School of Community Health, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2013 Jun 11;8(6):e65730. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0065730. Print 2013.
Marriage benefits both individuals and societies, and is a fundamental determinant of health. Until recently same sex couples have been excluded from legally recognized marriage in the United States. Recent debate around legalization of same sex marriage has highlighted for anti-same sex marriage advocates and policy makers a concern that allowing same sex couples to marry will lead to a decrease in opposite sex marriages. Our objective is to model state trends in opposite sex marriage rates by implementation of same sex marriages and other same sex unions.
Marriage data were obtained for all fifty states plus the District of Columbia from 1989 through 2009. As these marriage rates are non-stationary, a generalized error correction model was used to estimate long run and short run effects of same sex marriages and strong and weak same sex unions on rates of opposite sex marriage. We found that there were no significant long-run or short run effects of same sex marriages or of strong or weak same sex unions on rates of opposite sex marriage.
A deleterious effect on rates of opposite sex marriage has been argued to be a motivating factor for both the withholding and the elimination of existing rights of same sex couples to marry by policy makers-including presiding justices of current litigation over the rights of same sex couples to legally marry. Such claims do not appear credible in the face of the existing evidence, and we conclude that rates of opposite sex marriages are not affected by legalization of same sex civil unions or same sex marriages.
婚姻对个人和社会都有益处，是健康的基本决定因素。直到最近，在美国，同性伴侣还被排除在合法认可的婚姻之外。最近，围绕同性婚姻合法化的辩论引起了反同性婚姻的倡导者和政策制定者的关注，他们担心允许同性伴侣结婚会导致异性婚姻的减少。我们的目标是通过同性婚姻和其他同性结合的实施来模拟各州异性婚姻率的趋势。
从 1989 年到 2009 年，我们从 50 个州加上哥伦比亚特区获得了所有婚姻数据。由于这些婚姻率是非平稳的，我们使用广义误差修正模型来估计同性婚姻和强、弱同性结合对异性婚姻率的长期和短期影响。我们发现，同性婚姻或强、弱同性结合对异性婚姻率没有显著的长期或短期影响。
有人认为，对异性婚姻率的不利影响是政策制定者剥夺和取消同性伴侣结婚权利的动机因素，包括当前关于同性伴侣合法结婚权利诉讼的主审法官。面对现有的证据，这些说法似乎并不可信，我们的结论是，同性民事结合或同性婚姻的合法化不会影响异性婚姻率。
