US: Traditional Marriage Plummets

Traditional Marriage Plummets
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: July 19, 2005 12:01 am ET

(New Brunswick, New Jersey) While gays and lesbians fight for the right to get married the number of straight couples tying the knot has declined by 50 percent since 1970 a new study shows.

The survey, by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, shows that the divorce rate is also dropping but not as dramatically.

“One partial reason for the lower divorce rate is that more Americans are opting to stay single or live together instead of marrying,” says David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project and professor of sociology at Rutgers.

“People who otherwise might marry and then divorce are instead no longer getting married.” Popenoe said.

The study, released Monday, comes as religious conservatives make claims that same-sex marriage would dilute traditional marriage, endangering the institution.

Eleven states last November passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage following arguments that to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed would weaken traditional marriages.

The same argument was repeatedly made during the debate on same-sex marriage legislation in Canada and Spain.

"The irony of the statistical picture reported in the study is that thousands and thousands of committed, long-term same-sex couples around the country badly want to get married but are shut out of the institution," Susan Sommer, Senior Counsel at Lambda Legal and lead attorney in a lawsuit seeking marriage for same-sex couples in New York told 365Gay.com.

"Many of these are parents of children who need the legal protections that come only with marriage."

The one state in the US where same-sex marriage is legal - Massachusetts - has the lowest divorce rate in the country.

The Rutgers report also noted that while more and more heterosexual couples are preferring cohabitation to marriage, cohabitating unions have a significantly higher break-up rate than marital unions.

The report also said the United States has the lowest percentage - 63 percent - among Western nations of children who grow up with both biological parents.

"The report underscores what we've been saying for a very long time. The problems that the institution of marriage is having has nothing to do with gay people," said Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.