Chicago Tribune Columnist Steve Chapman confronts, head-on the accusations being made about marriage equality.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire have all decided to let gays wed. Most of the remaining 44 states, however, are not likely to follow suit anytime soon. So in the next few years, we will have a chance to compare social trends in the states permitting same-sex marriage against social trends in the others.

But with the experiment looming, some opponents seem to be doubting their own convictions. I contacted three serious conservative thinkers who have written extensively about the dangers of allowing gay marriage and asked them to make simple, concrete predictions about measurable social indicators — marriage rates, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, child poverty, you name it.

You would think they would react like Albert Pujols when presented with a hanging curveball. Yet none was prepared to forecast what would happen in same-sex marriage states versus other states.

In addition, the longstanding allegation that marriage equality would lead to the weakening of ‘traditional marriage’ and contribute to many societal ills such as higher divorce rates seems to be encountering exactly the opposite, as according to the National Center for Vital Statistics, Massachusetts, which has had same-sex marriage for over five years, has the lowest divorce rate in the nation.