Norway's progay-
     marriage north, the numbers of Norwegian children actually 
     living with their own married parents is now almost certainly 
     at or below 50 percent.
       Of course, the fact that ``most'' cohabiting parents in 
     Scandinavia eventually marry slides over the core point. A 
     great many parental cohabiters break up before they ever 
     decide to marry--and they do so at rates two to three times 
     higher than married parents. So many cohabiting parents break 
     up before they ever decide to marry that demographer Mai 
     Heide Ottosen has said, ``to be a child of young [Danish] 
     parents nowadays has become a risky affair.''
       Badgett cites a study showing that American children spend 
     even less time in total with their own married parents than 
     Norwegians. But that study's Norwegian data comes from the 
     1980s. Since then, America's family disruptions have leveled 
     off while Norway's have worsened. In any case, staging a 
     family-stability contest between America and Scandinavia 
     misses the point. American families are unstable because of 
     our high divorce rates and sky-high rates of underclass 
     single parenting. The fact that our family system has 
     weakened is precisely the problem. America's already 
     significant family vulnerabilities would be pushed beyond the 
     breaking point if Scandinavian-style parental cohabitation 
     spread here. Today, more than ten percent of American 
     children are born to cohabiting parents. And studies show 
     that cohabiting parents in America break up at a much higher 
     rate than they already do in Scandinavia. So a spike in 
     Scandinavian-style parental cohabitation in America would 
     deal a major new blow to our already vulnerable family 
     system.
       Badgett ignores my points about the differences between 
     Norway's socially liberal north and it's more conservative 
     and religious south. The parts of Norway where same-sex 
     unions are most accepted have by far the highest out-of-
     wedlock birthrates. That helps make my causal point. It also 
     helps explain why Norway's out-of-wedlock birthrate is rising 
     more slowly now--something Badgett makes much of. Rising 
     Norwegian out-of-wedlock births have hit a wall of resistance 
     in the recalcitrant, religious south.
       In any case, at very high levels, the out-of-wedlock 
     birthrate has to rise more slowly. That's because super-high 
     out-of-wedlock birthrates signal a radical shift in the way 
     parents think about marriage. In the early stages of 
     Scandinavian-style cohabitation, parents think of first, 
     and even second born children as tests of a relationship 
     that might someday eventuate in marriage. But as parental 
     cohabitation grows in popularity parents have two or more 
     children without getting married at all. So out-of-wedlock 
     birthrates rise more slowly as they move beyond the 40- 
     and 50-percent marks because they are pushing through the 
     final and toughest pockets of cultural support for 
     marriage. That's why the slow but steady increase in 
     Norway's already high out-of-wedlock birthrates is so 
     frightening. It shows that even the resistant and 
     conservative south is beginning to accept parental 
     cohabitation, while the liberal north is beginning to 
     abandon the idea of marriage altogether.
       Okay, says Badgett, let's provisionally grant Kurtz's 
     distinction between high and low-out-wedlock birthrate 
     countries. Even given that, says Badgett, out-of-wedlock 
     births have been ``soaring'' in some traditionally low out-
     of-wedlock birthrate nations (Ireland, Luxembourg, Hungary, 
     Lithuania, and several other eastern European countries). And 
     none of them but the Netherlands has gay marriage. So how 
     could gay marriage be the cause of higher out of wedlock 
     birthrates in the Netherlands when comparable countries that 
     don't have gay marriage have similar rises?
       Gay marriage is not the only cause of rising out-of-wedlock 
     birthrates. I never said it was and it doesn't take a 
     demographer to realize that lots of factors contribute to 
     husbandless women having babies. In fact the out-of-wedlock 
     birthrates that are rising so rapidly in the countries 
     Badgett cites are rising for a distinct and clear reason. 
     These nations are economically and culturally modernizing. 
     For good or ill, they are increasingly adopting postmodern 
     sexual mores, yet provide only limited access to 
     contraception and/or abortion. That juxtaposition of 
     divergent and even contradictory family and sexual systems 
     creates problems. In Ireland, for example, sexual mores are 
     loosening. Yet the Irish still tightly restrict contraception 
     and abortion. That combination has pushed out-of-wedlock 
     birthrates way up.
       Something similar is happening in Lithuania, and in other 
     eastern European countries. In a recent study of 
     contraceptive availability in Europe, Erik Klijzing found 
     that contraceptives were far less available in Lithuania and 
     Bulgaria than in other European countries. Some eastern 
     European nations have as little access to contraception as 
     third-world countries. Curiously, of all the countries 
     Klijzing studied, only in Lithuania do educated people have 
     even less access to contraceptives than uneducated people. 
     That fits the model of a culturally modernizing population 
     with loosening sexual mores, but poor access to 
     contraception. The result is soaring out of wedlock 
     birthrates. (Some will use this to argue for more 
     contraception. Others will argue for abstinence education and 
     a renewal of tradition. My point here is simply that, either 
     way, changes in sexual practices and attitudes have 
     consequences.)
       Badgett does list a country that doesn't have limited 
     contraception: Luxembourg. But while Luxembourg's out-of-
     wedlock birthrate is rising, it's moving up only about half 
     as fast as rates in Ireland, Lithuania, and the Netherlands.
       Hungary is the only country that Badgett lists besides the 
     Netherlands that has widely available birth control but a 
     rapidly rising rate of out-of-wedlock births. This does seem 
     to be related to greater cultural individualism. But another 
     factor is the economic

[[Page E1914]]

     stress that has hit eastern Europe as a whole since the 
     collapse of Communism. Under Communism, governments allotted 
     good apartments to married couples. In the post-Communist era 
     that incentive to marriage has disappeared. Large apartments 
     are now too expensive for many couples to afford in stressed 
     economic times. What used to be an incentive to marriage has 
     turned into a disincentive. Yet nothing of this sort is 
     happening in Holland.


                         THE EVIDENCE IS CLEAR

       So the real question raised by Badgett's comparison is why 
     Holland should be virtually the only traditionally low out-
     of-wedlock birthrate country in which couples have easy 
     access to birth control where out-of-wedlock birthrates are 
     now ``soaring''? I'm grateful to Badgett for (inadvertently) 
     drawing this additional factor to my attention. Rather than 
     weakening my point, it greatly strengthens it. It is clearer 
     than ever that something very unusual is happening in the 
     Netherlands. Demographically, we have a kind of Dutch 
     exceptionalism--and the key difference is that the Dutch 
     added gay marriage to their precarious balance between 
     socially liberal attitudes and traditional family practices. 
     Gay marriage--not restricted contraception or the collapse of 
     Communism--upset that balance, with the result that the out-
     of-wedlock birthrate began to zoom.
       The decline of marriage in the Netherlands in tandem with 
     the growing success of the Dutch movement for gay marriage is 
     the clearest example of gay marriage's impact on marital 
     decline. Badgett does her best to evade the problem by 
     claiming that the increase in non-marital births began before 
     Dutch registered partnerships took effect in early 1998. That 
     is a weak argument, since an increase of two-percentage 
     points in the out-of-wedlock birthrate for seven consecutive 
     years is rare. It was anything but inevitable that a two-
     percent increase in non-marital births in 1997 would be 
     followed by six consecutive increases at the same level. In 
     any case, the final vote to establish registered partnerships 
     took place in 1997.
       But the deeper point is that the meaning of traditional 
     marriage was transformed every bit as much by the decade-long 
     national movement for gay marriage in Holland as by eventual 
     legal success. That's why the impact of gay marriage on 
     declining Dutch marriage rates and rising out-of-wedlock 
     birthrates begins well before the actual legal changes were 
     instituted. The recent statement by five Dutch scholars takes 
     exactly that position.
       Badgett has no trouble accepting the idea that gay marriage 
     might be an effect of an increasing cultural separation 
     between marriage and parenthood. But how could gay marriage 
     be a product of this cultural trend without also locking in 
     and reinforcing that same cultural stance? I've offered 
     abundant cultural evidence that the message conveyed by gay 
     marriage does in fact reinforce acceptance of parental 
     cohabitation.
       The Dutch scholars are right. Many factors are in play in 
     European marital decline, and more research is needed to 
     separate out the relative importance of the various factors. 
     But continued marital decline in Scandinavia and the 
     Netherlands has already provided us with enough evidence to 
     call the wisdom of same-sex marriage into serious doubt.

                          ____________________