Americans warm to gay marriage, sour on marriage – Huh?

The Washington Post 16 March 2016
Family First Comment: How does gay marriage affect anybody, they ask? Here’s the evidence. It weakens the purpose and important role of marriage, and drives the ‘disassociation of marriage from family life’. Ironically, the survey shows ‘attitudes toward divorce have soured’. It only took 45 years to start seeing sense!
Gay marriage? Great. Marriage? Meh.
According to findings released Thursday by the federal government, Americans are warming to the idea of same-sex marriage even as they grow more apathetic about the role marriage, of any sort, should play in regulating family and behavior.
Newly released data from the National Survey of Family Growth, conducted from 2011 to 2013 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, show a decided increase in support of same-sex adoption and relations, but ambivalence about the sexual mores that once governed marriage.
Among women ages 15 to 44, those who agree or strongly agree that same-sex relations are “all right” has increased from 42 percent in 2002 to 60 percent in 2011-13. Men of that age cohort are evenly split on the question — with 49 percent for and 50 percent against — but the numbers are rapidly trending in the same direction.
The survey shows an even more striking shift in attitudes over the past decade on whether same-sex couples should have the right to adopt children. While 55 percent of women in 2002 said they were in favor of such a right, that number ballooned to more than 75 percent. Among men, support for same-sex adoption has swelled to 68 percent, up from 47 percent in 2002.
Even though marriage is no longer seen as tied to sex and child-rearing, the survey shows attitudes toward divorce have soured. While 47 percent of women and 44 percent of men in 2002 said divorce is “usually the best option” for couples struggling to get by, those numbers have dropped to 38 percent and 39 percent, respectively.
Mr. Sprigg speculated that attitudes toward divorce have been shaped by Americans who have grown up in broken households.
“People have seen the wreckage of families that have been devastated by divorce and the lie that this is somehow better for adults and their children,” he said.
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