August 1, 2008, Newsletter Issue #95: Marriage Rates for Opposite Sex and Gay Marriages

Tip of the Week

Gay marriage hasn't been legal long enough to establish reliable gay marriage statistics, and many statistics don't separate gay marriage from general marriage rates. Marriage rates have been dropping world wide since 1990. In America, the marriage rate dropped from 232,900 in 2000 to 217,800 in 2004.

Gay marriage, having been illegal for so long, takes a sharp rise wherever it is introduced. When San Francisco legalized gay marriage, 4,037 marriage licenses were issued and 3,995 gay couples were married in the several months before the state intervened and voided the marriages. In a review of the names of couples it was found 57 % of the couples were lesbian. Demographic information also showed most of the couples were older and better educated than average newlywed couples, with more than 74% over 35 years old and 69 % holding a college degree.

For the first six months after gay marriage was legalized in the Netherlands, same-sex marriages made up 3.6% of the total number of marriages. The numbers have steadily dropped since then to around 3%, with 2,500 gay couples marrying in 2001, 1,800 in 2002, 1,200 in 2004, and 1,100 in 2005.

In the 2000 census it was found that there were 601,209 committed gay couples in America.

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