All right, do you remember that New York Times story of last week, which claimed that more women were now unmarried than were married in the country? It turns out that the Times interpreted the Census Bureau data entirely wrong — and almost, it appears, purposefully so as to advance another far left-wing, extremist agenda, i.e., the redefinition of a family, the redefinition of traditional marriage and so forth and so on. Michael Medved has written about this, our good buddy from Seattle who has his own show, a movie critic extraordinaire — a renaissance man, if you will –and now also here Peter J. Smith at LifeSiteNews.com.
“The New York Times has once again published another ‘hit piece’ on the institution of marriage, alleging that for ‘the first time more American women are living without a husband than with one’. However, US census data for 2005 shows that the January 16th front-page story in the New York Times is just another disturbing showcase of the Times? tolerance for ‘journalistic malpractice’. ‘For what experts say is probably the first time,’ writes Sam Roberts on the Times front page, ‘more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.'” He wrote: “‘In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000,’ writes Roberts. He adds that now married couples make up a minority of all American households and ‘the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits,'” which, by the way, was a little hidden paragraph in the opening of the story which was the key to this whole thing in addition to the advancement of the whole destruction of the institution of marriage thing.
“The plain truth is…” writes Peter Smith, “The plain truth is that Roberts? findings are at variance with US census reports for 2005, which demonstrate a far different picture from the profiles selected by Roberts of single women ‘delighting in their new found freedom.’ According to the 2005 report ‘Marital Status of the Population by Sex and Age’, the United States is not yet a culture that has discarded the institution of marriage, where 60.4% of men and 56.9% of women over 18 years old are married. However, Roberts [the New York Times] creates his own analysis by using the Census Bureau?s ‘Living Arrangements of Persons 15 Years Old and Over by Selected Characteristics’…” (Laughing.) Of course if you’re 15 and you don’t have a spouse, you can be added into the statistic! They do this. I don’t know why I don’t suspect it all the time. They do this with polling data in the way they sample respondents and so forth.
“Roberts creates his own analysis by using the Census Bureau?s ‘Living Arrangements of Persons 15 Years Old and Over by Selected Characteristics’ by including in his 51% figure of women living without a spouse [these types of people]: unmarried teenage and college girls still living with their parents, women whose husbands work out of town, are institutionalized,” I wonder what that number is, “or are separated from husbands serving in Afghanistan and Iraq,” and that’s why it was worded the way it was! This guy wrote: 51% said living “without a spouse.” The headline said something about marriage, but in the body of the story, “living without a spouse.” Well, hell, if you’re 15 and you get lumped in this group by the New York Times and you’re living with your parents, yeah, you’re living without a spouse because you don’t have one, and they also include other areas where you do have a spouse but you’re not living with them, either the spouse is in an institution, having lost his mind, or is in Iraq or Afghanistan! (Laughing.)