Topic: Decline of the West
Some time ago, I reached the conclusion that same-sex marriage would turn out to be no big deal. It seemed to me that (1) same-sex marriage would be a boutique phenomenon and (2) that it would mainly benefit wedding planners and divorce lawyers.
How right I was.
Now that many countries in Europe and some US states have either legalized same-sex marriage or introduced civil unions, we’re beginning get some statistical feedback on this social innovation. Writing for NRO, Charles C.W. Cook crunches the numbers:
Since 1997, when Hawaii became the first state in the union to allow reciprocal-beneficiary registration for same-sex couples, 19 states and the District of Columbia have granted some form of legal recognition to the relationships of same-sex couples.… [T]he most recent U.S. Census data reveal that, in the last 15 years, only 150,000 same-sex couples have elected to take advantage of them—equivalent to around one in five of the self-identified same-sex couples in the United States. This number does not appear to be low because of the fact that only a few states have allowed full “marriage”; indeed, in the first four years when gay marriage was an option in trailblazing Massachusetts, there were an average of only about 3,000 per year, and that number included many who came from out of state.
On the whole, gay males seem not very interested in marriage. In America, two-thirds of legally recognized same-sex couples are lesbian. Cook notes that in Europe the situation is not greatly different—and what is more, divorce rates among gay married couples are strikingly higher than for heterosexual couples:
Stockholm University’s study seems to confirm the American trend. In Norway, male same-sex marriages are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce than heterosexual marriages, and female same-sex marriages are an astonishing 167 percent more likely to be dissolved. In Sweden, the divorce risk for male-male partnerships is 50 percent higher than for heterosexual marriages, and the divorce risk for female partnerships is nearly double that for men. This should not be surprising: In the United States, women request approximately two-thirds of divorces in all forms of relationships — and have done so since the start of the 19th century — so it reasonably follows that relationships in which both partners are women are more likely to include someone who wishes to exit.
These statistics confirm my longstanding suspicion that gays—particularly gay men— are not really serious about marriage. In the gay community, the legalization of same-sex marriage is formally treated as a civil rights issue. But actually the goal is to get “society” to accept the validity and value of same-sex relationships. How the legalization of same-sex marriage can realize this goal when gays themselves do not take it seriously is a good question that I for one would like to see the gay rights lobby address.
