Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

Marriage Equality: Three News Items Way More Important Than Chicken Sandwiches

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Ampersand

Government may give binational same-sex couples a break.
The Obama Administration’s DHS released a statement:

[W]hen exercising prosecutorial discretion in enforcement matters, DHS looks at the totality of the circumstances presented in individual cases, including whether an individual has close family ties to the United States as demonstrated by his or her same-sex marriage or other longstanding relationship to a United States citizen.

Civil marriage is, most fundamentally, about the legal right for a couple to form a new family unit, one in which they are each other’s closest kin. The inability to do this – and the threat of being ripped apart by deportation – has been extremely cruel to gay and lesbian binational couples. This won’t solve that (but see the news about DOMA, below), but it’s a small step in the right direction.
DOMA is heading to the Supreme Court after a big losing streak.
Since February, five different courts have ruled that section three of the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. In two cases, the ruling came from judges appointed by George W. Bush.

Section three of DOMA says that the Federal government will not recognize same-sex marriages, not even for folks living in states where same-sex marriage is legal. This is enormously consequential, both symbolically and practically (people lose money, health insurance, tax benefits, the ability to have their spouse become American, and many other benefits because of DOMA). It’s also very hard to justify legally.

Although all five cases overturned section three of DOMA, they don’t all use the same logic. In particular, there’s no consensus on what “level of scrutiny” should apply when analyzing gay rights cases. This is important for future court cases; the higher the level of scrutiny applied, the more difficult it will be for the government to justify treating same-sex couples differently than opposite-sex couples.

Nonetheless, even if the Supreme Court overturns section three of DOMA (and I expect they will), that won’t mean that states can’t ban same-sex marriage. It would just means that, in those states that have marriage equality, same-sex marriages will be recognized for purposes of federal law.
Democratic Party Adds Support For Marriage Equality To Its Official Platform
This is symbolic, but I’m still amazed. Ten years ago, the Democratic Party was allergic to the issue. Four years ago, no credible Democratic running for President favored same-sex marriage. Now it’s the official party position.

In the long run, this is good news for marriage equality. In the short run, this will make same-sex marriage even more of a partisan issue – but not one that Romney seems eager to talk about.

P.S. Also, Proposition 8 has been appealed to the Supreme Court — but will the Supremes take the case, or will they leave it be as a California-only victory for SSM? And, there are three state-level initiatives about marriage equality coming up. Will SSM finally win a victory in a direct vote?

Posted in Same-Sex Marriage | 2 Comments

On atheism

Posted on August 5, 2012 by Maia

On Saturday the 17th February 2001, I realised I had no faith in women’s magazines or God.

I was at the hospital – I wasn’t sick – I was visiting my best friend (she’ll be known as Betsy for the purposes of this post). I was in the waiting room, and was flicking through a Cosmopolitain with Cameron Diaz on the cover.* I don’t think I had ever really believed in Cosmo – but I had got pleasure from reading it. But that day, when as I turned the pages I got angrier and angrier. It wasn’t just that I was too young, too fat, too poor, too un-stylish, too un-cordinated, and too apathetic to have that life – none of it was real. There wasn’t a word of truth in the scores of glossy pages.

God was less sudden, maybe more cliched. The argument against God from the existence of evil was covered in my first year philosophy class. However, that day and the ones that followed I knew something I had never really bothered to think about before – that a sort of lazy agnosticism was not enough. I was opposed to the image of God that I knew, a good and powerful God, because a good and powerful God would not have let this happen.

********

I think of myself as a relaxed atheist. A while back following Britain’s lead, a group have put billboards up around Wellington “There’s probably no God, so Relax and enjoy life.” And I don’t really understand them. Why bother? Is God that big a deal? Is the idea of God stopping people relaxing and enjoying life? I have never had any bad experiences with organised religion myself (and extremely limited experiences of organised religion at all). So this idea that religion is ruining people’s life has little resonance for me.

I also think it’s important to be careful about the politics of atheism, particularly when you live on colonised land. There are atheists who are perfectly happy with focusing their critical anti-spiritual energy on those with least social power.

And even leaving aside the politics, as a historian I think the ways people have understood and made meaning from the world is incredibly important. I read this article by Douglas Adams when I was quite young, and I have always remembered it.## I don’t dismiss the role of religion in the world. Religious and spiritual practices can be a way of storing knowledge, and understanding of the world. I’ve also studied enough history to know that resistance movements have found strength and solace in organised religion.

On the smaller scale, I can see that some religious practices can be a useful to some people. I can see the value of meeting with people every week, of marking seasons (albiet in a topsy turvey way down this part of the world), of doing whatever people do in their religious practices (OK I actually don’t understand organised religion at all, but this means that I have no problem believing that some of it is useful).

I can even believe that sometimes spiritual stuff (lack of knowledge again breeds vagueness) is a good survival strategy for people. My aunt is an alcoholic who has found spiritual practice useful for her. I can see that some spiritual rituals can create space that some people need. I also know that the mind is a powerful thing, and beliefs can give us strengths in all sorts of ways (Dr Ben Goldacre is great for that).

Obviously, I’m aware of the harm that organised religion can do as well: the homophobia, the misogyny and the extortion just for starters. But I don’t see any of those as necessary features of organised religions – just common ones. Most of what happens in the name of religion doesn’t bother me because it happens in the name of religion – most of what happen in the name of religion happens with other justifications – and it bothers me just as much.

********

Someone I used to know has turned towards faith of a sort, and wrote about it here in a zine called “Radicle”. This was the passage I couldn’t forget:

Fortunately, the world is not a generally shitty place. There are amazing people, and forces for good deeper than I can make sense of, that often reward our faith. I want to defend faith, define it and make it less threatening, but the whole point that it cannot be fully explained or logically justified. It requires a leap into the unknown

I don’t know if other readers will catch the bit I object to. The bit where I stop being a relaxed atheist and start being an angry materialist atheist.

Betsy (now out of hopsital) ran into Tracey – someone we both went to school with. After that awkward chit-chat with someone you don’t actually know, Betsy turned to leave. Tracey said “can I pray for you?” Betsy said “Uh sure” to facilitate the leaving process.

Tracey grabbed Betsy, would not go, and shouted: “Jesus Christ, please show Betsy your love and strength so she can let you into her heart and you can heal her.”

Forces for good that reward our faith.

*******

In form, Tracey’s statement about the non-material forces in the world couldn’t be more different from the article in Radicle. It’s in a zine that you don’t have to read if you don’t want to, it’s generalised and it even contains a qualifier. Tracey’s statement of faith was a full on assault, directed at an individual that targeted the ways she was already marginalised.

But in content the statements were disturbingly familiar. Each present a view in the world that contains spiritual forces with some kind of agency. There is a huge difference with “faith is often rewarding” (which I don’t disagree with – I would say there is a prima facie case that anything that large numbers of people do on a regular basis is often rewarding in some sense of the world) and “forces for good often reward our faith”. In the second, the forces for good are rewarding faith – therefore they’re not rewarding not faith.** Like Tracey’s God, these forces are selective about what they reward.

But to me the most grotesque idea, in both formulations, is that a God, or spiritual forces, that are so selective in their rewards are good, or loving. The Greek and Roman Gods (as far as I’m familiar with them) with their limited powers, petty feuds, and complete lack of morality – I can actually see them mapping on to the way I understand the world. I can understand appeasing a God, or spiritual forces, that reward faith, but not believing they are good.

********

Another friend of mine was thinking about sending her child to Catholic school (she’s not Catholic). She was talking about why she didn’t mind the religion part of Catholic school: “When I went to school there was Religious Education and it terrified me. The God I learned about there was an angry smiting God, and I was scared he was going to smite me. But this is different – they’re all about how God loves you and looks after you.”

And what happens when God doesn’t look after him? Horrible things happen, and a belief in a loving caring God in the face of the world we live in is as scary as a smiting one.

********

On the macro level there are reasons why things happen – why some people get cancer and others don’t, and some live in poverty and others don’t. As a historian, nothing interests me more than the reasons things happen.

But on the micro level, that’s not how the world works – there is no answer to why. We can talk about all the explanations that explain the prevalence of say meningitis – poverty, exchange of fluids, age-based vulnerability. But we will always reach the limit to our understanding. A point where the only answer is luck. And at that point we will be unable to answer Why me? Why not her? Why not me? Why him?***

At this point, the point of ignorance, and randomness, some people place an interventionist God or other spiritual power. A God who heals those who believe, or forces that reward faith. This allows them to control the uncontrollable and to give meaning to that which is meaningless.

I understand that urge, and religion is certainly not the only way people in our society try and feel like they can control the uncontrollable. When Rod Donald died a friend said that he found it really scary if Rod Donald, cyclist, Greenie could of a disease that is so often associated with ‘lifestyle’ then anyone could die – which is, of course, the truth.

But what I cannot understand is embracing a belief system that creates meaning from randomness by arguing that virtue is rewarded. We live in a bitterly unfair world, to claim that there are mysterious forces, or a God that produces your luck – I cannot understand how anyone who looks at the world with their eyes open can believe that.

********

I was ranting about all this at a friend of mine, and she asked if it really mattered (beware I am probably caricaturing her beliefs to make a point of my own). People say they believe in moral spiritual forces, but surely no-one actually believes that. Betsy’s chronic disease would be cured if she accepted Jesus into her heart. Why bother engaging with people who say things that imply that they do?

But Tracey was not the first person to harass my friend Betsy in that way, and has not been the last. I’m not going to be harassed by people who believe that my body is a problem that God needs to solve. I don’t have to deal with more polite people who aren’t rude enough to say that my body is a problem that God can solve, but obviously believe it. The people who are most likely to suffer at the pointy end of belief – are people who are already facing massive amounts of unluck and calling bullshit is a way of standing in solidarity with them.

But I also think it’s more respectful to respond to people who say things that I believe are damaging and wrong with “I think that’s damaging and wrong” than with “I’m going to ignore that because I don’t believe you mean what you say.” To me – the second response is patronising.

I don’t assume that religious people hold the sorts of spiritual beliefs I have criticised in this post. I don’t assume that because someone has some sort of faith they give moral meaning to the luck and unluck that people experience. But when people say things that imply that some sort of spiritual force could intervene to improve people’s lives if they behaved or believed in a certain way – I think there is a political value in challenging and unpacking the implications of those statements.

*********

This is from a major news service’s**** coverage of the shootings in Aurora during the batman screenings:

[name redacted] told NBC television that when the carnage began she shouted at her friend: “We’ve got to get out of here.” But when they started to move she saw people fall around her as the gunman began silently making his way up the aisle, shooting anyone who was trying to escape ahead of him.

“He shot people trying to go out the exits,” she said.

At that moment, [name redacted] stared her own imminent death in the face. The shooter came towards her, saying nothing. The barrel of the gun was pointing directly at her face. “I was just a deer in headlights. I didn’t know what to do.”

A shot rang out, but it was aimed at the person sitting right behind her. “I have no idea why he didn’t shoot me,” [named redacted] said.

Later, when she was safe, [named redacted] told her mother: “Mom, God saved me. God still loves me.”

Imagine if this were true. Imagine if there was a God who had some power in that movie theatre, and he saved the lives of the people he loved.

I was hesitant about commenting on this. The woman was speaking immediately after surviving horrific trauma. I have thought terrible things, under far less pressure. This woman was dealing with her situation as best she could. I don’t want to draw attention to her as an individual who made those statements.

Religious beliefs that connect luck with morality are so normalised in our society that even their most horrific expressions stand without comment.

********

Turns out I am not a relaxed atheist, just a protected one. When people who win awards, reality shows, or sporting events thank God, I just find it amusing, because I don’t think winning awards, reality shows or sporting events really matters. And in my everyday life I very rarely run into people thanking God, or attributing their luck to any spiritual force that is rewarding their faith. But I don’t think you can call yourself a relaxed athiest if you’re OK as long as religion stays well away from spiritual explanations that involve virtue.

I am in fact, passionate about materialism,***** and think there’s huge power and strength in understanding what we can about the world. I think it’s even more important to accept the randomness of the universe; not to project meaning onto the unknown, but to acknowledge the role that luck and unluck play in our lives.

********

I was taking a 10 year old for a walk with his dog.

“Are you religious?” Later he would ask me who I voted for, he was obviously thinking about things a lot.

“I’m an athiest.”

“So’s Mum. Mum and Grandma had big argument over religion. Mum asked Grandma what she believed and Grandma said when she’d been little she had been really poor and had no school bag and everyone teased her. So she prayed for a new school bag. And then the next day someone from her church gave her one, so God listened to her prayers. And then Mum said that what about all the other children? why doesn’t God answer their prayers?”

“Yeah, that’s what I would have said”

Then we throw another stick for the dog. Apparently that’s all the questions for today.

*******

* There were two magazines with Cameron Diaz on the cover on the ward that month. Both had the same picture, but her top was a different colour. This was long before features exposing photoshop were common-place and seeing those two photos side by side with a different colour was disconcerting in a world that didn’t feel particularly safe or stable.

** I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again, understanding the difference between the active and the passive voice is a fundamental prerequistite for useful political thinking.

*** Somewhere around here Schroedinger’s Cat and Quantum Physics comes in.

**** I have not included the name of the person being quoted, or the site the quote is from (although google will verify my sources). As I said, my point is not about her, but that such views are seen as normal.

***** I can’t read that sentence without hearing ‘passionate about materialism’ in David Mitchell’s voice – but it is true.

## I had a quote from the article here. I’ve removed it as someone pointed out (and I agree) that the I used it was racist in exactly the kind of way I was trying to problematise and avoid.

Posted in Atheism | 41 Comments

Adoption is not a woman’s sole decision

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Ampersand

Ozy Frantz is a writer I almost always agree with. But in zir excellent article “11 Ways Men Can Be Better Feminist Allies,” zie writes:

8) Support women’s bodily autonomy. On a political level, of course, one should fight pro-life initiatives, attempts to de-fund Planned Parenthood, forced sterilization efforts, etc. On a personal level, of course, it’s almost more important. If your partner gets pregnant, it’s up to her whether to have an abortion, give the child up for adoption, or raise the kid. Her body, her rules.

Wait a moment. The reason it’s up to the woman alone to decide if she has an abortion is that it’s her body, and as Ozy says, “her body, her rules.” I agree with that.

But adoption doesn’t occur, legally, until after the child has been born. At which point, the child is no longer part of the mother’s body. If the mother isn’t willing to raise the child and the father is, then the child should be raised by its father — and that should be the case even if the mother would prefer that the child be given up for adoption. (And, of course, the mother should pay child support to the father, assuming she’s capable.)

As I understand it, adoption terminates the parental rights of both parents. For that reason, it should be agreed to by both parents.

Or so it seems to me. Is there something I’m missing here?

Posted in Families structures, divorce, etc | 104 Comments

S&M Aftercare… Or Brainwashing?

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Clarisse Thorn

[Crossposted from Clarisse Thorn’s blog.]

Yes, it’s another article about abuse and S&M, but I’m going to cover a lot more than that. I’ll talk about intimacy and bodily reactions and how these things build a relationship — whether consensual or abusive. And I’ll talk about how to deal with them, too.

Last year, I received an email from a woman who wanted to talk about sexual desire that exists alongside real abuse. She has been abused, but she is sexually aroused by S&M, and she struggles with boundaries a lot. She wrote to me:

Here’s what destroys you: that some of us are designed to shut down and feel terror and horror and arousal and shame all at the same time, to crumple before horrible people, to feel aroused even as they genuinely destroy you. This is not in any one’s best interest. It’s not hot, it’s not awesome. And yet it’s there.

The worst pain for some of us, that makes you want to scream and not exist and makes you want to scream to the heavens that you want to die and escape being in your own body is not that you are afraid he will come back. It’s that you are aroused by the possibility that he will. And other than destroying your very self, you can’t stop it. It is the cruelest of design flaws and the worst people understand it and the most compassionate people don’t.

However, the conclusion is not that some people want abuse. By definition, abuse is something that destroys you, that leaves you feeling violated and harmed in a way you don’t want. And part of that mechanism, that involves the desire for the abuse to continue, is that many of us are designed to want more intimacy once intimacy has been initiated with a person. Many of us don’t want to be left.

And the agony of feeling harmed by being left by someone you never wanted to be there in the first place is confusing and can be debilitating.

No one wants to be harmed in this way. Among abuse survivor communities the arousal involved in abuse situations is often called “body betrayal,” but this doesn’t seem to encompass how deep the desires can be for some people. At the root, the desires are often the same desires that fit into normal healthy intimate relationships. To be loved, to have an ongoing interaction, to be seen and understood at the root of all your emotion, to be taken sexually and feel the pleasure of another enjoying your sexual arousal. But these emotions have been exploited and manipulated for the gain of others.

For some number of people who have experienced abuse, the greatest split within the self does not simply come from how horrific the acts themselves were but from the feelings of desire and pleasure that can happen in human beings even during horrific unwanted acts. For some of us, BDSM can be a safe way to explore unpacking some of this desire and how these arousal patterns got mixed up with horrific things — or were already hooked up to horrific things and that pre-existing fact was exploited by a harmful person. And for some of us, taking that out and playing with it may not be a necessary part of recovery at all.

But simply knowing this — the fact that your arousal and pleasure systems can be activated by harmful people is ok — it does not mean you want it, it does not mean that it was good for you, or that anyone should have treated you in that way. That can be the greatest healing in and of itself.

I want to thank her for allowing me to publish her words. Her description is so far from how I usually discuss or experience S&M; and yet I see connections, too, and people rarely discuss those connections.

* * *

Aftercare: Intimacy Within Positive and Consensual S&M

A while back, a study came out that established that a consenting, positive S&M experience increases a couple’s intimacy afterwards. I cite that study all the time, but I still find its existence kinda absurd; I mean, they could have just asked us how it felt. On the bright side, if S&M is being studied by Real Researchers, it’s a sign that S&M is becoming more widely accepted. Yet for all its hormone level measurements and mood surveys, I didn’t feel like the study got anywhere near the heart of S&M and how S&M creates such extraordinary intimacy. Why would it? Studies are science, and aftercare is art.

Continue reading →

Posted in Sex | 5 Comments

Hereville 2 Title Page Pencils!

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Ampersand

So Hereville 2 is nearly done! I’ve drawn all the story pages and the cover, and I just finished penciling the title page a few minutes ago. Jake is blazing along on the colors. I want to go back and revise some drawings I’m not happy with, but basically, my part is done.

After all these months of drawing, it’s hard to imagine that eight days from now I’ll turn the pages in and have no more drawing to do! What will I do with my time?

(Answer: Begin writing Hereville 3. But I also plan to do some more of the things I haven’t had time to do in the last half-year, such as blogging and laundry.)

Anyway, here’s the penciled title page, subject to the approval of the nice folks at Abrams:

Posted in Syndicated feeds | 2 Comments

Speaking of Chick-Fil-A

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Ampersand

This behavior by the mayor of Boston is appalling:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from bringing its Southern-fried fast-food empire to Boston — possibly to a popular tourist spot just steps from the Freedom Trail — after the family-owned firm’s president suggested gay marriage is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion,” Menino told the Herald yesterday.

. . .

If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult — unless they open up their policies,” he warned.

Ken at Popehat comments:

…the government doesn’t get to pick and choose what social causes are permissible, and any government actor who aspires to that power is a lowlife thug. What’s particularly alarming about Menino’s thuggery is how openly his referencing to licensing “difficulties” reveals how things really work in government: whatever rights you think that you have, practically speaking some bureaucrat can punish you for exercising them on a whim, and there’s very little you can do about it. Menino represents the ethos of government actors who think quite frankly that this is right and just and how it should be — that they, our masters, should be able to dictate what we think and do and say if we want to do business in their fiefdom.

Freedom of speech requires that the government not discriminate against or punish people for the expression of their political views ((If the business has a history of breaking laws against discrimination, I think that would be a different matter — that’s a pattern of lawbreaking behavior, not just an expression of political views.)) – even those views I most strongly disagree with. Leave that sort of thing to private citizens acting in a private capacity.

Posted in Uncategorized | 60 Comments

Robert George Is Very Specific About What He Means

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Ampersand

In the “No Compromise” thread on Family Scholars Blog, David writes:

One conclusion I draw from this thread is that it would be a good idea for someone (presumably someone opposed to ssm) to state with some specificity the actual content of desirable and permissable protections of religious liberty and the rights of conscience with respect to laws permitting same-sex marriage.

But in the essay David links to, Robert George says what he thinks the content of those laws should be.

“We will accept the legal redefinition of marriage; you will respect our right to act on our consciences without penalty, discrimination, or civil disabilities of any type. Same-sex partners will get marriage licenses, but no one will be forced for any reason to recognize those marriages or suffer discrimination or disabilities for declining to recognize them.”

If Professor George is serious about this language — and there’s no reason to think he was joking — then what he wants is for no one, in any circumstance, ever, to be pressured in any way whatsoever to recognize a same-sex marriage.

So, for example, if Chick-Fil-A wants to provide health insurance coverage for the legal spouses of heterosexual workers, but not the legal spouses of similarly situated homosexual workers, Chick-Fil-A should have that right.

If a city clerk working in a small, one-clerk town wants to refuse to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, she should have that right. Let them drive to the next town over and try their luck there. Firing her because she’s effectively refusing to perform her job duties would surely be an example of a “penalty” and thus is not allowed.

If a bank clerk wants to refuse to accept a mortgage application from the same-sex couple, because they checked off the “married” box on their form, that should be acceptable behavior, according to Mr. George’s standards, and for the bank manager to discipline or fire that employee should presumably be illegal.

If a hospital or doctor decides not to recognize a same-sex marriage, and therefore refuses to accept a sick or injured person’s insurance from their same-sex spouse’s employment, they should face no penalty, according to George. They cannot be “forced to recognize those marriages,” after all.

Professor George is quite right to say that the “grand bargain,” as he describes it, would not be acceptable to many SSM advocates all. What George calls for is nothing less than permanent second-class status for all same-sex couples.

A different sort of “grand bargain” is certainly possible, however. I don’t know a single SSM who wants to see unwilling ministers forced to officiate at same-sex ceremonies, for example, or unwilling Churches forced to host same-sex ceremonies in their chapels. There are gray areas to be hashed out, but there is in fact quite a lot of agreement, from both SSM opponents and SSM advocates, of what such a “grand bargain” would look like.

There may be a few extremists on the pro-SSM side who oppose any religious exemptions at all – although if they exist, they are not prominent leaders of the movement. On the anti-SSM side, there are a few extremists, Professor George included, whose views would effectively condemn married same-sex couples to permanent second-class citizenship. Fortunately, I think most people’s views are actually in the middle, and in the next decade or two we will see a reasonable grand bargain, effectively (if imperfectly) protecting both gay rights and religious liberty, emerge in most states.

Posted in Religion, Same-Sex Marriage | 95 Comments

“Even Nice Jewish Girls Have Vibrators,” from Jezebel

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Richard Jeffrey Newman

This piece, by Sarah Tuttle-Singer, will make you plotz:

But then, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, the rabbi yanked the drawer open, and in the process activated the iRabbit’s on-switch. Whirring, buzzing, and gyrating, this vibrator, unlike so many smaller, more discreet models, leaves very little to the imagination. It comes complete with a fairly girthy shaft and a well-formed glans, and, why yes, it does appear to be circumcised.

Posted in Whatever | 1 Comment

Poor people value marriage as much as the middle class and rich, study shows

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Ampersand

The title of this post comes from the UCLA press release:

Poor people hold more traditional values toward marriage and divorce than people with moderate and higher incomes, UCLA psychologists report in the current issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

The findings are based on a large survey about marriage, relationships and values, analyzed across income groups. They raise questions about how effectively some $1billion in government spending to promote the value of marriage among the poor is being spent.

“A lot of government policy is based on the assumption that low-income people hold less traditional views about marriage,” said Benjamin Karney, a UCLA professor of psychology and senior author of the study. “However, the different income groups do not hold dramatically different views about marriage and divorce — and when the views are different, they are different in the opposite direction from what is commonly assumed. People of low income hold values that are at least as traditional toward marriage and divorce, if not more so.”

The study, What’s (Not) Wrong With Low-Income Marriages, is by Thomas E. Trail and Benjamin R. Karney. The abstract:

In the United States, low marriage rates and high divorce rates among the poor have led policymakers to target this group for skills- and values-based interventions. The current research evaluated the assumptions underlying these interventions; specifically, the authors examined whether low-income respondents held less traditional values toward marriage, had unrealistic standards for marriage, and had more problems managing relational problems than higher income respondents. They assessed these issues in a stratified random sample that oversampled low-income and non-White populations (N = 6,012). The results demonstrated that, relative to higher income respondents, low-income respondents held more traditional values toward marriage, had similar romantic standards for marriage, and experienced similar skills-based relationship problems. Low-income groups had higher economic standards for marriage and experienced more problems related to economic and social issues (e.g., money, drinking/drug use) than did higher income respondents. Thus, efforts to save low-income marriages should directly confront the economic and social realities these couples face.

And from a section in the paper in which they discuss the implications of their work for policy:

The relationship problems that low-income respondents do experience as more severe than higher income respondents included problems that are generally more common among low-income populations (e.g., problems with money, substance abuse)but also included problems with ﬁdelity and friends. It is important to note that, as in previous research (Amato & Previti, 2003; Karney & Bradbury, 1995), these problems are largely related to external stressors (i.e., ﬁnancial problems, friends) and problem behaviors (i.e., substance abuse) rather than relationship-centered problems, raising questions about the appropriateness of interventions targeting low-income couples that focus primarily on interpersonal processes (e.g., communication and problem solving).

To be sensitive to the unique challenges that may be associated with higher vulnerability in this population, interventions may need to expand their focus to how couples negotiate the demands and temptations of their circumstances. Some state programs have already instituted this type of comprehensive intervention program to improve marriage, incorporating drug and alcohol treatment as well as job training into their programs (Ooms et al., 2004). The current research suggests that this type of intervention should be the norm rather than the exception.

Similarly, programs that promote economic stability in low-income communities (e.g., programs to increase steady employment or assist with debt relief and housing) may have significant effects on marital outcomes in those communities, even if those programs never target marriages or relationships directly. Whatever bolsters the ﬁnancial prospects of low-income couples may remove barriers to marriage and/or forestall divorce for couples struggling with ﬁnancial problems (Levin-Epstein, Ooms, Parke, Roberts, & Turetsky, 2002).

Although the effect of ﬁnancial assistance on marriage and divorce rates is a source of controversy in the literature (Gennetian & Knox, 2003), the current research suggests that these strategies would help relieve stress on low-income relationships, allowing low-income couples to better follow through with their desires for stable, healthy marriages.

Thoughts?

My feeling is that there’s now quite a lot of evidence showing that poor people already want to get married and value marriage, and it seems unlikely that any policy intervention aimed at this area is going to do any good.

At the same time, however, it also seems unlikely that policy interventions to help poor people’s economic prospects are going to happen, given our dysfunctional government and Americans’ notorious hatred of income transfer programs. So it’s hard to feel a lot of hope, when thinking about new government interventions to help marriage and/or alleviate poverty.