As most of you know, the gay marriage bill passed in NY. I write a lot on ShrinkTalk about failed relationships, but those articles are skewed heavily toward heterosexual couples. I recently wrote a post on whether or not gay marriages could be more successful than traditional ones. You can read that here if you'd like: http://shrinktalk.net/?p=2125 FOCUS: Independent of your personal views on gay marriage (although feel free to share them here), do you see any differences that might suggest a higher success/failure rate when compared to heterosexual couples? Note: I don't define success and failure based solely on whether the marriage remains intact on paper; rather, success should include overall happiness and failure should include unhealthy marriages that continue to exist.
I'd give them a higher success rate in the short term personally, mainly because they were brave enough in the first place to say fuck you to social norms and do what made them happy instead of what everyone expected of them. I'm not saying straight people are cowards or anything, just that the average gay person that gets married today is willing to make more sacrifices to seek personal happiness than the average straight person. Also being one of the first gay couples to get legally married in a certain area is going to be a story that will bring happiness for the rest of their lives. In the long term as being gay is more and more accepted I think it will normalize and their success will most likely be similar to that of straight people.
I think gay marriages will be happier for one structural reason: No unexpected children. I could see how this would be used as evidence to the contrary (some children bring couples together), but I would wager that having children before you're financially or emotionally ready is a huge drain on a lot of marriages.
A few thoughts on gay marriage: -I'm happy th gays can get married in NY. It's legal here in CT and I was happy when it was passed because then we didn't have to hear anymore about it. -Traditional/nuclear families didn't dissolve overnight and people aren't running around fucking animals like the opposition predicted. -Gay marriage is not a civil rights or human rights issue. It must be insulting and a little diminishing to people who actually had gone through real civil rights challenges. It's a social issue, plain and simple. -As far as whether or not they're more successful? How could anyone know? Of course hetero marriages have higher divorce rates; the statistics are completely different and they're based on a different set of social constaints and values. Any comparison between the two is superficial at best.
I'm not sure. I think in the long run that there's nothing that will theoretically make gay marriages more or less stable than heterosexual marriage, but in the short term that they will be less stable. Homosexuality has been condemned by society for a pretty long time. As a result, homosexual relationships have been marginalized. They're portrayed as someone satisfying their UNHOLY URGES(tm), not a legitimate means of finding companionship and a lifelong partner. I think that sadly this has rubbed off on a lot of people; they've internalized that idea and act accordingly. As a result, even if homosexual relationships have the potential to be just as fulfilling as heterosexual relationships, people end up dooming them before they even start. As homosexuality becomes more accepted in society, this tendency will diminish and they'll be just as fucked up as the rest of us. However, it'll still be around for a long time.
One of the most interesting things that I think will come out of this is the change in the family court system. Right now things are heavily and institutionally biased on the assumption that women will automatically get primary parental rights, and men will be paying child-support/alimony. The cases of divorce might be more rare, but I bet that some of them will be just as vicious and bitter as heterosexual divorces. Who will get primary custody of the children when two women break up? Which partner will be paying spousal support when two men seperate? I hope that when the courts figure out a way to intelligently answer these questions, the results will trickle down and prompt structural changes in the current system.
For some reason, I feel like the success/fail rate will be like any other marriage. But that's because I see it as two people getting married rather than a homosexual couple. I'm sure homosexual couples have the same issues as heterosexual couple, except for maybe unplanned pregnancy. Then again, I'm sure there will be homosexual couples who have kids to "fix" a marriage. Edit: I realized the "two people" comment seems really preachy. I'm not trying to be holier-than-thou with that comment, I promise.
This. No shotgun weddings and no marrying the girl you knocked up because "it's the right thing to do". I have no proof of this but I have a hunch they'll also have a lot less religeous folk getting married just so they can finally have sex.
Do you consider the marriage a failure if one of them drops dead prematurely because of AIDS? I don't know if this is an alternate focus or not, but I hope the lack of kids opens them more up for adoption. There are a lot of kids out there in shitty situations, and I'm sure there are a lot of gays out there that would make great fathers. I may be terribly disgusted by the thought of the way they make love (or kiss, or hold hands), but at the heart of it they aren't much different than heterosexual people.
I don't mean to provoke a flame war, but I'm legitimately curious as to what you meant by this. Especially since the rest of your post suggests that you are in favor of the measure. What exactly is the distinction that you are drawing between a "civil rights issue" and a "social issue"? Is it that marriage to people of similar sexual orientation is not an inherent right, even if it may be desirable to grant such a privilege? Do you feel the same way about mixed race marriages? Similar to the "no kids" thing, I think that gay marriage might be more likely to be successful than others due to less social pressure to marry. Since there's no expectation to "hurry up and get married, so you can make us grandkids and become respectable members of society," I think that gay/lesbians/bisexual people are less likely to get into problematic marriages than heterosexual couples. Obviously, as gay marriage becomes normalized, the expectation of marriage will increase. But it will probably always be less than it is for heterosexual couples. They'll feel less pressured, so they'll be less likely to rush into marriages that are unlikely to work. In the short term, however, I think Omegaham is somewhat onto something, although that sort of lifestyle is far less prevalent proportionally speaking than it was twenty years ago. It used to be, and somewhere still is the case, that the gay community didn't feel constrained by mainstream norms because mainstream society didn't treat them like human beings. Public acceptance of homosexuality in the past decade, though, has somewhat tempered this. Increasingly, they act more and more like anyone else.
How is gay marriage NOT a civil right?? Why can only straight people be accepted for basic human rights? Because the bible told you so?? Well, I hope you are still a virgin, don't lie, cheat or steal or even masturbate then, cause it's going against that damn book. Sorry to mention religion, it just has so much impact on society that is negative.
Wikipedia and I disagree. In terms of how other people treat gays, yeah it's a social issue. However, when two gay people want to get married and share the same benefits from the government that straight people get but legally aren't allowed, that's very clearly not a social issue. See: Marriage rights and beniefits
I believe this is a huge factor. Being a broken-condom baby myself, I know that my parents were thinking of staying together for my sake so I could have a relationship with my father like my siblings. Thankfully, my mother was smart enough to realize that would have done more damage than good. They remain friends and are civil towards each other. But I know plenty of kids growing up having parents that can't even stand being at the same event for their kid. A lot of couples wait until the kids are out of the house/go to college to get a divorce. My best friend is going through this right now and it is just hell in their house. People grow to resent each other when unexpected things happen and no one talks about the issues. Something the article said was I definitely think there is huge influence on our primal instincts when it comes to attraction/how you act/etc. Not having that male instinct of spreading your seed be a factor in a gay relationship for the simple fact that it's just not biologically possible. Maybe this is a reason why open marriages are more apparent in gay relationships. No competition of who has the better genes. As far as if homosexual marriages will be more successful than heterosexual marriages-I think it might just be a short-term phenomenon for the simple reason that there is still a social issue and gay people can't get married wherever and in whatever state they want. I think those gay couples that are considering marriage subconsciously take more time and consideration in the thought of being "together forever". The chance of of a heterosexual marriage be successful as far as if they get a divorce or not is still basically flipping a coin. Getting a divorce isn't that much of a taboo anymore which is sad in the sense that I think people get married too young, don't know the person they are marrying well enough, and don't know to communicate well enough/won't try to get the help they need or at least try to see if there is anything to salvage. Now taking into the aspect of divorce for homosexual marriages I think will also affect "successful marriages". Because, unfortunately, homosexual marriages are a standard "right" all across the United States-having high rates of divorce in homosexual marriages may have a huge affect on if other states will allow gay marriages. Now say homosexual marriages becomes the norm and all states pass bills-I think there will eventually not be any major differences/issues/successes as heterosexual marriages. Alt focus on IF gay marriage will become a norm: One of my best friends is gay. He can't stand extremely flamboyant gay people and gay pride parades for the fact that as he states "You all are asking for equal rights and to be seen on the same level-yet you have sex in the middle of streets and cause havoc in a completely disrespectful manor. That is not how you get people to see you as equals". And I completely agree with him, you got to dress for the rights you want, not the rights you have.
The divorce rate in Maricopa County is 60-70%, I do not see how gay marriage could fail more than that. As someone had mentioned before, with the stigma attached to gay marriage, I think there will be an us against them mentality, and that will make the number of divorces in gay marriages much less. My guess is that it will be around 30-40% in 5 years, probably to soon to start gambling on it.
Another thing popped into my head: very few gay, lesbian, etc. people are devoutly religious in the fundamentalist sense. As such, they are less likely to view divorce as sinful. A nontrivial number of people do not get divorces because they consider divorce so spiritually monstrous that it was never an option. For them, marriage is a sacrement between two people and God. Gay and lesbian people are unlikely to take such a stance, and as such are potentially more open to getting a divorce. On the other hand, self-identified gay and lesbian people are, on average, better educated and slightly wealthier than the average American. Also, due to the confusion and long personal process that often accompanies realizing that you're gay or coming out of the closet, they're likely to marry at a later age. If I remember correctly, demographically speaking, these three factors makes them less likely to divorce.
Doesn't matter if it works or not. Never saw the logic in caring what anyone else does with their private parts. It's stupid and controlling.
I think short term, the "success" rate will be higher, due to having had to jump through more hoops to get married. Longterm, though? They're still just people with the same problems and hang ups as anyone else, so taking into account the numbers for both parties, I don't think anything will be different. I do believe that homosexual couples should have the unequivocal right to adopt/inseminate/whatever. People screaming about it being unnatural go home and ignore their own kids. People that have to work THAT hard for the opportunity to be a parent must really want it.
I'm dumb and said the same thing that Elset said. Please accept this NSFW and entirely gay-themed picture as my apology: NSFW