Will someone please explain elementary biology to this man? Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott says that lifting a ban on gay marriage will raise the number of children born out of wedlock. Ah yes. And a sheep's bladder has a key role in earthquake prevention.
Quoth he: "Texas’s marriage laws are rationally related to the State’s interest in reducing unplanned out-of-wedlock births." Isn't that cute? I always smile when a Texas Republican uses a word like "rationally." Aficionados of sweet reason, take note: 42% of Texas births are out of wedlock, compared to 34% for Massachusetts, the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.
4 comments:
This chucklehead is a state attorney general! I read the article (my head hurts) but not the brief he filed. I think you got his argument wrong Joseph. Here's the quote;
"By channeling procreative heterosexual intercourse into marriage, Texas’s marriage laws reduce unplanned out-of-wedlock births and the costs that those births impose on society. Recognizing same-sex marriage does not advance this interest because same-sex unions do not result in pregnancy.”
See, so he wants to keep a ban on gay marriage because the marriages wouldn't result in pregnancy. So I guess older heterosexual couples where the woman is past menopause shouldn't be allowed either?
I have to go take an aspirin for my headache now.
I'm sorry but True Believers aren't worth the time.
Actually, if you take race into account, Texas and Massachusetts have very similar out-of-wedlock birth rates. On the site you linked, if you take the number of children by race in Texas and Massachusetts as a proxy for births by race (which I couldn’t find there), then Texas births are 33% white, 12% black, 49% Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 2% other.
Massachusetts births would be 66% white, 8% black, 16% Hispanic, 6% Asian and 4% other.
The national out-of-wedlock rates by race are 29% for whites, 73% for blacks, 53% for Hispanics and 17% for Asians.
When I ran the numbers in a spreadsheet and assigned the “other” race group the same OOW birth rate as whites, I came up with an expected 45.6% OOW rate for Texas and an expected 35.6% rate for Massachusetts. That’s a 10% gap, similar to the 8% gap you mentioned.
Interesting work, Rob. But Abbott did not make race part of his argument, and so I see no reason to do so.
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