Bells began tolling for same-sex couples in Massachusetts one year ago this week. A year in numbers:Someone should mention this to John Kerry.
Date same-sex couples began legally marrying: May 17, 2004
Number of same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts from May 17, 2004, until February 2005: 6,142
Number of male couples: 2,170
Number of female couples: 3,972
Number of heterosexual marriages in Massachusetts during that time: 30,872
Public support in Massachusetts for marriage equality in April 2005: 56%
Public support one year ago: 35%
Public support across the nation for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman: 53%
Number of states that have amended their constitutions to ban gay marriage since 2004: 14
Percentage of Massachusetts voters who believe gay marriage has had a positive or no impact on the quality of life in Massachusetts: 84%
It’s amazing how Massachusetts hasn’t spontaneously imploded or turned into 7,840 square miles of nothing but leather bars and Bally’s or been the recipient of a brutal and horrific smiting by God himself. In fact, Massachusetts is doing just fine. (Better than most of the red states by just about any empirical measure.) Looks like the doomsayers that were so sure gay marriage would be the end of life as we know it were wrong again, just like they are about everything else. The only thing gay marriage in Massachusetts seems to have been the end of is legalized bigotry. Imagine that.
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