This contrarian bit in today’s Globe Ideas section has some more pesky facts on Massachusetts liberals:

The state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation is Massachusetts. At latest count it had a divorce rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population, while the rate for Texas was 4.1. … The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that “the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people.”

The author credits this mainly to higher levels of education (paid for by higher taxes), and later marriage ages. The author also gives some credit for this to Catholicism; maybe unsurprising because he’s a professor emeritus at Catholic University, but it’s a little dubious, especially since it’s the one claim he makes without citing any facts.

Anyway, it’s all crap. “Liberal” and “Conservative” aren’t meaningful labels, and aren’t mutually exclusive. If, by “conservative” you mean that one’s behavior is governed by tradition, or that one is straight-laced, you might be surprised at how extremely conservative Massachusetts is.

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