Rates of gay marriage

Maggie Gallagher's organization has issued a report finding that few gay couples are getting married in jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is available:

What proportion of gays and lesbians choose marriage where it has been available? The highest estimate to date of the proportion of gays and lesbians who have married in any jurisdiction that permits it is 16.7% (Massachusetts). More typically, our survey of marriage statistics from various countries that legally recognize same-sex unions suggests that today between 1% and 5% of gays and lesbians have entered into a same-sex marriage. In the Netherlands, which has had same-sex marriage as a legal option for the longest period (since 2001), between 2% and 6% of gays and lesbians have entered marriages.

Dale Carpenter comments:

As to the harm gay-marriage opponents claim will be produced, it's even harder to see how this tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the population will cause any practical harm to existing marriages or to marriage as an institution. It's true that a low rate of marriage among gays would mean fewer benefits from recognizing same-sex marriages, but it would also mean correspondingly fewer potential harms caused by the existence of such marriages (such as the modeling of bad marital behavior by nonmonogamous gay male couples).

Of course, if you believe that a "change in the definition of marriage" to include same-sex couples is itself harmful to marriage then marriage will be worse off even if no gay couple actually gets married — but then you didn't need this report to make your argument. To me, this definitional fear has always seemed far too abstract to count for much.

Rob