Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Supreme Court Decisions in Favor of Gay Marriage Would Not Go ‘Too Far, Too Fast’

June 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The Supreme Court will shortly decide two cases that deal with the standing of same-sex marriage under the United States Constitution. The first, United States v. Windsor, considers whether a provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (1996) defining marriage in federal law as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" violates the Fifth Amendment equal protection rights of same-sex couples who are legally married under state law. The second, Hollingsworth v. Perry, considers whether California’s voters violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal ... Read More

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Guess What? Traditional Marriage Doesn’t Exist

June 18, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The U.S. Supreme Court, any day now, will issue a decision about gay marriage as it considers the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, the two cases with a potentially huge impact for the more than 600,000 gay couples in the United States. Many conservatives are concerned about this ruling, believing that a federal acceptance of gay unions would constitute a fundamental change in the nature of marriage. “A broad negative ruling could redefine marriage in the law throughout the entire country,” the United States Conference of Catholic ... Read More

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News Outlets Show Significant Bias in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage

June 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The media is off balance with the public on the issue of same-sex marriage, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Stories with statements mostly in support of same-sex marriage outweighed those with statements mostly opposing by a five to one margin, from March 18 through May 12, while only a slim 51 percent majority of the general public favor legalizing same-sex marriage. The Pew study looked at stories from a mix of new media outlets such as Politico and BuzzFeed; 11 national, regional, and local newspapers; major broadcast news ... Read More

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The Decline of Marriage

June 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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In 1996 the Hoover Institution published a symposium titled “Can Government Save the Family?“ A who’s-who list of culture warriors—including Dan Quayle, James Dobson, John Engler, John Ashcroft, and David Blankenhorn—were asked, “What can government do, if anything, to make sure that the overwhelming majority of American children grow up with a mother and father?” There wasn’t much disagreement on the panel. Their suggestions were (1) end welfare payments for single mothers, (2) stop no-fault divorce, (3) remove tax penalties for marriage, and (4) fix “the culture.” From ... Read More

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Is Online Dating Really the Future of Marriage Matchmaking?

June 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The state of matrimony in the U.S. is in flux. Fewer Americans tie the knot even as gays battle state by state to be able to do so. The Census reported in 2011 that 51 percent of adult Americans were married—an all-time low and falling, while the median age for marriage hit an all-time high (29 for men and 27 for women). Still, most Americans, according to the Pew Research Center, still want to get married at some point in their lives. But how they’re meeting their future mates is also changing, and fast. That modern-day matchmaker, the Internet—both through its traditional channels ... Read More

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How the Internet Should Increase Geographic Mobility

May 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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You go where you know. Relocation is risky business. Another law of migration from Ernest George Ravenstein: "Most migrants only proceed a short distance, and toward centers of absorption." Moving far from home is the exception, not the rule. Knowledge doesn't travel very well. A successful transfer of ideas usually requires face-to-face interaction. The geography of venture capital looks a lot like the distance decay of migration: Fiber networks cross the world. Data bits move at light speed. The globe has been flattened, and national boundaries obliterated. Yet in Silicon Valley, the ... Read More

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Is Marriage a Universal Human Value?

April 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Editor's Note: We're reposting this piece from October 2012 following the landmark 26-12 decision by Rhode Island's Senate yesterday to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed. In this clip from a campaign rally, former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan argues that “traditional marriage” is a “universal human value.” http://youtu.be/kvvJQDkFgA8 Ryan could not be more wrong. In fact, few practices have undergone more fundamental transformation. For thousands of years, marriage served economic and political functions unrelated to love, happiness, or personal fulfillment. Prior ... Read More

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Why Are So Many People Changing Their Mind About Same-Sex Marriage?

April 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Yesterday, I did a live chat at The Huffington Post about why politicians—and the rest of America—suddenly seem to be “evolving” on same-sex marriage. It’s true that we’ve seen a real shift in support for the issue and acceptance of homosexuality in general; since 2011, the majority of Americans are in favor of extending marriage to same-sex couples and the trend has continued. What is behind that change? The Pew Research Center asked 1,501 respondents whether they’d changed their minds about same-sex marriage and why. Here’s what they found. The overall trend toward ... Read More

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The Physical Cost of Earning Less than Your Wife

February 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Ladies: Has your income risen to the point where you now make more money than your husband? He might insist he’s perfectly OK with that, but the medicine cabinet may tell another story. New research from Denmark finds that, compared to those who continue to outearn their wives, men in that ego-deflating situation are significantly more likely to use erectile dysfunction drugs. “Even small differences in relative income are associated with large changes in ED medication usage when they shift the marriage from a male to a female breadwinner,” a research team led by Lamar Pierce of ... Read More

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Veiled Doubts: New Data on Reasons to Say ‘I Don’t’

October 1, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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There is nothing so spectacular as the birth of a marriage—the pomp, the flowers, the gown, the string quartet, the sobbing mothers-in-law—nor so messy as the postponement of one. Wedding-day freak-outs are by now a standard plot point—or, as in “Runaway Bride,” the whole point—of any saccharine Hollywood romantic comedy, but the real-life kind have somewhat less cinematic endings: in 2005, a Georgia bride-to-be faked her own kidnapping and inspired a statewide manhunt before turning up in New Mexico, the victim of nothing more than cold feet. New research from the University of ... Read More

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