Seems like you're jumping to the conclusion that people up here in Massachusetts live together in sin more often. And hey -- if you break down the ratios, Massachusetts is still doing better with 1 divorce per 2.66 marriages compared to the Texan 1 divorce per 2.22 marriages. The higher number of marriages in Texas doesn't fully account for the higher number of divorces.

Those numbers are much closer than the nearly double rate that Sullivan offered, supporting my contention that the statistics are more dubious.

But an interesting point that I didn't note in the post is the socioeconomic makeup of the two. Mass. has only half as many African Americans as Texas (5 percent vs. 11 percent) and, of course, Texas has drastically more Latinos. This wouldn't be noteworthy except that the minority divorce is much higher than caucasion counterparts.

Also, Bryant, it's somewhat inaccurate to compare today's divorce rate to today's marriage rate and conclude that X% of marriages are ending in divorce. But I digress.

Another point to make about teenage births is that surely more women 18 and younger get married in Texas than in Mass. The more appropriate statistic to look at would be unmarried teenage births.

Oklahoma, one of the reddest of the red, almost always has a murder rate that it 2-3 times that of Massachusetts. Maybe people from my state are just more honest about reporting their demise.

And we all know that everyone in Texas voted for George Bush, and everyone in Massachusetts voted for John Kerry. This comparison is pretty meaningless to begin with. Sullivan's point would be better served by examining the divorce rate compared to marriage rate of the voters for each candidate. I have no guess as to what he'd find, but it would better prove or disprove his theory.

"This wouldn't be noteworthy except that the minority divorce is much higher than caucasion counterparts."

And the minority out-of-wedlock birth-rate is much higher than the caucasian counterpart.

Sullivan disingenuously assumes that the red-staters who voted Bush did so because of his "superior moral values" or "right-wing morality" or whatnot. The reality is that yes, the "religious right" supports the GOP far more often than they do the Democratic Party, but the "religious right" is only *a* segment of the GOP. And not everyone who's a member of the GOP professes to be a morally upstanding citizen.

Well, it's a goofy comparison, except that if I hear one more time about how Massachusetts liberals are out of touch I'm gonna go nuts. Don't blame Sully for following up on that one.

It's sort of generically frustrating for me as a Massachusetts resident because the stereotype reflects a vast lack of knowledge about the state. Massachusetts is fairly conservative, not to be mistaken for fairly Republican. We're a Catholic state by and large, we have blue laws stricter than most states, etc.

To follow up on Eirc's comment, I have always had a problem with the statistics on "teenage births." Sullivan talks about "Texas where the religious right is strong and the rhetoric against teenage sex is gale-force strong." I'm not against teenage sex; I'm against unmarried sex. I don't really want to know how many teen births there are; I want to know how many out-of-wedlock births there are. Or to be even more exact, I want to know how many out-of wedlock pregnancies there are--whether they end in a live birth or an aborted birth. That particular statistic seems to be hard to find. Not politically correct? In Texas, 18 and 19 year olds are old enough to take responsibility for their lives and get married and even have babies---legitimately.

Eric,
Whether teen or older, the latest known statistics for out-of-wedlock births are:
In 8 of America's 40 largest cities, unmarried women accounted for at least 60% of all births in 2001, compared with the national average of 33%, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
Baltimore 77% - Atlanta 64% - New Orleans 64% - Milwaukee 61% - Detroit 61% - Memphis 61% - Washington 61% - Fresno 60%
Now, are most blue or red? Whose moral values?
Such crap!

Could it be that Massuchussetts' lower divorce rate is due to the higher number of Catholics there?

"For starters, Texas has more people 18 and under (28% to 23.6%). But the most important and unfortunate reason for the discrepancy is that Massachusetts residents have more abortions, so of course teen pregnancy will be lower. Mass. has 333 per 1,000 to Texas' 209. Does all of this completely undermine Sullivan's thesis? No, but it does show that the evidence supporting it is much more dubious than his column suggests."

Well first of all this would be a RELEVANT statistic if you gave the breakdown of who was having abortions in Massachusetts. Are we to assume that since the abortion rate is higher in Mass that it is all women under 18? Is that a logical conclusion as to who is having abortions?

Why is it hard to simply realize that Massachusetts and its residents have practiced a more community focused campaign of education, jobs, keeping crime low, etc. In fact Boston is a model city and regularily has programs duplicated throughout the country that were thought up and funded by concerned residents of the city.

Ever heard of AmeriCorps? Guess what it is a model of City Year which was founded by two Harvard students based in Boston.

I am not saying that we do not have problems in this state. We fight crime, poverty, lack of healtcare, affordable housing like everyone else.
It's just we fight locally for funding for our projects.
Thanks to our dedicated citizenship and local politians.
I might add for all you right wing fanatics, our governor is a Republican. We, enjoy good governance and do not elect simply on the basis of a party.
The Spirit of America is truly the Spirit of Massachusetts!

Why is it so hard to get apples and apples numbers, such as the number of divorces per 1,000 *married* people in each state - perhaps with race breakdowns, since those seem to make for apples and oranges as well. Even education breakdowns would be nice, too.

And hello to Massachussets from the left blue state of California where we, too have a Republican governor, though I'm not about to say anything about it being because we vote for good governance. I'm just embarrassed.