This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
First there was this:
— Brief of 100 Scholars of Marriage — Gene Schaerr
" ... The mechanism is simple and intuitive: Fewer opposite-sex marriages means more unmarried women, more children born to un-married mothers, fewer total children born, and more children aborted. ...
" ... Specifically, under conservative assumptions, a mere five percent reduction in opposite-sex marriage rates would result in nearly 600,000 more children being born to unmarried women. ... Additionally, again under conservative assumptions and over the next 30 years, this would lead not only to hundreds of thousands fewer births, but also to nearly 900,000 more abortions. ..."
Then this:
— Utah's former lawyer claims same-sex marriage is deadly — Dana Milbank | The Washington Post
" ... Legalizing same-sex marriage devalues marriage and causes fewer heterosexual couples to marry, which leads to a larger number of unmarried women, who have abortions at higher rates than married women. As a result, Schaerr wrote, 'nearly 900,000 more children of the next generation would be aborted as a result of their mothers never marrying.'
"Case closed! Or at least it would be, if Schaerr's 'causal chain' were real. He freely acknowledged that he had no cause-and-effect proof when I asked him about it ... "
Followed up locally by this:
— Anti-equality Utahns not giving up without a fight — George Pyle | The Salt Lake Tribune
" ... Among the 100 are brains from institutions famous and obscure, secular and religious, with degrees in law, medicine, philosophy, theology, economics, political science and English. I counted 13 — a lot, given Utah's small population — from the Beehive State. Eight are associated with the LDS Church-owned, "traditional marriage"-defending Brigham Young University, and two more from BYU-Idaho. The rest are scattered among the University of Utah, Utah State University, Southern Utah University and, perhaps most notably, Matthew Holland, the president of Utah Valley University.
"That last might be a bit of a surprise, given Holland's passionate arguments for running a university where "inclusion and diversity" are key to individual and institutional success. Or it might not be, given Holland's own BYU education and the fact that he is the son of LDS Apostle and former BYU president Jeffrey Holland. And that he hosted lawyer Schaerr at a UVU Center for Constitutional Studies forum on April 15. (An event that was publicized on the UVU website but, as far as my search engines can tell, received zero media attention.) ..."
And this:
— Letter of the week: Holland hurts UVU core values with marriage brief — [More than] 100 UVU faculty and staff
" ... As current and former members of the Utah Valley University faculty and staff, we find President Matthew Holland's promotion of the spurious ideas expressed by the "100 scholars" and the potential association of UVU with the Schaerr brief to be disappointing and harmful to values at the core of our public university. ..."
And this:
— Professors say UVU president's signature against gay marriage harms Utah school's mission Annie Knox | The Salt Lake Tribune
" ... At UVU, the group of employees is not calling for Holland's resignation. [UVU Prof. Karen] Anderson notes a public campus is a forum for an array of ideas.
" 'It just means that our president gets answered when he expresses his opinion'."
And, as of this afternoon, this:
— In same-sex marriage debate, Utah med students question prof's 'strange science' — Paul Rolly | The Salt Lake Tribune
"Fifty-six University of Utah medical students signed a letter to medical school professor Richard Farnsworth concerning his signature on a hotly disputed amicus brief before the Supreme Court that contends legalizing same-sex marriage would cause 900,000 more abortions in the next three decades. ...
" ... "We felt this [the abortion argument] was strange science to be promoting," said Matthew Petersen, who began the drive that obtained signatures from more than half the first-year medical students...."
Stay tuned.