| State | Date Effective | Population | Percent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | May 2004 | 6,547,629 | 2.12% |
| Connecticut | Nov. 2008 | 3,574,097 | 1.16% |
| Iowa | Apr. 2009 | 3,046,355 | 0.99% |
| Vermont | Jun. 2009 | 625,741 | 0.20% |
| New Hampshire | Jan. 2010 | 1,316,470 | 0.43% |
| Washington, D.C. | Mar. 2010 | 601,723 | 0.19% |
| New York | Jun. 2011 | 19,378,361 | 6.28% |
| Washington | Dec. 2012 | 6,724,540 | 2.18% |
| Maine | Dec. 2012 | 1,328,361 | 0.43% |
| Maryland | Jan. 2013 | 5,773,552 | 1.87% |
| Delaware | Jun. 2013 | 897,934 | 0.29% |
| California | Jun. 2013 | 37,253,956 | 12.07% |
| Minnesota | Aug. 2013 | 5,303,925 | 1.72% |
| Rhode Island | Aug. 2013 | 1,052,567 | 0.34% |
| New Jersey | Oct. 2013 | 8,791,894 | 2.84% |
Total | 102,216,846 | 33.11% |
In written arguments filed with the court, King said the justices should invalidate the state’s ban on gay marriage if they agree to resolve the issue in a lawsuit filed by two Santa Fe men who were denied a marriage license.
King, a Democrat who plans to run for governor next year against Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, said New Mexico law effectively doesn’t allow gay marriages although there’s no statutory provision that specifically prohibits, or authorizes, gay couples to be married.
“New Mexico’s guarantee of equal protection to its citizens demands that same-sex couples be permitted to enjoy the benefits of marriage in the same way and to the same extent as other New Mexico citizens,” King said in the filing.
The five-member court had asked King’s office to respond to the lawsuit. No hearing has been scheduled in the case so far, and it’s uncertain whether the Supreme Court will issue a decision resolving the same-sex marriage dispute.
The lawsuit was filed directly with the justices to try to get a speedy decision. However, the court could decide that the case should be handled differently and has to work its way through the legal system as an appeal from a lower court ruling.New Mexico is an interesting locus for battles around marriage equality because it is one of the very few states in the Union which does not have explicit statutory or constitutional language barring same-sex marriage.
Start with Massachusetts, which endorsed gay marriage in May 2004. That year, the state saw a 16 percent increase in marriage. The reason is, obviously, that gay couples who had been waiting for years to get married were finally able to tie the knot. In the years that followed, the marriage rate normalized but remained higher than it was in the years preceding the legalization. So all in all, there’s no reason to worry that gay marriage is destroying marriage in Massachusetts.
The other four states that have legalized gay marriage—New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire—have done it more recently, somewhere between 2008 and 2011. But from the little data we have, it looks as if the pattern will be more or less the same—a temporary jump in marriage followed by a return to virtually the same marriage rates as before gay marriage became legal. Washington, D.C., which started accepting same-sex marriages in March 2010, saw a huge 61.7 percent increase in marriage that year, though it’s too soon to see where it will settle. Again, no signs of the coming apocalypse.
Mitt Romney 29,805Curiously, now Republican officials are coming around to mathematical realities and calling the results a "split decision" or tie. This is what they should have done at the very beginning! DO THE MATH. The point here is that, no, Romney did not win the first two nomination contests, he tied in the first and won in a state where he owns a house and was Governor of its largest neighboring state.
Rick Santorum 29,839
Twenty-nine states have enacted constitutional amendments blocking same-sex marriage. In 18 of those states, the amendments also ban domestic partnerships or civil unions. Twelve states bar same-sex marriage by statute, and in two, Minnesota and North Carolina, anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendments will go before voters next year. At this point, nearly 60 percent of Americans live in places that do not protect gay couples in any way.
With New York, same-sex marriage is still allowed in only six states and the District of Columbia. Only 13 states provide some recognition of gay relationships with broad domestic partnerships or more limited rights, for things like medical decisions and inheritance (this includes 11 states with constitutional amendments or statutes barring gay marriage).In addition to the attempts to ban marriage equality in Minnesota and North Carolina via the ballot box in 2012, there will be attempts to legalize marriage equality by ballot measure in Maine. There will be no such attempt in California, however. (Thank Goodness!) Also, in Washington, New Jersey and Maryland there are on-going efforts to legalize same-sex marriages in those states.
LOS ANGELES, CA – Over 140,000 same-sex couples have formalized their
relationship under state law in the United States. Nearly 50,000 same-sex couples have
married. These findings from a new Williams Institute study, Patterns of Relationship
Recognition by Same-Sex Couples in the United States, are based on state administrative
data from those states where same-sex couples can marry, enter civil unions or domestic
partnerships, or enter other legal relationship statuses. The study also finds that same-sex
couples prefer marriage over other non-marital legal relationship statuses.
“We see a lot of evidence that same-sex couples strongly prefer marriage over civil
unions or domestic partnerships. Same-sex couples marry at higher rates in the first year
they have the option than we see in civil union states, for example,” M.V. Lee Badgett,
Research Director of The Williams Institute and professor of economics at the University
of Massachusetts Amherst. “Our findings are consistent with other research showing that
couples value marriage more for its social meaning than for its practical benefits.”
The new study also provides a snapshot of the couples who enter legally-recognized
relationship statuses. These couples are predominantly female, tend to be younger than
currently married different-sex couples, and tend to be older than newly-married
different-sex couples. When a state allows marriage for same-sex couples, couples will
travel to that state to marry from other states in which they do not enjoy that same
opportunity.
“When we look at the residency of same-sex couples who marry, around 60 percent liveThe graphic at the top illustrates the impact of same-sex marriage in Iowa on the surrounding states in the midwest of the country. Currently, New York, Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and the District of Columbia all allow legal same-sex marriage.
outside of the state where they got married,” said Jody L. Herman, Peter J. Cooper Public
Policy Fellow at The Williams Institute. “Couples are much less likely to travel out of
state to enter non-marital legal statuses. This is further evidence that same-sex couples
prefer marriage.”
But Republican candidates, who have placed less emphasis on gay marriage in recent years, probably cannot expect their opposition to it to be a net electoral positive for them except in select circumstances. If support for gay marriage were to continue accelerating as fast as it has in the past two years, supporters would outnumber opponents roughly 56-40 in the general population by November 2012.
Past trends, of course, are no guarantee of future ones, and it’s always possible that the momentum toward increasing support for gay marriage could flatten out or even reverse itself.
But this does put Republicans in a tricky position. Their traditional position on gay marriage is becoming less popular. But to the extent they disengage from the issue, they may lose even more ground. One way to read the trends of the past few years is that we have passed an inflection point wherein it is no longer politically advantageous for candidates to oppose same-sex marriage, which in turn softens opposition to it among the general public, creating a sort of feedback loop and accelerating the trend.It should be interesting to see how heterosexual supremacists who are opposed to marriage equality, especially Republican presidential contenders, deal with these poll results, especially since the first two primary states, New Hampshire and Iowa, both have legalized marriage equality.
