In Bible Belt, gay marriage rights increasingly in flux

[RKP5637]

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2014/0729/In-Bible-Belt-gay-marriage-rights-increasingly-in-flux

ATLANTA — After a federal appeals court on Monday struck down a gay marriage ban backed by 57 percent of voters in Virginia, Roy Cooper, attorney general for Virginia’s neighbor, North Carolina, hoisted a surrender flag.

“There’s no argument left” against banning two consenting adults of the same sex from getting hitched, he said. Mr. Cooper, a Democrat, announced that he will no longer defend the state's gay-marriage ban in court.

The Monday ruling by a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., binds federal judges throughout its entire Bible Belt jurisdiction: West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The ruling will not legally take effect for another three weeks, during which time the defendants can appeal and demand a stay of the order.

Mississippi, where gay marriage is illegal, has the highest percentage of gay couples raising children, according to a report by the Williams Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, which studies gender identity law and policy. And Mississippi is not an outlier: Socially conservative states, many in the South, have higher rates of gay couples raising kids, the Williams Center found. Virginia has 2,500 gay couples raising some 4,000 children.

Different studies have also found that Southern gays are not cloistered only in Atlanta neighborhoods like Midtown and Buckhead. One in 10 couples in rural and mountainous Fannin County, Ga., is gay, according to 2010 census figures. And acceptance is quickly spreading. Today, half of Southerners support gay marriage, a March Washington Post/ABC News poll found.

[randys1]

1. This comment is startling

Mississippi, where gay marriage is illegal, has the highest percentage of gay couples raising children

in Mississippi, really?

[RKP5637]

2. I was amazed by that too! One of the last places I would have thought ... n/t

[d_r]

3. just a guess

In more conservative states young people may be more pressed into denial or the closet. So they may try to have a heterosexual marriage to hide it or thinking they will change. A little reality later and you have a gay couple raising children from the previous marriage.

[LuvNewcastle]

4. There's a lot of that here.

I know a lot of gay couples and single gay people raising children from previous marriages and relationships.. It's not at all uncommon.