A Texas-Sized Fib

Presumably, not many middle-school children in Texas marry people of the same sex. But thanks to the state’s Board of Education, they now know they’re not supposed to.

Textbook publisher Holt, Rinehart and Winston agreed to the education board’s demand earlier this month that the publisher’s middle-school textbooks for Texas define marriage as the “lifelong union between a husband and wife.” You can’t fault the accuracy of part of that statement. For now, in Texas and every other state, state-sanctioned marriage is solely for those of opposite sexes. Texas bans gay marriages and does not recognize same-sex civil unions.

But what’s with this “lifelong” business? Even Texas can’t pretend that’s always true. Textbooks might have to be politically correct for their time and place, but they’re still supposed to be accurate.

With 4.1 divorces a year per 1,000 residents, just a notch below the national average, Texas is pretty much like everyplace else: About half of its marriages end in divorce. Slightly more than half of those divorces involve couples with children. In this respect, Texas is different from that liberal stronghold, Massachusetts -- which, at 2.4 divorces per 1,000 residents, has the lowest divorce rate in the nation.

Maybe such statistics don’t matter. According to the definition in the Holt, Rinehart textbook, marriages that end in divorce aren’t real marriages anyway, right? Even Texas kindergartners know better than that.