Change the rules of the game, and people’s behaviors change. Now that marriage is an option, some gay men are saving their virginity until they find the right person to marry. Whodathunkit, right?
Funny what happens when society treats everyone equally – as true freedom means freedom for all kinds of choices, even unexpected ones.
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis had huge hits with their songs Thrift Shop and Can’t Hold Us, and then another unexpected hit in Same Love, a song that makes the political case for gay marriage. Or as Macklemore puts it: “No freedom till we’re equal. Damn right I support it.”
More on the success of Same Love at the NY Times.
Having grown up in a Mormon community largely defined by its sense of being persecuted and misunderstood, primarily around the issue of marriage, it is painful to watch the inability of Mormons to get the irony of their anti-marriage positions.
For my theory on why Mormons, of all people, cling to the narrowest definitions of traditional marriage click here.
A marriage equality video from Australia. Just watch it. It had me tearing up.
…partly because it is beautifully done, and partly because it is so powerfully clear.
Some other beautiful ads from Argentina collected by Blabbeando, and a sweet one from Canada.
- State with gay marriage the longest: Massachusetts, at 10 years.
- State with the lowest divorce rate: Massachusetts.
- Bonus Round: States with the highest divorce rate: The Bible Belt.
So much for gay marriage destroying straight marriage.
Of course correlation is not causality, as it is education that correlates with longer marriages, while religiosity correlates with increased divorce. For a fuller discussion of why, click here.
A funny and thought provoking map of the varieties of non-monogamous relationships from Franklin Veaux’s Journal.
(Click to embiggen)