Amanda Hess looks at the marriage numbers for Washington DC:
According to a recent Pew Research study, the District of Columbia has the lowest marriage rate in the country. Only 23 percent of women and 28 percent of men and in D.C. are married, compared to 48 and 52 percent nationwide.
Coincidentally, Hess points out, DC also has among the largest percentages of same-sex couples in the country relative to its population. Which means that legalizing same-sex marriage in the District would lead to a rise in the city's extremely low marriage rate, something that conservatives would applaud, if they weren't trying so hard to stop it from happening.
Conservatives have argued for years for marriage as a catch-all solution to poverty, but in a city where the percentage of people living below poverty is four points higher than the national average, they're doing the best they can to keep same-sex couples from getting married. Discriminating against gay people is more important than fighting poverty, I guess.
-- A. Serwer
