Heh.

[gothelittle]

http://www.newsmax.com/US/Census-Same-SexCouples/2011/09/27/id/412444WASHINGTON - The Census Bureau reports there are 131,729 same-sex couples in the U.S. who say they're married - the first-ever government count of this kind

Comments

[deckardcanine]

Huh. I'd expected more than 4% cohabiting. But then, I'd expected more than 4% vegetarian or semi-vegetarian before seeing that figure. Familiarity skews unscientific estimation.

Some unmarried straight couple should claim to be married. If they get in trouble for it, they could sue the Bureau for its double standard.

[gothelittle]

I like that idea. :)

The thing about cohabiting couples is that half of them marry within 3 years. All but something like four percent of the remaining ones split up within ten. Two of my friends from my highschool years cohabited.. both are now married.

Also, remember that "cohabit" does not equal "sleeping together". As long as they maintain separate residences, they're not technically "cohabiting", even if they take turns sleeping at each other's places.

This presents a bit of a problem in an unknown percentage of lower-income households. The father does not marry the mother and maintains a separate residence legally, but he basically lives in the house with them and his salary helps their upkeep... But if he married her, then they would be ineligible for all kinds of state aid that currently give them about twice the spending power.

[deckardcanine]

The Washington Post reports that the Census Bureau yesterday corrected an inflated (by 6.3%) number of same-sex couples in the D.C. region, blaming errors in the method of recording in the "name" and "sex" fields. Whatever that means.

The article reports revised numbers of self-described same-sex couples and marriages in the tri-state area. I notice that more than 58% of Virginian gay couples claim marriage, but only about 19% of Maryland ones and 15% of Washingtonian ones do. I have no idea why.

Also, Virginia and Maryland have seen 75% and 78% respective increases in gay couples since 2000, while D.C. has seen a 42.5% increase. That may have to do with how open D.C. was in the first place. It does have the "advantage" of being all urban and suburban.

[gothelittle]

The reason for the discrepancy between states is probably because Virginia is the only state of the three that does not permit gay marriage or civil unions. Nothing seems to tame the gay desire to marry like having achieved government-mandated recognition of their sexual relationship as Righteous and Good.

[headnoises]

Here's a mind-blower-- some percent of the heterosexual couples living together are legally married, because of common law marriage. A shocking number of folks don't know about common law marriage, too....

[gothelittle]

I do know about that, and I've heard about the odd case where it's happened. :) I suspect it's not more common because most heterosexual couples are either married or split up by then. But it does happen from time to time that someone finds out... It usually makes the news.

The law makes sense, though, especially out during colonization where there were no preachers or city records for ages.

[headnoises]

Possibly I hang out with a worse crowd than you. ^.^
I can think of four different folks who found out they were in a common law marriage when they were handed legal documents after a nasty break-up. Grew up around a couple more who'd had friends go through that and made sure to have nasty breakups and kick out their girlfriends (or whatever you want to call it) when the date approached.

Tooling around online, it's probably because they were in Colorado and the military, which seems to have the loosest requirements and a high rate of return for vindictive exes.