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Posted on August 27, 2004
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Civil Society
Effect of Same-Sex Marriage on Heterosexual Marriage
University of Massachusetts economist Lee Badgett has studied marriage customs in the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, where same-sex marriage or same-sex partnership rights have existed for up to fifteen years. She found, and noted in a briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families and the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, that previously existing trends in marriage, divorce, cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock childbearing did not change. In fact, in Denmark, heterosexual marriage rates increased after the adoption of same-sex marriage and are now the highest they have been since the early 1970s. Divorce rates remained the same in the countries studied. The majority of families with children are headed by married couples. In Norway, 77 percent of couples with children are married and in the Netherlands, 75 percent, compared to 72 percent in the United States. According to Badgett, the Scandinavian and Dutch experience suggests there is little reason to think heterosexual couples would eschew marriage if gay and lesbian couples got the same rights.
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