Thursday, September 09, 2010

Gay Marriage Is Good For Iowa

Lots of talk out in Iowa, as the Mid-Term elections approach, of electing candidates who will do away with those activist judges who circumvented the Constitution to make Iowa a true equality state. Lots of talk about how Iowans don't want same-sex marriage, and think same-sex marriage is detrimental to the very fabric of Iowan society.

Wrong.

As we have already seen, Iowans are not concerned with same-sex marriage as a campaign issue. They're concerned with things like the economy, unemployment, war. Same-sex marriage falls way down the list.

And now comes the news that, since same-sex marriage became legal in Iowa, marriages are up--both the hetero- and the homosexual kind--and divorces are down. Just like what happened in Massachusetts.

It now seems as though same-sex marriage doesn't actually destroy the sanctity of traditional marriage as much as strengthen it. And the way gay couples see marriage, and treat marriage is not so very different than the way straight people respond.

A new study from IowaWatch found that, "like people in traditional marriages, same-sex couples also talk about raising children and shielding them from the verbal slings of peers, the stability and unit-strength of a family and the value of loving relationships among parents and children, as well as legal necessities and financial security."

Marriage is marriage, gay or straight. We all want the same things.

And, as for divorce, well, the study also determined that Iowa is now more maritally blissful than it has been in years. More people are marrying, and fewer people are divorcing. In fact, divorce in Iowa is at its lowest level, per capita, since 1968.

Nineteen-Sixty-Eight.

Forty-two years of rising numbers of divorces and now that number is down in the very year that marriage equality was legalized. And, as we've seen in Massachusetts, this is not a fluke. And the increase in the number of marriages is not strictly gay marriage. Of the nearly 20,000 Iowa couples who bought marriage licenses in the last year, just one out of 10 were gay couples. So, hetero marriage is on the rise, creating stable family environments, and heterosexual divorce is on the decline, meaning more families are staying together, and the only major change in Iowa is the onset of marriage equality.

Just proves what we've been saying all along: Gay marriage is good.

2 comments:

  1. MA has had gay marriage since 2004 and not only does the state have one of the lowest divorce rates, but a majority of the population supports it now (as do all 3 gubenatorial candidates: the Dem, Republican and Ind). The first year or two is the most traumatic for those who were opposed and the key is supporting the legislators in your state who have done right by allowing this and mounting campaigns against those politicians that are trying to use same sex marriage as a wedge.

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  2. i think if these guys are happy on what they want to be with, let them be. All of us have the right to be happy as well as gays.

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