I'm calling it the inequality penalty. The New York Times has conducted research into the additional cost in being a gay couple. It turns out that there is a penalty in this society for being gay. A penalty that costs as much as $500,000 over a lifetime for being gay.
Much of the debate over legalizing gay marriage has focused on God and Scripture, the Constitution and equal protection.
But we see the world through the prism of money. And for years, we’ve heard from gay couples about all the extra health, legal and other costs they bear. So we set out to determine what they were and to come up with a round number — a couple’s lifetime cost of being gay.
It was much more complicated than we initially imagined, and that’s probably why we’ve never seen similar efforts. We looked at benefits that routinely go to married heterosexual couples but not to gay couples, like certain Social Security payments. We plotted out the cost of health insurance for couples whose employers don’t offer it to domestic partners. Even tax preparation can cost more, since gay couples have to file two sets of returns. Still, many couples may come out ahead in one area: they owe less in income taxes because they’re not hit with the so-called marriage penalty.
Our goal was to create a hypothetical gay couple whose situation would be similar to a heterosexual couple’s. So we gave the couple two children and assumed that one partner would stay home for five years to take care of them. We also considered the taxes in the three states that have the highest estimated gay populations — New York, California and Florida. We gave our couple an income of $140,000, which is about the average income in those three states for unmarried same-sex partners who are college-educated, 30 to 40 years old and raising children under the age of 18.
Here is what we came up with. In our worst case, the couple’s lifetime cost of being gay was $467,562. But the number fell to $41,196 in the best case for a couple with significantly better health insurance, plus lower taxes and other costs.
And up to a $211,000 in extra cost for health insurance. This analysis doesn't include the expenses of having to find a gay friendly locale, which is more expensive than suburban settings.
Gay people have always asserted that there were more expenses associated with not being allowed to marry, so I am glad the New York Times conducted this analysis. Hopefully, the word will get out about the inequality penalty and move more people to be active in their support for marriage equality.
I often hear straight people tell me (and some gay people) that a marriage license is a piece of paper and "all you need is love. It's NOT just a piece of paper.
Also, this analysis shows where unmarried gay couples benefit due to not paying the so-called "marriage" penalty. But the total losses significantly exceed that single "benefit" of discrimination.
Link
Update: Gambiteer added this to the discussion:
What about:
Lower salaries due to discrimination?
The answer is yes!
Gay male couples earn up to 23% less than straight married men.