How very ... unexpected.
Over the past decade or so, divorce has gradually become more uncommon in the United States. Since 2003, however, the decline in divorce rates has been largely confined to states which have not passed a state constitutional ban on gay marriage. These states saw their divorce rates decrease by an average of 8 percent between 2003 and 2008. States which had passed a same-sex marriage ban as of January 1, 2008, however, saw their divorce rates rise by about 1 percent over the same period....
Part of me wonders about the statistical validity of it all, but then, 538.com is known for making sure that its stats are tight.
Another part of me just wonders how on earth this can make any difference.
And another part of me says: Wait. Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Mexico have the lowest divorce rates. Mass. allows gay marriage, but the other two merely haven't passed bans against it; they ceritainly don't allow it. (And both states have experienced a certain amount of kerflaffle over the issue.) It's also true that these are three of the most Catholic states in the union; in the latest American Religious Identification Survey, using religious identification data from the US Census Bureau, 46% of Rhode Island respondents identified as Catholic, as did 39% of Mass. respondents and 33% of New Mexicans . Those figures all seem to be higher than the median, which would be in the 20s somewhere. Is it possible that these factors are not coincidental? Granted that Massachusetts is ... peculiar; after all, very Catholic and very Liberal really shouldn't go together like that, and yet they do -- there and nowhere else in the country.
(Something of a side note: the takeaway from the American Religious Identification Survey is that the US as a nation is becoming less religious -- or less willing to identify as such, which isn't quite the same thing. And it's happening with surprising speed. That would explain why religious conservatives have gotten so very LOUD of late, wouldn't it? A way of life may be passing.)
Posted by iain at January 12, 2010 05:35 PM
