With divorce rates well over 50 percent; with the number of couples cohabiting, even raising children, outside of marriage, on the rise; with Britney Spears marrying for a night; how is it that gay civil unions can harm the institution of marriage? To the contrary, by looking for and maybe finding something in marriage that most straights have given up on–lifelong commitment–gays may help breathe new life into the institution.
Certainly my own straight marriage will stand or fall on its own, regardless of what gays do, and I’m sorry for people whose own marriages are so shaky as to be jeopardized by what others do. At worst, gays may find, as so many of the rest of us have, that a ceremony and a piece of paper can’t fill the void left when love and mutual respect are gone, and no constitutional amendment can change that.
