My Head is Spinning

You probably already know about this. My desk, unlike yours, I'm sure, is piled high with un-done, un-read, and un-sorted tasks just begging for my attention. So I'm just now getting to the Wall Street Journal from earlier this week. My head is spinning, and I don't think it's an altitude (from climbing to the top of these paper piles) problem. We've reached new depths in the "unfortunate reasoning" department, and truly, I thought we'd pretty much bottomed out there.

Brendan Miniter's piece about Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is a bit of a puzzle. It seems that Gov. Romney is suing the state legislature for failing to vote on whether or not to put a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on the ballot. Bit of a separation of powers problem there, Mitt. Maybe they should have voted, though. I really don't know and haven't even tried to follow the issue in a state other than my own.

My real concern is with the editorial writer. He seems to be trying to make the claim that gay marriage is responsible for births occurring outside of (traditional) marriage. Okay, we've gone well beyond a separation of powers problem here. Let's start with the birds and the bees.

Although advocates of same-sex marriage will deny there is any connection to extending the institution to gay couples, a recent report released by the National Center for Health Statistics reveals why this debate is worth having now. The study found that although teen pregnancy rates are dropping, the number of out-of-wedlock births in America has been steadily rising since the 1990s. It seems women in their 20s and 30s are having children without getting married first. Last year the proportion of births that are illegitimate reached an all time high of 37%, or 1.5 million children.

Does anyone understand this?

Yes, teen pregnancy rates are dropping. Yes, births to single mothers are increasing. It seems to be true that fewer and fewer of these pregnancies are unintended as time goes on. So, women are getting pregnant outside of marriage on purpose.

Okay, we can talk about that as a public policy issue, a moral issue, a social work issue, an educational issue, a feminist issue. I see all of that. How in the name of all that is holy do we blame it on gay people, again?

Tags: public policy social justice social work