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Divorce Down, Marriage Up In Iowa After Marriage Equality Ruling

07/26/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
If lesbians and gays are allowed to get married, then traditional marriage will crumble. This has been the fear-mongering canard pushed by many of the groups such as the National Organization for Marriage. While that fear does not find its way into the minds of many, it has needed some scientific evidence backing it up. On a statistical level, apparently, that has been proven wrong.

A year after the Iowa State Supreme Court ruled that lesbians and gays were constitutionally guaranteed the right to marry. Iowa became the third state to recognize marriage equality by that means not counting California which had that ruling overridden by Prop 8. Apparently, marriages in Iowa are up, but divorces are down. While the divorce numbers may be because of the economic downturn, which makes it very hard to get divorced, marriages being up may not be related to the economy because it also costs money to get married.

Apparently, according to the Sioux City Journal, Iowa has had its lowest divorces last year since 1970, and the state turned around a trend of declining marriage numbers for the first time in four years. More than 2,000 same-sex weddings took place in Iowa last year.

Drake University lecturer Laurie Linhart stated “That’s really good news.”

Apparently in Massachusetts, which has had same-sex marriage for six years now has had the lowest divorces in the state since World War II.

The divorce rates may not reflect too much on the passage of same-sex marriage, but more that it is a reflection of the costs of getting divorced versus the benefits of staying married even in a broken marriage.

The marriage boost. . .now that is harder to pin on economics.