IGF CultureWatch

It is expensive to be gay.

How expensive?

We didn't know. We did know that committed gay couples had fewer rights than committed straight ones. We knew this meant we paid more for health insurance, that we couldn't share our partner's social security benefits, that we had to pay estate taxes that straight couples didn't.

But the wonderful people at the New York Times ran the numbers. They wanted to figure out how much more gay couples had to pay over their lifetimes because of fewer rights.

So they set up an imaginary lesbian couple with kids and an imaginary straight couple with kids. They gave them the same imaginary income of $140,000 per couple. And they looked for best-possible-case scenarios (both women were able to get health insurance on their own, for example) and worst possible cases (property was in only one of their names, which left the survivor with a whopping inheritance tax).

The reporters went through around 900 simulated tax returns, analyzing the data.

What did they find?

That, yes - it is expensive to be gay. Very expensive.

Try $41,196 more expensive than a married straight couple for a married lesbian couple with kids.

That's the best case.

The worst case is that this mythical lesbian couple will pay $467,562 more than a straight couple over their lifetimes - all because of a lack of rights.

$467,562.

Whoa.

That is a lot of money.

And that is great.

I mean - the cost itself isn't great. That's a preventable tragedy for thousands of families. But it is great that the cost of our rights is now in cold, hard dollar signs, because it is economic arguments that are most likely to move legislators (and perhaps judges).

Before, we knew the number of federal rights gay couples were denied: 1,138. But that number doesn't compute for most people. We don't understand what it means.

But almost half a million dollars? That we get in our gut.

That's a pair of college educations. That's the difference between living on the edge and being able to sleep at night. That's a house.

And the Times didn't even look at the other piece of this - that lesbian couples often make less than straight couples, especially because we're often found in helper jobs like social work, teaching and nursing.

They didn't consider that it's still legal in most states to fire someone for being gay or lesbian. They didn't look at the fact that some jobs with good benefits - say, serving in the military - are closed to us, which means that we also have fewer opportunities than members of straight couples.

Nevertheless, I am grateful to the Times for this analysis. It's the kind of work we need to do on our own behalf, because it's this kind of work that makes change.

We spend a lot of time in our movement trying to convince wingnuts on the right that Christianity doesn't have to be anti-gay, that we are just like anyone else, that we don't have some kind of subversive agenda.

These arguments don't work. Not on wingnuts. In fact, NOTHING will work on wingnuts, because they are crazy. They aren't open to argument or reason - they have their opinion and they're sticking to it.

But most Americans aren't wingnuts. Most Americans believe in fairness and justice. And it is those Americans who will look at those numbers and think - This is not OK.

We have rightness on our side. But now we also have the numbers. And sometimes, numbers speak louder than words.