The bizarre argument that getting rid of the specificity and implicit function of marriage would strengthen it has been refuted by experience: How Holland Destroyed Marriage. The piece (by Charles Colson) cites a series of pieces by Stanley Kurtz showing how the move toward “gay marriage” in northern Europe has gone with abandonment of marriage by couples with children.
Statistics in a time of rapidly changing demographics
“During the mid-1990s, the rate of out-of-wedlock births began to shoot up. By 2003, the rate of increase nearly doubled to 31 percent of all Dutch births.”
Without casting doubt on Charles Colson’s organization, we have learned in California to look closely at statistics. The article in question suggested that the proportion of unwed parents shot up in the 1990s, but that coincides with a time when the Dutch were massively welcoming an entirely non-Dutch population, and it would be more illuminating to see the statistics broken down by, for example, “native Dutch” and “immigrant Dutch.” That would have given us a better handle on who was doing the unmarried parenting. The article clearly insinuates the change in marriage patterns was by native Dutch.
We have the same thing in California when unwed mothers are subjected to statistical analysis. The analysis is done by race (white, black, Asian, American Indian) and about 91% of all Latinos & Mexican immigrants are included in the white classification. When Latinos & Mexican immigrants are factored out of the white category, the white statistics on unwed motherhood are fairly unchanged from 30 years ago. It is only when Latinos & Mexican immigrants are included that the white unwed motherhood statistics shoot up.
We have the same thing with hate crimes. Latinos & Mexican immigrants are mostly included in the white racial category. This latter system, by the way, is enforced by FBI and other federal agencies.
So you have to keep a sharp eye out for how the numbers are classified to make the outcome realistic.