demographic winter heralds same-sex spring
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8/14/2019 Demographic Winter Heralds Same-sex Spring
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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: [email protected] • 760/295-9278©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of theRuth Institute.
Demographic winter heralds
same-sex marriage spring
By Jennifer Roback Morse
The New England region is a sitting duck for the
further de-construction of marriage.
I would not like to be the governor of
Vermont right now. But I must say the man
who has the job is showing a lot of backbone in the face of a legislature on the
brink of legalizing same-sex marriage.
Vermont has had civil unions since 2000.This legal status for same sex couples is now
deemed to be inadequate, which supposedly
accounts for the decline in the number of
civil unions. In 2001, the state granted 1,876
civil unions, compared with only 262 lastyear. The Vermont Senate has already
approved the Freedom to Marry bill andDemocrats in the House say they will vote
for it on Friday. But Gov Jim Douglas says
he will veto the measure if passed.
The gay rights movement has targeted New
England for their “6 by 12” strategy of having same sex marriage in all six of the
New England states by 2012. This strategy
makes sense from their point of view. Theyalready have same sex marriage in
Massachusetts and Connecticut, by judicial
fiat. In addition, New England is less
religious than the rest of the country. Andthis is a region which has already given up
on having babies as a viable way to create a
future.
A priest from Vermont recently told me
what it is like to minister in one of the leastreligious states in America. It has one of the
highest proportions of the population who
consider themselves “unaffiliated” with anyreligious tradition, at 26 per cent, compared
with 16 per cent of the US population. Only
23 per cent of the Vermont populationattends church services at least once a week ,
compared with 39 per cent of the general US
population. The priest has had one wedding
in the past year, and that was a couple intheir fifties. He has perhaps one or two
baptisms per year. It sounded rather grim,
and a lot like Europe.
About the same time I happened to bereading P.D. James’ chilling novel, The
Children of Men. That dystopian novel
imagines what the world would be like if the
entire human race became sterile. Since noone can have kids, marriage doesn’t mean
much. Women lavish attention on child
substitutes: they have elaborate christeningsfor cats and drive dolls around in baby
carriages. Since no young people come into
being, nothing new and energetic can reallyhappen. People lose hope and reason for
living as they age. With the exception of the
cat christenings, it sounded a lot like the
priest’s description of Vermont.
So this got me to thinking: what isVermont’s demographic situation? Are they
reproducing themselves?
8/14/2019 Demographic Winter Heralds Same-sex Spring
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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: [email protected] • 760/295-9278©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of theRuth Institute.
Vermont has the lowest total fertility rate of
any state in the union: 1.66 babies per woman. (Note: you have to click on the link
for the excel file to see the birth rates.)
While you’re looking at the table, pleasenotice that the six New England states,
Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine,
Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode
Island, are in the “top ten” of the lowest totalfertility rate states in the country. Not
surprisingly, Vermont has a low population
growth rate compared with the rest of thecountry: Vermont’s population grew 2 per
cent between 2000 and 2007, while the
entire country grew by 7.2 per cent over thesame period.
None of these states are replacingthemselves with births. All of them have net
out-migration: more people left between
2006 and 2007 than moved into the NewEngland states. See pages 5 and 6 here.
Taking this demographic malaise together with the general low religious practice, the
whole region is a sitting duck for the further
de-construction of marriage. And make nomistake: instituting same sex marriage
amounts to the de-construction of marriage.
Natural, man woman marriage attaches
fathers to their children, and mothers and
fathers to each other. Redefining marriagefrom the union of a man and a woman to the
union of any two persons jettisons three
important principles: first, the principle thatchildren are entitled to a relationship with
both parents, second, the biological principle
for determining parentage, and third, the
principle that the state recognizes parentage,
but does not assign it. Regular religious practice seems to inoculate people from
believing that these principles are
unimportant.
Sometimes the arguments over same sex
marriage degenerate into an argument over cause and effect. Advocates of same sex
marriage argue that there is no real
connection between that legal change andchanges in other aspects of marriage, at least
not when looking at measurable
demographic indicators like non-marital
child-bearing. But that is not what I amsuggesting here.
My point here is that people who have
already excused themselves from
reproducing do not see any particular problem in redefining marriage. The people
who have given up on reproducing don’t
mind uncoupling marriage from concern
about children. And if religious people arethe only ones who can muster the hope in
the future necessary to shoulder the effort of
raising children, so much the worse for thenon-religious.
But the fact that the aging solons of NewEngland have given up doesn’t mean that
the rest of us ought to. The people of
Vermont and the rest of New England arenot going to surrender this territory without
putting up a good fight. Letters and emails
are pouring into Governor Jim Douglas’office. The principle that kids need mothers
and fathers is worth fighting for.
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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: [email protected] • 760/295-9278©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of theRuth Institute.
Copyright © Jennifer Roback Morse.
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Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is an
economist and the Founder and President of
the Ruth Institute , a nonprofit educational organization devoted to bringing hope and
encouragement for lifelong married love.She is also the author of Love and
Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a
Village and Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World.