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DO THEY WALK THE TALK IN THE BIBLE BELT OR IS IT THE PHARISEE BELT?
Certainly a society that teaches the values of the religious right must have "clean living" written all over it. And ripe fruit of their morally superior lives abounding.
It doesn't. Far from it. Joining its history of Biblically correct bigotry and discrimination, it is an area with the highest divorce, murder, STD/HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, infant mortality, and obesity rates in the nation. With pencil and report card in hand, let's take a peak at this morally superior and not shy about it "Christian nation" in the south whose only rise seems to be the one in their pants.
As you will clearly see, if the priests of religious conservatism were required to clean up their own house before addressing ours, we would never hear from them again. We can only dream.
"The census found that in the 1990's, the number of unmarried couples living together jumped by 97 percent in Oklahoma, 125 percent in Arkansas and 123 percent in Tennessee. These increases in the buckle of the Bible Belt are well above the 72 percent increase in unmarried couples that the census found in the nation as a whole."
"A posse of public health nurses, social workers, pastors and extension agents has been deputized to bring down a divorce rate that in Oklahoma, as in several states across the Bible Belt, is among the highest in the country."
"Barna released the results of their poll about divorce on 1999-DEC-21. 1 They had interviewed 3,854 adults from the 48 contiguous states. The sampling error is within two percentage points.
The survey found:
--11% of the adult population is currently divorced.
--25% of adults have had at least one divorce during their lifetime.
--Divorce rates among conservative Christians were much higher than for other faith groups.
George Barna, president and founder of Barna Research Group, commented:
"While it may be alarming to discover that born again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time. Even more disturbing, perhaps, is that when those individuals experience a divorce many of them feel their community of faith provides rejection rather than support and healing. But the research also raises questions regarding the effectiveness of how churches minister to families. The ultimate responsibility for a marriage belongs to the husband and wife, but the high incidence of divorce within the Christian community challenges the idea that churches provide truly practical and life-changing support for marriages."
"Although it is in the buckle of the Bible Belt, conservative Oklahoma with its population of 3 million, has a divorce rate more than twice as high as New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and other populous states."
By the hypocrites, these are the constantly demonized liberal states of the Northeast.
"Only neighboring Arkansas has a higher divorce rate, if you discount Nevada where "quickie" divorces are big business."
Salon Mothers Who Think | Southern governors declare
war on divorce.
When President Bush was Governor of Texas he instituted the abstinence-only sex-ed programs within the state. Texas now has the highest teen pregnancy birth rate of any state in the union and also one of the highest STD rates among teenagers.
In this next section, I have used the most up to date statistics that are available in HTML. For newer slides see HIV//STD site index which will point you to newer slides and reports in PDF and PowerPoint @ CDC/NCHSTP/Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention
In the USA, 8.1% of coupled households are made up of unmarried, heterosexual partners. Although many European countries have higher cohabitation rates, divorce rates in those countries are lower, and more children grow up with both biological parents, even though the parents may not be married, Popenoe says.
The USA has the lowest percentage among Western nations of children who grow up with both biological parents, 63%, the report says.
"The United States has the weakest families in the Western world because we have the highest divorce rate and the highest rate of solo parenting," Popenoe says.
As you can see, the most religious part of the USA has the weakest families in the USA. The USA has the weakest families in the western world. And we play religion like it makes a difference. It does not.