Political Crossfire Forums

[Enoch]

Bag of Rags wrote: Trajan wrote: Bag of Rags wrote: Silkheat wrote: Trajan wrote: So what.

It has been said that 50% of hetero marraiges end in divorce.

Your point is?

I think it is more like 60%. One thing is almost certain in marriage and that is divorce. If you are a guy married to a women be prepared for some hard times.

You know, that whole "50% of marriage end in divorce" line is over-used, and WRONG.

It is based on the fact that, in America, there are roughly half the number of divorces as weddings. If you actually do the math, you find that the "50% thing" is really pretty misleading.

Well if you have 100 weddings and 50 of them end up in divorce????

Okay, let's think about it. I'll "make up" numbers, for the sake of illustration.

This year, in my town, there are 500 weddings. There are also 250 divorces. Seems like 50%.

However, there are actually 5,000 married couples living in my town. 250 of them divorce. 250 divorces out of 5,000 couples is not 50%.


Statistics don't lie, but liars constantly use statistics for their own agenda.

Okay, so there are 5,000 married couples in your hypothetical town. How many divorced people in your town? This is a red herring. Comparing number of weddings in one year to number of divorces in one year is logical. Comparing number of married couples total to number of divorces in one year is misleading and diverts attention from the true issue.

However, I will agree that the 50% figure is misleading. It leads some people to think that half of the population will, at one time, go through a divorce. It does not take in to consideration the people who go through 5t, 6, 7 weddings in their life (Liz Taylor for example). Having people divorce many times causes a skew in the data.

Saying 50% of marriages end in divorce is logical, saying 50% of people get divorced is not.

[F'losrix]

What we have here is a not so clever attempt at a flame thread. Joe is attempting to lay several stealth premises here, all of which he can plausibly deny because he didn't explicitly make the assertions. So let me break down the twisted thinking behind this thread for you:

1) Homosexuality is bad.
2) All gay people are promiscuous.
3) Therefore, gay marriage will have undesirable results.
4) Therefore, we must present any argument we can make up to portray them negatively, to further our agenda of screwing them over.
5) Wherever possible, use questionable statistics from biased sources that have been extrapolated in ways never intended by the original researchers.
6) Truth doesn't matter here - results is what matters.

And so we have a thread that in a roundabout way tries to make us think that gay marriage is bad because gay people are supposedly incapable of forming lasting relationships and their marriages will overburden the courts and society with divorces.

To counteract this brainwashing, ask yourself these questions:

Do all gay people have a problem forming lasting relationships?

If not, do most of them have a problem forming lasting relationships?

Now ask yourself, how do we know this? Have someone actually polled all of the gay people about their relationships? Do we even know how many gay people there are? Did those research studies involve representative populations, or were they restricted to out-of-the-closet, young gay people concentrated in an urban area? Or were the populations studied unusual in some other way (such as the incarcerated?)

There are a couple of solutions:

1) Outlaw divorce.
2) Outlaw marriage, and therefore no need for divorce.
3) Realize that differing populations are bound to have different divorce rates for a variety of reasons and see if there are ways to address those reasons to reduce the divorce rate for that specific population.

Anyone who thought that out of all the gay couples who got married none would subsequently get divorced must have inhaled a little too much pixie dust.

[connermt]

JoeTrumps wrote: Silkheat wrote: JoeTrumps wrote: Trajan wrote: So what.

It has been said that 50% of hetero marraiges end in divorce.

Your point is?

I'd bet good money the divorce % for gays will be higher.
They change partners with much more frequency, and their relationships are much shorter than heterosexuals. and yes, if someboy questions that I will have to dig up the info to back it up.

but I can

Really? I have gay friends who have stayed together for over thirty years. Please provide a link...

Oh great. just because you know a couple, I have to go dig up the info.

here you go, as if you don't know this isn't common knowledge.

Quote: More than one study shows that breakups among homosexual couples is much greater than among heterosexual couples. Some limited data was included in the first edition of my book A Treatise on the Family, and other studies have been published since then.

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2005/07/response_on_sam.html

now you are going to make me find the studies, like this is some kind of shock to you.


pulllease. :roll:

I'm curious: does this study relate a 'dating' gay couple to 'married' straight couples or dating for both sides? The only reason is because it is much easier to come 7 go when dating, but much less easier to do so when legally married. So if this compares dating gays to married straights, then I think the results would be one-sided, no?

[Sage Orator]

JoeTrumps wrote: Trajan wrote: So what.

It has been said that 50% of hetero marraiges end in divorce.

Your point is?

I'd bet good money the divorce % for gays will be higher.
They change partners with much more frequency, and their relationships are much shorter than heterosexuals. and yes, if someboy questions that I will have to dig up the info to back it up.

but I can
You would be wrong then. I'll find the information in a bit. It is true that some homosexuals often switch partners, but no more than heterosexuals.

Here we are, now follow me on this. The divorce rate between 2000 and 2004 was an average of .39% for per capita. For homosexuals in Vermont, where the homosexual population is about 14,000, it is. .27%. Let's do it per 100 marriages now, it is about 41 for everyone. For homosexuals it is about 4. Now let's do it per 1000 people, for everyone it is about 3.9 for the past five years, for homosexuals it is about 2.7.

Also, look at your own link. A person provides striking evidence contradicting what you are saying. http://www.gottman.com/research/projects/gaylesbian/

This thread is really old, but really good for making my point.