Ruining it for the Rest of Us

The Pew Research Cen­ter has put up a nice, inter­ac­tive graph­ic show­ing some mar­riage sta­tis­tics by state. So, based on what we’ve always been told, you might expect lib­er­al states — espe­cial­ly those which have allowed same sex mar­riages — to have some of the worst numbers. 

It does­n’t real­ly pan out that way, though. In par­tic­u­lar, the states with the high­est per­cent­age of men hav­ing been mar­ried three or more times are some of the red­dest of the red states: Arkansas (10%), Okla­homa (9%), Ten­nessee (9%), Alaba­ma (8%), and Mis­sis­sip­pi (8%). The state with the low­est per­cent­age in this cat­e­go­ry? Blue, gay-lovin’ Mass­a­chu­setts at 2% (stats aren’t much dif­fer­ent for women, inci­den­tal­ly). So much for the gays ruin­ing mar­riage; we het­ero­sex­u­als seem to be devalu­ing that hal­lowed insti­tu­tion just fine on our own.