According to The New York Times:
When France created its system of civil unions in 1999, it was heralded as a revolution in gay rights, a relationship almost like marriage, but not quite. No one, though, anticipated how many couples would make use of the new law. Nor was it predicted that by 2009, the overwhelming majority of civil unions would be between straight couples.
The numbers are surprising:
In 2000, just one year after the passage of the law, more than 75 percent of civil unions were signed between heterosexual couples. That trend has only strengthened since then: of the 173,045 civil unions signed in 2009, 95 percent were between heterosexual couples.
Whatever their reasons, and they vary widely, French couples are increasingly shunning traditional marriages and opting instead for civil unions, to the point that there are now two civil unions for every three marriages.
It seems to me that conservatives in America should embrace marriage equality. If not, civil unions will be the alternative and it is unlikely that they will remain popular in large metropolitan areas with only gay people.
The ironies in this articles are so rich.
Civil Unions were a way to creat a lesser institution for gay people as befits our inherently lesser status, both real and perceived. That way, marriage is preserved only for the blessed heterosexual elect, because they are just so goldurned fabulous, and love marirage, and are just more important than us, our lives, and our families.
Straight people soon find that they like civil unions even more than marriage: easier to get into, easier to get out of, less obligations and responsibilities. A Perfect trial marriage without the marriage part.
And voila: the institution of marriage is undermined from within, by heterosexuals, all because marriage was not held to be the gold standard for EVERYONE. As with so much else in the digital age, good enough is now good enough.
The other unfortunate irony: we will be blamed for the bad behaviour of straight people. If they had allowed us to get married, as we asked, they would not have been in the unfortunate position of recognizing the moral and legal validity of our claim upon this legal institution, yet being unable to grant us equality because of bigotry and an often claimed, but otherwise wholly imaginary, sense of superiority.
Because THEIR morality did not match up to THEIR rhetoric, WE will be blamed.
See, we TOLD you what would happen if you recognized the humanity of homosexual people!!!
Ben, don’t forget that for some reason the wingnuts really hate the French (maybe because it’s such a liberal society and they don’t kiss America’s a*s the way the UK does). This gives them another reason to rag on the French, and blame them (along with us) for ‘destroying marriage’.
Viva la France!
This is interesting, but we should also realize that in Europe they have a somewhat different view of marriage and civil unions. Here marriage is taken more seriously (for the time being)–though we are making strides toward the European view of marriage.