How interested are gay couples in getting married?
This dearth of early adopters is not peculiar to America. Research conducted in 2004 by Gunnar Anderson, a professor of demography at Sweden’s Stockholm University, seems to confirm the trend. Anderson looked at legal partnerships in both Norway and Sweden and found that in Norway, which legalized civil unions in 1993, only 1,300 homosexual couples registered in the first eight years, compared with 190,000 heterosexual marriages; in Sweden, between initial passage in 1995 and a review in 2002, 1,526 legal partnerships were registered, compared with 280,000 heterosexual marriages. In the Netherlands, gay marriage is actually declining in popularity: 2,500 gay couples married in 2001 — the year it was legalized — and that number dropped to 1,800 in 2002, 1,200 in 2004, and 1,100 in 2005. In 2009, the last year for which figures are available, less than 2 percent of marriages in the Netherlands were between same-sex 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. It is, of course, possible that the estimated number of homosexuals is wrong, but, if anything, gay-rights groups tend to argue that the projected numbers are too low, and statistics show that the numbers of self-identified gay citizens are going up in every Western country.
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I think the Daily Caller was right, President Gutsy “The Black Man with a Funny Name” Call does not appreciate all this talk about gay marriage.
Keep it coming.
WeekendAtBernankes on May 15, 2012 at 7:04 PM
They should be entitled to be as miserable as the rest of us who are married to opposite sex partners.
That’s when the regret about same sex marriage will kick in.
Consider the number of divorces already in states where same sex marriage was legalized.
Foolish gays….they can just walk now (in most states) but once you put a ring on it your wallet gets a string on it.
ProfShadow on May 15, 2012 at 7:05 PM
They’re only interested as far as it lets them spike the football in front of the “evil, bigoted, psychotic religious homophobes.”
Stoic Patriot on May 15, 2012 at 7:06 PM
In reality, isn’t a regular human population something like roughly between 5-10% homosexual?
Badger40 on May 15, 2012 at 7:06 PM
It’s more like 70-80% if you watch NBC.
Stoic Patriot on May 15, 2012 at 7:09 PM
Not at all interested.
oceansidecon on May 15, 2012 at 7:16 PM
Have they ever heard of the term…extinction?
Quite right. The push for gay marriage is nothing more than a means to end end, and that and is the complete and utter destruction of the “evil” ones, us Christians and anyone else who tends to believe in a nuclear family.
eva3071 on May 15, 2012 at 7:18 PM
I also forgot to mention, but the useful idiots in all of this are the ones supporting gay marriage for “equality”, neverminding just how exactly that would work.
eva3071 on May 15, 2012 at 7:19 PM
In middle school they taught us it was 10%. I think it’s probably closer to 3% or less. The 10% figure is from the Kinsey study which has been largely discredited.
WeekendAtBernankes on May 15, 2012 at 7:20 PM
Two to five percent. The “ten percent” figure comes from infamous Kinsey Report, the one conducted by an entomologist with no training in the social sciences or statistical analysis.
David Marcoe on May 15, 2012 at 7:23 PM
Based on the sex parties they call gay pride parades, they’re not all that interested.
Ronnie on May 15, 2012 at 7:26 PM
For those of us gays who have chosen marriage, it is a beautiful thing. Before I even got close to proposing, I was already quite aware that I was the marrying kind. I know some people are not really suited for it, but that is their business.
McDuck on May 15, 2012 at 7:27 PM
rates of homosexuality are very dependent on methodology. The 4 percent that cooke comes up with i think is a rounding up of a figure given in Wikipedia…and that figure comes from this
http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Gates-How-Many-People-LGBT-Apr-2011.pdf
For those interested, look at Fig 1 which summarizes several different studies. It makes a big difference if you ask if the respondent self-IDs as gay (maybe 1 percent), bisexual (another 1 percent) or have you ever had sexual relations with….well, you know the rest. That number is much higher.
So it depends what the definition of is is.
Looking at Figure 1, the best estimate in the Median since there is an outlier. The median of those studies is roughly 2 percent, for gay+bisexual…and 1 percent for gay/lezzer.
those numbers help explain cooke’s confusion
r keller on May 15, 2012 at 7:31 PM
Seems to me a large portion of the vocal advocates are really after acceptance. They will be sorely disappointed when they find out that government recognition =/= acceptance.
Lost in Jersey on May 15, 2012 at 7:33 PM
It’s nice you’re happy.
I just really don’t want to be forced to socially accept your lifestyle when I consider it immoral.
And I really don’t think it’s wise for society to open the door to legally accepting it.
But of course, no one was ever stopping you from getting married in your own way.
Have a nice life.
And I do mean that. I’m not being sarcastic.
Badger40 on May 15, 2012 at 7:39 PM
Phew! I was getting worried there! It seemed like we’d gone a couple of hours without a same sex marriage topic.
Kensington on May 15, 2012 at 7:45 PM
If you followed the history of this you’ll recall that those in the gay community who were advocating for SSM – like Sullivan – were vehemently denounced for years by large numbers of gay people. It just wasn’t viewed as something they wanted.
I don’t recall the poll data but a lot of the gay crowd – especially men – believed that marriage was an instrument of controlling the sex lives of people and was something that was simply not of interest. Too bourgeois, conventional and just too stifling.
Sullivan faced at least as large a backlash from them as he did from heterosexuals.
As others have noted, the issue isn’t really as much about “equality” legally (sure, that’s part of it) but “equality” socially. They view SSM as being acceptance; that a gay marriage is an instrinsically valuable as a heterosexual one.
Identity politics if you will.
SteveMG on May 15, 2012 at 7:45 PM
“Pride” used to have a different meaning, too; now it means BJ’s on the street.
Kensington on May 15, 2012 at 7:46 PM
Don’t forget, also, that Sullivan used to be quite open about the fact that he doesn’t think monogamy is an important or even necessary component to marriage.
We’re really gaining quite a bit with the redefinition of marriage. First it doesn’t have to include two sexes; soon it won’t involve monogamy either.
All according to plan.
Kensington on May 15, 2012 at 7:49 PM
But does Obama support Gay Divorce?
ButterflyDragon on May 15, 2012 at 7:52 PM
What you mean, Does not marriage involved walking down the street without pants and letting every Tom, D!ck and Harry play with your member all at the same time. That is so much like Holy matrimony they all want in and at the same time.
tjexcite on May 15, 2012 at 7:52 PM
Similarly, I don’t want to be forced to socially accept any religious tenets of morality enforced through any level of government.
Also, I do not want someone’s religious stances to be forced to accept something they do not accept through any leel of government.
Grindstone on May 15, 2012 at 7:58 PM
Yeah, I know. The influence of the absurd Dan Savage on him has been disappointing. As you probably know Savage goes even further than Sullivan on this. Marriage to him is meaningless.
The gay journalist Jonathan Rauch argues that SSM will be good for gay men and women because it will restrain and direct the sex lives of them, especially those of men. Their promiscuity will decline and they’ll be more responsible as they bond into long term committments with one another.
Sullivan and Savage reject this I think. For them it’s about acceptance. They want to change marriage more than want to be changed by it.
So who wins out? Rauch or Sullivan/Savage?
SteveMG on May 15, 2012 at 7:58 PM
Considering the vast differences of the “definition” of marriage across history and culture, what, exactly, is being redefined? How women are transfered as property from father to husband? How it was used as a tool for forming national/political alliances? FOr socio-economic gain? Even in ancient Greece it was simply a matter of two adults agreeing that they were married and that was it.
Grindstone on May 15, 2012 at 8:03 PM
The Gay life appears to more about lots of sex than it really is about love.
Kjeil on May 15, 2012 at 8:05 PM
I’m not aware of these “vast differences.” They always involved a male and a female. Was it ever of the same gender?
That’s the key: a man and a man or a woman and a woman are simply not the same as a man and a woman or a man and several women.
The sex differences are the key, not the sexual orientation of the individuals.
SteveMG on May 15, 2012 at 8:06 PM
That’s true for young heterosexuals too, don’t you think?
The question is whether the historic promiscuity of gay men – gay woman much less so – is due to their rejection by the larger world. That is, if society accepted them, they would accept society and so the social restraints on promiscuity would also follow.
In other words, they reject the norms of society because society has rejected them.
I don’t know.
SteveMG on May 15, 2012 at 8:08 PM
Ming dynasty, Fujian, China. Females would bind themselves to younger females, sometimes males would do the same.
Also, various forms of domestic homosexual partnerships existed throughout ancient China.
In Rome, Nero was engaged to a male slave. Another emperor married a male slave. The Theodosian Code was established and specifically outlawed same-sex marriage, indicating that it did exist.
Then there’s ancient Israel. Or Biblical Israel, if you prefer. Polygamy was widely practiced.
Incestual marriage among the nobility was also quite common in Medieval Europe even into the 18th century.
So, again, whose defnition are we going by here?
Grindstone on May 15, 2012 at 8:16 PM
unless there has been some massive shift in behavior, by both groups. I don’t think it’s close. Young guys are just up for more sex than young women, so if your partner is another guy or guys you will naturally have more sex.
Kjeil on May 15, 2012 at 8:24 PM
We’re talking about the past 2,000 years of western history. Sure, you’re correct that that definition hasn’t been universal; the default arrangement in many cultures, ancient and modern, has been polygamy and not monogamy.
But the overwhelming accepted definition of marriage in the west has been an arrangement between opposite sexes, a single man and a single woman. It’s that complementarity – a man and woman – that is essential to marriage as an institution.
The thought has been – for us in the west – is that lifelong heterosexual monogamy offers something distinctive and remarkable and important.
And that by re-defining it we’re abandoning that uniqueness.
SteveMG on May 15, 2012 at 8:27 PM
They want to go after the church.
John the Libertarian on May 15, 2012 at 8:29 PM
So, essentially, we’re talking soley about the Christian interpretation of marriage? Christianity does not hold a monopoly on marriage. It never has.
And now we’re saying that a monogamous marriage between one man and one woman is unique and special? That seems to conflict with the “that’s the way it always has been” idea.
I have no problem with religious marriage. However, that is not the only “type” of marriage in the world. Just because “that’s how we (western Europeans) have ‘always’ done it” doesn’t mean that anyone else’s idea is invalid.
I was not married in a religous ceremony. My wife and I are not producing any offspring. Fundimentaly, how is that any different from a same-sex marriage?
Grindstone on May 15, 2012 at 8:36 PM
@ Grindstone:
Various types of “bindings” have existed throughout history, often invested with a great deal of sentiment, but involved nothing of conjugal relations. Could you elaborate on the nature of these bindings?
You mean the slave that he had castrated and dressed up as a woman because he thought it was the reincarnation of his dead wife?
Which one?
Doing a search, this is an oft-repeated claim, but from what I find, the code itself is convoluted and can be interpreted as “providing evidence” or “insinuating” that gay marriage existed, because it forbaded men from taking the role of women in sex. I would have to do a better search on the information out there, though.
Cousin marriage was common, but marriage of cousins being considered incest is (1) relatively recent and (2) not considered so by most cultures. If you want clear-cut incestual marriage, look to Pharaonic Egypt, with marriage between brothers and sisters, where the imperative was the preservation of the royal bloodline. You won’t find it among commoners, though.
I don’t say that your wrong on your main points. I don’t have enough facts to say one way or the other, but my own readings don’t gel with what you’re saying. If you could provide sources and citations, that would be good.
David Marcoe on May 15, 2012 at 8:50 PM
From what life has offered me for observation, less than 1% of males are gay and 90% of females are bi-sexual.
BL@KBIRD on May 15, 2012 at 8:54 PM
If it means this much to you, why don’t you try out a same-sex marriage, and comeback and give us a report in a few weeks. Then you can tell us if there are any significant differences.
If SSM wasn’t going to force every kindergartner in America to go through gay relationship training, I would be tempted to look the other way and say nothing. But it won’t stop there, they won’t stop until Bible-believing Christians are muted even in their own churches.
Kjeil on May 15, 2012 at 8:56 PM
Basically it was marriage in every sense. A contracted union for both domestic partnership as well as sexual partnership.
I try to stay out of a person’s personal issues.
I belive it was Elagabalus?
While I can’t claim to read Latin, the translations I found of it tend to indicate the “submissive” position of women in both sex and domestic life.
Habsburg house, for one.
I detest spoon-feeding, but I’ll oblige.
Bizhouzhai Yutan, by Defu, Shen
Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China. Bret Hinsch
Theodosian Code “When a man marries [a man] as a woman offering herself to men (quum vir nubit in feminam viris porrecturam), what can he be seeking, where gender has lost its place; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed to another form; when love is sought and not found? We order the statutes to arise, the laws to be armed with an avenging sword, that those infamous persons who are now, or who hereafter may be, guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment. Some scholars (Dalla, Cantarella, and Treggiari) note that the “marriage” in question may be a metaphor for the passive, or “feminine” role in sex rather than a literal reference to a same-sex parody of marriage. Williams, in his Roman Homosexuality (p. 246), agrees but insists that a literal reading is equally plausible.
I don’t know how much more you want me to offer, since most is easly a quick search away, even cross-referencing (and not sourcing sites that directly advocate either stance).
Grindstone on May 15, 2012 at 9:19 PM
Agreed.
But having a coty govt have the 10 Commandments set up on the lawn out front of city hall isn’t forcing you to socially accept it.
Human beings get together for a reason: progeny
Progeny are best raised by their parents
Which is a man & a woman
So the tenet of ‘marriage’ in society goes with what humans normally are: heterosexual
We let one thing go, then it open the door to all other things.
Like polygamy.
And I don’t want to see that for our society in America,personally
Badger40 on May 15, 2012 at 9:19 PM
Probably not going to happen, since I don’t find men attractive at all. Then again, there are many women I don’t find attractive at all.
If SSM forces every kindergartner in America to study homosexual sex, I’ll eat every hat I own. If SSM makes your kids ask why their friend has two daddies, then you can deal with it in your own way, for good or ill. The question is bound to come up eventually as it is.
I’m sorry, I don’t fall for the “gay gestapo” meme. I know there are a few, rare instances of jackbootedness, but where isn’t there? It happens in all other instances of anything. I agree that people who morally object shouldn’t be coerced into partaking anything they object to. But that doesn’t mean we should legistlate that moral objection.
Grindstone on May 15, 2012 at 9:26 PM
@ Grindstone
Thank you for the elaboration. I’ll have to look that up.
My point is that the Nero example doesn’t hold water for this discussion. He had the slave forcibly castrated because he thought it was his wife, whom he had kicked to death. The cheese had completely slid off the guy’s cracker by that point.
How is it spoon-feeding to ask you to provide your sources? You were the one who made the points. I was curious as to where your information came from and the burden of proof is one the one who made the arguments.
David Marcoe on May 15, 2012 at 9:32 PM
No, but it is an implicit endorcement of the Judeo-Christian religion(s) from when those 10 commandments come from. I know for a fact many of you (maybe not you specifically) would vehemitly object if that same city hall set out a crecent moon and star.
And progeny are best raised by people who love them and nurture them. This does mean their biological mother and father. However, I’m sure you wouldn’t object if this included non-biological mother and/or father (or vice versa). Or by a loving, hardworking single mother/father.
Polygamy… I don’t really care. It doesn’t bother me as long as it’s with consenting adults.
I don’t buy the “slippery slope” argument, either. It’s been used to death in so many other applications, such as segregation and so forth.
I don’t care much for religious social morality, I don’t want to see our society governed by a religious theocracy, personally. I want to see a society where a person has individual liberty in every aspect of the word. I want to see one’s interaction with government limited to the postal worker. I don’t want legislated morality.
Grindstone on May 15, 2012 at 9:42 PM
@ Grindstone
It is quite interesting to learn about difference cultures around the world and their history.
Yes, Nero was quite insane. However, it was merely one “example” in a list of many.
I called it spoon-feeding because of the ease of access we have to such information in this age. I peronally enjoy discovering and learning new things through my own research. And in this instance, I didn’t really refer to anything too obscure. Basically I was trying to give you a push to read into that yourself, since you did say you “don’t have all the facts” (not that I claim to have “all the facts”). No offense was meant.
Grindstone on May 15, 2012 at 9:46 PM