Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The great marriage debate.




People marry for many reasons, to publicly declare their love or legitimise their relationship, to have a family, improve economic stability, and sometimes for citizenship in a foreign country. Whether the reasons for marriage are legal, emotional, social or financial some truths emerge about the consequences of marriage on the individual. Marriage has been shown repeatedly to make people happier, healthier and wealthier.

The case for wealthier:

It has been shown that married people fair better in employment particularly with regards to earnings. This is most apparent when a large portion of unpaid labour in the home is performed by only one of the married persons; in traditional relationships this is usually a woman. This unequal division of labour provides the working partner with greater freedom to dedicate themselves to their work, become more specialised, receive promotions and ultimately earn more. This greatly increases the combined wealth of the couple. Baxter and Gray (2003) found married men earn 15% more on average than unmarried men.

In addition to increased earning potential marriage creates wealth in other ways depending on the specific tax advantages within a country’s system. Marital status is a determining factor in receiving benefits, rights and privileges. Some of the financial advantages that may be available within marriage are health insurance, inheritance rights, no estate tax and a lower tax rate for joint filing.

The case for happier:

The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes of 2005 undisputedly discovered that married people were considerably happier. 78% of married people rate themselves as 7 or above on 0-10 scale, compared to 63% of the never married. In fact married couples were also happier than de facto couples. Married people were more likely to be in the very happy 9-10 range, 32% compared to 21% among de facto couples. This indicates that marriage itself and not simply being partnered influenced happiness positively. These results have been replicated elsewhere. Data from a 15-year study of over 24,000 individuals living in Germany also indicated that people who get married and stayed married are more satisfied with their lives than their unmarried counterparts.

Casting aside discrepancies between genders, which is a discussion for a whole other article, the fact remains that married people do report higher levels of happiness than unmarried people.

The case for healthier

De Vaus (2002) concluded that marriage is a protective factor against social pathologies, greatly reducing the risk of mental disorders such as depression. He found that married men had better mental health than single men and that married women also had the best mental health. A 2002 study conducted at La Trobe University in Australia revealed that married women with children were the least likely to suffer mental health problems. Single men are twice as likely to commit suicide as married men. (Miller-Tutzauer et al, 1991).

Life expectancy is increased through marriage. Mortality rates for single men are 250% higher than married men. Single women have mortality rates that are 50% higher than married women (Ross et all, 1990). This research demonstrates that marriage protects both men and women against mental disorders and increases life expectancy. These are all good things really.

Enough dry statistics. Lets talk about something more controversial. Same-sex marriage.

Since 2001, five nations have made same-sex marriage legal, namely the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, and South Africa. In the United States, Massachusetts is the only state to recognize same-sex marriage under the name marriage whilst several other states offer civil unions or domestic partnerships, which grant same-sex couples some or all of the same rights under state law granted to married couples.

Civil unions are a separate form of legal union open to couples of the same sex. Denmark was the first country in the world (in 1989) to extend the rights and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex couples under the name of registered partnership. Civil unions (and registered partnerships) are currently recognized in 24 out of 193 countries worldwide.

Without question stable relationships are better for society. Being happier, healthier and wealthier can only impact positively. It reduces the need for society to support its members as each spouse looks out for the other often providing care that would fall to a public health or social welfare system.

But with de facto status often granted to same-sex couples is there a need for same-sex marriage? Absolutely. Marriage and living together are not the same thing. Brown and Booth (1996) found that cohabitation typically does not bring the benefits—in physical health, wealth, and emotional wellbeing—that marriage does. This is partly due to the tendency of cohabitants orientation towards personal autonomy over the wellbeing of their partner and also due to commitment discrepancies.

Cohabitating couples do not have the same level of commitment. Although married couples often succumb to the same problems and issues as those who are merely cohabiting, marriage provides a level of commitment legally, emotionally, financially and socially. It is much easier to leave a relationship without these entanglements.

When society doesn’t value your relationship it is harder to value it yourself. Society labels same-sex couples as second-class citizens by denying them the opportunity to validate their relationships. This has consequences not just for the individual or couple but also for their entire extended family. Same–sex couples exist within a family unit. They are someone’s daughter, son, niece, nephew, grandchild, sibling, cousin, aunt, uncle, parent or grandparent. The toll taken on a family that experiences the discrimination and exclusion of same-sex individuals within their family is understated and often ignored.

If we acknowledge that to love freely and have your love recognised by society is a fundamental right and that there is absolutely no difference in the ability of same-sex couples to care for each other, then the law of marriage should apply to same-sex couples as well.

Marriage establishes a spouse as a next-of-kin. Your next of kin is involved in practically every legal matter, from medical decision-making to property rights to funeral arrangements. It is a severe violation of human rights to deny this to same-sex couples.

Homosexuality is no more a choice than heterosexuality. Denying same-sex couples the right to marry will not stop same-sex couples from having loving committed relationships. What it will do is perpetuate prejudice and intolerance to the detriment of the individual, the couple and society as a whole.

Same-sex couples pay the same taxes, fight the same wars and abide by the same laws and responsibilities as other citizens, this is reason enough to grant the same rights.

To claim marriage as a tradition is to suggest that traditions are immutable. Marriage as an arrangement has changed significantly over time. Women are no longer considered their husband’s property, divorce is legal, interracial marriage is legal, polygamy is prohibited, and marital rape is considered a crime. Customs and traditions change and are not justification enough for violating human rights. Same-sex marriage is just another branch in the evolution of the institution of marriage.

Small business – sustainability leaders?



There is a lot of talk about corporate responsibility and the environment. Individuals are tiring of the onus being placed on them to change the world. Have shorter showers, water your garden less, switch to green power, change your light globes, car pool, take reusable bags to the supermarket, and recycle. All of these are necessary but pale in comparison to the damage being done by big business and industry.

But what about small business?

Somewhere in between large corporations and the individual, lies small business. Australia, a country of about 21 million people, incredibly has over 2 million small businesses. In the US approximately 99.9% of all business is small. The ecological impact of these cannot be ignored.

It is easy to assume that large corporations are, by the nature of their large profits, less ethical but is this actually the case? Large corporations have large reputations to protect. Often it is more cost effective for big business to invest in environmental impact minimisation than to clean up the mess afterwards. They also have the capital to invest in changing technologies to not only utilise the green machine but to actually profit from it, directly through carbon trading and indirectly through marketing with a social conscience.

So where does small business fit in and what can be done? The answer is very little or a lot. It depends on your business model, your business goals and your values. The advantage that small business has over a large multinational is fewer layers of bureaucracy and more transparency. Big business generally has a board of directors that need to be convinced, then a feasibility study conducted before changes can be implemented. As a small business owner you can conceive it and implement it virtually simultaneously.

Here are some of the things you can do:

- Recycle. Seems simple enough but you may have to find different depots for your various waste such as paper, plastic, printer cartridges, batteries, computers and other electronic parts.

- Switch to paperless billing. It is resource intensive to print and deliver paper. It is also time consuming and unreliable.

- Switch to a Green Power company that derives its energy from renewable sources that do not pollute.

- Reduce water consumption by ensuring your business has dual flush toilets and water efficient taps.

- Choose energy efficient vehicles for your business.

- Choose sustainable suppliers. Research suppliers whose ethos includes environmental sustainability. The potential for eco-conscious small businesses to support each other is large and underestimated.

- Donate to charities. Really any charity is a positive step but a charity that is aligned with your business practice or goals serves to reinforce those values.

- Become Carbon Neutral. This does not simply mean paying for an offset for bad business practice or paying for the right to pollute, this means establishing the carbon footprint of your business, then reducing emissions as far as possible. Once a minimal emissions target has been met the residual emissions can be neutralised by the acquisition of offsets.

The changes that you make may depend on your local economic landscape but have the potential to impact locally and globally. Small business is more important than ever and has a responsibility to future generations.

Hunting For Sport – An Indulgent Tradition


There is a fundamental difference between killing for sustenance and hunting for sport. The legal definition of cruelty to animals is: ‘the unnecessary infliction of physical pain, suffering or death’. Based on that definition, hunting for sport is a cruel and barbaric pastime.

My grandmother had chickens. We ate the eggs and occasionally the chicken. She would ring its neck, and then pluck it before my eyes. It was not hunting and it was not sport. My grandmother took no pleasure in the act of killing the bird but she took great pleasure in feeding her extended family.

Hunters on the other hand derive pleasure from the hunt. They celebrate the killing. Often this is achieved by mounting a piece of the animal that has suffered on a wall or by posting a video or photograph of the hunt online.

Within the sport of hunting, the playing field is in favour of the hunter. Only the hunter knows they are in the game. Hunting often occurs in closed, prescribed zones where animals have little or no chance of escape. Discussions from hunters regarding the ethics of hunting generally pertain to the fairness between hunters themselves and not between the hunter and the animal. For example, it is “unethical” to shoot a duck resting on water and “ethical” to shoot at the bird in flight. This ethic establishes nothing more than fair play amongst hunters. The increased accuracy of shooting a duck resting on water minimises unnecessary injury and a slow painful death.

Equipment has become increasingly high tech including long range hunting rifles that are deadly to 600 yards. Given the likelihood of human error from this distance the chance of injuring an animal is high. Cameras are used to assess the size, species and sex of the animals passing the spot they plan to hunt and advanced optics to locate animals more easily. Often a GPS will be utilised to spot terrain features suitable for prey and sensors to alert the hunter of a nearby animal.

Other popular practices are baiting, which is the use of decoys, lures, scent or food to attract animals, the use of camouflage either for visual concealment or scent, to blend with the environment and using artificial light to find, light or blind animals, a charming practice known as spotlighting.

Dogs may be used to help flush, herd, drive, track, point at, pursue or retrieve prey. Hunting with dogs is particularly cruel because hunting dogs are bred for endurance not speed to ensure an extended chase, which makes for a more ‘entertaining’ sport. This of course causes the animal being pursued to suffer for longer.

Some of the most heinous hunting methods involve trapping which is the use of devices such as snares, body grippers, Conibears and legholds to capture or kill an animal. It is safer for the hunter to trap an animal and requires less time and energy. Animals caught in leghold traps suffer enormous pain as their foot or leg breaks or is dislocated. As the animal struggles to get free the trapped limb is mutilated. Often in desperation an animal will chew off a leg in order to get free from a trap. Otherwise they succumb to exhaustion, dehydration, shock and death. While leghold traps have been banned by more than 85 nations, the top 3 fur-producing countries; the U.S., Canada, and Russia, continue to use them. In addition to the cruelty inflicted on a trapped animal, the traps are often indiscriminate. Other animals including endangered species are mutilated or killed by traps. Reportedly anywhere from 10-40% of animals caught will be non-target animals.

Hunting advocates like to claim that hunting is necessary as a means of population control and that they are in fact conservationists doing everybody including the animal a huge favour. This rhetoric is deceptive and irresponsible. In the absence of predators, an environments ecological carrying capacity can be exceeded and animals will surely die a slow painful death from starvation, or so the justification goes. However, hunters do not seek out and kill only those animals within the population most likely to die of starvation; in fact the opposite is true. Whether hunting for trophy or meat it is the largest and strongest males that are targeted. This also disrupts the natural 1:1 male to female birth ratio of animals, leaving a disproportionate number of females, which will inevitably produce more in the subsequent years to the point of overpopulation.

Both of these practices disrupt natural selection. Left alone, animal populations can and do regulate their own numbers. Whilst human intervention and irregular natural occurrences can cause an animals population to rise and fall temporarily, the group soon stabilises through natural processes.

The absence of predators is almost entirely due to human intervention through excessive hunting and habitat destruction. Predators have been systematically eliminated to provide habitat for game species. When natural predators are reintroduced there is absolutely no need for hunters to do any favours. The reintroduction of predators is the most effective and natural wildlife management tool. Natural predators help keep a prey species healthy and optimum by killing only the weak or sick not the large, strong trophy animals that hunters kill.

The other regular catchcry of hunters is that they fund conservation efforts. This is misleading. It is not a donation nor charitable act, it occurs indirectly through licences and excise taxes. Hunters would hunt, purchase licences and pay taxes if none of the money was redistributed to conservation. The funding in fact is mostly used for habitat manipulation and ‘management’ for hunters, to protect their game species. True conservationists would push for all the revenue to be used for habitat protection, not manipulation to overpopulate target animals. Game officials are appointed and their salaries are paid through hunting fees. This creates a conflict of interest, as game officials are therefore not neutral and represent the hunters. Dependent on the activity of hunting itself very few are going to question conservation ethics.

Contrary to the ‘who’s going to fund conservation if we don’t’ analogy, conservation funding need not rely on hunting activities. There is a multitude of revenue raising pursuits such as eco-tourism, hiking, wildlife photography etc that can provide the necessary funds for habitat protection and wildlife preservation.

Animals die needlessly, directly and indirectly every day through habitat destruction, pollution, and other human impact environmental degradation, it is not necessary and grossly indulgent to add to this with recreational hunting.

To suggest that recreational hunting is a tradition that should be preserved is to suggest that cultural values are immutable. This is erroneous to say the least. Traditions can and have changed with changing values. Consider slavery and marital rape, both were accepted, widespread and legal but abolished and outlawed because of their inherent cruelty. Traditions are capable of change and are not sufficient to justify inhumane practices. The hunting community need to acknowledge the false and misleading arguments used to justify hunting for sport and address the validity of the counter arguments for animal welfare.