Listening to the Senate Republicans debate on the Marriage Amendment is an exercise in absurdity.  Earlier this morning, Senator Brownback of Kansas made the argument that allowing same-sex marriages would increase the divorce rate.  To back up his unfounded view, he used figures of increasing out-of-wedlock rates in Europe.  In a chart, he showed that the rate of women having children out of wedlock in the Netherlands increased, when same-sex marriages were allowed.  First of all, I think it is a stretch to say out-of-wedlock births has anything to do with divorce rates and secondly, not surprisingly, he never shows similar figures for countries similar to the Netherlands that have not allowed same-sex marriages.  When one takes a less biased look at the figures, the highest out-of-wedlock childbirth rates are found in Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, France, Slovenia and Britain, where the rates exceeded 40 percent (source: Eurostat).  None of these countries allow same-sex marriages.  

According the US Census bureau, the out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate in this country is much lower today than in 1960.  I wonder how Senators Brownback, Allard, Santorum, or any other republican rationalize this figure.  Perhaps, using the same perverse logic that they employ, we can make the argument that by increasing the acceptance of homosexuals into mainstream society decreases out-of-wedlock pregnancies.  

This type of republican lunacy is deeply disturbing.  I find it unfortunate that today, on the 62nd anniversary of D-Day, the allied landing on the beaches of Normandy to defeat the hatred and bigotry of Nazi Germany, that the republican party finds it acceptable that hatred and bigotry should be enshrined in the Constitution.