Demand for SSM/Maggie Gallagher

I got interested in the question of how many gay people marry, where marriage is available, not because I thought it was some sort of "killer app" in the gay marriage debate. It's not the kind of thing where you release the data and anyone will turn and say "Oh Socrates, your position cannot be denied!" (But then that so seldom happen in real life, don't it?. . .)

But the data is (for me) potentially relevant to several potentially important questions, including: Will marriage be a good answer to problems like hospitals who don't treat gay partners well? For if it turns out only a small minority of gay people marry, then marriage is not going to be a very good vehicle for addressing some of the legitimate social needs of gay people being raised in the gay marriage debate.

I have said (and believe) that gay marriage is going to have a bigger effect on marriage than on gay people, because (I believe) only a small minority of gay people will end up married. Jon Rauch is one of many folks who think otherwise, and I think we both recognize this latter particular question is an empirical one to be determined by the future actions of gay people.

To me, the results so far are pretty inconclusive. In general, in most jurisdictions, the demand for gay marriage by gay couples appears to be minimal: somewhere between 1 percent and 5 percent. In the Netherlands, which has had gay marriage for almost 5 years, less than 6 percent of gays and lesbians have married. (Maybe as little as 2 percent). (And that's assuming all the spouses are Dutch citizens). And the numbers are still dropping each year.

There are two big exceptions to this generalization: British Columbia and Massachussetts, both of which have a high proportion of gay marriages, perhaps as high as 14 percent for BC and almost 17 percent for Massachusetts.

If this upper bound figure is accurate, that's a pretty big demand and could signal marriage will eventually be a dominant, or at least majority, experience for gay people.

I suspect these two jursidictions are outliers for a reason however. British Columbia was the earliest province to adopt gay marriage. Quite likely people travelled from other provinces to marry there. Similarly Massachusetts is the only U.S. state which permits gay marriage. Quite likely a substnatial fraction of these Mass. marriages actually have an out of state spouse or even two. In order for nonresident couples to marry in Massachusetts, all they have to do is declare their intent to reside there. Press accounts have certainly reported at least some out of staters getting married in Massachusetts, nobody knows how many.

In which case, the upper bounds of this study would represent a potentially large overestimate of the proportion of gays and lesbians in Massachusetts who chose to marry.

Time(and more research) will tell.

I don't think comparing the proportional marriage rate of straight people to gay people makes a whole lot of sense (though Gary Gates agrees with Jon) because well, the proportion of gay people exposed to the risk of marriage is many, many times higher, since they start out with 0 percent married.

The big dropoff in Massachusetts between 2004 and 2005 is also notable. Almost 6000 couples married in the short 8 months of legal availability in 2004. In 2005 the number dropped sharply to 1300 couples.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds.
posted by maggie at 12:19 AM VOTE

1 Comments:

At 4/28/2006 4:20 PM,  maggie said...

Actually, just to issues a minor correction, Ontario beat British Columbia by about a month. (June 2003 vs July 2003) most other provinces redefined marriage in 04 or early in 05.

We couldn't get stats from Ontario, so BC is the "earliest adopter" we have figures for.

 

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