Obergefell--5 years later

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_Holy Ghost
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Obergefell--5 years later

Post by _Holy Ghost »

In just 4 months, it will be 5 years since the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Obergefell. States have, since then, not been allowed to deny marriage licenses to same sex couples.

Before that, and for a short time after, the Mormon church did its best Chicken Little imitation. Somehow allowing gay marriage was going to lessen hetersexuals' marriages. Sort of the same logic that my neighbor building a larger house will miraculously shrink the square footage in my house.

In February 2017, the findings from a study were published in JAMA Pediatrics. A medical writer for the AP summed up as:

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The researchers analyzed data on more than 700,000 public high school students who participated in government surveys on risky youth behavior from 1999 through 2015, the year the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.

Overall, 26,252 students reported being gay, lesbian or bisexual. The surveys didn’t ask about transgender status. They included questions about suicide attempts, smoking and alcohol or drug use.

In 32 states that enacted same-sex marriage laws during the study, suicide attempts dropped 7 percent among all students and 14 percent among gay kids after the laws were passed. There was no change in suicide attempts in states without those laws.


The Mormon church still performs temple sealings, though it appears it is on its way to getting out of performing legal marriages. Gays haven't stormed the gates of any temple to get in, neither literally nor in court proceedings. Freedom of religion remains.

It seems to be that the religious opposition was much ado about nothing, but legalizing same-sex marriages has helped curb the rate of gay teen suicides. As seems more often the case than not, the Mormon church was on the wrong side of this social issue.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov
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