I've decided I don't believe in gay rights. I believe in human rights.
For a long time, I've been saying that that's the most lethal strategic mistake the gay political movement has made.
We all know people legally eligible to marry who don't, for a variety of reasons. Therre is a whole genre of urban legend about, for instance, pensioners who live as husband and wife, but don't marry because their retirement benefits would go down. The fraction of all households with children has gone from 2/3 in 1900 to 1/4 in 2000 (with lots more consequences in other directions!). And average household size has gone steadily down.
So "gay marriage" was a blunder. We need a legal status of "household", with attendant rights and privileges.
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Date: 2006-10-04 06:02 pm (UTC)For a long time, I've been saying that that's the most lethal strategic mistake the gay political movement has made.
We all know people legally eligible to marry who don't, for a variety of reasons. Therre is a whole genre of urban legend about, for instance, pensioners who live as husband and wife, but don't marry because their retirement benefits would go down. The fraction of all households with children has gone from 2/3 in 1900 to 1/4 in 2000 (with lots more consequences in other directions!). And average household size has gone steadily down.
So "gay marriage" was a blunder. We need a legal status of "household", with attendant rights and privileges.