While some anti-marriage equality people might think that marriage is all about God, there is a lot of government involvement in a marriage that goes beyond just getting a marriage license. Take, for example, the increased costs for a gay couple who can’t get their partnership legally recognized by their federal or state government. Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard analyzed the increased costs of being a gay family versus a straight family and found that gay families pay more over their lifetimes than straight families due to the increased health insurance costs and Social Security benefits that don’t cover domestic partners. In their New York Times article, Lieber and Siegel Bernard outline how they analyzed these costs but acknowledge that their system isn’t perfect and that the average heterosexual family could be very different from the average gay family. For the sake of their report, they created a hypothetical gay family that would be in a similar situation as a heterosexual family: two parents, two kids and one parent would take off five years from work to take care of the children.

At best, Lieber and Siegel Bernard found that gay couples would pay $28,595 more during their lifetime than a heterosexual couple in a similar situation. At worst, the gay couple would pay $211,993 more than the heterosexual couple. The “best case” family was a family of two women in a domestic partnership who each earn $70,000; the “worst case” assumed one partner earned $110,000 and the other earned $30,000. In the “best case” scenario, they speculated that both partners had employer-provided health care coverage and that the high-earner’s employer provided the domestic partner coverage which would cover the lower-earner’s time off from work to care for their children. The “worst case” assumed the low-earner had no employer-provided health insurance and the higher-earner’s employer-provided coverage wouldn’t cover domestic partners. The “best case” scenario assumed that the two partners had equal incomes so they received equal Social Security benefits, although federal law does not grant Social Security benefits to domestic partners since the federal government won’t recognize same-sex marriage. In the “worst case” the lower-earner would not receive spousal Social Security or survivor benefits. Neither couple would receive the $225 death benefit. The “best case” scenario assumed that the partners were savvy financial planners who titled their homes as tenants-in-common so they didn’t owe anything to the government regarding estate taxes. (Heterosexual married couples can freely transfer assets to each other during the lifetime without paying estate taxes.) In the “worst case” the higher-earner who died fist would exceed the state’s estate tax threshold and the lower-earner would have to pay $43,378 in estate taxes. Pensions, spousal I.R.A., childbearing costs for couples who want a biological child or who adopt, tax preparation, financial planning and income taxes were also factored into the best and worst case families. One benefit that the same-sex couple would have over the heterosexual couple would be that they would not have to pay higher income taxes.

Essentially the study comes down to the fact that gay couples are paying a “gay tax” over their lifetime simply for not being heterosexuals. While some may argue that heterosexual partners are also paying these “gay taxes” as well, the heterosexual couple will always have the option of getting married and decreasing their lifetime costs, the gay couple won’t have that option if same-sex marriage remains illegal. Even if same-sex marriages are legal in their state, gay couples will still not be able to share Social Security benefits when the other partner dies. The increased costs that gay couples and families have to pay simply because they are not heterosexual is institutionalized and government-approved discrimination. Sure, $20,000 spread over several decades may not sound like a lot, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that these are essentially anti-gay costs that our society and government forces onto homosexual couples. Let’s not forget, marriage equality isn’t just about two dudes or two ladies wanting to get hitched, it is about reversing mindless discrimination and giving every American citizen the same rights, regardless of who they spend the night with.

5 Responses to “Being A Gay Couple Costs More Than Being A Heterosexual Couple”

1. copa says:

   October 5, 2009 at 9:14 pm

   20,000 in the end IS alot, after all that money could have put one of the hypothetical kids through college and that would in turn make a huge difference in that childs life, not having to struggle to pay bills and work night shift at a Denny’s or take out massive debt, and then that person would have more cash to help with their future kids expenses and so on and so forth, I know my story isn’t the best (sleeping pills and a cold don’t mix sorry) but my point is, discrimination, even 20,000 dollars worth over a lifetime can affect generations.

   Reply
2. The Wicked 7 says:

   October 6, 2009 at 9:28 am

   Are the results of this study really surprising?
   I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who is going to disagree that same sex families are discriminated against in almost any public arm of their lives, including financially.

   Reply
   • Bia says:

     October 6, 2009 at 10:19 am

     On another site that ran this article, it might have been the original source actually, a lot of comments were saying that homosexuals have it better because they do not usually have children and do not have the costs associated with them, while heterosexuals don’t have that “choice.”

     Bleeech.

     Reply
     • Rhonda says:

       October 6, 2009 at 11:18 am

       So true. I mean it’s not like we have things like adoption or IVF so gay couples can never have kids and whoever heard of a straight couple without kids? Everyone knows that women spontaneously conceive after marrying a man after all.

       Reply
     • Marochka says:

       October 8, 2009 at 6:53 am

       Wowee. Does that mean my husband and I are homosexuals? ‘Cause we’ve been together for 20 years and we ain’t got no rugrats.

       I don’t get it. What’s the BFD about letting people get married? I’m sorry, I expected “equal treatment before the law” to apply to everybody, well, equally. Sigh.

       Reply