Ruth Institute Blog

by Carolyn Moynihan

Here is a useful little nugget of information — an abstract describing a study that showed the protective effect of marriage for the health of newborn babies. The study concerned African American women and showed that the lowest risk for a low birth weight baby was found when marriage preceded childbirth for two generations. Read more…

Monday (July 5th) I listened to a broadcast on the Diane Rehm Show of an interview with James T. Patterson, author of Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life from LBJ to Obama. That title was already on my long (long…) wish-list of books I’d like to buy if I had a few thousand bucks to spare (and a few years of leisure time I could spend to read them) so of course I listened with interest. But if what I heard was any indication of the kind of self contradictory ‘logic’ to be found in his book, then it’s probably no longer one of the must-have titles on my list. (So don’t take this as a review of Professor Patterson’s book, which I haven’t read. This is just my reactions to some of the assertions he made in his interview.) Read more…

Here is a photo my colleague sent me from the Church of God in Christ convention. Some of the convention-goers pose with a NOM employee who was exhibitng at the convention.

I know that many of our gay and lesbian readers do not understand why the black community feels so strongly about natural marriage. But they do. My experience in debates, is that my opponents have several strategies for dismissing the views of the African American community, rather than dealing with their concerns. So guess what? I’m not about to explain it to you. If you can’t figure it out for yourself, I’m not going to help you!

Ruth Institute Executive Director Jamie Gruber is an exhibitor at this massive conference of African American women, of the Church of God in Christ, held in LA this year. Jamie tells me this crowd of mature African American women recieves our message of lifelong married love with great enthusiasm.
It is my understanding that Maggie Gallagher, the Chairwoman of the Board of NOM (our parent organization) presented Marriage Protector Awards to the General Supervisor of the organization, Mother Willie Mae Rivers and Bishop Charles E. Blake, Sr.

Mother Rivers’ bio is typical of many of the stories I have heard from African Americans of her generation. Let me quote from the COGIC website.

At the age of fifteen, June 26, 1941, the very lovely Willie Mae Smalls was united in holy matrimony to Mr. David Rivers. Their marriage lasted just short of 56 years until his demise May 15, 1997. This union was blessed with twelve children; two sons and daughters….Mother Rivers is a true servant of God and she touched the life of her sons, the late Robert Lee Rivers and Samuel Rivers. She continues to touch the lives of her ten daughters, twenty grandchildren, thirty-six great-grandchildren, three great-great grand, three sisters, uncles, aunts, many cousins, her community and the Grand Ole Church of God in Christ Family.

(In between this brief description of Mother Rivers’ family life, is a list of her extensive contributions to the life of her church and community: a true “community organizer,” in the best sense of the term.)

This is the face of the African-American community that the Sex Radicals do not want you to see: married young, and for a lifetime, with great fruitfulness, in every sense of the word.

We are very excited about our 2nd annual It Takes a Family Conference, for college students August 12-15 here in Southern Caliornia. We have lined up a distinguished and diverse faculty for this long week-end leadership training experience.
Dr. Linda Malone-Colon will be covering the social science aspects of marriage. She is chairwoman of the Psychology Department at Hampton University in Virginia. (That is the school that Booker T. Washington graduated from.) She heads the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting at Hampton. We are very excited to have Dr. Malone-Colon with us this summer!
Students, don’t forget to get your application in! The deadline is Friday, May 21!

Question: What percentage of African American adults (aged 20-54) were married in 1970 and in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available? Read more…

Race and Abortion: a series of billboards in the Atlanta area call attention to the connection between abortion and race. I talk about those billboards in this interview on Issues Etc, on Lutheran Public Radio.

I recently asked a black pastor friend of mine to consider this hypothetical question: Where do you think the black community would be today, if the Sexual Revolution had not happened at the same time as the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s? Think about it: a functioning African American family, black men inside the family, collaborating with their wives to raise their children together, as they had done for generations, but doing all that in the post-segregation era.

Now the CDC offers this report on another facet of the sexual revolution that hits blacks disporportionately: Read more…