“Marriage is slowly dying in Scandinavia. A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood…. [B]y looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage? It already has.”
This ought to alarm you for this reason: the historical, cultural purpose of marriage is to produce a nuclear family unit for the express purpose of providing genealogically traceable families and raising children. There are many other aspects going with it, but that’s key. Just because the divorce rate is climbing does not mean the institution is worthless, and that we can allow anybody into it. All that does is weaken it even further. It’s like saying, “All right, the glass is already broken. Let’s break it the rest of the way so it’s not a threat to anybody.” It’s juvenile thinking.
