Practice Management

Most of us, as lawyers, have a secular self and a religious self, and too often it makes us appear hypocritical as we try to reconcile our legal duties with our personal beliefs. It is not always easy. But, the moral aspects of marriage as a sacrament that needs to be protected by the state has always seemed contradictory to me as a lawyer, given that our obligation its to divorce those religious obligations.  My union to my wife, and my relationship to my family, and my faith, have never felt threatened by other people that want to get married, for whatever reason.  Maybe that is just the lawyer side of me coming out. Maybe it is my belief that my faith cannot be altered based upon conduct and beliefs of others.  Regardless, maybe from a legal business perspective we need to encourage those states that want to ban marriage because ultimately our job is to protect the institute of marriage one divorce at a time.  

As analyzed on FiveThirtyEight.Com, divorce rates are higher in states that have banned gay marriage.  As stated by the site:

"Over the past decade or so, divorce has gradually become more uncommon in the United States. Since 2003, however, the decline in divorce rates has been largely confined to states which have not passed a state constitutional ban on gay marriage. These states saw their divorce rates decrease by an average of 8 percent between 2003 and 2008. States which had passed a same-sex marriage ban as of January 1, 2008, however, saw their divorce rates rise by about 1 percent over the same period."

"As is somewhat visually apparent, those states which have tended to take more liberal policies toward gay marriage have tended also to have larger declines in their divorce rates. In Massachusetts, which legalized gay marriage in 2004, the divorce rate has declined by 21 percent and is the lowest in the country by some margin. It is joined at the top of the list by Rhode Island and New Mexico, which do not perform same-sex marriages but idiosyncratically also have no statute or constitutional provision expressly forbidding them, as well as Maine, whose legislature approved same-sex marriage only to have it overturned (although not banned constitutionally) by its voters.