In praise of marriage

Same-sex marriage is better than mere civil unions, according to a report from New Jersey. (Britain, take note!)

“In a number of cases,” says the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission (CURC), “the negative effect of the [state’s] Civil Union Act on the physical and mental health of same-sex couples and their children is striking, largely because a number of employers and hospitals do not recognize the rights and benefits of marriage for civil union couples.”

Pink News has the details of how civil unions were introduced in New Jersey after the state Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling that gay and lesbian couples are entitled to equal civil rights.

The Governor of New Jersey, Jon Corzine, backed the commission’s conclusions. “While this administration is focused squarely on the economic crisis for the foreseeable future, it’s clear that this issue of civil rights must be addressed sooner rather than later,” he says.

Opponents of gay marriage have attacked the commission’s conclusions.

“The CURC’s argument that redefining marriage would not cause any economic fallout is laughable,” says Toni Meyer, director of research for “traditional family” group the New Jersey Family Protection Council, “and the insinuation that children would somehow benefit from society equating same-sex unions to marriage is sadly false.”

Meyer goes on to cite research from Scandinavia. “In Scandinavia, where same-sex unions have been legal longest, government data shows that same-sex unions break up at a significantly higher rate, valid research shows that children raised in these households are more confused about their sexual identity, and more likely to be promiscuous, and LGB youth are more likely to experience teen pregnancy.”

The actions of pillocks like you who continue to bang on about how “traditional marriage” is better than same-sex unions – maximising the possibility that people will feel hostile towards same-sex relationships, and maximising the discomfort many will feel about being in same-sex relationships while there is so much hostility – are bound to skew things. You’re not getting an untainted reading.

Let all of society be accepting of same-sex unions – totally, unequivocally, unreservedly – and take these readings in twenty years’ time. My bet – unscientific, but, I would humbly submit, worth the experiment – is that everyone would just not consider same-sex unions an issue, they’d just get on with life, kids of either type of union would know no difference and feel no antagonism coming from other kids, and we’d all live happily ever after.

Apart from all the other shit life dishes up, but you can’t have everything.