{"id":936,"date":"2004-06-28T14:36:07","date_gmt":"2004-06-28T22:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/06\/28\/poll-cause-and-effect-results\/"},"modified":"2004-06-28T14:36:07","modified_gmt":"2004-06-28T22:36:07","slug":"poll-cause-and-effect-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=936","title":{"rendered":"Poll: Cause and Effect? (Results)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thank you  all for voting on <a href=\"http:\/\/amptoons.poliblog.com\/cgi-bin\/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=879\">&#8220;Cause and Effect&#8221;<\/a>.  Despite my valiant efforts, which paralleled Dr. Stanley Kurtz&#8217;s valiant efforts, it would seem that few &#8220;Alas&#8221; readers believe either one of us.  Only 1 in 8 believe that SSM can cause changes in the non-marital birth ratio and these changes can be seen in the data.  (Who&#8217;d have thought?)<\/p>\n<p>Here are the final results:<\/p>\n<div class=\"snip\">POLL QUESTION: Select the statement that best represents your opinion.<\/p>\n<p>CHOICES AND RESULTS<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Same Sex Marriage can cause changes in the the non-marital birth ratio and these can easily be seen in the data., 1 votes, 12.50% <\/li>\n<li>Same Sex Marriage can cause changes in the the non-marital birth ratio but these are nearly impossible to see in the data., 4 votes, 50.00%<\/li>\n<li>Same Sex Marriage can not cause changes in the the non-marital birth ratio., 3 votes, 37.50% <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>Despite being trounced, I pledge this:<\/p>\n<div class=\"snip\">If Dr. Kurtz writes more articles showing us that the campaign for SSM caused the non-marital birth ratio<sup>[1]<\/sup>  to rise in the Netherlands, I will continue to defend my position that it has caused non-marital births to drop in the US.  I will respond theme for theme; causal mechanism for causal mechanism. I will persist even if others question my motives, accuse me of satire, stupidity or resort to bizarre metaphors like &#8220;obfuscatory house of cards&#8221; <sup>[2]<\/sup>. I would pledge to respond word for word, but even I can&#8217;t write that much.<sup>[3]<\/sup><\/div>\n<p>Despite this pledge, Alas readers may be spared the burden of reminding me that correlation does not mean cause and effect.  Eve Tushnet, who is sick of hearing correlation doesn&#8217;t mean causation may also be spared.  (See <a href=\"http:\/\/amptoons.poliblog.com\/blog\/000903.html\">&#8220;Tired&#8221;<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s why we may all be spared:<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Kurtz seems to have ended his quest to waste all available ink penning articles in which he presents cherry picked data in an attempt to show that Same Sex Marriage has killed marriage in Scandinavia.  Starting on Feb. 2, 2004, he published almost one a week at  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/kurtz\/kurtz-archive.asp\">The NRO <\/a>; additional articles were published at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/Content\/Public\/Articles\/000\/000\/004\/126qodro.asp\">The Weekly Standard.<\/a>  His last article on this topic appeared only a few days after I published mine showing <a href=\"http:\/\/amptoons.poliblog.com\/blog\/000845.html\">&#8220;The American Data&#8221;<\/a>.<sup>[4]<\/sup><br \/>\nCause and Effect?  Summer vacation? You decide!<sup>[5]<\/sup><br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nEpilog:<br \/>\nAs some of you are aware, I earnestly defended my claim that it was the campaign for SSM and <i>not<\/i> Welfare Reform that caused the decrease in nonMarital births. A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2004\/0623\/p11s02-ussc.html\">disinterested party<\/a> speaks: <\/p>\n<div class=\"snip\">The studies, published in the journal Demography last month, suggest that current welfare polices are having little effect on encouraging marriage and two-parent families.<\/div>\n<p>Even more interesting <\/p>\n<div class=\"snip\">&#8220;We can say with some confidence that welfare reform is not &#8216;pro-marriage&#8217; on balance,&#8221; write the authors of &#8220;The Impact of Welfare Reform on Marriage and Divorce.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p>No.  I do not believe The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 caused the drop in non-marital birth rates in 1995. (And The Contract for America, written after most women women who gave birth in 1995 conceived their children also didn&#8217;t cause the drop.)<br \/>\nEnd Notes========<br \/>\n[1] Or other strange metrics he may select to diagnose the health of marriage.<br \/>\n[2] Can a house of card get confused? Or be unclear? Does that qualify as a mixed metaphor?<br \/>\n[3] Apologies to Dan J. who wants me to take the lead on this!<br \/>\n[4] Soon after I published my very convincing article, several anti-SSM bloggers, who previously endorsed Dr. Kurtz&#8217;s data and analysis, posted articles at MarriageDebate.com suggesting one couldn&#8217;t use the available data to prove this sort of thing. It might take decades.<br \/>\n[5] I also pledge to include pendantic little footnotes when commenting on Kurtz. He doesn&#8217;t do it, but it&#8217;s fun.<a style=\"text-decoration:none\" href=\"\/index.php?p=deltasone-cost-no-insurance\">.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thank you all for voting on &#8220;Cause and Effect&#8221;. Despite my valiant efforts, which paralleled Dr. Stanley Kurtz&#8217;s valiant efforts, it would seem that few &#8220;Alas&#8221; readers believe either one of us. Only 1 in 8 believe that SSM can &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=936\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-same-sex-marriage","category-ssm-the-scandinavian-question"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}