doodledee

Last week, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that gay couples have the right to marry under the Massachusetts constitution, a group of bigots Republicans in the Minnesota legislature leapt into action and proposed that Minnesota amend our constitution to define a marriage as being between a man and a woman. That may sound outrageous at first, but when you consider that their initial proposal tried to limit marriage to suburban white Christians, it's actually not that bad.

But wait. Doesn't Minnesota already have a law in place that prevents gay folk from marrying? Yes, my astute reader, we do. But it's just a law. And laws can be challenged in court. And they presumably will be once all those gay folks get back to Minnesota after marrying in Massachusetts. And seeing as the Big Important Minnesota Judges rule on the legality of laws based on our Constitution, Sviggum & Co. figure it's probably best if that particular document is worded just exactly perfect.

So here comes the circus of letters to the editors and stuff, which is really the point for me writing all this. The other day, some lady wrote in and commented:

With the divorce rate at 50 percent, I hardly think that heterosexual couples have a sterling record protecting the sanctity of marriage.

Maybe we should be asking ourselves how we're doing in all of our relationships with all people.

I read that and I thought, "she's right, you know." And then I thought, "wait a sec... do 50% of marriages really end in divorce?" I saw this same statistic referenced somewhere else recently and I didn't believe it then, either. After all, I know tons of people who are married and I hardly know anyone who is divorced. Am I missing something?

So I looked around. And guess what: I pretty much am. It turns out the divorce rate is right around 0.40% per capita per year. That's like 4 in a thousand. So if I know a thousand people, only 4 will get divorced every year. That might explain why it doesn't seem like half of my married friends are divorcing every year.

But the 50% statistic also holds up. It turns out that on average, about 50% - or 43% or whatever, depending on whose counting - of marriages actually do end in divorce within 15 years. Huh.

There's probably a way to extrapolate the 50% statistic using the 0.40% number, but I can't take the time to figure it out right now because I'm focusing all my mathematical energy on preparing for my January trip to Vegas. God may not play dice, but I do.