American Foundation for Equal Rights

Strong and Stable Relationships

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The American Psychological Association: “Empirical research demonstrates that the psychological and social aspects of committed relationships between same-sex partners closely resemble those of heterosexual partnerships…”

In the states with available data, dissolution rates for same-sex couples are slightly lower on average than divorce rates of different-sex couples. The percentage of those same sex couples who end their legal relationship ranges from 0% to 1.8% annually, or 1.1% on average, whereas 2% of married different-sex couples divorce annually.

In Scotland, after four years, 5.5% of marriages had ended in divorce, compared with 2.5% of civil partnerships that had been dissolved, according to figures for 2010.

“Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in the characteristics relevant to the ability to form marital unions. Like opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples have happy, satisfying relationships and form deep emotional bonds and strong commitments to their partners. Standardized measures of relationships satisfaction, relationship adjustment and love do not differ depending on whether a couple is same-sex or opposite-sex.” Perry v. Schwarzenegger, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (August 4, 2010).

American Anthropological Association: “The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.”

American Psychological Association: “…it is unfair and discriminatory to deny same-sex couples legal access to civil marriage and to all its attendant benefits, rights, and privileges.”

American Psychiatric Association: “The American Psychiatric Association supports the legal recognition of same-sex civil marriage with all rights, benefits, and responsibilities conferred by civil marriage, and opposes restrictions to those same rights, benefits, and responsibilities.”