One of the statistics that people love to throw around regarding same-sex marriage is that how is traditional marriage worth defending when 50% of marriages end in divorce. Too bad it is not true.
Here is how you get that statisitic. According to the Statistics Canada website there were 146,618 marriages in 2001 and 71,067 divorces. 146,618/71,067 = 48.5%. Round it up and voila 50%. This is a convenient way to measure it, but it is nonsense. Considering that "before the first anniversary of marriage, there was less than one divorce for every 1,000 marriages in 2002" how can you possible relate the number of marriages and divorces in that same year. Conviently enough StatsCan provides a more significant measurement, "Total Divorce Rate by the 30th Wedding Anniversary", which in 2001 was 37.9%. Not great, but not 50% either.
Furthermore these statistics include people who have been married and/or divorced multiple times. It is hardly fair to this upwardly skewed statistic to beat up on the defenders of tradional marriage.
That being said, if the divorce rate were 5% or 95%, the stat is just as irrelevant as the actual rate in determining whether marriage should be extended to homosexual couples or not.
