As the divorce rate plummets at the top of American society and rises at the bottom, the widening “marriage gap” is breeding inequality, says this interesting article from The Economist.

Marriage in America | The frayed knot | Economist.com

THE students at West Virginia University don’t want you to think they take life too seriously. It is the third-best “party school” in America, according to the Princeton Review’s annual ranking of such things, and comes a creditable fifth in the “lots of beer” category. Booze sometimes causes students’ clothes to fall off. Those who wake up garmentless after a hook-up endure the “walk of shame”, trudging back to their own dormitories in an obviously borrowed football shirt, stirring up gossip with every step.

And yet, for all their protestations of wildness, the students are a serious-minded bunch. Yes, they have pre-marital sex. “I don’t see how it’s a bad thing,” says Ashley, an 18-year-old studying criminology. But they are careful not to fall pregnant. It would be “a major disaster,” says Ashley. She has plans. She wants to finish her degree, go to the FBI academy in Virginia and then start a career as a “profiler” helping to catch dangerous criminals. She wants to get married when she is about 24, and have children perhaps at 26. She thinks having children out of wedlock is not wrong, but unwise.

The idea that differing views on the sanctity of marriage is creating a growing “caste system” in American society is new to me. It’s alarming that God’s opinion and the role of the church on all this is nowhere mentioned in the article, which may also say something about the world view of the media. And our increasingly pagan society.

Dave, quick to point out that “pagan” is not being used here pejoratively, just factually.