Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.

"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
  -- Daniel Webster



Tuesday, May 25, 2004 :::
 

At the Corner, Stanley Kurtz writes about his pieces on gay marriage [emphasis added by me, for reasons I'll explain after the quote]:
Critics of my Scandinavia work have said that Scandinavian registered partnerships "don't count," because they're not full and formal gay marriage. They claim I haven't sufficiently isolated the causal effects of gay marriage from other causes of marital decline. And my critics say gay marriage, having followed so much marital decline, is only an effect of that decline, not a cause. I've answered all that, but the case of the Netherlands finally puts these criticisms to rest. Holland has full and formal gay marriage. The causal effect of gay marriage in the Netherlands can be disentangled from other factors. And in the Netherlands, parental cohabitation didn't begin in earnest until the campaign for gay marriage gave it the green light.
Now, I don't spend a lot of time reading or thinking about gay marriage because I don't believe it's all that important (or, in general, interesting). But I skimmed some of his Scandinavia stuff, and did, in fact, think his main failing was in demonstrating causation from correlation. So I thought I'd take a look at his Dutch piece.

He leads with a graph of the illegitimacy rate in the Netherlands from 1970 through 2003, with significant milestones on the road to gay marriage noted on the graph. The increase in illegitimate parenting is quite remarkable -- and, I'll agree, disturbing -- but the rise is also pretty smooth, and it starts before his first gay-marriage milestone. Finally, imagine the chart without the milestones marked on it. Suppose you were asked to guess the timing of one or more events that caused the change. Would you place markers in '89, '90, '91, '97, and/or 2000? I can't see why you would -- I'd pick a random year in the late '70s.

I've only read the beginning of the article -- maybe if I get to the end, I'll see something more persuasive. But I hope he doesn't think that the graph makes his point.


::: posted by Steven at 5:06 PM


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Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.


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