there's some pork that could be cut from the federal budget - funding to promote pro-marriage propaganda.

Thank you Bella for presenting the balance and the facts about the pro-marriage propaganda we're inundated with every day - and the facts about how single people are punished (financially) for being single.

I doubt we'll ever see those facts or that balance in the lame$tream media because it doesn't match the plutocratic / ideological agenda (ie: gov't/corporate/religious).

God forbid that we instead spend gov't money on simply educating people about healthy relationships regardless what form they take (married, single, same-sex, etc.), and about responsible family planning, regardless what form that takes (ie: abstinence-only=ineffective+stupid - puhleeze can we have some common sense)

If corporate-welfare (corporate personhood) and religious agendas were removed from gov't as they ought to be, we might actually end up with some common-sense legislation and spending instead of so much of this "propaganda-as-fact-lets-shove-our-ideologies-down-other-people's-throats" type legislation.

Pfft.

I'm so happy that I pay an extra $5000/year (over married people) in taxes so the money can be spent on promoting marriage.

The added wealth seems to come not only from government policies though, but also just by virtue of having two incomes. On a daily basis I am shocked and outraged at how much money married people who make the same or equal salary as I do seem to have.

Thanks for being one of the few voices of reason and posting these things, Bella. If only the federal government funded your blog!

MSNBC picked up the story, presumably from USA Today:

From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29260413/
"What exactly are those benefits? Better health, greater wealth and more happiness for the couple, and improved well-being for children, research suggested."

Sigh. I think it's time to write some letters to our dear Congresspeople to tell them if they need some money, here's a great place to cut: Inappropriate and ineffective ad campaigns should not be funded with federal funds!

a) I love the term "lamestream media" - I will have to remember that!

b) I read Bella's book cover to cover and loved it. My opinion is that it doesn't matter in advertising what actually IS... most people want to believe in things, and that funding, advertisments, etc. actually revolve around what we WANT the truth to be. Perception is reality in many of these circumstances. Society wants the myth of a happy married family to be true. And although it's changing, that view is still the majority right now. It's not right, but it is what it is.

c) The government should get out of the marriage business altogether—that is the real problem. Every gov't person keeps quoting a variant of "separate church and state", yet they don't - they provide credits and tax relief "for families" but the definition of a family in the real world is slowly is changing.

In Canada, for example, we have "common law" and it doesn't matter if you are 2 guys, 2 family members, or girlfriend-guyfriend - it's a status that means "we are joined financially and co-habitat" - it doesn't mean you are necessarily lovers. You just apply for it (or become common law if you meet certain requirements) and it's got nothing to do with regligious churchy stuff. Although in Canada we still get the tax breaks for married people so I obviously agree that change is needed.

One thing that annoys me greatly about the Alternatives To Marriage Project is that they seem to believe that couples should be priveleged over the uncoupled. There whole campaign and ideology is hell-bent on getting unmarried couples the same priveleges as married couples. Meanwhile, the uncoupled single is left paying for priveleges for couples both married and unmarried.

Unmarried couples already have considerable priveleges such as various schemes to collaborate to reduce their taxes (e.g. declare one the head of the household for purposes of the head-of-household tax rates, declare one the dependent of the other, assign their children to the lesser earning one so as to qualify him or her for the Earned Income Tax Credit etc.). And most large employers and many state and local governments now let employees designate their "partners" for health benefits.

Its like we're turning marriage priveleges into couples priveleges.

Funny that an article about the accuracy of our view towards marriage gets the name of "Cliffs Notes" wrong throughout. Note the "s" in Cliffs.

As I would like to believe your conclusions, I hope the balance of the article was more thoroughly researched and vetted.

I concede in advance that this issue is complicated, especially bringing the role of government into the mix.

That having been said, in light of the stated preference for basing decisions on claims dubiously drawn from empirical data rather than morality, I hypothesize that my wife is the most wonderful, kind, and intelligent person I have ever met and that marrying her was the best decision I have made in my entire life. Perhaps you can help me to design a scientific study to test my hypothesis? Maybe I can clone myself and my wife and have us live apart, that would serve as a good control group, probably.

Forgive the sarcasm, but it feels like in your zeal to dispel "myths" about the advantages of having two parents instead of one, you disregard the other side of what is undoubtedly a more complex issue than you make it seem. I could not imagine growing up without one of my parents. I like that my mom was there when I came home from school, and I felt bad for kids who went to childcare after school. School is long and hard, and the last thing I wanted to do at the end of the school day was to be transferred to yet another institutional setting.

You prefer science over ideology, but it seems like you selectively spin data to support your own ideology. What study could possibly support, in good faith, the conclusion that a child would just as rather have one or no parents, rather than two? What would possess such a child's father to knowingly impregnate the mother while having no intention to care for the child, and how could a child be proud to have a father like that? Your discussion seems to omit entirely an honest consideration of the character and likely feelings and the moral implications underlying this fictional portrait you paint of the perfectly happy shattered family.