Last year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released a report on married same-sex couples. It relied on income-tax data and dealt only with the year gay marriage became legal nationwide (2013) and the following year.
The data are frankly disturbing in that they verify a complaint I never took seriously – that same-sex marriage benefits well-off gays and lesbians and does nothing to improve the lot in life of the poor. Usually that objection was articulated in terms of race. But because every single objection to gay and lesbian life is now clad in accusations of racism, especially when levelled by transgenders, “queers,” and “LGBTs,” the race aspect can be discounted. The income aspect cannot.
That is because U.S. data show that married same-sex couples – even lesbian wives – are richer than married heteros on average and in almost every subgroup. Even gay and lesbian couples with kids are richer.
Because gay marriage is available across the board, even to the poor, the inescapable conclusion, which the authors are too decorous and cautious to draw, is that most gay and lesbian couples who get married were already doing well financially. In enough cases that they can’t be considered exceptional, married gay males are flat-out rich.
It turns out there really is an affluent dream demographic of “DINK” gays. The only place we can prove it exists is in the United States, and it consists mostly of married gays and lesbians.
☛ I added a new page to the Gay Money site that explains the findings and more.
Gay marriage: A bauble to add to your collection if you and your fiancé(e) are doing great already
Same-sex marriage had to be legalized on equality grounds. It was pretty obviously never going to be the same thing as opposite-sex marriage and, in the U.S., it definitely is not the same thing. Gay marriage in America is an accoutrement, a luxury good, a perq.
I sat here trying to come up with consumer trinkets that I could use as comparators. Nothing made sense except for these two: Gay cruises and a live-in boytoy. The function of both is to enable ostensibly married men to have epic amounts of sex that hetero males would find unthinkable. Monogamy is quite a joke when it comes to gay marriage.
At this point the whole thing strikes me as hypocritical.