October 6, 2009 | Sex & Society

The cost of being gay

According to the New York Times, it will cost a gay couple about $467,562 more than their straight counterparts for extra expenses incurred over a lifetime. Business journalists Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber looked at everything from Social Security to income taxes to find out what homosexuals are paying for that heterosexuals are not.

Bernard and Lieber reported, “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 yes, legalizing gay marriage would certainly have a positive effect on these figure, Bernard and Lieber argued, because it would force governments, health insurance companies and employers to treat all married couples the same way.

"Nearly all the extra costs that gay couples face would be erased if the federal government legalized same-sex marriage,” according to Bernard and Lieber.

While the study did illustrate the unfairness of the current tax and insurance systems for gay couples, it doesn't reflect the true bottom line for the vast majority of gay couples. In the experiment, the hypothetical gay couple had 2 children and one partner stayed home for five years to take care of them. In reality most gay couples choose not to have kids, meaning that even with a tax and insurance system skewed against them, they avoid the enormous costs of child-rearing. But that's still no excuse for not fixing the system.

The High Price of Being a Gay Couple [The New York Times]