Is marriage in Scandanavia 'dead'? Is it the fault of gay marriage?

Great Debates
21

This is an absurdly silly attempt to scapegoat homosexuals for what is, by HIS OWN definition, a heterosexual problem (since if homosexuals marry less, I doubt Kurtz would see it as a problem). Straight people are marrying less. They are divorcing more. Now, let’s assume for the moment that this is indeed a bad thing. Personally, I don’t think it’s that simple (would we really want to go back to “fault only” divorces? is the breakup of marriages in general really a good way to measure stable homes, given that not all divorcing couples have children?). But let’s assume it.

Where is the mechanism? What about gay people marrying will make straight people marry less?

Andrew Sullivan is dead on about this, even from a social conservative stance. His argument is simple:

  1. Gay people exist, and they are not going away: no matter how much some might want them to, they cannot be forced back into the closet without using means that would be repulsive to our way of government.
  2. Either we find ways to integrate them into our society as best as possible in some way, or we wage a losing battle against them to prevent them access to anything.

Given this, the solution is to give homosexuals the right to marry and demand from those who do all the things we want to demand from the institution. The absolute WRONG solution is exactly what will happen otherwise: the creation of a whole lot of complex “marriage-lite” options that WILL without ANY doubt, undermine the social position of traditional marriage.

I’ve heard absolutely 0 in the way of a coherent response to that position. It’s a conservative position (i.e., it’s interest is in preserving as best as possible the traditional institution), distinct from libertarian and far left positions (which are generally to eliminate marriage from being a government controlled instiutition in the first place, and to do away with the need or expectation of marriage entirely, respectively). And it makes tons of sense.

22

Not that I don’t totally agree with you, but just as a FYI, the argument I’ve always heard is pretty much the same as why Clinton’s affairs were morally damaging to the country: a breakdown of values. According to this argument, young people (or maybe the citizenry in general) see that we accept gay marriage and think, “gee, if acceptance of moral deviants like gays is accepted, then we should be able to do whatever we want too, and that’ll be okay also!” And they go out and do it with wild abandon now that they know that any old amorality will be a-okay in the eyes of government and society.

Now, that’s a load of crap, but that’s what they say the mechanism is.

23

The link to the article cited in the OP is dead. What was the source?

24

This is really all it comes down to. For those that don’t know (i.e. non Swedes or non Swedish residents) a “Sambo” relationship is basically a common law marriage. Unliek other countries it doesn’t take long at all to come into effect, I believe after a year you are effectively Sambo, meaning that all related laws come into effect. In a Swede’s eyes a Sambo relationship is as good as a marriage. There is very little to differentiate between them.

Now, other countries that either don’t have such concepts (I believe only about 15 US states have Common Law Marriage) or it is decidedly weaker (for example in my native UK it takes many years, IIRC, of living together to be classed as a Common Law marriage) then the Swedish Sambo relationship may sound strange.

It isn’t here.

Many of my friends are unmarried sambos. Many have kids. A susprising amount are engaged and wear the rings to show it (an interesting side point here: Swedish males wear engagement rings, something normally reserved for married males in other countries) but have no real intention of getting married. The engagement itself is seen as a non-legal commitment to each other to supplement the legal commitment to each other that is their sambo relationship. Looking at it like that, what more is there to get from spending the money to get married?

25

New link to the article mentioned in the OP.

Conservative :slight_smile: Norway chiming in.

Marriage is far from dead here, but has definitly lost it’s monopoly as The Only Right And Proper Thing for a couple living together. Cohabitation is usual, and widely accepted. In a recent survey, 70% of young grownups wanted cohabitation and marriage to give the same legal rights. I can’t remember ever hearing phrases like “unwed mothers” or “out-of-wedlock children” in public debates - there’s some discussion about single parents (usually related to welfare or lack of it), but whether a child lives with two married parents or two unmarried parents isn’t seen as important. (Cute family anecdote from about fifteen years ago or so: Children ask their parents when they are going to marry. Parents explain that they married before the children were born. Children: “That’s unfair! Why did you have a wedding without us? All our friends get to be at their parents’ weddings!”)

This isn’t, of course, in any way caused by gay marriage. The article went through some pretty weird contortions to “prove” some significant change around 1993, when gay marriage became possible here. *) It is perhaps relevant to note that the Norwegian political party which most openly opposes same-sex marriage uses some fuzzy “argumentation” about parenthood and children to support their stance, there’s no claim (on their website, at least) that it’s any kind of threat to opposite-sex marriage.

The article also made several other statements on the far side of truth. Among other things, it claims that gay marriage has weakened the Norwegian state church, stating

A more correct description would be that the church damaged much of its own authority by fighting strongly for causes which were at odds with the morals of a large portion of its members - not only in its position on gays, but also on female priests and bishops, and that silly criticism of the crown prince when he and his fiancee lived together before their wedding.

The article claims

If this is remotely true, then everything I’ve heard and read about Christianity in USA is grossly exaggerated. (This is, of course, not completely impossible…)

The statement

doesn’t fit my experiences here, either. I just checked the websites of Norways three biggest newspapers for how they describe a recent story about a celebrity ex-couple, and all of them use the Norwegian words for “marriage” or “married” referring to a same-sex marriage/registered partnership.

There’s one positive side to the article. If I read it with all critical thinking suspended, it’s a very nice ego boost. I’m used to thinking that we Scandinavians have the global significance of a fart in a jacuzzi, but the article tells me that we’re spearheading a world-wide (im)moral revolution! :smiley:
*) A footnote about the “gay marriage” terminology: matt_mcl is correct that Norway doesn’t have same-sex marriage, but registered partnership, which is mostly (but not yet completely :frowning: ) legally equal to opposite-sex marriage. I prefer to call it marriage because if it looks like a marriage, and fills the same social role as a marriage, it seems silly and annoying to use a cumbersome phrase of legalese. More importantly, it makes sense to emphasise the similarities to opposite-sex marriage, as a (small) contribution in the fight for full equality.

26

A lot of good comments have already been made by my fellow Scandinavians (and by other people as well).

What I can contribute is some numbers and statistics. I did a quick check with Statistics Sweden and checked the population statistics for a few years.

…1970…1975…1980…1985…1990…1995…2002
Unmarried…43%…44%…45%…46%…47%…48%…50%
Married…48%…46%…43%…40%…40%…37%…35%
Divorced…3%…4%…6%…7%…7%…8%…9%
Widow(s)(ers)6%…6%…7%…7%…7%…6%…6%

(small note, these are rough numbers based on all ages including children who obviously cannot marry, but the general trend should be clear anyway)

It is quite obvious that the marriage rate has been falling for quite some time and since gay marriages is only a few years old it has obviously had no impact on trends that go back three decades.

Conclusion the reporter is full of shit.

27

Yes, I’m bumping an old thread, but I just wanted to mention that for those of you who didn’t catch this article the first time, I’ve read that it’s gotten some wider print, including in, of all places, the San Francisco Chronicle. So watch out for it, because it’s apparently spread beyond that website it was originally published on.