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The Boston Globe recently reported cheery findings for Boston’s same-sex population: the number of same sex couples living together in Boston has risen 17% since Massachusetts legalized gay marriage 10 years ago—that’s over 20,000 couples enjoying domestic bliss with the similarly gendered partner of their choice.
Since Massachusetts stepped to the front of the line and initiated the legalization of gay marriage, the Globe’s report seems to indicate that lesbian and gay individuals are feeling less concern over acceptance, and more freedom to pursue their choice without worry of experiencing backlash or prejudice, both of which they may have come face to face with in past years. Especially significant is the fact that increases in the number of same-sex residences have occurred greatest in traditionally conservative parts of the nation—namely Arizona, Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky—the Globe continued to report. These positive statistics imply that those communities that once shunned the gay and lesbian populous may be forgoing dated prejudice and showing greater acceptance.
Scouring Boston apartments with their partners may have been only a fanciful dream for some same-sex couples in their fifties and sixties, who grew up in a time when homosexuality was widely abhorred, but today those couples are beginning to enjoy the type of acceptance as same-sex couples in their twenties. Although not without its challenges, modern viewpoints have gradually begun shifting since the sexual revolution of the sixties; those couples who were young adults then and couples just starting out now are feeling more than ever that their lifestyles are being accepted.
While prejudice still has a place in plenty of American hearts, let’s hope these positive statistics are an upswing that doesn’t land, and same-sex couples in each state can be showered with the same blessings of domestic bliss on their own wedding days as those lucky couples in Boston.
