"I'm feeling like single people's rights are really being thrown aside. . . . There is all this talk about gay marriage being good for people to get all these benefits. What about for those who don't want to get married?"
-- From "Are single people getting a raw deal?" by Kara Spak, Staff Reporter, Chicago Sun-Times 9/18/09
"Why should equal rights depend upon your marital status?" said Tom Coleman, executive director of Unmarried America, the group behind Unmarried and Single American Week which starts Sunday.
Nearly 96 million Americans over 18 years old are not married, a group that includes those who are divorced and widowed, said Bella DePaulo, a Harvard-trained social scientist, fellow at the Chicago-based Council on Contemporary Families and author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After.
Single people -- gay or straight, alone or in a committed relationship outside of marriage -- are paying more for everything from travel packages to dinners out, she said.
"It's still predominantly a married person's world, and [marriage] is still seen as being the preferred state," he said. "I think where we are moving is to see marriage as one option among several."
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