After a vote by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council against Lexington Mayor Teresa Isaac’s plan to impose a domestic partner benefits policy, the Lexington Herald-Leader spent 501 words saying in an editorial what few supporters of the mayors cohabitation subsidy had until then admitted:

Marriage doesn’t matter.

This admission made the issue much clearer for everyone: if you think marriage matters, then you will have a problem with domestic partnership policies; and if you don’t think marriage matters, then you won’t.

Traditionally, the benefits policies of businesses and municipalities have encouraged marriage, and the vast majority of them still do. But the Herald-Leader—which has cohabited so long with political correctness that it must surely now constitute a common law marriage—called the pro-marriage provisions of these plans "marriage hurdles." These policies, they said, just don’t take account of the increased numbers of cohabiting employees, nor do they result in increased costs to taxpayers.

If you consult the actual research on the societal consequences of marriage—rather than journalistic screeds—what you find is that husbands earn more than their single counterparts and divorced men earn less than both. Married employees are more productive, work longer hours and lead healthier lifestyles. To say, as the Herald-Leader did, that there are no financial consequences of promoting marriage is simply ludicrous.

The benefits to the community are equally tangible: Children from married families are more likely to do better in school, less likely to commit crimes, less likely to use drugs, less likely to suffer from domestic abuse, and less likely to experience poverty. In addition, both men and women benefit, financially, medically, socially, and in myriad other ways.

If there’s one thing we know from social science research it is that more marriages are better for society and fewer marriages are worse. It’s a short logical step from that fact, to the conclusion that promoting it is good for people and discouraging it is bad.

Domestic partnership benefits policies are never enacted because it is good business—and certainly never because it benefits the community. Such policies do neither. They are enacted for one reason and one reason only: because of political pressure from gay rights groups.

If private businesses want to ignore the business considerations of cohabitation subsidies and their effects on the good of the community, that is their call. But municipalities have obligations that they can’t run away from. Not only are they supported almost exclusively by taxpayer money, their primary purpose is the good of the community.

For a city like Lexington, the decision is simple: if a policy is likely to promote fiscal responsibility and the improvement of the community, you embrace it; and if it results in financial costs to taxpayers and a degradation of the quality of life in the community, you reject it—no matter what pressure there may be from special interest groups.

Marriage matters, and those who say it doesn’t have simply divorced themselves from reality.