Same-sex "marriage" is not about same-sex "marriage"

Interesting article over at the National Review Online entitled "The Gay Divorcees," by Charles C.W. Cooke." It goes a long way toward proving a rather central point about the same-sex "marriage" controversy: it isn't about same-sex "marriage" at all.

19 states and the District of Columbia have instituted either "marriage" or domestic partnerships for same-sex couples since 1997.The most recent census indicates that, nationally, only 150,000 gay couples- one in five- have taken advantage of them. Nor is this a function of the fact that 41 states have no such arrangement. In Massachusetts, for example, there were only 3,000 same-sex "marriages" a year for the first four years they were legal, and many of the couples came from other states.

In Norway, 1,300 gay couples registered as legal partners during the first eight years such relationships were established. During the same time, 190,000 straight couples got married.

In Sweden, there were 1,526 legal partnerships registered during the first seven years they were legal- compared with 280,000 marriages between heterosexual couples.

2,500 gay couples got "married" in the Netherlands in 2001, the first year it was legal. Then 1,800 gay couples got "married" in 2002, 1,204 in 2004, and 1,100 in 2005. Fewer than two percent of Dutch marriages were between same-sex couples in 2009, the last year for which statistics are available.

I surmised before I even got to the statistics in the Cooke article that most same sex "marriages" would be between women. Lesbians seem more inclined to enter into committed relationships rather than the "one-night stands" more typical of gay males, concerning whose tendency toward promiscuity the gay community has been laudibly open. Even "committed" relationships between gay men tend not to carry an expectation of sexual exclusivity; behavior which would be termed "adultery" in a heterosexual marriage is virtually a given in even close and stable relationships between gay men.

The reason isn't difficult to see. I forget which well-known humorist it was who once awakened in the middle of the night with a flash of brilliant insight as to the essential truth behind all conflict between the sexes. He jotted it down on a pad of paper he kept by his bedside. In the morning, he eagerly read his nocturnal note to himself, expecting great profundity. It turned out, however, that he had written the following:

Higamus, hahgamis
Woman's monogamous;
Hahgamis, higamus
Man is polygamous.

And of course, it's true. Anthropologists have written a great deal about the biological imperative for males to spread their genes around (bearing no biologically necessary burden of having to care for his offspring), contrasted with the imperative for women to ensure the help and protection of a mate in raising the children for whom she cannot evade responsibility. In simpler terms, men- whether straight or gay- have a straightforward sexual urge not necessarily connected with nurturing or committment. Women, on the other hand, have more complex sexual drives, intrinsically involving emotion, closeness, and the need for committment.

The lack of any particular expectation of sexual monogamy among gay men is one reason why the legalization "marriage" between them cannot help but negatively impact heterosexual marriage, by the way. At a time when marriage as an institution is reeling, it cannot help to include a subsection of the legally "married" population for whom sexual fidelity in the traditional sense is not even an expectation.

It turns out that I was right: two-thirds of the legally recognized same-sex couples in the United States are lesbian. Statistically, very few male gay couples are interested in getting "married" to begin with- a point which, at first glance, would seem to mitigate the negative impact of same-sex "marriage" on marriage as an institution.

But wait.

Among male same-sex couples, the very pattern predicted by the fact that the relationship exists between two individuals more committed to sexual gratification than relational stability in fact obtains. In Norway, "marriages" between male same- sex couples are 50% more likely to end in divorce than heterosexual marriages. But now comes the surprise: divorce between lesbian couples are 167% more likely than between heterosexual couples!

Cooke points to the reason, and it makes sense: in the United States, for example, since the 19th Century women have annually requested approximately two-thirds of all divorces. Just as lesbian couples would figure to be more committed to each other initially by virtue of their gender, so it makes sense that they would be far more apt to divorce than couples which include only one woman. Women tend to be more concerned with the quality of any interpersonal relationship, and more emotionally invested; it makes sense that they would be more sensitive to difficulties arising in them, and more apt to find them intolerable.

In short, although you'd never know it from the media or from the rhetoric of gay activists, same-sex couples as a group seem surprisingly uninterested in "marriage." Sexual monogamy is not a particular expectation among most male homosexuals even when they are in "committed relationships." And divorces between same-sex couples regardless of gender tend to be drastically higher than those for heterosexual couples. This is particularly true for lesbian couples.

Two conclusions seem inevitable. First, the usual rhetoric to the contrary, it seems clear that especially at a time when marriage as an institution is under pressure as never before in our history, broadening the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples would indeed weaken the institution substantially. Yes, the marriages of heterosexual couples would be adversely affected by same-sex marriage, if only because the institution of marriage itself would be weakened.

And secondly, the furor over same-sex "marriage" is not really about same sex "marriage" at all. It's about completing the process which began when the homosexualists in the American Psychiatric Association succeeded through political manuevering in getting homosexuality removed from the category of psychopathological conditions back in 1973-74.

It's about "mainstreaming" homosexual behavior.