Sunday NYT Calculates The Cost Of Being A Gay Couple

The Sunday New York Times has an in-depth analysis of the financial implications of being a same-sex couple in America. The results are fascinating reading:

It was much more complicated than we initially imagined, and that’s probably why we’ve never seen similar efforts. We looked at benefits that routinely go to married heterosexual couples but not to gay couples, like certain Social Security payments. We plotted out the cost of health insurance for couples whose employers don’t offer it to domestic partners. Even tax preparation can cost more, since gay couples have to file two sets of returns. Still, many couples may come out ahead in one area: they owe less in income taxes because they’re not hit with the so-called marriage penalty.

Our goal was to create a hypothetical gay couple whose situation would be similar to a heterosexual couple’s.

[...]

Here is what we came up with. 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.

[...]

Nearly all the extra costs that gay couples face would be erased if the federal government legalized same-sex marriage.

And that last line says it all. Repeal DOMA!