Last April, the New York Times Magazine published a piece by Benoit Denizet-Lewis that seemed to be about how lots and lots of young men were getting gay married. 700 men age 29 or younger got hitched in Massachusetts. Trend! Or, as Choire Sicha put it in his excoriation of the story, "what else can the story be when an author points out a small group of people that are united by a common activity?" Now, California offers the gay marriage as well. So surely this trend of so many of the young gay men getting gay married must be rising still! Not according to today's Times!

Today's story—"Gay Couples Find Marriage Is a Mixed Bag"— points out that "while nearly half of straight people marrying are under 30, more same-sex married couples of both sexes are older - nearly a third are in their 40s." (And that figure includes lesbians, we are pretty sure!)

Anyway it's sort of an about-face by the Times except of course that one was a subjective Sunday Magazine piece based on anecdotes and this is a researched news story based on statistics and anecdotes.

Of course one would expect marriages to level off after the boom of long-standing couples tying the knot immediately following legal recognition of their unions. And those couples would be older, so one would also expect the percentage of gay marriages involving young gays to rise after that. But it doesn't look like that is the case in Massachusetts? We need a newsy trend piece to square the contradictions between these pieces. Or, you know, more stories about gay wedding cakes or something in Thursday Styles.