Tag Archives: Family

UK Liberal Democrats oppose tax breaks for getting married and staying married

From the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

 In a speech designed to reassert the Liberal Democrats’ voice in government, the embattled Deputy Prime Minister will also set out his vision of an “Open Society” — in direct contrast to the Big Society trumpeted by David Cameron, the Prime Minister.

Tax breaks for married couples are a key demand of the Tory faithful and Mr Cameron has committed to their introduction before the next election. The issue has the potential to become a major source of friction within the Coalition in the New Year.

As Mr Clegg delivers his speech in Westminster on Sunday, a number of Tory MPs will meet David Gauke, the Treasury minister, to press the government to introduce the tax break for married couples as soon as possible. It means Mr Clegg is now in open disagreement with the senior Coalition partner on two major areas of policy — the marriage tax break and Europe.

In his speech to Demos, the Left-leaning think tank, Mr Clegg will say: “We should not take a particular version of the family institution, such as the 1950s model of suit-wearing, breadwinning dad and aproned, homemaking mother, and try and preserve it in aspic.

“That’s why Open Society Liberals and Big Society Conservatives will take a different view on a tax break for marriage. We can all agree that strong relationships between parents are important, but not agree that the state should use the tax system to encourage a particular family form.”

[…] Research has suggested that children brought up by two married parents living together are happier, fare better at school and are less likely to become heavily involved in alcohol, crime or drugs.

The Centre for Social Justice [CSJ], a pro-family think tank set up by Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said that just one in 11 married couples separated before their child’s fifth birthday, compared with a third of unmarried couples.

Gavin Poole, its executive director, said: “Nick Clegg’s stance flies in the face of all the evidence, completely ignoring national and international data demonstrating how important marriage is to the health and wellbeing of children and families.”

And this isn’t surprising – Obama has said the same thing about not preferring traditional marriage over other arrangements.

Excerpt:

President Obama has included homosexual couples raising children in a list of “American families” in a recent proclamation declaring Monday National Family Day.

“Whether children are raised by two parents, a single parent, grandparents, a same-sex couple, or a guardian,” said Obama in the proclamation, “families encourage us to do our best and enable us to accomplish great things.”

The president went on to encourage participation in Family Day by sharing an evening meal as a family unit.  “A strong nation is made up of strong families, and on this Family Day, we rededicate ourselves to ensuring that every American family has the chance to build a better, healthier future for themselves and their children,” he said.

The family day proclamation is in keeping with Obama’s oft-professed support for the homosexualist agenda.

When Obama proclaimed June “LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) Pride Month,” he reiterated that he supports several issues on the homosexual docket, including homosexual hate crime legislation, homosexual “affirmative action” in the workplace, allowing open homosexuals in the military, and adoption to homosexual couples.

During the same month, Obama signed a presidential memorandum extending spousal benefits to homosexual partners and other unmarried partners of federal employees.

It’s important to realize that the secular left, including our own Democrats here at home, are committed to the destruction of marriage. They support policies like sex education, single mother welfare, no-fault divorce, redefining marriage, and so on. They do not support traditional marriage. And they will oppose and and all incentives given to people who choose to marry and who choose to stay married. They do not care about providing children with a stable environment to grow up in, with a mother and a father who are biologically linked to the children. They would rather have more children growing up in poverty and exposed to violence, neglect and abuse than promote traditional marriage.

The secular left opposes traditional marriage for 2 reasons. First, they do not like the way that traditional marriage tends to lend itself to the man working and the woman staying at home – they want both people to work and pay taxes, so the parents are “equal” and they want the government feed and educate the children instead, so all the children are “equal”. Second, they do want to encourage “healthy attitudes” about sex, so that people who have sex before marriage do not feel guilty about it – since the school has told them that “everyone is doing it”. The left doesn’t want people who decide not to marry to feel bad about sex. They prefer to remove the moral boundaries that protect children.

In fact, if you are a woman, and you vote for the leftists, and you are wondering why you are not married, you should understand that the very policies you vote for are the policies that take away a man’s willingness to marry and his ability to perform the traditional obligations of a husband and father. He has no reason to commit in order to get sex – you’re giving him sex for free. And he has no money to provide for a family – he paid it all to the state in taxes. And he has no ability to lead on moral and spiritual issues – that’s all been beaten out of him in the public schools, where objective morality and theism are frowned on. Think before you vote.

Pew Research: U.S. marriage rate slumps to a record low

Marriage and family
Marriage and family

UPDATE: Welcome, visitors from IOwnTheWorld. Thanks for the link! Readers should check out John Hawkins’ list of the top 40 conservative blogs for more great blogs!

ECM sends me this depressing article from the BBC.

Excerpt:

Barely half of Americans – a record low – are currently married, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census data.

Just 51% of adult Americans are married, compared with 72% in 1960.

The median age of first marriage has also hit a new high, of 26.5 for brides and 28.7 for grooms.

Pew said the number of adults co-habitating, single-person households and single parents had meanwhile increased in recent decades.

The study found that 20% of adults today aged 18 to 29 are married, compared with 59% in 1960.

It is unclear whether they are delaying matrimony or abandoning it altogether.

The analysis also found the number of new marriages in the US had declined by five percentage points between 2009-10.

This may not necessarily have been caused by the economic downturn, since a similar trend has continued in Europe regardless of business cycles.

Pew, a nonpartisan think tank and polling organisation, found the percentage of those Americans who have been married at least once had declined as well – 72% in 2010, from 85% in 1960.

If the trend persists, in a few years less than half of Americans will be married, Pew said.

I think that there are many causes for this problem. One of them has to be that the recession has hit men harder than women, and it is harder for a man to contemplate marriage when he isn’t the provider. A second reason is that the expansion of government makes it less important for women to men to fit the provider role, and men sink to those expectations and concentrate on other things that women want. A third reason is the men are performing poorly in school and earning fewer degrees, probably for the reasons that Christina Hoff Sommers explained in “The War Against Boys” – i.e. – feminism in the schools. A fourth reason would be the decline of prestige associated with marriage – men marry more when they get respect from their wives and society as a whole for doing something challenging and difficult. A fifth reason would be feminism’s drive to push premarital sex as something natural and normal to women – if women offer premarital sex to men as a form of recreation, then men have a big disincentive not to marry – they can already get the sex without having to commit for life to one woman. Furthermore, I don’t think that men feel comfortable about marrying a woman with a lot of previous sex partners – men know, and research confirms, that the higher number of prior sex partners is a huge risk of divorce. A sixth reason is that men’s incomes are taxed more and more, so that the government has more and more authority to interfere with his leadership – e.g. – a man cannot afford to select a private school or a religious school because the government takes the money and he is left with a politicized, failing public school that doesn’t accomplish the goals he wants for his children. A seventh reason would be that divorce is very bad for men’s finances – men have to pay alimony and child support, too.

I was chatting about this post over with ECM, and he said that the easy availability of pornography was another cause for the decline of marriage.

I wrote a longer, snarkier post about the decline of marriage here.

Hugh Hewitt: is he a conservative radio talk show host?

Hugh Hewitt is a strong supporter of Mitt Romney. Let’s look at Romney’s views.

Here is Mitt Romney on abortion:

And more:

Mitt Romney on immigration:

Mitt Romney on global warming:

Here is Mitt Romney on gun control:

Here is Mitt Romney on embryonic stem cell research:

Here is Mitt Romney on the flat tax:

So long as Hugh Hewitt endorses Romney, then Hugh Hewitt is not a conservative in any sense of the word.