Gays demanded marriage, not because they were dying to be married, but to make a point

The General Social Survey (GSS) has collected enough data to begin to give us a sense about the degree to which homosexuals have embraced marriage since the opportunity has opened up. Here are marital status trends for gay men by decade:

The red line represents married people. The percent of gay men who are married in this decade is only slightly higher than previous decades. (I assume that married gays from earlier decades were either married to a woman or called their relationship with a man "marriage."). The next graph is lesbians:

Lesbian marriage has decreased (red line). Again, I'm sure lesbians were married to men in previous decades or called their same-sex relationships "marriage," but their move away from heterosexual marriage has not been replaced by lesbian marriage.

Maybe we need more time to see the trends more clearly, but what we GSS data suggest is that homosexuals did not fight gay marriage because they were dying for participation in the practice, but because they wanted the law to reflect the view that homosexuality is as good as heterosexuality. They were just making a point.