Where Are All The Gay Marriages?

Ireland has just had a national referendum that passed a constitutional amendment to legalize gay marriage. Same sex couples can already get married in 36 states, and next month the Supreme Court is likely to recognize a right to gay marriage under the Constitution. It seems that gay marriage has already become as traditional as apple pie. And a disclosure, I support gay marriage as a basic legal right, and I recommend to my fellow conservatives to graciously accept that it will probably soon be the law of the land.

And yet, where are all the gay marriages? You would think from the massive PR campaign of the last few years that millions of gay couples were just pining away to get hitched and settle down in a cozy little house with a white picket fence. Well, so far the promised flood of gay marriage licenses has turned out to be not much more than a trickle.

There are now 380,000 married gay couples in America. Out of an estimated adult gay population of 12.5 million, that’s a marriage rate of 6%. That’s not negligible, but far less than a fervent embrace of a right that LGBT activists, liberals and other social engineers assured us was something that most gay people ardently desired.

In reality, the cause of gay marriage was always more of a political objective and a fund raising tool. If you even casually survey broader gay culture and society, you will observe that cruises and cruising, fashion and being fabulous are the main focuses of most gay people. Gay marriage became a rallying cry not so much because it was something a majority of gay people urgently wanted, but because it was something available to straight people but not to gay people. Call it the politics of envy more than a crusade for human rights.

And for some gay people, it is less about marriage per se than it is about weddings. If you take a cursory glance through any gay magazine or website (and I advise doing so with one eye and prepared to quickly avert your attention if you are in the least bit squeamish) you would conclude that very often the gay definition of “wedding” is essentially “a fabulously gay party” (forgive the - intentional - pun). Gay people love to dress up, and on what occasion do people get more dressed up for than a wedding? Of course there’s also lots of gaiety all around, with lavish decor, great dance music, and lots of fancy cakes. And a predictably liberal and boring churchperson there to officiate the ceremony with a lot of blathering about the beautiful rainbow of diversity and so forth.

But as I said, we conservatives need to start accepting the new legal and political realities. A rear guard campaign opposing the fact that gay marriage is here will not be a winning issue in 2016, and President Hillary should be a sobering enough thought. And yes, some people have perfectly justifiable religious and moral objections to same-sex marriages. But then the Republic has so far survived cultural calamities like The Village People and their anthem YMCA, it will almost certainly survive gay marriage as well.