http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/9/863946/-RuthlessLong story short, the National Organization for Marriage, a famous anti-gay marriage religious group, has put The Ruth Institute onto college campuses with the purpose of promoting marriage. But that's just what they say to get into the door. The real purpose is defined by this paragraph which was leaked to the author of the Daily Kos article.
It aims to work hand-in-hand with other organizations in the marriage movement to:
* Decrease the divorce rate
* Increase the marriage rate
* Decrease the cohabitation rate</li<li>Increase the number of children who grow up with both married parents
* Reduce the lag time between the age of sexual initiation and the age of first marriage
* Maintain at least a replacement-level birth rate, so that the devastation of a European-style "demographic winter" is avoided
Focus on bullet point 5 here. Demographic winter--- let's break that down.
And what is the concept of "demographic winter"? A right-wing notion with culturalist, if not racist, overtones regarding the end of first-world civilization because of declining birthrates. There's even a documentary about it, put out in part by the Ruth Institute's christianist allies at the Family Research Council. Righter-wing governments in Europe, such as that of Berlusconi's Italy, have offered economic incentives to the "right type of Italians" to conceive children--and have notoriously taken them away when it was discovered that some of them were going to the wrong people--namely, immigrant families.
This is what this and other Religious Right/Nazi organizations are really up to- putting on an air of legitimacy while working towards preserving the "white male is God" power structure (See Bill O'Reilly and John McCain interview from May 2008). Fundamentalists want 2 things- blacks back in chains and women in the kitchen baking brownies.
If I want marriage advice, I'll ask Dan Savage and not the National Organization for Marriage.