Much of the delusional Christianist base for the Republican Party is centered in the South. This segment of the GOP party base claims to worship the Bible and the Ten Commandments and insist that all Americans conform with their "family values" agenda. The problem is, that these folk - who some would call total hypocrites - as a group have the highest divorce rate of all Americans. Meanwhile, the decadent (at least in Christianist minds) Northeast has the lowest divorce rate in the nation. Obviously, if the "family values" crowd and their boot licking sycophants in the Republican Party are truly concerned about "protecting marriage," rather than foaming at the mouth over same sex marriage, they need to put their own foul house in order. Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, are you listening? Here are highlights from a CNN story that looks at the Bible Belt's disconnect from what it preaches:
While the Bible Belt is known for its devotion to traditional values, Southerners don't do so well on one key family value: They are more likely to get divorced than people living in the Northeast.
Southern men and women had higher rates of divorce in 2009 than their counterparts in other parts of the country: 10.2 per 1,000 for men and 11.1 per 1,000 for women, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.
Of the 14 states reporting divorce rates for men that were much higher than the U.S. average -- ranging from 10.0 to 13.5 per 1,000 -- most were in the South. They included Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.
In contrast, men in the Northeast divorced less than the national average. Five of the nine states that had divorce rates for men significantly below the U.S. average -- ranging from 6.1 to 8.5 -- were the Northeastern states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey , New York and Pennsylvania.
The same was true for Southern women. Nine of the 14 states with divorce rates for women above the U.S. average, ranging from 10.7 to 16.2, were in the South. They included Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.
By comparison, four of the 10 states with below-average divorce rates for women, ranging from 6.0 to 8.9, were in the Northeast: Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Values about premarital sex associated with the Bible Belt and rural America may be encouraging people to marry early, at ages when they are likely to have less education and less income to support a long-lasting marriage, according to Naomi Cahn, law professor at The George Washington University Law School and co-author of "Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture."
"There's a moral crisis in red states that's produced by higher divorce rates and the disparity between parental values and behavior of young adults," said Cahn. "There is enormous tension between moral values and actual practices."
Marriages and families within faith communities are no healthier than in the rest of society. Faith communities must provide support systems to salvage damaged marriages and resurrect dead marriages."
Could it be that the Bible beater's obsession over same sex marriage is aimed at avoiding focus on their own hypocrisy and failed marriages?
1 comment:
I read a "Christian" analysis of the divorce data online somewhere, where the writer concluded that the "Christian" divorce rate was actually lower than that of atheists. He did this by the use of the "No True Scotsman" argument of those who divorced were not "real Christians" to begin with. So there are those who are both homophobic and stupid in the marriage debate.
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