Making gay marriage count

With Iowa becoming the fourth state in the US to legalize gay marriage, it would seem reasonable to assume that the number of married couples (both heterosexual and homosexual) would increase. Unfortunately, when it does, the federal government won't (officially) take notice. The reason for this, is that the Census Bureau--the government's statistical agency--can't legally count these couples as married:

The federal law banning gay marriage bars the agency from counting same-sex marriages, the Census Bureau says, even though they are legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and, most recently, Vermont and Iowa.

Last summer, census officials announced that legally married same-sex couples would be reported as unmarried, same-sex partners.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act allows states to refuse recognition of gay marriages from other states, and bars the federal government from recognizing gay couples as "married". This means that when legally married gay couples are surveyed by the Census Bureau, their answers to questions pertaining to marital status will be recoded by Census Bureau statisticians.

It's not all that uncommon for research to be subject to political pressures. But the purpose of the Census Bureau is to be the nation's "leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy". It's hard to fulfill this role when you're legally bound to deny reality.

And it's not as if this issue is going away anytime soon. According to polling and statistics expert Nate Silver, a majority of states could oppose gay marriage bans by 2012. Momentum is on the side of greater freedom and equality and if the Census Bureau wants to accurately measure marriage rates in the US, they will have to count gay married couples sooner or later.

Fortunately, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn are advocating for equality and for sanity:

"Although we understand that federal law may not recognize same-sex marriages for the purposes of administration of federal benefits programs," they wrote, "we do not believe it prevents the Census Bureau from reporting statistics from the forms of self-identifying same-sex couples married under state law, like all married couples."

Doogie Howser, PhD

In the Funny or Die video "Proposition 8 - The Musical", Neil Patrick Harris brings together supporters and opponents of the ballot measure by reminding everyone that there's money to be made in gay marriage. According to Ian Ayers over at Freakonomics, NPH isn't the first to have this idea. Jennifer Gerard Brown, Ayers co-author, estimated that:

"...the present value of a change in marriage law for the first-mover state could reach three or four billion dollars. [E]ach tourist dollar spent generates additional private income, tax revenue, and jobs. Forbes magazine recently estimated that if same-sex couples currently living together would marry, they would spend $16.8 billion in the first several years following legalization."

Ayers also points out that "Brad Sears and Lee Badgett have estimated that same-sex marriage would “boost California state and local government revenues by over $63.8 million.'"

Same-sex marriage doesn't need to be justified on the basis of economic benefits. But it's a useful reminder that restrictions on human liberty don't lead to prosperity.

Prop 8 - The Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Neil Patrick Harris just might be the greatest visionary of our time...

Thomas Sowell is wrong on gay marriage

You would never guess from reading this piece, but Thomas Sowell is an articulate and thoughtful economist and commentator. While he discusses both affirmative action and gay marriage in the same article, I wish to focus on the latter.

Sowell's defines the terms of the debate as such:

"Marriage is not a right but a set of legal obligations imposed because the government has a vested interest in unions that, among other things, have the potential to produce children, which is to say, the future population of the nation.

Gays were on their strongest ground when they said that what they did was nobody else's business. Now they are asserting a right to other people's approval, which is wholly different.

None of us has a right to other people's approval."

The obvious (and ludicrous) implication of this argument is that heterosexual couples who cannot have children, or who choose not to, similarly have no business marrying. But the more interesting implication is that government should directly intervene into people's lives in order to advance collective goals. This is a bizarre position for a conservative economist to take, and at least one noted libertarian, Don Boudreaux, has taken notice:

"It's true that marriage laws emerged largely to deal with fact that heterosexual couples have children. But this fact does not imply - contrary to Mr. Sowell's careless claim - that "the government has a vested interest in unions that, among other things, have the potential to produce children, which is to say, the future population of the nation." Certainly in a free country, the state has no business governing in any way or for any purpose people's decisions on having children."

Sowell goes further, making a cruel and ironic argument on the rights of gays:

"While people may be treated the same, all their behaviors are not. Laws that forbid bicycles from being ridden on freeways obviously have a different effect on people who have bicycles but no cars.

But this is not discrimination against a person. The cyclist who gets into a car is just as free to drive on the freeway as anybody else.

The question is not whether gays should be permitted to marry. Many gays have already married people of the opposite sex. Conversely, heterosexuals who might want to marry someone of the same sex in order to make some point will be forbidden to do so, just as gays are."

I don't know how someone can say this and still be considered a serious part of the debate.

Gay marriage is not about "asserting a right to other people's approval" or imposing a way of life on anyone else. It is quite the opposite. Extending marriage rights to gays means removing government-sponsored opposition to sexual preference. It's about letting people choose their own path towards happiness, without needless interference from a nosy state. For anyone interested in the cause of liberty, the choice is clear.

But I can't say it any more eloquently than Keith Olberman: