Men are not getting married because they get ruined in a divorce. Only a stupid man gets married now days with the feminist family laws. The goobers and the bubbas will always get married.

Marriage does mean anything because its too much trouble and really who cares? Also, I don't know why people even bother to have children. You're just bringing someone into this world that will be slapped with 30,000 in national debt per person. There's also the fact with war, global warming, murder, disease, and violence why would you subject someone to that anyway? Better off not having any kids.....

Ummmmmmm let me see if I can explain this...... these divorce rates are not down because less people are marrying. This statistic is only taken from those that ARE married and of those how many have divorced. This is relative to the number of married couples NOT those not married but breaking up. WOW

Actually Cindi, the stats the Times article uses are based on the number of divorces per thousand people, not per thousand married people. If you have scientifically founded information that contradicts those numberss, please share with the group.

one thing is for sure, when a man gets married, and it comes apart; the woman hits the lottery, because weather she contributed to the marrage or not, the man will lose half his life to her. according to this horror of a system.

I suppose that another contributing factor to the reduction in marriage is purely economic. I read yesterday that new college graduates are increasingly moving back home to live with mom and dad because of high rents and low entry level wages. This situation of reduced financial and personal independence may well lead to deferred consideration of marriage. Of course, of those who do take the plunge but would later desire to get divorced, some may not do so simply because neither party can make do financially with just one income. AS far as the divorce penalty that many males have mentioned as a disincentive to tying the knot, I wonder what is keeping these men or women from making prenuptial agreements to soften the blow in case of breakup? Or is that not possible? As for me, I must confess I have no idea of what marriage or divorce is like. I posponed getting hooked-up long ago (I am now in my fifties) because of ecological concerns and a strong streak of independence that just did not add up to getting married. I must say I have not regretted it. I agee that gay marriage should be facilitated legally. (Although they too have failed partnerships, legal or not.)

Also, divorce rates do not take into consideration people like my husband and I who have been separated for over 20 years. Men are moving in with girl friends or women are moving in with boy friends without either one getting a divorce. In my case, I was left with no money and 2 children to take care of and couldn't afford a divorce and He refused to pay for one since if he had gotten a divorce his girlfriend would have demanded marriage and he would have had to go to work instead of being supported by her.

Oh my gosh! SO much bitterness. Most states are community property states, at least in the west. I don't know as much about other parts of the country. No one gets raped in a divorce, it's a 50/50 and if men think that women don't bring anything to the party, it's best they NOT get married anyway.
I've been divorced for 20 years. I've lived with two men, but never remarried. The man I expect to grow old and die with has cohabitated with me for nine years. Neither of us see any reason to get married other than issues like health insurance and pensions. If we do ever get around to "making it official" it'll be more a matter of social pressures than any belief in the sanctity or holiness of the institution. Ironically, often the one's who praise the god sanctified union the most are the one's who make it increasingly less appealing to those of us who just don't quite get why it's so necessary. Marriage isn't some sort of magic wand that creates mutual respect and undying love, if anything it tends to lend itself to neglect and indifference. VIVA unwedded bliss!

Katie: Women's sites do seem to attract lots of barely-literate right-wing trolls, don't they? It's like a faint echo of the nastiness directed at Kathy Sierra, and she was writing about tech issues, not politics.

It's all transference: The guys are upset at their worsening economic state over the last few decades -- a state caused by the decline of unions and the big move of money from the lower and middle classes straight into the pockets of the rich, thanks to tax breaks and double-dipping for the top dogs and increasingly regressive tax burdens for everyone else -- yet they don't have the stones to fight the people who caused their problems. Instead, Stockholm-syndrome style, they identify with their tormentors and blame others (namely women) for their problems.

Speaking of Stockholm, those more intelligent Swedes do not get married anymore. Men speak from their personal experience of suffering and pain. How dare you belittle our pain and suffering. That is why many intelligent sensitive men do not date women. Then many women only get the dregs, the druggies and the lazy , then they complain. Some of the women on this post appear to suffer from conscious or unconscious sexism. Remember, sexism is first cousin of racism. You need therapy.

Personally,I say it a grand mistake these days to marry. When the government gives aid & helps the illegals more than the legally born here in the USA.
Why pay for the cow when you can get the milk free.
[read between the lines]

Besides the little woman now days can get all the health care she wants if she comes in under the poverty line. Same goes for the children too. They just can't own a piece of the rock or personal property. But what the heck the Sugar Daddy can take care of that.
Its so unjust this world we live in anyway.
Open your eyes an look around.
The debt a newborn is handed as soon as they take their first breath is shocking.

There's a word for someone who demands money because they had sex with you.

A number of studies of per thousand MARRIED couples and the rate of divorce indicate that the real rate is between 13% and 24% depending on the source. Just google for it. As to homosexual men/women getting a shot at it, no. When the average "dedicated homosexual couple" has an average of 8 outside liasons why bother getting married? Besides, marriage has historically been one man and one woman, with aberrations all through out history. Polyandry, polygamy, serial monogomay, etc., but these are just that, aberrations and outside the norm.

Research indicates that the average male homosexual has hundreds of sex partners in his lifetime:

· The Dutch study of partnered homosexuals, which was published in the journal AIDS, found that men with a steady partner had an average of eight sexual partners per year.

· Bell and Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having one thousand or more sex partners.

· In their study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in the Journal of Sex Research, Paul Van de Ven et al. found that "the modal range for number of sexual partners ever [of homosexuals] was 101-500." In addition, 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent had between 501 and 1,000 partners. A further 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent reported having had more than one thousand lifetime sexual partners.

· A survey conducted by the homosexual magazine Genre found that 24 percent of the respondents said they had had more than one hundred sexual partners in their lifetime. The magazine noted that several respondents suggested including a category of those who had more than one thousand sexual partners.

Ramon, in the G/L community, very few, may be 2 % want marriage, so don't worry. The whole idea behind the push for legal marriage is acceptance as equals. It is the right, not necessarily the exercise of the right, like so many other things. We Vikings, are roamers, we do not settle down.

So..., other than being an attempt to define what is 'moral', what does the federal government care who marries who?

BTW: I haven't found a statement in the Constitution that enumerates a power for the federal government to define what is moral and acceptable among individuals.
Have any of you?

Yes mainly it's the goobers and the bubbas who get married, but it's also the goobers and the bubbas that breed. I don't want to have children because I look at who is breeding the fastest, and realize who I would be condemning my children to live with if I choose to have any.