[Opinionated Blowhard]

Any time you want to wonder about why gay marriage has come as far as it has, think of this article. The concept of traditional marriage — where a man and woman get married in their early or mid 20s, have kids and live together until they die —has been under assault for years. As this article points out, heterosexual people just don’t value marriage anymore. They shack up, they get divorced at the drop of a dime, or they never get married in the first place.

A large number of people in this country just don’t care about marriage anymore. In some instances, its understandable and perhaps beneficial — there is some merit to living together before you get married. But in other cases, it results in getting divorced instead of trying to work problems out, and “alternative” marriages like gay marriage.

[riri]

I tend to believe the opposite of conventional wisdom that "living togther let's you try out a person". I think living together results in people getting married who may otherwise have gone their own ways when they should have. By then so much is invested. Time, energy, finances, etc.--they, often, take a wronf turn and just keep going.

Where as dating, you'd be much more less likely to ignore warning signs and end more likely to move on.

[Chickensoup]

One thing that doesn’t get talked about is all the quasi-divorces that happen. And the financial and emotional toll that takes.

There are many more splits from shack ups than marriage. These people quasi marry, sometimes for the duration of college or whatever, for one to 15 years, then there is a split. There are many many walking wounded out there

[Boogieman]

“As this article points out, heterosexual people just don’t value marriage anymore.”

This is technically true, but it’s also just as much nonsense as if I said “people just aren’t scared of dragons anymore”.

Marriage doesn’t exist in this country and hasn’t for quite a while, so heterosexual people are rightfully incapable of valuing it.