A Numbers Game

Among the barrage of rhetorical questions that accompany the argument in favor of gay marriage is this: How can such a small minority redefine marriage for such a vast majority? The standard answer — absolutely correct — is that homosexuals' influence on society is extremely disproportionate to their actual numbers. Justice Scalia recognized this in his dissent from Romer v. Evans:

The problem (a problem, that is, for those who wish to retain social disapprobation of homosexuality) is that, because those who engage in homosexual conduct tend to reside in disproportionate numbers in certain communities ... have high disposable income ... and of course care about homosexual-rights issues much more ardently than the public at large, they possess political power much greater than their numbers, both locally and statewide.

And of course, it is indisputable that homosexual causes are put forth not only by homosexuals themselves, but also by elites in such culturally critical institutions as education, law, entertainment, and the arts. Once again, this objection, like so many others, is frequently brushed aside with the cudgels of accusations of bigotry or intransigence.

I recently read, somewhere (I think in a book review in National Review), an idea about unequal pay scales for men and women that nobody from whom I received my education had thought worthy of mention: Men were generally the sole breadwinners, so paying women less was a way in which to ensure that families did not require both spouses to seek full-time employment. Now, you can disagree with this premise, or challenge its insurmountability, but it got me to wondering about something in the gay marriage debate.

Another piece fell into place when I came across a recent survey (PDF) of homosexuals in Rhode Island. As I've already noted, I find this survey's results highly problematic. Nonetheless, they can serve as a somewhat realistic example of homosexuals' disproportion of influence without reference to activism.

According to the summary document for the survey (PDF), "81.1% of the LGBTQ sample for all [Rhode Island] participants over the age of 25" have college degrees. The summary also notes that only 25.6% of all Rhode Islanders of the same age group have a bachelors degree or higher; I'll use 26.4%, which I found on a census table (PDF), so as to compensate somewhat for the fact that the survey includes two-year degrees, while the census does not.

For the sake of simplicity, assume that 5% of Rhode Islanders are homosexual. (It's probably closer to 3% for the population as a whole, but Rhode Island is liberal, gay-friendly, and between New York and Boston.) That means that 4% of the population are homosexuals with college degrees. Subtracting that from the 26.4% total, to get the 22.4% of the population who are straights with college degrees, we find that one out of every 5.6 people in Rhode Island with college degrees are homosexual.

Even considering the vagaries and problems of the numbers involved, here, it can certainly be stated that the disproportionate influence of homosexuals extends far beyond Hollywood. Generally speaking, in every office in Rhode Island that requires a college degree as a baseline, there is a higher percentage of homosexuals than there is of non-whites in the state overall.

The implications of this analysis are more significant than as a measure of influence. Among the premises of marriage, spanning from the theological to the civil, is that it creates a single entity of the two people. With that in mind, consider the competitive disadvantage that heterosexual married couples will face economically speaking. I've had a hard time tracking down dual-income married statistics, but the Christian Science Monitor put the percentage of "dewks" (dual-employed with kids) for 1998 at 51%.

At this point, the various statistics from various sources become unwieldy, and much data is unknown (e.g., how many homosexuals would actually marry). However, as a matter of biology and sociology, it is very likely that heterosexuals will remain much more likely to have children. In the next post, I intend to show that almost all married couples between the ages of 25 and 45 have children under 18; the rate for homosexual marriage would surely come nowhere near that. The higher rates of higher education and lower rates of parenthood among homosexuals combine to harm — not just theoretically, but actually — the single greatest purpose that gives even secular society an interest in recognizing and "rewarding" marriage.

This way of approaching the debate is still new to me, requiring substantial consideration of the way in which the numbers ought to be estimated and compared. Suffice, for now, to say that not only would the possibility of matrimony offer homosexuals incentive to pair up (as distinct from the culture of that pairing), but it would do so more than it does for heterosexuals. And it does so to the competitive disadvantage of the family form that society has the most interest in encouraging: procreative marriages in which one parent takes on the "occupation" of raising the children.