Interesting article at National Review Online by Charles W. Cooke pointing out that in multiple countries and multiple states that recognize same-sex marriage, civil unions, or something like it, same-sex marriages are actually quite rare, and divorce or dissolution rates are much higher than for straight couples:
Controlling for the ratio of homosexuals to heterosexuals does little to explain the enthusiasm gap. For rates to be similar, we would have to pretend that only 0.5 percent of the population of Sweden, 0.7 percent of the population of Norway, and less than 2 percent of the population of Holland is gay. In fact, the numbers tend closer to an average of 4 percent, which suggests that heterosexual couples are up to eight times more interested in registering their relationships than homosexual couples.
...
While data in the United States are clearly limited, Scandinavian countries have been at this a little longer. Denmark was the first country to introduce recognition of same-sex partnerships, coining the term “registered partnership” in 1989. Norway followed suit in 1993, and then Sweden in 1995. Again, 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 really does not surprise me. Into the 1970s, marriage was regularly denigrated by homosexual activists as a bourgeois institution. Most of what has driven this desire for recognition--even when civil unions existed that provided everything but the name, as in California--is a desperate need by gay couples for governmental approval, so that they will feel normal and accepted.
In years past, the government recognized the family as the fundamental organizational unit of society. To promote marriage, there were criminal penalties for sex outside marriage and divorce was hard to get.
ReplyDeleteGovernment now treats individuals as the fundamental organizational unit, which is why a woman's right to choose is about the woman, not about the rest of the family (father and soon-to-die baby). Free Love means no reason to get married and No Fault Divorce means no reason to stay married.
Yet like every subsidy continued long past its usefulness, marriage still entitles spouses to Social Security benefits.
The drive for gay "marriage" is a demand for government goodies.
Takes some of the shine off the crusade, doesn't it?
I predict two things.
ReplyDeleteThanks to 60 years of "sex roles are a result of social forces, otherwise there is no difference between men and women", after same sex marriage does its magic and every school asks little boys and little girls who they will marry, and emphasize that girls can marry girls, when these not so hypothetical girls reach puberty, they will conclude that because they don't want sex as often or as vigorously or as anonymously as the boys do, then they must not be hetrosexual, since the sex drive is exactly the same. These girls will conclude that they are therefore lesbian, and since counselling re sexual orientation will be criminal as will soon be in California, there will be a lot of lesbians, and hetero boys will go wanting, or they will have to seek out the pathological female and "share".
Second, lesbian women get "baby rabies" as much as straight women, and they will divorce, just as straight women divorce. When that happens, the courts won't know which partner to treat as the man,and no woman will want to be so treated, so the courts will make the law up as they go along, and once they do, Bang! some man divorcing has an equal protection claim (that, by the way, is the only good thing I can see will come out of this whole sordid mess. Same Sex Marriage has now eliminated the " Status" element, leaving only the "contract" element, so the marriage is only about having children and distributing assets, and every marriage will be examined to ensure it is not a sham, like marriages now between a citizen and a foreign national that result in Green Cards are examined to ensure they are not shams. Leftism was supposed to stay out of the bedroom. It's taken over every other room of the house and will next intrude in the bedroom.