The World May Never Know

I was doing some research the other day for my recent post on the New York vote to redefine marriage. One thing I wondered about in my meandering through ideas on the subject was the divorce rate. Here's what I was thinking. I would think that same-sex people are less likely to remain together than heterosexual people. Their culture is different. Monogamy doesn't mean the same thing to them that it does to straight couples. It just seemed reasonable to me. And, of course, if "same-sex marriage" is legalized, then "same-sex divorce" will be just around the corner. (That's a given, since it already exists.) So if these couples are divorcing at a higher rate, then logically the divorce rate will go up. If the divorce rate goes up, that would have an impact on marriage (genuine marriage), since the current "high divorce rate" already scares people considering marriage and already feeds the divorce idea because "they did it, so why shouldn't we?". (Fact: If people who were not allowed to call their relationship "marriage" are now allowed to do so, then the divorce rate must go up when they dissolve that relationship because prior to this change, they were not among the "married". And everyone knows the #1 cause of divorce is marriage.)

So I thought I'd try to see if there was any merit to this line of thinking. Is it true that same-sex couples have a higher divorce rate than heterosexual couples? What do the statistics say? Well, I found out that they don't. Not that they don't have a higher divorce rate, but that the statistics don't say anything. It appears that, while the government is keeping track of marriages and divorces, they are not keeping track of the "sexual orientation" of the people involved in the divorce. So while studies such as this tell us that homosexual unions have a much higher likelihood of dissolving and, consequently, boosting the divorce rate, you'll never know it because "marriage" has been redefined to mean "the union of whomever wishes to be unionized" or some such and inflated divorce rates will have a greater impact on genuine marriage. But, don't worry. What you don't know can't hurt you, right?