Besides, weddings are great for the economy. The 2000 U.S. Census Bureau reported 601,209 unmarried same-sex partner households in the United States living in 99.3% of all counties in the nation. The Urban Institute claims that the census data is low and suggests that gays and lesbians make up about 5% (10,456,405) of the total U.S. population over the age of 18. For argument sake, let's just assume that the Census data is low and that the Urban Institute figures are high. No matter where that number falls between the two, it is still pretty high. And nearly all of them are unmarried. Think about the consumption possibilities!
We can estimate that some portion of the same-sex partners already living together (the 2000 U.S. Census Data figures) along with some portion of the total gay and lesbian population would wish to marry if same-sex marriage became legal. For the sake of convenience we'll say 500,000. According to Bride's Magazine, the average wedding costs $19,000. Two hundred-fifty thousand more marriages at the average wedding rate would result in wedding costs of $4.75 billion! Mind you, this doesn't include the amount spent on wedding gifts. As a bonus, the first states to allow gay marriage will likely experience an influx of tourism and tourist-related economic activity. For the short time that San Francisco mayor, Gavin Newsom, issued wedding licenses to same-sex couples, more than 3,000 gay and lesbian couples from more than twenty states and Europe flocked to the city to be married.
Of course, weddings are just the tip of the iceberg. For some marriages there is even the coup de grâce: divorce. As the majority of divorcés will tell you-the most expensive part of getting into a marriage is getting out. While divorces can range anywhere from several hundred dollars to millions, divorce is a multi-billion dollar-a-year industry. Assuming that gay couples divorce at the same rate as heterosexual ones, I am surprised the legal battle is not fully endorsed by Divorce Lawyer Associations everywhere!
In any event, I'm going to agree with Senator Byrd and look beyond the legal and moral questions surrounding gay marriage and concentrate on the economics. This is an issue that the courts will have to sort out (yes, President Bush, those "activist judges" that think the constitution should factor into their rulings). In the meantime, I see a whole lot of marriage-related economic activity ripe for the picking.
This was an entry for The 2004 Moffatt Prize in Economic Writing. See the contest rules for more information.
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