Top 5 Things To Know About Same-sex Marriage In The US

Today marks the first day of Pride Month, and because of this, we want to celebrate by taking a look at one of the landmark decisions for us queer people. I personally don’t think I will ever get married, but deep down in my soul, I believe that marriage is something that any two consent adults should have access to, irrespective of their gender identity or sexual orientation. So, without further ado, let’s dive into this blog and learn some important facts about same-sex marriage in the United States.

1. Statistics

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Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage, and the first legal same-sex marriage was performed on May 17, 2004- a day when seventy-seven other couples in the state also tied the knot. The share of Americans who support same-sex marriage has risen steadily for most of the past decade, but public support has stabilized in recent years.

About four in ten adult Americans (37%) supported allowing gay and lesbian marriage in 2009, a share that rose to 62% in 2017. However, opinions have remained largely unchanged in recent years. About six in ten Americans (61%) support same-sex marriage in the latest Pew Research Center poll on the issue, conducted in March 2019.

2. Support in the United States

Although support for same-sex marriage in the United States has increased across nearly all demographic groups, there are still fairly large demographic and partisan divides. For example, 79 percent of Americans who are not affiliated with any religion now support same-sex marriage, as do 66 percent of white Protestants and 61 percent of Catholics. Among white evangelical Protestants, however, only 29 percent favor same-sex marriage. That’s still twice as many as in 2009 (15%).

While support for same-sex marriage has increased steadily across generational cohorts over the past 15 years, age differences remain wide. For example, 45% of adults in the silent generation (born between 1928 and 1945) support allowing gay and lesbian marriage, while 74% of adults in the millennial generation (born between 1981 and 1996) support it. There is also a significant political divide: Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are much less likely to support same-sex marriage than Democrats and Democrat sympathizers (44% vs. 75%).

3. Rise of same-sex marriage

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Same-sex marriage is on the rise. Gallup polling from 2017 shows that about one in ten LGBT Americans (10.2%) are married to a same-sex partner, an increase from the months before the High Court decision (7.9%). As a result, a majority (61%) of cohabiting same-sex couples were married in 2017, up from 38% before the ruling.

4. Why should queer people get married?

Like the general public, Americans who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), or queer (as an umbrella term) are most likely to cite love as a very important reason for getting married with their partner or for other people to get married. According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, 84% of queer adults and 88% of the general public also cited love as a very important reason for marriage, and at least seven in ten people in both groups cited partnership (71% and 76%, respectively).

There are differences, however. For example, LGBT Americans were twice as likely as the general public to cite legal rights and benefits as an essential reason for marriage (46% vs. 23%), while the general public was nearly twice as likely as queer Americans to cite having children (49% vs. 28%).

5. same-sex marriage in the world

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The US is among 29 countries and jurisdictions that allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. The first nation to legalize same-sex marriage was the Netherlands, which did so in 2000. Since then, several other European countries- including England and Wales, France, Ireland, Scandinavian countries, Spain, Austria, Germany, and Malt- have legalized same-sex marriage more recently.

Outside of these European countries, same-sex marriage is now legal in Australia, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, South Africa, Uruguay, and parts of Mexico. In addition to this, in May 2019, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to allow gays and lesbians to legally marry.

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