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Significant benefits to same-sex couples, no harm to different-sex marriage.
That's the takeaway from a new report by researchers at RAND and UCLA. Their study reviews two decades of evidence since Massachusetts first issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004.
Let's start with the benefits to LGBT people and their children. The “marriage benefit” that has been well documented in different-sex couples applies to same-sex couples, too. This includes lower psychological distress as compared with same-sex couples with other forms of legal status or no legal status. The physical health of LGBT people in states that approved same-sex marriage also improved. And when states legalized same-sex marriage, same-sex households experienced more-stable relationships, higher earnings, and higher rates of home ownership. Evidence also suggests health and academic benefits for the children of same-sex couples.
Meanwhile, the fears expressed by opponents of same-sex marriage “simply have not come to pass,” as coauthor Benjamin Karney says. There have been no negative effects on marriage, divorce, or cohabitation among different-sex couples.
In fact, the few significant effects observed by new analyses of the issue suggest a slight increase in overall marriage rates and provide some evidence of improved attitudes toward marriage among young people in states after same-sex couples were granted legal status. “We find no evidence for a retreat from marriage,” says RAND's Melanie Zaber, also a coauthor.
In short, the researchers find that, for LGBT individuals and same-sex couples, their children, and the general U.S. population, the benefits of access to legal same-sex marriage are “unambiguously positive.”
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