Arthur Brooks: "Marriage and Happiness Go Together"
July 10, 2012 at 11:00 am
Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, in the New York Times:
"...Many conservatives favor an explanation focusing on lifestyle differences, such as marriage and faith. They note that most conservatives are married; most liberals are not. (The percentages are 53 percent to 33 percent, according to my calculations using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, and almost none of the gap is due to the fact that liberals tend to be younger than conservatives.) Marriage and happiness go together. If two people are demographically the same but one is married and the other is not, the married person will be 18 percentage points more likely to say he or she is very happy than the unmarried person.
... Whether religion and marriage should make people happy is a question you have to answer for yourself. But consider this: Fifty-two percent of married, religious, politically conservative people (with kids) are very happy — versus only 14 percent of single, secular, liberal people without kids."
13 Comments
Right. So let's keep same sex couples from marrying!
@Bryce,
It is a packaged deal:
"Fifty-two percent of married, religious, politically conservative people."
vs
"Fourteen Percent of single, secular, liberal people without kids."
Marriage corruption is incompatible with traditional Christian Bible based morality.
Just saying.
That's because marriage is an important part of our eternal progression.
Doesn't the Declaration of Independence refer to the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right?
Or there are contraints on that when one type of pursuits leads to less happiness than other types? Who gets to decide what type should be pursued?
And NOM wants to deny happiness to others. What lovely people you are!
@DoE. I love it. Eternal progression – marriage.
How ironic that the bastion of liberal newspapers the NY Times has to admit the value of marriage to society. The strong commitment to marriage has always and will continue to do so bring about a stable and prosperous society.
This is why we here at NOM are so involved in this fight. We understand the importance of marriage whereas the other side wants to render it meaningless.
Uh... is this evidence that NOM doesn't want gays to be happy? Are you sure this wasn't meant to be filed under Humor?
Andy, that's like saying we don't want children to be happy because we won't give them absolutely everything they demand. Over indulgence can have damaging effects in the long run.
Son of Adam, gay people are not children. Though some of NOM's children will grow up to be gay. And that's really what this is all about, isn't it?
Choosing a nonmarital alternative (such as a type of relationship or arrangement that lacks either bride or groom) is a liberty exercised (presumably in the pursuit of some notion of happiness) and not a right denied.
Marriage integrates the sexes. SSM is sex-segregative.
If sex-segregation is for the sake of male-sexual-attraction then SSM is also segregative based on sexual attraction; likewise if done for the sake of female-sexual-attraction.
Even by the lights of the SSM campaign argumentation and rhetoric, SSM is segregative in terms of sex and in terms of sexual attraction; but, again by their own lights, marriage -- the union of husband and wife -- is integrative by sex as well as by sexual attraction since it entails the combination of male- and female-sexual attraction.
But the SSM idea is proposed as replacement of the marriage idea. This is usually framed by SSMers as forcing the law, and thus society, to treat the man-only and the woman-only types of scenarios exactly the same as the husband-wife relationship. As this is demand on the basis of segregation by sex and segregation by sexual attraction, the SSM idea would actually force the law, and all of society, to treat all unions of husband and wife as if they lacked either husbands or wives. That's the same-ness that the SSMers demand.
And that means the replacement of marriage begins and ends with the asserted greater societal significance of segregative over integrative.
That is not about the freedom to pursue happiness; it is about the totalitarian impulse to impose a government takeover of civil society's most foundational social institution and, thus, of civil society itself. This is about crowding out society to make more and more room from a government pushed and prodded by identity politics.
SSMers are confused. Marriage is certainly about the pursuit of happiness in civil society free of the heavy hand of governmental meddling, but the SSM campaign is about something else. The SSM idea is about government running happiness (as bizarre as that is in actuality) via imposition on civil society. The idea is that government makes happiness possible via legal fictions.
It does not. And wherever SSM would be imposed, participants in SSM will eventually learn that hard lesson.
"gay people are not children."
Then they should stop acting like children.
@Son of Adam
Sweet burn. Your point is valid because it's overgeneralizing and insulting. By that rationale, you and your peers are acting like cruel bigots.
Here's a tip, simplifying and scorning? -That's- what children do.