Massachusetts, the first US state to have legalized gay marriage, frequent attractor of hate from the "family values" crowd, has the lowest divorce rate in the US (2.4 per 1000 persons) and the lowest
teenage pregnancy rate in the US (
7.9% of pregnancies). For comparison, Texas, a bastion of "family values" (and executions), leads the nation in teenage pregnancy (16.4% of pregnancies); states in the Bible Belt (Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas) have divorce rates approximately 1.5 times the US average of
4.1 divorces per 1000 persons.