data on spousal violence by relationship type
More from Touchstone-- citing statistics on spousal violence in Canada, as reported by Rory Leishman in the London Free Press.
Common law spouses are especially at risk. According to Statistics Canada, they comprised just 13 percent of spousal relationships, yet accounted for no less than 40 per cent of all spousal homicides between 1994 and 2004.
AND...
This same survey also indicated that spousal violence is more than "twice as common among homosexual couples compared with heterosexual couples." Studies in other countries have come to similar conclusions. For example, in 2002, the American Journal of Public Health published a study of domestic violence among male homosexuals in four major cities in the United States which found that 39 per cent of the men reported at least one type of battering by a partner over the last five years.
posted by Eric Schansberg @ 10:50 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Apparently, the reason domestic violence is higher in male same-sex couples is because domestic violence is primarily a male behavior, and, well, gay male couples have two men in them.
Christians who teach that homosexuality is wrong often cite these kind of derogatory statistics. But, as in their treatment of evolution, their opposition to a mainstream scientific position is not really based upon the science—medical science has long since abandoned the view that homosexuality is a mental illness—instead, their opposition to homosexuality is really based on their religious beliefs. A gentle indicator of this: Would Touchstone or similar Christian publications ever happen to publish articles concerning scientific studies with a positive message about gay people and their relationships?
From a Biblical worldview, it is difficult to separate that which is harmful from that which is sinful. If we worship a benevolent God, those are one and the same-- although the costs of harmful behavior is not always so obvious to discern.
Your gentle indicator is a good question! I'm not sure, but I'll ask the editor.
Thinking about this some more, it's not inherently clear that males would be more inclined to engage in spousal violence within a same-sex relationship. One might expect it to be less, since males in a male/female relationship might be more inclined to take advantage of their typical physical advantages.
Moreover, I'm not an expert in the field, but my memory is that females are equally likely to engage in spousal violence within a male/female relationship, but their version of violence tends to be less deadly.
I think men in a relationship who commit acts of violence aren't thinking like economists, weighing the costs and benefits of their behavior; they are acting on anger or frustration on a very emotional level. So it does make sense if you have twice as many men in a relationship, you'll have roughly twice the violence. But I didn't think of this explanation myself, I read it somewhere in a discussion of this kind of research.
Concerning Biblical morality: There isn't a single Biblical morality regarding sexual behavior. We have examples such as Solomon, with large harems (promiscuity on a heroic scale), and we also have the strange custom of levarite marriage (practiced at the time of Jesus), where if a married man with an unmarried brother died, his brother became his wife's husband. Then again, we have Jesus and his flat prohibition of divorce (when no infidelity has occurred); this was an abrupt change from the established Jewish law. Of course, the underlying morality and ethics of the Bible is compassion and justice, and the latter two examples make sense in the context of their time: levarite marriage was designed to care for the woman, and Jesus's prohibition of divorce protected women in a world where divorced women often had to resort to prostitution to survive.
Thus, on the basis of compassion and justice, it is now clear to me that the only fair and compassionate thing to do concerning homosexuality is to support gay people and their relationships. It is clear from decades of scientific research that homosexuality is a common, natural human sexual variation; that homosexuals fail all tests for mental illness; and that gay relationships tend to last as long as heterosexual relationships. Indeed I myself know a number of gay people, including friends, colleagues and relatives, who are in decades-long caring relationships.
I'm willing to grant that some of the violence is what economists call "irrational". But not nearly all. For example, someone is (far) less likely to attack another-- if that person has a gun pointed at them, knows karate, or has a policeman standing nearby. Likewise, it is certainly more likely that I would get violent with someone I think I can best in a physical confrontation!
So, I'm not saying that I don't buy the two males = more violence theory. But it is also feasible that two more evenly matched people would fight less often. The bottom line: I'd like to see data instead of relying on conjecture when there are two legitimate explanations. If you find some, I'd be interested to see it.
It's also unnecessarily demeaning to the human person-- to claim that they're crazy and don't weigh benefits and costs, even subconsciously. And we already have too much of that within the "debate" on homosexuality-- when people imply that homosexual conduct is deterministically driven by genetics.
Concerning Biblical morality, you said that "There isn't a single Biblical morality regarding sexual behavior." Yes and no. To your examples, Solomon's behavior was condemned-- although examples of polygamy from levirate marriage were praised and even commanded. (Genesis 38 and Ruth are particularly memorable on this account.) Of course, the motivations behind each decision-- although they look similar on the surface-- were profoundly different-- and thus, we can judge Solomon as unrighteous and Boaz as righteous.
But how can one jump from that to the assertion that homosexual conduct can be legitimized biblically? There are no examples and no scriptural backing for legitimization. So, the description of those behaviors as sinful trumps the applications of principles that are important but can only be implied secondarily to the issue at hand.
Yes, compassion and justice-- but without losing what a benevolent God has made clear in the Scriptures: that such behavior is harmful to the human person.
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