This study, Putting a Price on Equality? The Impact of Same-Sex Marriage on California's Budget, published in the Stanford Law and Policy Review, finds that giving marriage rights to same-sex couples in California will have a positive impact on the state budget.

As scholars of sexual orientation law and public policy, amici Badgett and Gates have a substantial interest in the issue before this Court, the constitutionality of California’s exclusion of same-sex couples from 1 marriage. Amici have conducted extensive research and authored numerous studies regarding the geographic, demographic and economic characteristics of same-sex couples in California and the United States. Amici believe that the expertise and perspective that they offer as independent researchers can help the Court more fully appreciate the impact of California’s marriage exclusion on same-sex couples and children raised by same-sex couples in the State.

Extending marriage to same-sex couples will boost the District of Columbia‟s economy by over $52.2 million over three years, which would generate increases in local government tax and fee revenues by $5.4 million and create approximately 700 new jobs. This analysis estimates the impact on business revenue and local government revenues if D.C. were to extend marriage to same-sex couples. We take into account the new legal landscape of same-sex marriage, which includes Massachusetts and Connecticut as marriage destinations for same-sex couples, along with the brief period in which California opened marriage to same-sex couples (June to November of 2008). This analysis precedes the recent expansion of marriage rights in Iowa and Vermont.

Data from the American Community Survey suggest that marriage equality has a small but positive impact on the number of individuals in same-sex couples who are attracted to a state. However, marriage equality appears to have a larger impact on the types of individuals in same-sex couples who are attracted to a state. This study shows that in Massachusetts marriage equality resulted in an increase of younger, female, and more highly educated and skilled individuals in same-sex couples moving to the state.

The greatest potential for changes in the social meaning of marriage will arise in three areas for which there is empirical evidence of significant differences between gay and straight couples: division of household labor, sexual exclusivity & childrearing. While the number of same-sex couples in the population is too small to produce significant change in overall patterns of behavior, the issue of gay marriage has generated so much attention and debate that a mixed process of gay assimilation to and effect on the social meaning of marriage is a reasonable expectation.

This analysis estimates the impact of extending marriage to same-sex couples on state and local government revenues in New Jersey. Using the best data available, we estimate that allowing same-sex couples to marry will result in approximately $15.1 million in new revenue over the next three years.

Our analysis relies on the same methods that we used in previous studies of the fiscal impact of marriage for same-sex couples on Washington, New Mexico, New Hampshire, California, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland, and Iowa. The full methodology for our analysis is set out in Supporting Families, Saving Funds: A Fiscal Analysis of New Jersey‘s Family Equality Act. These studies have found that extending the rights and obligations of marriage to same-sex couples would have a positive impact on each state‘s budget. Similar conclusions have been reached by legislative offices in Connecticut and Vermont and by the Comptroller General of New York. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that if all fifty states and the federal government extended the rights and obligations of marriage to same-sex couples, the federal government would benefit by nearly $1 billion each year.

Allowing same-sex couples to marry in Vermont would have a positive impact on the state economy, generating $31 million in new spending over the next three years. This new spending will generate 700 new jobs and an additional $3.3 million in state tax revenues.

This research study estimates that same-sex marriage in Maine, if permitted, would have a positive impact on the state's economy and budget. The study finds that same-sex weddings and associated tourism would generate $60 million in additional spending in Maine over three years, creating 1,000 new jobs. Due to this spending, the state and Maine counties would see an increase of $3.6 million in revenues over the next three years; the result of an increase of sales tax revenues of approximately $3.1 million and new marriage license fees of $500,000. In calculating the net benefit to the State, the study approximates that half of Maine’s 4,644 same-sex couples, or 2,316 couples, would marry in the first three years that marriage is extended to them. The study also estimates that approximately 15,657 same-sex couples from other states would come to Maine to marry.

Extending marriage rights to same-sex couples in New Mexico would bring an estimated $20.4 million to the state economy over the first three years. According to the most recent U.S. Census, there are currently 5,825 same-sex couples living in New Mexico. An estimated 2,913 (50 percent) of those couples would marry in the first three years, according to the pattern that has been observed in Massachusetts, which has had marriage equality since 2004, and elsewhere.

Over the next three years, extending marriage to same-sex couples in New Mexico would generate state and local sales tax revenues of $1.48 million, create and sustain over 318 new jobs, and increase income tax revenue from $344,481 – $745,883. The net impact of these effects will be a positive impact of $2.5 – $3.7 million on the state budget over the course of the first three years that same-sex marriage is legal in New Mexico.

This dissertation aims to develop a critique of gay liberation based on an ethnographic study of LGBT movements in contemporary Japan. Tensions within the so-called LGBT community in Japan appear to grow along with intensifying debates about marriage equality, which is increasingly becoming a barometer for national development and fought for in the name of anti-homophobic resistance in today’s globalizing world. Against this backdrop, this dissertation examines the distance between two primary groups—a non-profit LGBT organization Tokyo Rainbow Pride and one segment of their audiences, Tokyo amateur gay volleyballers—by asking the following questions: (1) Is gay liberation necessary in Japan? (2) How do divergent ways of living a queer life unfold in Japan? (3) What does the existence of diversity among LGBTs do to the Euro-American(ized) notion of gay liberation? Based on long-term participatory fieldwork in Tokyo (2018-20) and by braiding together queer studies, Japan scholarship, and social-movement research, I argue that disagreements over what constitutes gay liberation complicate the very cause in family-oriented Japan. More specifically, Japan demands the suspension of anti-homophobia in intersectional analysis and in the politics of gay liberation, as the existence of anti-homosexual discrimination is as fragile as the state of an anti-discrimination foothold among sexual minorities in the nation. At present, it is difficult to gauge the prospect of Japanese LGBT movements given the whims of the Japanese government under international pressure. In short, this context-sensitive, comparative, and policy-relevant study of gay liberation contributes to discussions about sexual inequality, nation-state formation, and social activism in the discipline of anthropology.