News from Attorney General Mark R. Herring: Virginia has issued 2,670 marriage licenses and 70 birth certificates to same-sex couples since gay marriage became legal in Virginia a year ago. So reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The figure that startles me is the 70 birth certificates. Presumably, male same-sex couples are not giving birth (although I suppose it’s possible that gay men could hire surrogates like some heterosexual couples do). According to highly authoritative information I scraped off the first page of Google search results, the number of married gay females nearly equals the number of married gay males nationally. If national trends hold true in Virginia, that implies that about 1,300 gay female couples account for those 70 births. But that’s just a guess. I would be interested to see the break-down of the births by the gender of the parents.

Ignoring the ethical, religious and political dimensions of gays raising children, I’m fascinated from an anthropological perspective. Are gay women more inclined to want children than gay men? (I’m guessing that’s the case: After all, the name of the book was, “Heather Has Two Mommies,” not “Heather Has Two Daddies.”) Do gay women tend to be more nurturing than gay men, just as women are more nurturing than men in the general population? How do gay women decide which spouse bears the child? If they want more than one, do they take turns?

So many questions. This should be a fruitful field of inquiry for an aspiring young social scientist.

— JAB