Myth: Gay people want to be married to the person they love!
Fact: Gay people want other gay people to be able to be married to the person they love. As long as they don't actually, you know, go through with it.
In the Australian census of 2006, only 50,000 adults out of 17,000,000 (or 1 in 340) reported being in a same sex partnership. This compares to 203 in 340 reporting being in a straight partnership. If partnering rates were the same in gay Australia as they are in straight Australia, we'd expect to see at least another 200,000 gay couples flouncing about. But as it is, the rate is running at about 20% of all gay adults (assuming a very conservative rate of homosexuality at 2.5%).
There may well be a few militant gay couples who refuse to acknowledge their relationship until they are allowed to call it a "marriage". But they would be nowhere near numerous enough to explain this discrepancy.
So what does explain this discrepancy? At first I wondered if the absence of a female in the relationship removed some of the drive to settle down and make a nest. But if that were the case, one would expect to see much higher partnership rates for lesbians... and they're not there. Partnership rates between gay men and between lesbians are roughly similar.
More likely, it would seem, is a combination of two primary factors. One, it's harder to find a compatible mate when your sexual orientation is limited to a tiny minority of the population. And two, homosexuals don't experience the same social imperatives to partner up and reproduce the families that created them. Sure, a mother might nag her gay son to find someone and settle down, but it won't have the same force behind it as her nagging of her straight son to marry his girlfriend and start popping out grandchildren. In the latter situation, she sees strong echoes of her own experience and priorities. In the former, the correlations to her own experience are more muted.
I use the mother here as an example, but the social pressure to follow the traditional familial and reproductive narrative comes from every part of our culture. And it's directed at the straights; it's merely coopted by the gays, and not, apparently, in large numbers.
Fact: Gay people want other gay people to be able to be married to the person they love. As long as they don't actually, you know, go through with it.
In the Australian census of 2006, only 50,000 adults out of 17,000,000 (or 1 in 340) reported being in a same sex partnership. This compares to 203 in 340 reporting being in a straight partnership. If partnering rates were the same in gay Australia as they are in straight Australia, we'd expect to see at least another 200,000 gay couples flouncing about. But as it is, the rate is running at about 20% of all gay adults (assuming a very conservative rate of homosexuality at 2.5%).
There may well be a few militant gay couples who refuse to acknowledge their relationship until they are allowed to call it a "marriage". But they would be nowhere near numerous enough to explain this discrepancy.
So what does explain this discrepancy? At first I wondered if the absence of a female in the relationship removed some of the drive to settle down and make a nest. But if that were the case, one would expect to see much higher partnership rates for lesbians... and they're not there. Partnership rates between gay men and between lesbians are roughly similar.
More likely, it would seem, is a combination of two primary factors. One, it's harder to find a compatible mate when your sexual orientation is limited to a tiny minority of the population. And two, homosexuals don't experience the same social imperatives to partner up and reproduce the families that created them. Sure, a mother might nag her gay son to find someone and settle down, but it won't have the same force behind it as her nagging of her straight son to marry his girlfriend and start popping out grandchildren. In the latter situation, she sees strong echoes of her own experience and priorities. In the former, the correlations to her own experience are more muted.
I use the mother here as an example, but the social pressure to follow the traditional familial and reproductive narrative comes from every part of our culture. And it's directed at the straights; it's merely coopted by the gays, and not, apparently, in large numbers.
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