NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, today is linking to a piece at Citizen Link — the online publication of Focus on the Family — that links to a “report” from the uber-conservative Heritage Foundation on child poverty.
“Children living in single-parent households face a greater risk of living in poverty, according to a report released Wednesday by The Heritage Foundation,” the Citizen Link article states:
A child’s probability of living in poverty is reduced by 82 percent when his parents are married to each other, according to “Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty.â€
…
Almost 40 percent of all single-parent families with children were poor in 2009; less than 7 percent of married couples with children were poor.
According to the report, nearly 75 percent of poor families in the United States are headed by single parents.
The New Civil Rights Movement has written often about child poverty and child homelessness, and about the fact that conservative policies work to maintain this environment, and we’re dedicated to bringing greater awareness to the plight of the poor, especially children. Frankly, it’s a national disgrace, and yet the GOP is working to make it harder for these same people to get government assistance, to vote, and to get an education so they can help themselves out of poverty.
However, this idea that if you’re poor and you get heterosexually married and all of a sudden you’re lifted out of poverty is just hogwash.
Single parent families with children are poorer than married couples with children, so just get married sand watch the cash flow in, is what they’re suggesting.
If NOM, Focus on the Family, and the Heritage Foundation actually believe this, then its even more of an outrage that they are working so hard to deprive same-sex couples and their children of the benefits of marriage.
In 2009, in honor of Father’s Day, The New Civil Rights Movement published “2.9 Million Orphans, Happy Father’s Day,” in which we explained that — at that time — “States Offering Full Marriage Equality Have Lowest Rates Of Child Homelessness.”
An excerpt:
There are 2.9 million children in America living with no parents – and 1.6 million American children are homeless. 2.9 million is almost 1 percent of the entire U.S. population – and that figure is five years old.Half a million U.S. children live with foster parents.
Those half a million foster kids? Only half will graduate high school, only 2% will earn a Bachelor’s degree. The day they turn 18, 30% will have no health insurance and will be on public assistance.
Same-sex marriage would, by these anti-gay group’s own logic, help these children.
Why are they standing in the way?
Image:Â Pink Sherbet Photography