Interesting article in USA Today—no, it’s a periodical not on my usual reading list, but this morning I briefly scanned the front page of a copy in the hands of a fellow Metro rider—on the state of gay civil unions in Vermont, “mostly affairs of the heart”:
Vermont statistics indicate that gay marriage has a limited appeal, to couples both in and out of the state. The annual number of civil unions has dropped steadily after the first year. Just half the gay households in the state have taken advantage of the law.
Vermont also provides a glimpse of how society reacts to gay marriage. The strong opposition to civil unions that initially resulted from the law has dissipated as it has become clear what gay unions are and what they are not. And the predicted “gay invasion” of the state by outsiders seeking legal haven has failed to materialize.
I found these two statements almost contradictory, though: “gay marriage has a limited appeal” and “half the gay househoulds in the state have taken advantage of the law.” And I found the paper’s use of the word “just” in that latter statement—“just half”—odd.
The fact that in just over one year’s availability, one out of every two gay couples in the state opted in doesn’t necessarily seem to imply “limited appeal.” After all, according to one online source I found (from the Family Institute at Duquesne University), the present pre-marriage cohabitation rate for straight couples is probably 50-60% (eventually, after a median time-span of 1.3 years, 60% of cohabiting couples do marry, though 60% of those marriages later end in divorce); in 1998 cohabiting straight couples represented 10% of all couples in the U.S.