What's most interesting about this comment by Jonathan Rauch on Stanley Kurtz' continuing self-serving rants against SSM is Spencer Windes' comment.
Rauch says:
I'm increasingly suspicious that Kurtz has no consistent hypothesis to defend and no consistent method by which to defend it.
My own feeling is that Rauch takes Kurtz way too seriously. He has a history of massaging data and changing the ground rules mid-argument, and to try to meet him on particulars is a waste of time -- he'll just do another paradigm shift and keep spouting.
It's indicative of Kurtz' methods -- and Rauch's blindness (excuse me -- "increasingly suspicious"? Puh-leeze!) -- that the whole argument is based on a careful and arbitrary limitation of data. Windes has it right -- if you're going to talk about marriage, culture, and policy, you have to consider a much broader range of factors than Kurtz is doing. Real life isn't nearly that tidy, and Rauch should know enough to figure out that the methodology of anyone arguing from an ideology, as Kurtz is, is suspect. There's ample evidence of that.
Link courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, who falls into the same trap Rauch does.
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