But your link says that heterosexual people cant hold fast to each other without marriage? Your link, not mine. Yours. You.
Have a nice day.
It says cohabitation does not confer the benefits of marriage, and then gives reasons for such. Marriage starts with committment. Commitment comes BEFORE marriagem not after. Getting a marriage will not reinforce commitment, commitment is the horse which must go before the cart.
Are these the only factors by which marriage produces greater health?
No. Psychologists tell us that much of the health and longevity benefit of marriage comes because married people have a greater sense of life purpose. Married people are happier, more optimistic, and more energetic than singles, and they are less likely to become depressed.18 Proponents of same-sex marriage have sought to debunk these statistics as self-fulfilling prophecies, reflecting that happy people are more likely to get married than unhappy people. But careful studies have found that marriage, in itself, improves mental health just as it improves physical health.19 It isn't just avoiding "stupid bachelor behavior" or making more trips to the doctor that is at work here. Marriage itself makes people healthier and happier and therefore allows them to live longer.
Married people have sex considerably more often than single people do, and they enjoy it more. Studies consistently show that both married men and married women enjoy sex much more than single people do-especially single women, who, in most studies, don't seem to be having much fun.20 But it isn't just women having better sex: Studies show that men find sex in a committed relationship far more satisfying than casual sex. Despite all the myths and television shows, men value commitment nearly as much as women do. Researchers also have observed that sexual infidelity hampers sexual satisfaction and general happiness in both sexes.21 Fidelity makes you happier and improves your marriage, and, as we have seen, people in happier marriages live longer.
Heterosexual couples who cohabitate-who live together without marriage-do not enjoy most of these benefits of marriage.22 Their lack of commitment to one another and their preference for autonomy and separateness deprives them of most of the emotional and sexual benefits of marriage and most of its health and longevity advantages. Marriage matters.
What other benefits does marriage have?
Marriage, unlike cohabitation, also makes people richer.23 After men marry, they work more productively and make more money than they did when they were single.24 Women also become more productive workers when they marry and earn more money than they did when they were single,25 although they do leave the workforce from time to time to bear and raise children. Marriage overall has a positive financial impact on both sexes.26
Married couples tend to specialize, dividing household tasks according to the talents and interests of each spouse. Specialization makes them more efficient, so they have more time for each other, for parenting, or for other activities.27 Further, since two can live almost as cheaply as one, household overhead decreases with marriage, and savings increase.28
17# Waite and Gallagher, op. cit., 47-77.
18# Ibid, 57, 65-77.
19# Marks and Lambert, op. cit., 652-86.
20# Edward O. Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Scott Stanley and Howard Markman, Marriage in the 90s: A Nationwide Random Phone Survey (Denver: PREP, Inc., 1997).
21# Robert G. Bringle and Bram P. Buunk, "Extradyadic Relationships and Sexual Jealousy," in Sexuality in Close Relationships, eds. K. McKinney and S. Sprecher (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991), 135-53.
22# Arne Mastekaasa, "The Subjective Well-being of the Previously Married: The Importance of Unmarried Cohabitation and Time Since Widowhood or Divorce," Social Forces 73 (1994): 665-92.
23# U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1997), 466, table 719.
24# Sanders Korenman and David Neumark, "Does Marriage Really Make Men More Productive?" Journal of Human Resources 26 (1991): 282-307.
25# Linda Waite, "Does Marriage Matter?" Demography 32 (1995): 483-507, esp. 495-6.
26# Waite and Gallagher, op. cit., 109.
27# Frances K. Goldscheider and Linda J. Waite, New Families, No Families? The Transformation of the American Home (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1991).
28# Gary S. Becker, "Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics 3, no. 1 (1985): 533-58; Shoshana Grossbard-Schechtman, On the Economics of Marriage: A Theory of Marriage, Labor and Divorce (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993).
I grow weary of this nonsense. You are all being deliberately obtuse and not researching. Gay marriage is your sacred ox that can never be gored. You are not interested in actually learning anything or discussion. You will even stoop so low as to misrepresent the source I am using when even clicking on the source would answer your query.
You want context m0nkfish? The Folsom Street Fair is a representative example of how gay men view fidelity: masturbating each other in the street. You can be naive and pretend they are on the whole just like the rest of us, but wishful thinking isn't sound reasoning. There is no argument that can dissuade you because you say data doesn't matter without context, and then proceed to ignore anything that provides context. You then attack the source, dispite the fact the source is just a summary based on other sources.
I'm done here. None of you show any interest in even the smallest modicum of intellectual honesty. (Arguing the source isn't effective m0nkfish.) You have drunk the gay marriage koolaid and nothing can persuade you from your position. I have struggled with the position on and off because I am sensitive to the issue and do care about what is moral and right. The more I have learned the more I have decided against gay marriage.