Unmarried Couples Twice as Likely to Be Interracial

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In Florida, unmarried couples — gay and straight — are twice as likely as married couples to be interracial. When including couples in which one partner is Hispanic, the percentage nearly doubles. About one in five households in Florida includes an unmarried couple of different races or Hispanic origin — almost twice the 11 percent of married couples, according to figures recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

“With both same-sex and different-sex couples, (unmarried couples) are younger than their married counterparts. Broadly speaking, young people are more open and don’t see race as a distinguishing factor as their older counterparts would,” said Gary J. Gates, a demographer with the Williams Institute, a think tank associated with the UCLA law school.

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But it still takes a leap of love to step over the lines of race and sex for interracial couples. Overall, the South has a lower percentage of married and unmarried interracial couples than the nation as a whole. {snip}

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Racial separation still exists among gays. Many blacks don’t feel comfortable or accepted by the larger, white gay community. {snip}

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The high number of unmarried interracial straight couples may be related to short-term trial partnerships — couples experimenting with dating people different from themselves — as opposed to married couples who are theoretically choosing mates for life, the Census Bureau reports.

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