Homosexual Pressure Group Turns up Heat on Mesa for Domestic Partner Benefits

Equality Arizona continues to push its radical agenda onto the citizens of Mesa, one of the nation’s more conservative communities.Earlier this summer, Equality Arizona encouraged homosexuals to move to Mesa, and now it is campaigning for domestic partner benefits with city officials there. This is nothing more than an effort to undermine marriage and family.What’s more, this group is asking its members call or email members of the Mesa City Council, Mayor Scott Smith and the Human Relations Advisory Board "to let them know you support a process to explore relationship recognition that that will provide opportunities for unmarried people to take care of each other.”Equality Arizona is attempting to drag public municipalities into people’s bedrooms in order to gain taxpayer-funded benefits.Only one percent of Arizona’s population is homosexual, and the homosexual agenda is vastly out of step with the state’s mainstream. Mesa and the East Valley are strongholds of marriage and family.The extension of spousal benefits to domestic partners erodes the status of marriage, reduces the well-being of children and increases taxpayer costs while reducing worker productivity and economic progress.Whether heterosexual or homosexual, cohabitation is a huge drainer of taxpayer-funded social services. A plethora of social science studies reveals a whole host of horrors related to households headed by unmarried adults:

• U.S. and Canadian women in cohabiting relationships were nine times more likely to be killed by their partner than women in marital relationships.
• The Family Violence Research Program at the University of New Hampshire found that cohabiters were much more violent than married couples, that the overall rates of violence among cohabiting couples was double that of married couples and “severe” violence was five times as high for cohabiters.
• Three times as many cohabiters admitted “hitting, shoving, and throwing things at their partners in the past year,” compared to married couples. Cohabiters are also more likely to exhibit depression and drunkenness than married couples.
• Aggression was at least twice as common among cohabiters as it is among married partners. During a one-year period, 35 out of every 100 cohabiting couples experienced physical aggression, compared to 15 out of every 100 married couples.
• Half of all cohabiting couples either broke up or married within two years, and after five years, only 10-percent of cohabiting couples stayed together. In contrast, 55-percent of first marriages lasted a lifetime.
• U.S. couples that cohabited before marriage had a 46-percent greater risk of divorce than couples that did not live together before marriage.
• Children in cohabiting households demonstrated more emotional and behavioral problems, such as not getting along with peers, experiencing difficulty in concentration and feeling sad or depressed. Among adolescents ages 12-17, the percentage of those exhibiting emotional and behavioral problems was six times greater in cohabiting stepfamilies than in married biological-parent families. Negative school engagement was also more common among children in cohabiting families.
• Unmarried parents were five times more likely to break up than married parents.
• Cohabiters had a “significantly higher” risk of suicide than married people.
• Cohabitants tolerated behavior in their partners that husbands and wives would discourage – particularly smoking, alcohol and substance abuse.

The logical question is why the City of Mesa would even entertain the thought of promoting and celebrating aberrant behavior. In the mid-1990s, Phoenix was named the world’s best-run city. Since offering benefits for cohabiting employees, it has not approached that lofty status.Typically, less than one percent of the work force benefits from domestic partner benefits, so why go there, Mesa? Why go there, Mayor Smith and city council members?Cohabitating adults are already able to take care of each other, and this pressure by Equality Arizona is merely a ploy to undermine families and gain municipal and taxpayer endorsement for alternative lifestyles. It is also out of step with the strong family values evident throughout the history of Mesa.By far, the best way for Mesa and other Arizona cities to promote social well-being is to encourage strong and vital marriages, rather than forcing taxpayers to pick up the costs related to cohabitation. Councilman Alex Finter has already vowed not to support domestic partner benefits.