What Culture Has Done

In the past thirty years [from 2002], with the advent of effective contraceptive technologies and widespread sexual permissiveness promoted by advertising and the organized entertainment industry, premarital sex has become widely accepted. In large segments of the population cohabitation no longer is associated with sin or social impropriety or pathology, nor are cohabiting couples subject to much, if any, disapproval. 

David Popenoe and Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “Should We Live Together? What Young Adults Need to Know About Cohabitation before Marriage.”  A publication of The National Marriage Project, pg.10

Cohabitation Not Good For Children

One of the greatest problems for children living with a cohabiting couple is the high risk that the couple will break up. Fully three quarters of children born to cohabiting parents will see their parents split up before they reach age sixteen, whereas only about a third of children born to married parents face a similar fate. ...

Parental break up, as is now widely known, almost always entails a myriad of personal and social difficulties for children, some of which can be long lasting. For the children of a cohabiting couple these may come on top of a plethora of already existing problems. Several studies have found that children currently living with a mother and her unmarried partner have significantly more behavior problems and lower academic performance than children in intact families.

David Popenoe and Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “Should We Live Together? What Young Adults Need to Know About Cohabitation before Marriage.”  A publication of The National Marriage Project, pg.8

Dangers of Cohabitation

Annual rates of depression among cohabiting couples are more than three times what they are among married couples. And women in cohabiting relationships are more likely than married women to suffer physical and sexual abuse. Some research has shown that aggression is at least twice as common among cohabitors as it is among married partners. Two studies, one in Canada and the other in the United States, found that women in cohabiting relationships are about nine times more likely to be killed by their partner than are women in marital relationships.

David Popenoe and Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “Should We Live Together? What Young Adults Need to Know About Cohabitation before Marriage.”  A publication of The National Marriage Project, pg.7

Cohabitation Is Mentally Harmful

Cohabiting couples report lower levels of happiness, lower levels of sexual exclusivity and sexual satisfaction, and poorer relationships with their parents. One reason is that, as several sociologists not surprisingly concluded after a careful analysis, in unmarried cohabitation “levels of certainty about the relationship are lower than in marriage.” 

David Popenoe and Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “Should We Live Together? What Young Adults Need to Know About Cohabitation before Marriage.”  A publication of The National Marriage Project, pg.6

The Effects of Cohabitation

The act of cohabitation generates changes in people’s attitudes toward marriage that make the stability of marriage less likely. Society wide, therefore, the growth of cohabitation will tend to further weaken marriage as an institution. An important caveat must be inserted here. There is a growing understanding among researchers that different types and life-patterns of cohabitation must be distinguished clearly from each other. Cohabitation that is an immediate prelude to marriage, or prenuptial cohabitation—both partners plan to marry each other in the near future—is different from other forms. There is some evidence to support the proposition that living together for a short period of time with the person one intends to marry has no adverse effects on the subsequent marriage. Cohabitation in this case appears to be very similar to marriage; it merely takes place during the engagement period. This proposition would appear to be less true, however, when one or both of the partners has had prior experience with cohabitation, or brings children into the relationship.

David Popenoe and Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “Should We Live Together? What Young Adults Need to Know About Cohabitation before Marriage.”  A publication of The National Marriage Project, pg.6

Cohabitation Makes Marriage Less Successful

The results of several studies suggest that cohabitation may change partners’ attitudes toward the institution of marriage, contributing to either making marriage less likely, or if marriage takes place, less successful. A 1997 longitudinal study conducted by demographers at Pennsylvania State University concluded, for example, “cohabitation increased young people’s acceptance of divorce, but other independent living experiences did not.” And “the more months of exposure to cohabitation that young people experienced, the less enthusiastic they were toward marriage and childbearing.”

David Popenoe and Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “Should We Live Together? What Young Adults Need to Know About Cohabitation before Marriage.”  A publication of The National Marriage Project, pg.5

Cohabitation Gives No Contribution to Marriage

No positive contribution of cohabitation to marriage has ever been found. The reasons for a negative “cohabitation effect” are not fully understood. One may be that while marriages are held together largely by a strong ethic of commitment, cohabiting relationships by their very nature tend to undercut this ethic. Although cohabiting relationships are like marriages in many ways--shared dwelling, economic union (at least in part), sexual intimacy, often even children--they typically differ in the levels of commitment and autonomy involved. According to recent studies, cohabitants tend not to be as committed as married couples in their dedication to the continuation of the relationship and reluctance to terminate it, and they are more oriented toward their own personal autonomy.

David Popenoe and Barbara Defoe Whitehead, “Should We Live Together? What Young Adults Need to Know About Cohabitation before Marriage.”  A publication of The National Marriage Project, pg.5

Homosexual Privilege

I would submit the real problem today, in our culture and in our politics, is not in fact white privilege but homosexual privilege. Despite their constant claims to martyrdom and victimhood, homosexuals have an entire array of privileges and powers that are based exclusively on their private sexual preferences, and they are privileges and powers that normal people do not possess. Homosexuals must be catered to by wedding vendors and be catered to in housing and employment, or those who refuse to cater to them will be demonized, vilified, and sued until they’re broke or out of business.  Today homosexuals belong to the most pampered, protected, favored, privileged demographic in all of America. . . . 

Homosexuality was once rightly known as “the love that dare not speak its name.” Those days are long gone. Now it is not a career-killer but a resume enhancer. Due to the decaying morals of the Republic, we have now made it possible for a man to boldly sin his way right into the White House.

Bryan Fischer, "The Problem Isn’t White Privilege, It’s Homosexual Privilege.”

When the Sexual Fence is Removed

The idea of sexual activity being limited to marriage, always defined as male-female, has been a fence erected in all civilizations around the globe. Throughout history, many people have climbed over the fence, engaging in premarital, extramarital and homosexual sex. Still, the fence stands; the limits are visible to all. Climbing over the fence, metaphorically, has always been recognized as a breach of those limits, even by the breachers themselves. No civilization can retain its vitality for multiple generations after removing the fence.

John R. Diggs, Jr., M.D., “The Health Risks of Gay Sex,” Corporate Research Council paper

Financing AIDS Detracts From More Important Issues

The impact of the health consequences of gay sex is not confined to homosexual practitioners. Even though nearly 11 million people in America are directly affected by cancer, compared to slightly more than three-quarters of a million with AIDS, AIDS spending per patient is more than seven times that for cancer. The inequity for diabetes and heart disease is even more striking. Consequently, the disproportionate amount of money spent on AIDS detracts from research into cures for diseases that affect more people.

John R. Diggs, Jr., M.D., “The Health Risks of Gay Sex,” Corporate Research Council paper

Encouraging Risky Sexual Behavior Is Unethical

Encouraging people to engage in risky sexual behavior undermines good health and can result in a shortened life span. Yet that is exactly what employers and government entities are doing when they grant GLB couples benefits or status that make GLB relationships appear more socially acceptable.

John R. Diggs, Jr., M.D., “The Health Risks of Gay Sex,” Corporate Research Council paper.

Spousal Benefits Should Be Reserved for REAL Marriage

The continued extension of spousal benefits to domestic partners further erodes the status and practice of marriage, ultimately reducing the well-being of children, increasing taxpayer costs, and retarding workforce productivity and economic progress. Domestic partnership benefits do not fulfill a large, unmet social need, but instead operate primarily on the symbolic level, as a signal that these relationships are marriage equivalents. …

Given the powerful advantages of marriage in protecting the well-being of children and the productivity of adults, responsible executives should be reluctant to embrace policies that suggest or imply to workers, their lovers, or their children that cohabitation is the functional equivalent of marriage, or that children do not really need both mothers and fathers.

Maggie Gallagher, “Why Supporting Marriage Makes Business Sense.”  Corporate Research Council paper.

Cohabitation Is Not Like Marriage

Living together is not just like marriage because marriage is not just a piece of paper. Marriage is a powerful social institution that changes the way adults behave towards each other and their children.  But institutions have this power only when their boundaries are protected. If society begins to treat other relationships as the equivalent of marriage, marriage loses some of it social power, especially the power to signal to young people and prospective parents that this particular kind of relationship—a lifelong legal and public commitment joining mothers and fathers in one family unit—is the most socially responsible and desirable context for having children.

Maggie Gallagher, “Why Supporting Marriage Makes Business Sense.”  Corporate Research Council paper.

When the LEFT Can’t Win Politically

[M]ost political scandals, sooner or later, are transformed into legal dramas. As legal dramas, scandals become understood in non-partisan terms. The way in which they are resolved can have decisive political impacts, but those in charge of resolving them are the “neutral” prosecutors, judges, and bureaucrats who make up the permanent (and unelected) government, not the people’s elected representatives. To resort to scandal in this way is thus a tacit admission that the scandalmongers no longer believe they are able to win politically. To paraphrase Clausewitz, scandal provides the occasion for politics by other means.

John Marini, Politics by Other Means: “The Use and Abuse of Scandal,” Hillsdale College, Imprimis, March 2019.

Marriage Protects Children

Marriage is a powerful protector of children. Children raised by their own two married parents live longer, are physically healthier, and show fewer signs of emotional distress and mental illness, than children in other family forms, even after controlling for race, income, and family background. They are mores likely to succeed in school and on the job. They are less likely to commit crimes, abuse alcohol or illegal drugs, engage in premature and promiscuous sex, have children out of wedlock, commit suicide and drop out of high school. 

Maggie Gallagher, “Why Supporting Marriage Makes Business Sense.”  Corporate Research Council paper.

An Importance of Boys Being Raised in Intact Marriages

Boys raised in single-parent homes are about twice as likely (and boys raised in step-families three times as likely) to have been incarcerated by the time they reach their early thirties. Teens raised outside of intact marriages are more apt to develop beliefs such as “most things that people call ‘delinquency’ don’t really hurt anyone” and “It is all right to get around the law if you can get away with it.” Combined with lower levels of parental supervision, these attitudes set the stage for delinquent behavior.

Maggie Gallagher, “Why Supporting Marriage Makes Business Sense.”  Corporate Research Council paper.

Marriage Reduces Tax Expenditures

Divorced and unmarried childbearing create substantial taxpayer costs, born by the public at large. Higher rates of crime, drug abuse, education failure, chronic illness, child abuse, domestic violence, and poverty lead to higher public outlays for a wide array of programs: e.g. welfare, food stamps and Medicaid, increased remedial and special education, high day-care subsidies, child support collection services, increased Medicare and increases in prison and police expenditures.

Maggie Gallagher, “Why Supporting Marriage Makes Business Sense.”  Corporate Research Council paper.