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Another Reason Gay Marriage Can't Get Traction
June 10, 2004
Elena Shore writes that ethnic communities in the U.S. are strongly opposed to gay marriage. Even - make that especially - in San Francisco! I don't at all buy into the condemnatory rhetoric against gays that's expressed by several sources in this piece. But ethnic opposition is a significant part of the political landscape. It is not just black and white conservatives who are fighting gay marriage. My own view: let voters decide. A vote on a proposed federal constitutional ban is hardly the evil plot progressives claim - the bar for passage would be remarkably high. So high that it will probably never even come to a vote in Congress, much less state legislatures. With Massachusetts now permitting gay marriage, and various local jursidictions nationwide attempting to follow suit, it should shock or dismay nobody that opponents in a number of states are mounting drives for state constitutional amendments to ban the practice. Existing state "defense of marriage laws" obviously don't mean much to activist judges and politicians. Defenders of gay marriage should spend less time crying "foul," and more time on the ground dealing with the real politics of the issue. Did they really believe that once they opened this can of worms, opponents would sit on the sidelines? Posted by Matt Rosenberg at June 10, 2004 08:31 AM Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry: Comments:
For some reason, this study did not receive much coverage in the press: "A recent study offers the first systematic review of same-sex unions and divorce rates based on accurate national register data in Sweden from the 1990's. The study found that gay male couples were 1.5 times as likely (or 50 percent more likely) to divorce as married opposite-sex couples, while lesbian couples were 2.67 times as likely (167 percent more likely) to divorce as opposite-sex married couples over a similar period of time. Even after controlling for demogrpahic characteristics associated with increased risk of divorce, make same-sex couples were 1.35 times as likely (35 percent more likely) to divorce, and lesbian couples were three times as likely (200 percent more likely) to divorce as opposite-sex married couples. One would expect that this information would be relevant to the gay marriage debate and deserve to be reported. Posted by: Jeff at June 10, 2004 01:08 PM"Did they really believe that once they opened this can of worms, opponents would sit on the sidelines?" Well, yes, they did. It's been my observation of people on the left/liberal side of political thought, that they are not as well-informed of the diversity of opinion as we conservatives are. In other words, they think everybody except some easily-dismissed lunatic fringe agrees with them. Hence the constant surprise when an expression of doubt arises at something they want to do. Sad to say, this has come up in my politically-diverse church just this past week. It seems it's only us conservatives who must be asked to tolerate the other guy's view. Posted by: Laura at June 12, 2004 06:14 PMPost a comment
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