A $467,000 Price Tag for Being Gay

by Michael Jones · 2009-10-03 12:00:00 UTC
Topics:

Dollar Bills

What's the price of not having equal rights? According to the New York Times, it could be upwards of $467,000. That's how much the paper estimates a gay couple will pay -- in a worse case scenario -- over the span of their lifetimes for extra costs related to health care, legal affairs, and other issues. Huh, it sure is expensive to be denied the more than 1,100 benefits granted to straight married couples.

To figure this dollar amount out, the Times created a same-sex couple whose real life situation might mirror that of a straight couple. They looked at the three states with the largest LGBT populations - New York, California and Florida -- and merged data from those three states to determine annual gross incomes, and other various cost of living expenses. And not surprisingly, they found that being gay is expensive. Damn expensive, especially if you're a family.

The biggest expenses that gay couples face, at least in the Times' hypothetical picture, is in the areas of health care, social security and estate taxes. Health care is a crazy variable, because it's dependent on a person's employer, but in the worst case scenario gay couples pay more than $211,000 alone for health care than straight couples over the course of their lifetimes, a shocking figure to say the least.

Social Security is a big bust for gay couples, since the federal government doesn't recognize same-sex marriage. This lack of recognition means that gay couples don't receive a myriad of government benefits that straight couples receive.

And then there's the estate tax, which might be the most viscerally unfair example of how straight married couples have it pretty good when it comes to U.S. tax laws. Straight married couples can transfer an unlimited amount of assets to each other during their lives and at death without having to pay any sort of estate tax. Gay couples? Not so much. Same-sex couples have to shell out a boatload in federal estate taxes, at least if the estate passes an expense threshold. Granted, this really only effects very, very wealthy same-sex couples, but it's still an example of how unfair the U.S. tax system really is.

The statistics and information in the Times piece are pretty dense, but the bottom line is this: gay couples generally have to pay more throughout their lifetimes because same-sex marriage isn't legal in the U.S. If the federal government chose to recognize same-sex marriage, then all of these costs or penalties would evaporate. It's really as simple as that.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Using Disneyland to Sell Gay Marriage in Iowa
NEXT STORY:
On Aeroflot's Birthday, Russian Activists Condemn Company's Anti-Gay Record. And You Can Help.

COMMENTS (4)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.