Same Sex Marriage Affects the Whole Country

By Suzi Steffen, AlterNet. Posted August 22, 2008.

Patchwork, partying, pessimism, politics: That's the state, so to speak, of same-sex marriage around the U.S. since same-sex couples began lining up to get married in California on the afternoon of June 16.

News of the California Supreme Court's May 15 decision, which said that denying marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples was unconstitutional, surprised some observers because it came from a Republican-appointed court -- and thrilled couples across the country because California does not have residency requirements for marriage.

At the time, Massachusetts, which began offering same-sex couples marriage licenses in 2004, had routinely been denying them to couples from other states thanks to a 1913 law intended to ensure that interracial couples from other states didn't get married in Massachusetts. That law changed at the end of July.

Many marriage equality proponents hailed California's decision as a major step forward, but one of the first reactions for some political wonks was markedly more guarded or even pessimistic.

First, the good news, by the numbers. During the first month that licenses were available to same-sex and opposite-sex couples equally, counties in the Bay Area reported larger numbers of licenses granted and of ceremonies performed in clerk's offices, according to a mid-July Associated Press report.

California does not keep separate count of same-sex marriages, according to the California Department of Public Health, so those curious about the numbers must track county-by-county records or simply look at increases. The AP says that San Francisco, not surprisingly, reported a 131 percent increase in licenses granted, but Sonoma County (a romantic destination in the heart of California's wine country) also reported an increase of 160 percent, from 340 to 546, and a quadrupling of ceremonies performed in the clerk's offices. That number went down in at least one California county, however: Kern County, which includes Bakersfield, stopped performing any civil ceremonies at all, whether between opposite- or same-sex couples, on June 15. But the county clerk's office there must still grant marriage licenses to those who legally qualify.

The economic impact on a budget-constrained state has not been small. According to the AP, the 44 counties in California took in over a quarter of a million dollars more this June than last June. The UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute released a study in early June, before same-sex marriages began in California, estimating that if the state's voters didn't approve a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on the ballot in November, the ceremonies would "boost California's economy by over $683.6 million in direct spending over the next three years."

Massachusetts hasn't ignored those findings. A study commissioned by the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development estimated that repealing the 1913 law, which said that the state would not marry those whose marriages would be illegal in other states, could bring in at least $111 million into the state economy over the next three years. The Massachusetts Senate voted for repeal on July 15, and the House added its vote two weeks later. Bay State Governor Deval Patrick added his signature July 31. The bill repealing the old law contained an emergency preamble allowing out-of-state same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses immediately, and reports in the New York Times indicate that New York couples took advantage of the repeal as soon as it was signed. When a reporter asked Patrick about couples coming to Massachusetts to get married from other states that expressly forbid same-sex marriages, Patrick said, "What we can do is tend our own garden and make sure that it's weeded, and I think we've weeded out a discriminatory law."

But the state of the union isn't all wine and roses, cakes decorated with two brides or grandmothers finally able to give their grandsons the heirloom china.

For one thing, in many states, same-sex couples won't see any legal benefits from getting married in California or Massachusetts. Indeed, Lambda Legal reported earlier this summer that same-sex couples from Wisconsin may face harsh legal penalties if they get hitched on one of the coasts. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the penalty for a marriage "that's prohibited or declared void in Wisconsin" can range up to a $10,000 fine and up to a nine-month prison sentence -- though Wisconsin prosecutors seem uninterested in using what one called "scarce resources" to prosecute same-sex couples. Still, the Wisconsin law (apparently passed in order to discourage underage heterosexual couples from marrying in other states) indicates one of the many concerns progressive voters felt when the California law passed.

See more stories tagged with: election, california, florida, same-sex marriage, arizona

Suzi Steffen is a freelance writer in Eugene, Oregon and an arts editor at the Eugene (Ore.) Weekly.

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