Marriage equality is not about the ability to call someone wife or husband. It’s about the ability to protect our families from a variety of situations, the most important of which is healthcare.
A recent study by the UCLA School of Public Health and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund looks at the widespread disparity between healthcare coverage for married heterosexuals and healthcare coverage for same-sex couples.
The study examines a recent period in California and discovers that partnered gay men are less than half as likely (42 percent) as married heterosexual men to get employer-sponsored dependent coverage, and partnered lesbians have an even slimmer chance (28 percent) of getting dependent coverage compared to married heterosexual women. As a result of these much lower rates of employer-provided coverage, partnered lesbians and gay men are more than twice as likely to be uninsured as married heterosexuals.
Translation: The lack of marriage equality puts same-sex couples in precarious financial and health situations.
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