Dollars and Sex by Marina Adshade

Author:Marina Adshade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2013-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

Probably the most important element of this research is that rather than observing that opinions are converging in favor of equal marriage rights, in reality individual communities are diverging in terms of their opinions. So, for example, people who are white have become more accepting of same-sex marriage over time, while the opinion of the black community has remained almost unchanged (71 percent opposed same-sex marriage in 1988, compared with 69 percent in 2006). Democrats have become more accepting relative to Republicans, and non-evangelical Christians have changed their opinions by a greater percentage than have evangelical Protestants.

Baunach argues that the reason for the growing divide is that people in some groups have come to accept that the legalization of same-sex marriage is about equal rights, rather than about morality, while people in other groups have not.

I wonder, though, if the real issue is that the individuals in the more-accepting groups are more likely to have had an opportunity to observe marriages between people of the same gender firsthand. Not only was that the experience in my family, but seemingly the experience of President Barack Obama’s family as well. The record shows that it is much harder to be opposed to same-sex marriage when you see your neighbors, your colleagues, or your family members happily united.

Just as an aside, you might try to use the Pareto efficiency test to see if allowing same-sex marriage makes anyone better off at the expense of making others worse off. If they have not, and I would argue that no one is made worse off in any measurable sense when people of the same gender are allowed to marry, then changing those laws has to be a welfare improvement according to that criterion.

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