Chaim Amalek writes: “Women are the gatekeepers of sexuality, and if there is no gatekeeper at the gate, anyone who wants to can just barge right on in.”
Timothy J. Dailey writes for the Family Research Council: “Married and Gay Couples Not All that Different,” proclaimed the headline of a news article portraying homosexual households as remarkably similar to married couples. “We’re the couple next door,” claimed one partnered homosexual. “We have a dog and a cat. I drive a Volvo. I’m boring.”[1] Such down-home portrayals of homosexual couples are meant to provoke the question: Since gay couples really differ only in that both partners are of the same sex, what rational basis exists for denying them full marriage rights?
Are homosexual households, as the article suggests, simply another variant of human relationships that should be considered, along with marriage, as “part of mainstream American society”?
On the contrary, the evidence indicates that “committed” homosexual relationships are radically different from married couples in several key respects:
relationship duration
monogamy vs. promiscuity
relationship commitment
number of children being raised
health risks
rates of intimate partner violence
Finally, this paper will present evidence from gay activists themselves indicating that behind the push for gay marriage lies a political agenda to radically change the institution of marriage itself.
RELATIONSHIP DURATION
Gay activists often point to high divorce rates and claim that married couples fare little better than homosexuals with regard to the duration of their relationships. The research, however, indicates that male homosexual relationships last only a fraction of the length of most marriages.
Married Couples
A 2001 National Center for Health Statistics study on marriage and divorce statistics reported that 66 percent of first marriages last ten years or longer, with fifty percent lasting twenty years or longer.[2]
Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2001)
A 2002 U.S. Census Bureau study reported similar results, with 70.7 percent of women married between 1970 and 1974 reaching their tenth anniversary and 57.7 percent staying married for twenty years or longer.[3]
Source: Current Population Reports: U.S. Census Bureau (2002)
Male Homosexual Relationships
The 2003-2004 Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census surveyed the lifestyles of 7,862 homosexuals. Of those involved in a “current relationship,” only 15 percent describe their current relationship as having lasted twelve years or longer, with five percent lasting more than twenty years.[4] While this “snapshot in time” is not an absolute predictor of the length of homosexual relationships, it does indicate that few homosexual relationships achieve the longevity common in marriages.
Source: 2003-2004 Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census
In The Sexual Organization of the City, University of Chicago sociologist Edward Laumann argues that “typical gay city inhabitants spend most of their adult lives in ‘transactional’ relationships, or short-term commitments of less than six months.”[5]
A study of homosexual men in the Netherlands published in the journal AIDS found that the “duration of steady partnerships” was 1.5 years.[6]
In his study of male homosexuality in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, Pollak found that “few homosexual relationships last longer than two years, with many men reporting hundreds of lifetime partners.”[7]
In Male and Female Homosexuality, Saghir and Robins found that the average male homosexual live-in relationship lasts between two and three years.[8]
MONOGAMY VS. PROMISCUITY: SEXUAL PARTNERS OUTSIDE OF THE RELATIONSHIP
Lest anyone suffer the illusion that any equivalency between the sexual practices of homosexual relationships and traditional marriage exists, the statistics regarding sexual fidelity within marriage are revealing:
Married couples
A nationally representative survey of 884 men and 1,288 women published in the Journal of Sex Research found that 77 percent of married men and 88 percent of married women had remained faithful to their marriage vows.[9]
A 1997 national survey appearing in The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States found that 75 percent of husbands and 85 percent of wives never had sexual relations outside of marriage.[10]
A telephone survey conducted for Parade magazine of 1,049 adults selected to represent the demographic characteristics of the United States found that 81 percent of married men and 85 percent of married women reported that they had never violated their marriage vows.[11]
Male Homosexuals
Research indicates that the average male homosexual has hundreds of sex partners in his lifetime:
The Dutch study of partnered homosexuals, which was published in the journal AIDS, found that men with a steady partner had an average of eight sexual partners per year.[12]
Bell and Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having one thousand or more sex partners.[13]
In their study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in the Journal of Sex Research, Paul Van de Ven et al. found that “the modal range for number of sexual partners ever [of homosexuals] was 101-500.” In addition, 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent had between 501 and 1,000 partners. A further 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent reported having had more than one thousand lifetime sexual partners.[14]
A survey conducted by the homosexual magazine Genre found that 24 percent of the respondents said they had had more than one hundred sexual partners in their lifetime. The magazine noted that several respondents suggested including a category of those who had more than one thousand sexual partners.[15]
“Commitment” in Male Homosexual Couples
Even in those homosexual relationships in which the partners consider themselves to be in a committed relationship, the meaning of “committed” or “monogamous” typically means something radically different than in heterosexual marriage.
A Canadian study of homosexual men who had been in committed relationships lasting longer than one year found that only 25 percent of those interviewed reported being monogamous.” According to study author Barry Adam, “Gay culture allows men to explore different…forms of relationships besides the monogamy coveted by heterosexuals.”[16]
The Handbook of Family Diversity reported a study in which “many self-described ‘monogamous’ couples reported an average of three to five partners in the past year. Blasband and Peplau (1985) observed a similar pattern.”[17]
In The Male Couple, authors David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison reported that, in a study of 156 males in homosexual relationships lasting from one to thirty-seven years:
Only seven couples have a totally exclusive sexual relationship, and these men all have been together for less than five years. Stated another way, all couples with a relationship lasting more than five years have incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity in their relationships.[18]
As the following chart shows, the extremely low rate of sexual fidelity among homosexual men dramatically contrasts with the high rate of fidelity among married heterosexuals.
According to McWhirter and Mattison, most homosexual men understood sexual relations outside the relationship to be the norm and viewed adopting monogamous standards as an act of oppression.
In their Journal of Sex Research study of the sexual practices of older homosexual men, Paul Van de Ven et al. found that only 2.7 percent of older homosexuals had only one sexual partner in their lifetime.[19]
Brad Hayton provides insight into the attitudes of many homosexuals towards commitment and marriage:
Homosexuals…are taught by example and belief that marital relationships are transitory and mostly sexual in nature. Sexual relationships are primarily for pleasure rather than procreation. And they are taught that monogamy in a marriage is not the norm [and] should be discouraged if one wants a good “marital” relationship.[20]
While the rate of fidelity within marriage cited by these studies remains far from ideal, there is a significant difference between the negligible lifetime fidelity rate cited for homosexuals and the 75 to 90 percent cited for married couples. This indicates that even “committed” homosexual relationships display a fundamental incapacity for the faithfulness and commitment that is axiomatic to the institution of marriage.
LEVEL OF COMMITMENT IN HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
If homosexuals and lesbians truly desired the same kind of commitment signified by marriage, then one would expect them to take advantage of the opportunity to enter into civil unions or registered partnerships, which grant them legal recognition as well as the legal rights of marriage. However, surprisingly few homosexuals and lesbians choose to enter into such legally recognized unions where such arrangements are available, indicating that such couples do not share the same view of commitment as typified by married couples.
Vermont
In April 2000, the governor of the state of Vermont signed a law instituting civil unions for homosexuals. The bill conferred 300 privileges and rights enjoyed by married couples upon same-sex partners who register their relationship with the town clerk and have their union solemnized by a member of the clergy or the justice of the peace.
Estimating the homosexual and lesbian population of Vermont: The number of homosexuals and lesbians in the state of Vermont may be estimated based on national studies. Contrary to the widely promulgated but inaccurate claims that up to ten percent of the population is homosexual, research indicates that homosexuals comprise one to three percent of the population. For example, a recent study in Demography relying upon three large data sets–the General Social Survey, the National Health and Social Life Survey, and the U.S. Census–estimated the number of exclusive male homosexuals in the general population to be 2.5 percent and the number of exclusive lesbians to be 1.4 percent.[21]
According to the 2000 Census, the adult population of Vermont is 461,304.[22] Based on the Demography study, a reasonable estimate of the number of homosexuals and lesbians in Vermont would be approximately 5,600 (2.5 percent of the adult male population) for male homosexuals, and approximately 3,300 (1.4 percent of the adult female population) for lesbians, for a total of approximately 8,900 homosexuals and lesbians. [Note: these are only rough approximations for purposes of statistical comparison.]
Number of homosexuals and lesbians in Vermont who have entered into civil unions: USA Today reports that, as of January 2004, only 936 homosexual or lesbian couples (for a total of 1,872 individuals) have entered into civil unions.[23] This indicates that only about 21 percent of the estimated homosexual and lesbian population of Vermont has entered into civil unions. Put another way, 79 percent of homosexuals and lesbians in Vermont choose not to enter into civil unions.
By contrast, in Vermont, heterosexual married couples outnumber cohabiting couples by a margin of 7 to 1, indicating a much higher level of desire on the part of heterosexual couples to legalize their relationships.[24]
For purposes of comparison it may be useful to examine two countries that have granted special rights to homosexuals, including marriage-like civil unions, which grant gays and lesbians virtually all of the rights of marriage.
Sweden
In 1995 Sweden passed the Registered Partnership Act which created civil unions for homosexual couples. In 2003 that law was amended to give registered homosexual couples the same right to adopt or have legal custody of children as married couples. The percentage of homosexual or lesbians in Sweden that enter into civil unions may be estimated as fo llows:
Estimated homosexual and lesbian population of Sweden: Extrapolating from the Demography estimates in the U.S., a similar percentage of the homosexual and lesbian population of Sweden would be approximately 140,000 (2.5 percent of the adult male population of 3,531,554, and 1.4 percent of the adult female population of 3,679,317).[25]
Number of homosexuals and lesbians in Sweden who have registered their unions: The number of registered same-sex unions in Sweden is reported to be about 1,500 (for a total of 3,000 individuals) out of the estimated homosexual and lesbian population of 140,000.[26] This indicates that only about two percent of Swedish homosexuals and lesbians choose to enter into legally recognized unions. Put another way, about 98 percent of Swedish homosexuals and lesbians do not officially register as same-sex couples.
The Netherlands
A landmark law allowing same-sex “marriage” was instituted in the Netherlands on March 31, 2001, with a highly publicized communal ceremony that included two lesbian “brides” and six homosexual “grooms.” The Netherlands instituted a “registered partnership” law in 1998 that accorded legal status to homosexual relationships similar to that of marriage. The new law, which explicitly recognizes same-sex matrimony, is restricted to Dutch nationals. However, as the following analysis shows, the percentage of homosexuals and lesbians that have entered into marriage-like civil unions is very low.
Estimated homosexual and lesbian population of the Netherlands: Extrapolating from demographic figures for homosexuals and lesbians in the U.S., a similar percentage for the Netherlands would be 242,000 (2.5 percent of the adult male population of 6,161,662, and 1.4 percent of the adult female population of 6,311,338).[27]
Number of Dutch homosexuals and lesbians who have registered their unions: A news report by the Gay Financial Network predicted that “some 10,000 gay couples could be married” in the first year following the legalization of gay “marriage” in the Netherlands. In reality, far fewer chose to solemnize their relationships. The Office of Legislative Research released a report in October 2002 stating: “The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs reports that 3,383 of the 121,776 marriages licensed between April 1, 2001, and June 30, 2002, involved people of the same sex.”[28]
Thus, as of October 2002, only 2.8 percent, or 6,766 individuals (3,383 licenses) out of an estimated homosexual and lesbian population of 242,000, have registered their unions as “married.”
