The Joys of Holy Matrimony (Statistical Evidence Division)

   A report recently released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, in America, marriages last longer than non-marriage cohabitative relationships, a phrase this reporter just made up.
   According to a March 2 Reuters report, the CDC study suggests that seventy-eight percent of marriages last five years or more. Less than thirty percent of what the CDC, unlike this reporter, calls "cohabiting unions" (making it sound like the unions themselves are cohabiting, something that hasn't happened since the days of Jimmy Hoffa) last the same amount of time. 
   The study was based on a nationally representative sample, whatever that is, of 12,571 American men and women. 

   Normally, one prefers to go to the source - to dig beyond the Associated Press or Reuters - in order to flesh out blog items. But the CDC report, available here, runs forty-six pages, forty-five-and-one-half pages longer than that for which one has any patience a 'tall. 
   However, gays and lesbians enthused about marrying might want to study the report. They'll find nothing about themselves in it, of course. But they will amass interesting conversational fodder for when they dine with their heterosexual counterparts and try to convince them that gay people are just like they are, and therefore should be allowed to marry. 
   This, of course, is a canard. Gay people are irrevocably different from straight people by virtue of being well-groomed, well-spoken and well-mannered, and of having a capacity for sexual relations the deviance of which is quite rightly thought to be a danger to the safety of the women and the horses.