Does Same-Sex Marriage Spell the End of LGBT ‘Community’?

[Guest]

A new study of same-sex couples in Massachusetts shows ‘a widely shared belief that since gaining the right to marry there was less need to organize for rights and acceptance.’

“Within a generation or so, marriage will mean the end of gay culture as we know it.”

That was author and Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Rauch’s bold prediction in his 2004 book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America—but so far, it’s been a difficult proposition to test. Same-sex marriage has only been legal nationwide since 2015—and three years is far from being “a generation.”

But same-sex marriage has been legal in the state of Massachusetts for over 14 years now—and that’s where visiting Notre Dame sociologist Dr. Abigail Ocobock chose to produce a pioneering study, published last month in the Journal of Marriage and Family, that examines the impact of legal marriage on LGBT community life.

“Married and unmarried participants alike articulated a pervasive feeling that having access to legal marriage had greatly diminished the sense of need that had fueled organized LGBQ community in the past,” the study concludes. (Ocobock uses the acronym LGBQ in her study rather than LGBT because although it was open to transgender people, too few participated for her "to be able to speak to their experiences," she tells The Daily Beast.)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/does-same-sex-marriage-spell-the-end-of-lgbt-community?ref=home