California Economy Could get a Gay Bump
Mind out of the gutter everyone. As it turns out, giving 10% of the population the right to marry means that they might actually take you up on it, and spend a whole lot of money in the process:
Gay couples are projected to spend $684 million on flowers, cakes, hotels, photographers and other wedding services over the next three years – so long as voters don’t put a halt to the same-sex marriage spree, according to a study by the Williams Institute at University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
After the bump to the marriage industry, I guess we’ll also be able to see a sizable bump in the money from marriage counselors and divorce lawyers. With any luck within the next decade or two, gay people will be downright boring.
A very significant part of the money will come from couples from out of state. This isn’t just significant in terms of the states economy. The bulk of the couples will be from New York and New Mexico (that last one is news to me), states that have said they will recognize out of state gay marriages. Massachusetts doesn’t allow non-residents to marry, but California has no such restriction. This effectively now means that if the marriage ban ammendment is defeated (and I wholeheartedly hope it is) New York and Vermont same sex couples will be free to marry, even if they have to travel out of state to do so.
If this happens, expect New York and Vermont to both either backtrack in their recognition of same sex marriages or legalize the marriages for their states, since they wouldn’t want California to get all the revenue from the marriages.
But what of all the human-animal, adult-children and human-automobile marriages that will ensue now?
Anyway, I hope that the new revelations that gays can be lucrative will endear less christianist sections of the republicans to gay civil rights.