Blog For Arizona

The Wrong's Newest Gay Marriage Argument and the Ammunition You'll Need to Shoot it Down.

M.V. Lee Badgett, a professor of economics at Amherst wrote a rebuttal of Wrong-winger Stanley Kurtz's assertion that homosexual marriage has killed hetero marriage in Scandinavia, which, ergo, bodes ill for us should we adopt gay marriage here.

Professor Badget looks at all the demographic data in "Prenuptial Jitters - Did gay marriage destroy heterosexual marriage in Scandinavia?" and finds that, as is so often the case, Kurtz has his facts dead wrong. Kurtz is masterful at spinning very selective samples, and his own quirky observations, into mass phenomina and demographic truisms, such as the Red State - Blue State bullshit Kurtz invented that has become the modish political shorthand of the stupidensia. Kurtz never got beyond copping a quick feel of the Scandinavian data. While Badgett cohabited with the data long enough to know what it actually says, and can arm you against the Wrong's inevitable attempts to twist the data's meaning.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 5/22/2004 04:36:00 AM