A recent newspaper article stated that same-sex civil unions have exceeded expectations. But have they? There is more than one way to look at the numbers, so I did some calculations of my own.

I looked at the 2010 Census numbers for adults in Delaware, the Gallup polling data on gays and lesbians as a percentage of the population, and the number of civil unions in Delaware since licensing began a year ago. I was very surprised at what I found!

Assuming all of those sources are reliable, over 95 percent of Delaware’s gay and lesbian population did not get a civil union last year. Regardless of how you crunch the numbers, it is hard to ignore the reality that the vast majority of the gay and lesbian population isn’t interested in getting a legal union.

Jordan Warfel
Greenwood