Love in America Changes for the Better

 A positive change in attitudes concerning sexuality occurred in the opening years of the twenty-first century.  In the year 2000, the little state of Vermont became the first in the country to sanction civil unions - the legal equivalent of marriage – for same sex couples.  Fifteen years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that under the Fourteenth Amendment Americans everywhere have a right to marry the person they love.  And now, this month, Congress passed a Respect for Marriage Act guaranteeing (just in case the Supremes change their mind) that the law of the land remains in place.  

A generation ago, moralists warned that homosexual unions would mean social breakdown and the end of the traditional family.  Instead, the Institute for Family Studies reported that in 2020 the divorce rate hit a fifty year low, not seen since Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were a TV couple. True, fewer folks are getting married.  But those that tie the knot are staying together, which can only be good for kids.

In fact, the Crimes Against Children Research Center, which gathers data reported to family protective services around the country, documents a fifty-three percent decline in physical abuse and a whopping sixty-two percent drop in sexual abuse over the last three decades, between 1992 and 2018.  Cases of child neglect have seen a more modest eleven percent decline.  Still, we are talking about millions of kids saved from mistreatment.  While the reasons for this wholesome trend are not entirely clear, what is beyond dispute is that all this happened just as Americans were beginning to embrace and normalize lesbian and gay relationships.

Correlation is not causality, but with diminishing rates of child abuse, one might also expect a drop in crime.  In the cycle of violence, youth from  abusive environments are more prone to delinquency.  Safer homes mean safer streets, and this is exactly what we see.  According to FBI statistics, gathered from law enforcement agencies across the nation, violent crime plunged from a rate of 758 incidents per 100,000 population in 1992 down to 395 incidents in 2021, a forty-eight percent drop.  The rate of property crimes saw an even more precipitous fall..  So the perception that America is experiencing a crime wave is just wrong. The country has seldom been so law abiding. 

Why aren’t media outlets reporting these stories?  Divorce is down.  Children are flourishing.  Crime is on the run.  

Given so much good news, the current raft of “Don’t Say Gay” laws, book bans and rhetorical vitriol directed at the LGBTQ community seems especially ill-timed and misguided.  Gay people coming out of the closet pose no threat.  Trans and queer folk exploring their own forms of gender expression and identity may be a very healthy development.  As Americans began to acknowledge and accept the full spectrum of human sexuality, the social unraveling  that was predicted never happened.  The numbers show just the opposite, and it should come as no surprise.  People flourish in relationships that are honest and open.  They thrive when their primary emotional bonds are mutual, consensual, caring and voluntary–freely chosen rather than dictated by dogma or enforced by morality police.   Enabling people to be who they are and to love whom they love seems to be leading to  happier marriages, fewer children at risk, more stable families and, ultimately, a more civil society.