Gay Marriage Opponents Have 'Leave It To Beaver Mentality'

The debate over gay marriage has social conservatives decrying the destruction of the sanctity of marriage, but a nationally renowned marriage expert argues the institution was thrown into chaos long ago.

Once people started eschewing marriage as a business proposition and instead partnered up based on something as fleeting as love, all convention was thrown out the window, says Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage."

"Staying together 'til death do us part' is a bigger challenge than any generation ever had to face," she said. "The fact remains that you're never going to get back to a situation where you can assume every adult is going to spend the majority of their life in marriage."

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In the 1950s, married couples represented 80 percent of all households, Coontz said. By the early 21st century, they were only 50 percent of households. The percentage of households comprised of married couples with children was down to 24 percent, from almost 40 percent a decade or so earlier. For the first time ever, there are more single-person households than married couples with children.

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon05/12/120405marriage.htm

My family was not like Leave it to Beaver back then. Hell, I didn't even KNOW any family that was.

I'm 33, and recently attended a family reunion where several of my mom's cousins (in their 50s) related their stories of telling their grandfather that they were pregnant at 16. (My mom was the only one who had her first child in her 20s and after marriage: She was 25.) Meanwhile, four of the cousins were raised by their father after their mother just split and their parents divorced, while another four were abandoned by their father after their mother died at age 29, because they would ruin his chances of a new life. They were adopted by their grandparents.

If they're so concerned about the institution of marriage, you'd think they'd be encouraging everyone who wants to marry to get married. In Amsterdam, there were more same-sex marriages than opposite sex ones last year. It sounds like gay couples are keeping the institution of marriage alive!

the issues that SINGLE BY CHOICE people face will get those people to the polls. Seeing as there ARE more single person households now, it's time to give these people a little RESPECT. And by so doing, get them into the voting booth.

For the life of me I have always wondered why politicians are scrabbling after soccer moms, savvy seniors and security dads, and whatnot, and totally ignoring a veritable motherlode of people who can easily get their asses into a polling place, if only they are given the motivation to do it.

Their issues need to be articulated by a major candidate, and put forward front and center, not as a throw away line. Single people are a real bargain--they cost employers less (no family health/dental, no daycare credit, no time off to go to the doctor with little Jody), they pay in more than they get back, and their views should be taken into consideration more than they have been in the past.