NZ Herald 21 Jan 2013
Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesman Garth McVicar is standing by his claim that legalising gay marriage could increase crime, despite a backlash on social media. Yesterday, Mr McVicar said his submission was personal and not on behalf of the trust and he stood by his claims. “If you look at the court stats, most of the crime that has been committed has been committed by fatherless kids.” He said if the bill were passed, same-sex couples might be able to adopt children. “That’s where it’s heading – this is just another step in that politically correct journey that we’ve been on as a country.” It wouldn’t matter that some children, if adopted by a gay couple, had two fathers, because they would still need a mother, he said.
Green Party MP Kevin Hague, who sits on the select committee considering the bill, said that of the 20,000 submissions on the proposals, Mr McVicar’s was the only one to link gay marriage with crime. He said it mirrored a number of other submissions connecting gay rights with an erosion of traditional values, which was associated “in a vague way to various ills in society”. “They are statements of probably genuinely held belief, but entirely absent of actual argument or evidence.” (see below)
Mr McVicar made the submission last month. It said: “I see the marriage amendment bill as being a further erosion of what I consider to be esential [sic] basic values and morals that have stood the test of time for centuries.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10860409
Broken Families Far More Lethal To Children than Guns
Bureau of Justice Statistics 20 Dec 2012
A new Justice Department study looking at violent crimes committed against “youth”—defined as Americans from 12 to 17 years of age—discovered that the rate of “serious violent crime” committed against youth by a perpetrator using a firearm dropped 95 percent from 1994 to 2010.
The study—“Violent Crime Against Youth, 1994-2010”– released Dec. 20, also discovered that an American youth was 3.8 times more likely to become the victim of a serious violent crime if he or she lived in a home where the householder was unmarried than if he or she lived with married parents. In 2010, 7.4 out of every 1,000 youth living with married parents became the victims of a serious violent crime. At the same time, 27.8 out of every 1,000 living with an unmarried householder became the victims of a serious violent crime. http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4575
