Mike Pence: “My colleague, we are afraid of the decline of marriage. We are afraid that what has happened in the last 15 years in the…”

“My colleague, we are afraid of the decline of marriage. We are afraid that what has happened in the last 15 years in the Netherlands since the advent of same-sex marriage is going to happen in America, and that our children and our society will be harmed as a result. As Dan Quayle first said on the national stage some 14 years ago, we know that marriage matters to children. Children born outside of wedlock are more than two times more likely to fall into every form of social malady that besets our kids. The experience in the Netherlands is undeniable. Since the advent of same-sex marriage in the Netherlands and in Holland, the decline of marriage has been from 95,000 to 82,000. As Dutch academics wrote in their newspapers there recently: 'Over the past 15 years, the number of marriages has declined substantially. The same period also witnessed a spectacular rise in the number of out-of-wedlock births. In 1989, one in 10 children were born out of wedlock, roughly 11 percent; by 2003 that number had risen to almost one in three children.' That is what we are afraid of, Mr. Speaker.…”