Axios reports:
The U.S. has not seen any negative effects on marriage, divorce or living arrangements among all couples since Massachusetts issued the first state-sanctioned, same-sex marriage licenses 20 years ago, a new analysis says.
A review of nearly 100 studies examining the consequences of same-sex marriage on multiple measures of family formation and well-being found no harm to different-sex unions, a report from RAND and UCLA found.
The analysis found that after states legalized marriage for same-sex couples, marriage numbers jumped in those states at rates greater than what could be accounted for by the new marriages of same-sex couples alone. Researchers found no consistent evidence of an increase in divorce as a consequence of legalizing marriage for same-sex couples.
Read the full article. Hate groups warned back then and continue to claim today that same-sex marriage would result in the destruction of the “natural family.” Some, such as the Liberty Counsel, have claimed that same-sex marriage laws legalized pedophilia, bestiality, and incest marriages. Last month the Liberty Counsel declared that the still unfolding 2015 Kim Davis case will soon be before the Supreme Court.

I remember arguing with a RW acquaintance back in 2004 (when it was all the rage for red states to put Anti-Gay Marriage propositiions on the ballot to turn out the Talibangelical vote for Shrub and the War Criminals) over this very subject, he claimed that marriage rates in Europe had fallen precipitously when the Netherlands first made same-sex sort-of-but-not-really-marriage legal.
I was able (with an ‘arduous’ 10, maybe 20 minutes googling research?) to show that marriage rates had fallen steadily for the past 20 years at the time that happened, and showed no change after the legalization, but what it DID correspond to was the steady decline in religiosity of the European population, and the expansion of the European social democratic state and benefits that were not tied to marriage.
He refused to accept this, of course. The scary thing is that he’s an engineer who works on bridge design. Faith-based bridges, just the thing our aging infrastructure needs! (even then our infrastructure was falling apart!)
He also got phenomenally pissed that I accurately told him that he was objectively in favor to taking children away from their parents based on their political beliefs in the whole Elian Gonzales episode.
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Hi brucedesertrat. Yes I often run into that when trying to correct misconceptions and long held bigotries. I get the same response when trying to correct Covid anti-vaxxers. They seem unable to process anything new if it doesn’t come from a bombastic preacher / right wing media host. Anything that doesn’t fit their already formed bigotry, hate, and racism along with now if it doesn’t come from the political tribe they belong to it is ignored no matter how correct. And to tell the truth I don’t know how to get through to them. One anti-trans person used to come here and spout the latest lies against trans people. Each time I would show them the correct study, debunk the lie, show them the truth. Next time they were here arguing against trans people they would repeat the same debunked already discussed stuff. Frustrating is beyond the word to describe it. Hugs. Scottie
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