This is one of those weird questions that baffles much of society and causes arguments that are far beyond reason. You often hear that the advent of gay marriage is just the latest sign of the apocalypse, or something to that effect. Many bad things–a rise in the divorce rate, further deterioration of the morality of our society, etc., are thought to be right behind gay marriage.
Of course, the problem is that none of these things is likely to happen as a result of gay marriage being legalized. Lesbian couples especially are legendary for their fidelity to one another; I’ve never seen any statistics, but most of the lesbians *I* know would probably *raise* the average length of marriage if they were allowed into the statistical pool along with the straight couples. While many gay men “play the field” so to speak, many don’t, also, and frankly what they do isn’t the business of the rest of us anyway, is it?
The strangest part of this political debate, however, is the way it’s handled by the two political parties. Republicans have absolutely nothing to gain by moving one inch to the left (Schwarzenegger’s opposition to the proposed state Constitutional Amendment notwithstanding) because the gay political leadership tends to be scornful of anyone to the right of them on a myriad of issues, gay marriage only being one. Democrats are happy to have gays vote for them in large numbers, and need to do *nothing* to keep them happy. Here in California, they can even occasionally quietly voice opposition to gay marriage themselves: gays have nowhere else to turn. As a result, the Democrats will be happy if the proposed Constitutional amendment passes, and will spend most of their time in the gay community doing their best to tar every Republican (Schwarzenegger included) with the homophobic brush in order to generate support for themselves.
The real solution to this problem (if the gay community wished to actually have the right to marry, as opposed to being a victimized righteous minority) would be to launch their own referendum campaign, and finance it well. It’s not as if there aren’t any wealthy gay people here in California. If they ran the campaign properly, didn’t call anyone a homophobe, were respectful of other opinions, and tackled issues such as child molesting, possible quotas, and the like head-on, they’d probably win handily. Unfortunately, the chances of something like this happening are nil.
