(Editors note: We wrote this editorial back in 2005 a year after Massachusetts legalized gay marriage. Since then hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent and the number of new gay marriages have either remained the same or have declined.)
Something in the style section of the New York times caught our eye this week.
It was a piece on gay marriage and the fact that lesbians seem to be tying the not a lot more than gay men.
“Although women have served at the front lines of litigation efforts in the emotional debate over same-sex marriage, the issue’s most vocal opinion leaders have been men, often leaving the impression that marriage is the preoccupying goal of one sex more than the other. Yet of the close to 5,400 couples who have married in Massachusetts since last May, a figure that represents nearly a third of all same-sex partner households in the state identified by the census, almost two-thirds of the couples have been women. Boston was one of the few cities and towns in the state where male marriages outnumbered female ones.”
What caught our eye was not the fact that lesbians were getting married at a greater rate than men but the raw number of 5,400 couples or 10,800 people.
Now there are just under seven million people living in Massachusetts. Yes that is seven followed by six zeros. The number of gay married people in the Bay State is less than two tenths of one percent. 30,000 people the number of “gay households” derived from article is less than six tenths of one percent.
That really isn’t a whole lot of people.
The total population of Elko County for example is close to 50,000 and no one says Elko County is populous.
Now while it is true that not everyone who is gay wants to get married just as not every heterosexual ties the knot but a quick check of Massachusetts demographics revealed there are about 1.5 million married people out there.
Now that’s a lot of people.
Now opponents of gay marriage or civil unions say that those unions threaten the basic building blocks of society.
Proponents say that homosexuals should have the basic right to marry.
But considering all the time money and effort that is being spent on a tiny, tiny part of the population aren’t both sides grandstanding just a little bit?
Aren’t there more important things to be fighting about rather than the nuptial of less than two people out of a thousand?