March 27, 2013

I tried and tried and tried to find a way to get this in, because I absolutely love it, but I just couldn't find a place where it didn't mess with the flow. I was writing this in 2010, so the 2008 statistics were the most recent I had. It wouldn't surprise me if the trends I discuss continued.

The last argument the Defenders of Traditional Marriage make is that American marriage is already in a precarious enough position and that allowing gay people to marry would destroy it altogether—that if we degrade the institution by letting gay people in, straight people will have an even flimsier standard to hold themselves to.

Let’s look at that, shall we?

In Massachusetts, marriage between people of the same sex was legalized in 2004. If we look at the divorce rate between 2003 and 2008 (the latest year for which statistics are available), we should be able to develop an idea of whether marriage equality has harmed the institution of marriage there.

In 2003, the divorce rate in Massachusetts was 1.21%. In 2008, it was 0.96%. This means that, during the first five years of marriage equality, the Massachusetts divorce rate fell 20.7%. Not a particularly damaging blow to the institution of marriage.
But we’re looking at this out of context. What if, during the same period, divorce rates dropped much more in other states, and Massachusetts was actually dead last in divorce reduction? In that case we’d have to admit that the Defenders of Traditional Marriage might have a point.

Except that the Massachusetts divorce rate fell farther than that of forty-seven of the other forty-nine states. The only states with bigger reductions in divorce rates during the same period were Rhode Island and Maine, with respective drops of 20.8% and 21.2%. That still places them behind Massachusetts in 2008 divorce rates: Massachusetts is in fact the only state in the union with a divorce rate under 1%.

Okay, but maybe all the other states are in more or less the same position—maybe divorce rates dropped 20% or so around the country, and Massachusetts is third among fifty equals. We don’t want to be unfair to the DTMs by creating the illusion of significance without actual significance backing it up.
So let’s look at, say, Alaska, which as it happens was the first state to enact a constitutional ban on marriage of same-sex couples.

In 2003, Alaska’s divorce rate was 1.87%. In 2008, it was 2.20%. That’s an increase of 17.2%.

It’s possible that marriage equality would be the best possible thing for the health of American marriage since the invention of earplugs.

Go figure.

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