Amos dear boy, dont be so shocked....See here, the Williams Institute,UCLA School of Law, have found the take up figures for homosexual marriage to be exceedingly low...about 5 new homosexual marriages to 1000 new heterosexual marriages.

Why So Few? Looking at what we know about same-sex marriage
By Stanley Kurtz
National Review Online
June 5, 2006

Why have so few gays chosen to marry? A new study by Maggie Gallagher's Institute for Marriage and Public Policy (iMAPP) estimates that, in countries that legally recognize same-sex unions, typically between 1 percent and 5 percent of gays and lesbians have entered into a same-sex marriage. Obviously, that is a very low number. Much of the argument for gay marriage turns on the claim that same-sex couples need the cultural, legal, and economic benefits of marriage. Yet if only a small number of gays actually marry, the practical impact of the change on gays themselves would be minimal.

The fundamental purpose of marriage is to encourage mothers and fathers to maintain stable families for the children they create. It would be a mistake to undercut that purpose by redefining marriage, whatever the take-up rate for same-sex unions. Yet, for those receptive to arguments for same-sex marriage, the case for this reform would be greatly weakened if it turned out that only a few gays actually marry.

And there's more at stake than numbers. Since the "conservative case" for same-sex marriage holds that marriage will import a more conservative ethos to the gay community, we need to know something besides how many same-sex couples actually marry. If substantial numbers of gay couples take advantage of the legal benefits of marriage, while simultaneously rejecting traditional marital norms (like monogamy), that would greatly weaken the "conservative case" for same-sex marriage.

Despite the few short years formal same-sex marriage has been available, we can now offer some preliminary answers to questions about why so few gays marry, and how those gays who have married understand their unions. The iMAPP study covered only countries that have formal same-sex marriage, with data going back, at most, five years (for the Netherlands). Yet a turn to Scandinavia provides a fuller story. A series of recent empirical studies on Scandinavian registered partnerships have made available a fascinating body of data about a same-sex partnership system that has been in existence for 17 years in Denmark, 13 years in Norway, and 12 years in Sweden (19 years if we go back to the same-sex unions Sweden created in 1987).

The new studies show that after nearly two decades of Scandinavian registered partnerships, only a very small number of gays have actually entered legal unions. And there are clear indications are that even many couples who have registered may be doing so more for legal benefits than because they aspire to traditional marital norms. In short, there are now clear signs that same-sex marriage is not working the way its defenders claim it should, even for gays.

Complete article