In my letter i told them to look at Jim’s blog post. Jim I agree you should offer it up as an op ed piece.

“Submissions to the main letters section may be e-mailed to Inquirer.Letters@phillynews.com; mailed to Readers Editor, The Inquirer, Box 41705, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101; or faxed to 215-854-4483. Questions? Call 215-854-5801.”

Also: “Readers can comment on today’s editorials by phone at 215-854-5060 or e-mail editor@phillynews.com.”

Check that link to make sure you include all the info they want to accompany submissions.

Jim, you might need to do a bit of reworking but I think you should submit this post as an op-ed piece:

“Submissions to the op-ed page may be e-mailed to oped@phillynews.com; mailed to Commentary Page Editor, The Inquirer, Box 41705, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101; or faxed to 215-854-4483. Questions? Call 215-854-2905. Complete op/ed guidelines can be found at
Guidelines for Opinion Pieces.”

I much prefer to get my news online, from someone like NY Times or BBC.

Jim PLEASE send this to the editor at the Inquirer. I’ll try to do it in the form of a link from your site.

There’s just no reasoning with you when you do that!

There is a trend in the culture that pushes off marriage until after people feel like they have a real lasting relationship. Because of a type of common-law marriage called “Samboerskap,” (living-together ship,) and the financial pressure of a wedding ceremony, many couples end up waiting longer to officially get married. Frequently this means their children are born “out of wedlock,” as Mr. Santorum would describe it. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t born in a home with their mother and father. If anything, Norwegians take marriage much MORE seriously than Americans.

As an intersting side note, many of the societal problems that conservatives like Rick Santorum blame on progressive ideas about marriage and sex are much smaller in Norway. Teen pregancy, STD and abortion rates are much, much lower in liberal Norway than the conservative U.S.

I actually own a copy of “Gay Marriage: for Better or for Worse?” that Walt mentioned in an earlier comment to this post. It’s a great book, and I recommend it as well. It takes on specifically the arguments by Stanley Kurtz that have been repeated ad nauseum by conservative folks.

As always, thanks for debunking the statistical lies :-)

There’s plenty of data available now to debunk the concerns described by the far right about the impending destruction of marriage by allowing same-sex couples to wed. Nevertheless, there is a need to explain the cultural differences in Scandanavia that also include individuals marrying later and in smaller proportions than in the U.S. But those trends were pre-existing, and as Jim highlights above, were either unchanged or improved by the existence of same-sex unions.

I haven’t seen any statistical information out of Massachusetts, which is going to be culturally more similar to California. It already appears that Massachusetts has a lower divorce rate than the red states like Texas.