Statistic Of The Day: Same-Sex Marriage Makes Marriage Stronger

Adam Serwer points to some interesting statistics from the District of Columbia, which legalized same-sex marriage just over a year ago:

What is the state of marriage in Washington DC a year after passing marriage equality legislation? More than twice as strong as it used to be:

Officials don’t track how many same-sex couples have married in the city, but applications for new marriage licenses more than doubled last year. In the year before same-sex couples were legally allowed to wed, there were some 3,000 applications. Last year there were some 6,500.

Isn’t more people getting married a good thing?

 

FILED UNDER: Gender Issues, US Politics, , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Kylopod says:

    By far, the biggest problem with marriages today is the high divorce rate. The impact that SSM will have on that, if any, can only be assessed over several years. It will be interesting to watch how SSMs compare with traditional marriages on that front. I wouldn’t be surprised if they turn out to be stronger, at least in the short term, purely because of their novelty and an added incentive on the part of the couples to see them work out.

  2. Al says:

    Cue the “But…. But… But we don’t know what the long term consequences will be!” complaints from social conservatives. Any attempts to ask what the bad long term consequences came about with the end anti-miscegenation laws will be met with faux outrage, claiming that the suppression of civil rights because of race is different. How it is different (or why that matters) will never be addressed.

  3. Kylopod says:

    >Cue the “But…. But… But we don’t know what the long term consequences will be!” complaints from social conservatives.

    Just to be clear, I am not a social conservative or any sort of conservative, and in fact I support SSM. I was just commenting that it will be interesting to watch how SSM comes along in the years to come. I am sure we will see studies comparing it with traditional marriages statistically. But I have no expectation that it will hurt traditional marriages, much less foster the collapse of civilization.

  4. Al says:

    I just took too long to type in my comment, Kylopod. I wasn’t referring to you.

  5. Tristan says:

    It’s a correlation alright. What’s our evidence for it being causation?