DES MOINES, Iowa (BP)–Nearly two-thirds of all “gay marriages” in Iowa have involved lesbian couples — a statistic mirrored in other states and one that should impact the nationwide debate on the issue, a leading policy analyst says.
The data from the Iowa Department of Public Health shows that since “gay marriage” was legalized in April 2009, 64 percent of the 2,020 licenses given to same-sex couples were obtained by lesbian partners, the Des Moines Register reported.
It’s a common theme among states that recognize same-sex relationships. In Massachusetts, 64 percent of the “gay marriages” there through the first three years were by lesbian couples. In New Jersey, 60 percent of the same-sex civil union licenses were obtained by lesbian couples through the first few months of that law taking effect.
“One of the interesting things that we will see through this unfortunate same-sex experiment with the family is that gender does matter, and this will be increasingly revealed in the how the same-sex marriage experiment plays itself out, if we have the eyes and wisdom to notice what it is teaching us,” Glenn T. Stanton, the director for family formation studies at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colo., told Baptist Press.
One lesson to learn from the data, Stanton said, is that the natural differences between men and woman — such as the male desire for a physical relationship and the female desire for an emotional one — are skewed in same-sex relationships. Gender, Stanton said, “makes a difference in marriage and family.”
“Man-couples are not as interested in marriage because of how men are wired,” Stanton said. “On the hetero-side, do you think it is women driving the increases in cohabitation? Cohabitation is the relationship on the man’s terms — regular sex with little commitment. This is also why gay couples who have or adopt children are overwhelmingly lesbian. And this is one of the key reasons that natural marriage matters, because women domesticate and socialize men.
“As Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof has explained, men who don’t link themselves to women through marriage don’t tend to be men who settle down.”
The Iowa data also showed that 60 percent of all the “gay marriages” were by out-of-staters.
PORTUGAL LEGALIZES ‘GAY MARRIAGE’ — Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva ratified a law legalizing “gay marriage” in mid-May, making the country the eighth worldwide with such a law. The others are the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway and Sweden.
The president said he disagreed with the law but wouldn’t veto it because the legislature had the votes to override.
“Given that fact, I feel I should not contribute to a pointless extension of this debate, which would only serve to deepen the divisions between the Portuguese and divert the attention of politicians away from the grave problems affecting us,” Cavaco Silva said, according to the Associated Press.
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Michael Foust is an assistant editor of Baptist Press.
