Are gays the marrying kind?

Many wonder. Jonathan Rauch points to his 1996 article in The New Republic, Making the case for gay (and straight) marriage, and says ever since then he’s “been concerned that G&L people might demand marriage but then neglect it.”

He finds in a study (pdf) from the Williams Institute at UCLA “welcome evidence” that we won’t:

We analyze data from states that have extended legal recognition to same-sex couples. We show that same-sex couples want and use these new legal statuses. Furthermore, they react more enthusiastically when marriage is possible. More than 40% of same-sex couples have formed legal unions in states where such recognition is available. Same-sex couples prefer marriage over civil unions or domestic partnerships. In the first year that marriage was offered in Massachusetts, 37% of same-sex couples there married. In states that offered civil unions, only 12% of same-sex couples took advantage of this status in the first year and only 10% did so in states with domestic partnership registries.

Focus On The Family’s CitizenLink will have none of it. They argue that the “supposedly unbiased” institute “claims to be a public-education program” but it can’t be because it “receives funding from Tim Gill — a gay activist and software mogul who has spent millions promoting the gay agenda.”

Jenny Tyree, associate marriage analyst for Focus on the Family Action, cited data from the U.S., Canada and Europe that show, after an initial rush, a dramatic decrease in the number of same-sex unions following legalization of gay “marriage.”

“The report’s projections assume that the inherent nature of male-male and female-female relationships is the same as male-female and that they will respond similarly to legal recognition,” she said. “But it seems unlikely when science tells us that male and female are unique, even at the cellular level.

“Marriage traditionally celebrates the differences between male and female, and gives a mother and father to children. There will be little to celebrate, however, if marriage is reduced to nothing more than benefits for two consenting adults.”

Jonathan’s cautious optimism makes more sense to me:

It takes generations to establish a culture of marriage in a social milieu where marriage has always been not just illegal but inconceivable. Low take-up rates, by themselves, would not vitiate the case for SSM. But it is good to know that gay culture is already responding to this powerfully life-enhancing institution.

In the meanwhile, Obama has reaffirmed his support for LGBT adoption rights,  CA Attorney General Jerry Brown said in a court filing Monday that Prop 8 will not undo same-sex legal marriages, and with Prop 8 supporters raising more money than opponents some on the Right have declared it “the Armageddon of the culture war.”