Gay Marriage: The 21 Century's Most Successful Pro-Family Policy

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/gay-marriage-the-21-centurys-most-successful-pro-family-policy/250905/

Rick Santorum would forbid it and nullify existing unions. So how can he claim to be the most pro-family candidate?


There are an estimated 131,729 same-sex married couples in the United States, a Census Bureau figure that would be significantly higher if not for the fact that the vast majority of jurisdictions still prohibit gays and lesbians from marrying. Still, more than a quarter of a million gay people are married to one another. And it's worth explicitly pondering what that means.

For wedded gays and lesbians, it means more financial stability, more emotional stability, better access to health care, hospital visitation rights, and fewer legal burdens in the event of their partner's death. It means a more formal investment in their relationship, and in many cases, vows uttered before family and friends to strengthen their union. It means emotional fulfillment, and the end of the feeling of being discriminated against by one's own government, a valuable thing in itself.

And for the one-third of lesbians and one-fifth of gay men who are parents? For them, It means more stability for their children, plus an opportunity for their socialization into what a loving marriage looks like. For society as a whole, it means gay people share in the same method of family formation as their parents, their straight colleagues, and their heterosexual friends. It means that gay culture is more invested than it would otherwise be in the success of marriage as an institution and in the norm of long-term coupling.

Compared to the old status quo, wherein gay couples were everywhere prohibited from marrying, and often made less financially secure, healthy, and happy as a result -- wherein the children of gays and lesbians enjoyed less stability -- the advance of gay marriage has been the most important and successful pro-family reform of the 21st century, and it's only going to expand as more jurisdictions permit same-sex unions as younger people vote their conscience.