Study Finds Marriage Equality Doesn’t Affect Opposite-Sex Marriage Rates

From Think Progress:

The idea of marriage equality as an “attack on traditional marriage” is a favored talking point of opponents. In April, former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said legalizing same-sex marriage would discourage marriage among heterosexual couples because the traditional understanding of marriage as a means of reproduction would erode. The Family Research Council has argued that “traditional” marriage keeps men from cheating on their wives once the women are no longer fertile. Two anti-marriage equality advocates from the Heritage Foundation said it would lead to the erosion of marital norms, even though opposite-sex couples already cheat, divorce, and decline to have children (or are unable to), even in states that still restrict marriage.

While there is no harm to opposite-sex couples, studies have shown that ballot initiatives banning same-sex marriage are actually psychologically harmful to the gay community.
More here.

Yeah.  This was always pretty stupid, a testament to how irrational and emotion-driven the whole "debate" about gay marriage has been since the idea became commonplace enough to freak out people who don't like it.  That is, it never really was a debate.  It was just a whole bunch of goofy whining and squirrel arguments.

Gay marriage has NEVER been an "attack" on or a "threat" to straight marriage.  And this is pretty easy to illustrate.  How, exactly, is heterosexual marriage harmed by allowing gays and lesbians to get married?  Anti-equality advocates have always been pretty vague on this one, scrambling to make the institution all about child rearing, or general fidelity within society overall, even though hetero counter-examples to these notions are so common as to render such "concerns" meaningless.  It's always been desperate clutching at straws, and nothing else.

And it's no exaggeration to say "desperate."  It changes the definition of marriage!  Yeah, sure, ever so slightly, but so what?  How does that affect you?  Remember Rick Santorum's assertion that gay marriage would lead to "man on dog"?  That's so incredibly laughable that it cheapens my intellect to even formulate a response.  Anti-equality advocates have made total fools of themselves over the years trying to explain why gay marriage is something we don't want.  What's amazing is that anybody at all has ever taken their demented pleading seriously.

Indeed, the study from the linked article now shows what all honest observers already knew to be true: in states where gay marriage has been legalized, straight marriage continues just as it always has.  What on earth was everybody so paranoid about?

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