Economics Of Same-Sex Marriage Laws

Even with the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) and Supreme Court setbacks, laws recognizing same-sex marriages are popping up in various states (happily, imo). Larry Ribstein has a great post up, explaining the trend, chalking it up to state vs. state competition, federalism and the market for law: "But same sex marriage is proving the dynamic nature of our federal system. All it takes to recognize a right is one state. Mobile parties can go to that state or contract for its law.  Then they can try to take their rights on the road, and challenge other states to either send them away or recognize the right. States can’t afford to send away either big firms or entire groups of people."

Here's Ribstein's telling of recent history:

• Massachusetts became the first state to recognize full-fledged same sex marriage. But out of state couples couldn’t use the law because of a century-old Massachusetts law restricting local marriages by out of state couples.
• Then California recognized same sex marriage. So NY couples had an incentive to settle in California.
• Then NY recognized out of state same sex marriage, thus giving same sex couples an incentive to come back to NY after they get married in California.
• Meanwhile, Massachusetts had an eye on those New Yorkers flying all the way to California. According to a story about all this in today’s NYT: "A June memo from the Massachusetts Office of Housing and Economic Development estimated that 21,000 gay couples from New York might go there to marry if the state allowed. That is about 43 percent of the estimated 49,000 same-sex couples in New York."
• Not surprisingly, Massachusetts, by a law signed Thursday, now lets out of state couples marry in Massachusetts instead of having to go to California.

It's interesting which states compete with which other states. It's not surprising that New York, California and Massachussets, all relatively wealthy, and economically dynamic states would compete on this front. Obviously North Dakota doesn't feel the same pressure to keep up with California in its attitude towards same-sex marriage.

I wonder what this means for a city like Austin -- a high tech, dynamic and "blue" bastion in the middle of Texas (generally a dynamic state, but fairly conservative in its attitudes).

Comments

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Massachusetts and California do not have Marriage Equality! Marriage Equality is having ALL of the rights of marriage, including the 1138 federal marriage rights, not a legal category labeled "marriage" which is devoid of those rights. Barak Obama supports granting “civil unions and other legally-recognized unions" (including domestic partnerships and marriage) the 1138 federal rights of marriage. Presently, that includes 10 states! That would be Marriage Equality! Who cares what it is called? The vast majority of the LGBT community is more interested in their rights than the title.

The backlash to our marriage-only strategy has brought us an entirely new body of anti-gay laws: the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and 45 states passing laws or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. 17 of those laws/constitutional amendments went further by also prohibiting civil unions and domestic partnerships. However, domestic partnerships and civil unions have never been successfully reversed on a direct challenge. The difference between California's same-sex marriage and California's comprehensive domestic partnerships is moot. When will our community start putting reality before rhetoric? True Marriage Equality can only be won in Washington, DC. That is where we should be focusing our energies.

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