Friday, December 10, 2004
Bible belter values
I thought this was pretty interesting reading. We all know that the south and the bible belters feel the need to force their values onto everyone else, but just what kind of values do they really have? We all know that the south has the highest crime rate along with the highest murder rates, and those are excellent values to have, but don't get too caught up on that whole "sanctity of marriage" bullshit that they spout every time they get home from a gay bashing.
Here are some good numbers to combat these hypocrites.
From the www.ncpa.org website:
Aside from the quickie-divorce Mecca of Nevada, no region of the United States has a higher divorce rate than the Bible belt. Nearly half of all marriages break up, but the divorce rates in these southern states are roughly 50 percent above the national average.
According to federal figures:
Nationally, there were about 4.2 divorces for every thousand people in 1998.
The rate was 8.5 per thousand in Nevada, 6.4 in Tennessee, 6.1 in Arkansas, 6.0 in Alabama and Oklahoma.
Of southeastern states, only South Carolina's rate of 3.8 was below the national average.
By contrast, the divorce rate is less than 3.0 in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York.
Why so many divorces in the Bible belt?
Experts cite low household incomes (Oklahoma ranks 46th and Arkansas 47th), and a tendency for couples to marry at a younger age than in many other states.
Religion may play a role, since some of the lowest divorce rates are in northeastern states with relatively high household incomes and large numbers of Roman Catholics whose church doesn't recognize divorce.
Bible belt states, in contrast, are dominated by fundamentalist Protestant denominations that proclaim the sanctity of marriage but generally do not want to estrange churchgoers who do divorce.
No state has been more embarrassed by the divorce problem than Oklahoma. Over the past few months, Gov. Frank Keating has enlisted clergymen, academics, lawyers and psychologists in a campaign to reduce the divorce rate by a third within 10 years. In neighboring Arkansas, state officials hope to halve the divorce rate by 2010.
Source: David Crary, "Bible Belt Leads U.S. in Divorces," Associated Press, November 12, 1999.
For text http://wire.ap.org/
For more on Divorce http://www.ncpa.org/pd/social/social2.html
Also consider that RI, NY, IL and MD were the only "blue states" that had a higher than national average of births out of wedlock in 2000.
SC, SD, TN, OK, NC, NM, NV, MO, OH, IN, AL, AZ, GA, LA (45.6%) and MS (46%) are all above the national average of 33.2%.
Again when these states start talking about morals and values, just remember these statistics.
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3 comments:
Well since the government shouldn't be involved in marriage anyways, why should I care? The only question I have is when was Nevada added to the South? The region known as "The South" is usually only referring to the states that got fed up with the Federal Government and decided not to recognize its authority anymore. And since there are more red states than blue states, you are guarenteed to have some of them with divorce rates above that of the national average.
I said, besides Nevada, Nevada not being part of the south, which makes it unique in that its one of the few northern states with a higher than average divorce rate. Typically the south, other than Nevada, has a higher divorce rate than any other region of the US, and those regions don’t go around calling the rest of the country immoral. Nevada also has the highest rate a marriage, which apparently is a good thing.
The point being made here is that the south, has often said that blue states such as Illinois, California and New York are out of touch with the morality of the rest of the country. I was just bringing to light all of the fine moral standards and traditions of the south, such as segregation, the highest murder rate, the highest divorce rate, and the highest incidents of out of wedlock child births. Which is why maybe the rest of us are out of touch with them, we value things such as equality, civil liberties, free expression, tolerance of other people (most of us anyway), you know things that god never intended.
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