Same-Sex Marriage--Too Few

With as surprisingly envious of heterosexual relationships as homosexuals seem to have become over the last quarter century or more, and in spite of all the years of strenuous effort and enormous amounts of money spent campaigning and litigating to legalize same-sex marriage, and against the expectation that throngs of homosexual couples would tie-the-knot like their heterosexual neighbors, thus making the level of social concern and effort and expense seemingly worthwhile and in proportion, it turns out that relatively few (29%) homosexuals have been in a relationship at any given time (see HERE), and about the same percentage have entered into long term relationships lasting more than 7 years (see HERE, see also HERE), and fewer still (between 6% and 25%) legalize those relationships where possible (see HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE), as compared with about 95 percent of heterosexuals who have married (see HERE), with more than 70 percent of those marriages lasting longer than 10 years (see HERE and HERE).

It is uncertain what proportion of homosexual couples have legally married in the U.S. where possible (as differentiated from civil unions, domestic partnerships, and the like), but according to the National Review: "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." (See HERE)

Using the national average of 1.7 percent, the adult gay population is Massachusetts is estimated at around 117,000 (see HERE). This means that even were all of the same-sex marriages in Massachusetts to have been in state, then at best that would amount to only 5% of homosexuals getting married each year.

And, it appears that after the initial burst in 2006, the number of same-sex marriages drastically declined. (See HERE, as reported HERE)

Thus, all the hoopla yielded very little, if not disappointing results for those on the Left.

[Update 6/22/2016: According to this Atlantic article, Gay Marriage in the U.S., After Obergefell v Hodges, "A new Gallup poll released Wednesday estimates about 9.6 percent of LGBT adults are currently married to a same-sex spouse, up from 7.9 percent before the landmark court decision last June. Gallup estimates about 123,000 same-sex marriages have taken place since the ruling: Gallup currently estimates 3.9% of U.S. adults are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, and 0.4% of U.S. adults are married to a same-sex spouse. These figures can be used to estimate there are approximately 981,000 U.S. adults in a same-sex marriage and, thus, 491,000 same-sex marriages in the U.S. That latter estimate is up from roughly 368,000 a year ago." This means that even though homosexual couples have, for a year, been able to leagally marry anywhere in the U.S., at best less than 10% have done so. Evidently, homosexuals are not the marrying type--particularly when compared to heterosexuals.]

[Update 12/6/13: Washington state officials recently released figures showing that over the last year that gay marriage was legal, around 17 percent of the marriages in the state were same-sex couples. (See HERE) "About 7,071 same-sex couples got married in Washington between December 6, 2012, and the most recent complete month of data, September 2013. There were 42,408 total marriages in the state during that time, according to the Washington State Department of Health. So far, most of Washington state's same-sex marriages, 62 percent, were between two women....During the five years before Washington's gay marriage law, when the state had what was affectionately called "everything but marriage," only 9,500 couples registered themselves as domestic partners, including about 950 who were not gay, said state Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle....About a quarter of the gay couples who got married this past year in Washington were from another state. " (ibid)

In one respect this seem rather impressive and at odds with what I claim above. If gay adults represent 1.7 % (see HERE) of the 5,312,045 adult population in Washington (see HERE), this means that about 12% of the gay population got married in one year as compared with .14% for heterosexuals. In other words, proportionately there were more than 8 times as many gays that got married as heterosexuals.

However, in another respect it is underwhelming, particularly when one considers all the adults in the state of Washington who were already married or in domestic partnerships. When given the opportunity to legally marry, only 12% of the gay population thus far opted to marry and are currently married in Washington, as contrasted with on average about 95% of heterosexuals who have married and 55% who are currently married (see HERE).

It is even more underwhelming when one considers the fact that 5303 in-state gay couples married, whereas there were already approximately 8550 gay couples in Washington who were in domestic partnerships. (See HERE)  In other words, at best only 62% of the gay domestic partnerships in the state opted to convert to marriages).].

[3/28/15: According to the Washington Post, only 1 in 4 gay couples in the U.S. are "married."; see a;lso Gallup Poll April 2015, although in June of 2015, Pew Research published an article indicating that earlier estimates erred by inflating the numbers by almost double. In 9/10/215, the percent of gay couples that have married is less than 1/3, though the author may be working with earlier inflated numbers. ]

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For an explanation as to why these same-sex marriage Leftist LUNC have happened, see: The politics of Victimization, Compassion, Equality, Emotions, Bullying, Propaganda and Disinformation. [the unlinked topics will be posted later as they are completed]